Why tilting ain't money & 3 misses and you're out

if you play the game for a while and you pay attention to what's going on in the game instead of multi tasking watching tv, listening to music and chatting with your friends on IM, you might notice that sometimes people starts to play aggressively with very weird hands. A guy in first position raise, the second guy reraise, the third guy shove all in and the first guy insta call with KK or AA. And what does the other guy have, something weak or funny, and the range varies.

Now if you think that xmas have come early, you might be right. Is this guy some sort of a billionaire doing micro charity at the table or is he just really bad? Or, could it be that this guy is just tilting?

Why we tilt?
It could be due to many reasons, you could be having a bad day, like the song, you could be having a bad breakup, or maybe you just shove all in with AA vs villain's KK and somehow he manage to crack you aces. Shit happens, that's normal. But playing poker when you're not right in the head for whatever reason is plain dumb. Sure you might think, if i played some hands won some stacks against some fishes, that would make things better. Guess what, it usually doesn't unless you're playing at nosebleed stakes and just won enough to buy your dream home, a Porsche and a small island to be named after you.

And what usually do happens is that your game drops, suddenly you're playing hands that you normally wouldn't be playing, calling in position that you normally would have folded and basically find it hard to lay down whatever hands that you have even when a super tight player is showing aggressions on each street and you can't even beat top pair on the board.

So learn to recognize when you're on a tilt, and no matter what you do, just stay the heck away from the poker tables and do something constructive, like listening to the Carpenter's End of the world. And come back when you can start to bob your head up and down to MC Hammer's You can't touch this song.

Stop Loss
So let's say you're tilting and you're leaking money like a torn pocket when do you call it a night and start sobbing in your sleep? A simple rule of thumb that i use is 3 stacks. If you lose three stacks regardless of the reason and you're feeling jumpy waiting to get AA and shove all in on every hand and get frustrated each time that you don't make a pair and still manage to shove your stack by the river card, that's it.

Luck matters in the short run in this game, and sometimes you just get dealt cooler hands and there's no avoiding going all in. Like hitting middle set on the flop and villain getting top set on a wet board. Money are just going to fly. But if you can lost up to three stacks in succession even if you did nothing wrong, it's hard not to be affected mentally by the losses and still keeping your A game on.

At night like those, your time can better be spent doing something else. So go do that something else, at least just for one night :)

If you can avoid playing when you tilt and you call it quits when it's just not your day, you would have avoided the biggest leak in your game and is well on your way to become a winning poker player.

To Grind or To Learn, That is the Question.

If you watch any poker shows these days on TV or online, and there's a lot, from High Stakes Poker to Poker After Dark to the tournament based WSOP, you'll probably think that the cool/awesome god like players of this game wins a lot via bluffing big and getting their opponent to fold.

But just like the popular proverb all roads lead to rome, there are many ways to play this game profitably, you can play loose basically playing a lot more hands than the average and aggressively betting to get the villain to always second guess himself and profit when he makes a big call and was wrong. Or you can play tight good ol ABC type of game and bet big when you have it and go for a cheap showdown or fold when you don't.

Eke & Squeeze - The Grinding approach
Basically you play a good amount of hands at a certain levels and you start to get a feel of how players at this level react. You learn to hand read pretty well and you have some basic rules of when or when not to go all in and you're surviving and even thriving on this level. And then you slowly internalize all these rules in your head and you become sort of an auto pilot poker bot. So you just sits there each day waiting for the right cards to come or the right fish to come and you don't really bother much about the table, players, etc. In short the game has become a grind which you patiently turns to squeeze out profits here and there and occasionally lose when you hit a cooler.

What's behind door no #2 Johnny? - The Learning approach
There's an awesome cycle that goes on in our brain, which is that you tend to enjoy doing things that you're better at. And this is exactly the proper mindset that you want to have in order to do well in this game. There's a lot of things you can learn from preflop play and postflop play, to player's style, to table dynamics and hand range and more. If that sounds complicated, well, it is. But you don't have to learn them all today. Just like any other skills that you've mastered riding a bicycle to using your computer, you get better at them via practice.

Enough with the fluff - so how do i learn?
So let's start with the basic, if you haven't done so already, you need to immediately go turn on something call hand history on your poker client, i'm using Full Tilt Poker as an example.

You want to set it to 9999 days so that no hand history will ever get deleted.
So with that turn on, each hands that you played is now captured into a convenient little text files inside the directory as shown on the hand history image.

So what?
If by now you have earned your free license of holdem manager, then all these hand history will have been converted and stored in a nice little tables which contains all your stats which you might regret by now if you didn't pay attention back when you're daydreaming about the hot girl in the next classroom when the teacher were spewing formulas at you.

But even if you haven't got it yet, you can just go to the path and open it. Inside that folder you should see a folder which indicates the year and upon opening that folder you should see folders which indicates the month. Open that up and you will see some text files inside. Open it up and it will be something like below:

So what 2?
So this is where the internet and the online poker community shines, i know there's plenty of poker forums out there but i prefer this one as it's been there since forever. And it's archived posting contains some very very awesome information that will rock your world. But how does this relates to the hand history?

You can find different forums for different level and the link that i've posted above is specifically for 6 max games for micro limits which we're playing right now. So go there setup an account and you're ready to leverage on the great minds of poker to improve your game.

So here when you post a new thread, you can actually post the hand history into the thread and ask specific question about your play. You can also read up on how other players play specific hands and just absorb the knowledge as you go along.

Happy learning!

Hello world of poker game

So where do u begin? The rule of the game seems simple, everybody has two cards, first comes three cards - the flop, then one more - the turn and finally one last card - the river. All together there's four rounds of betting allowed and since this is the no limit version, you can basically go insane with your betting size although shoving all in with 72 might get you in a straight jacket. But if you're playing in a table full of such players then it's time to quit your day job and get used to working in your pj.




VPIP & Table selection and why it matters
At the very least table selection will dictate who you get to play with and the rule of thumb is dead simple, you want to play with players who are weaker than you are period. In this friendly and animal name calling game of poker we like to associate these type of players as fish. And those who are sucking you dry of your monthly pay, annual bonus and retirement funds, sharks.

That's why we like to look at a player's stat called VPIP, Voluntary put money in pop, or player preflop % stats. This basically means how often a player will call a hand each round. So for example in a game of 6 maxs, each player will get to see a flop a maximum of six times each round. So if every round you call six times you'll have a Vpip of 100% = 6/6 and 50% if you call and see the flop half of the time, 3/6.

In general a high number is bad, well why you ask? Because it's hard to flop a good and strong hand most of the time, so if you're calling wit any two cards, you're going to be either folding a lot or join the homeless shelter soon. And if the thought of three meals a day in the soup kitchen isn't appealing to you then you should learn to play tight.



Playing tight just like a virgin
A good regular player will have a Vpip stats of around 20%++. so what this means is that in general you will be folding a lot of bad non playable hands, yawn and scoop up the pots. Or alternatively you could be playing in a wild, cursing and swearing manner and getting high blood pressure at the same time and losing a lot of pots.

So if making money sounds fun then this should be a good way to learn how to play the game. There's a lot of resources out there which teaches you what are the best starting hands in poker. And you should start with them and also always try to play in position. Being the last to act matters a lot in this game when anybody's two cards could be anything.

This is a game of a small edge, so when you're the last to act, you will always gain that small edge, so regardless of what you hold in your hands from AA-23, it's good to always have a position. Just playing this way should help you win a lot more hands.



So after the big roundabout, i still haven't talk about what to look for when selecting table. But since you already know what Vpip means, it should be quite obvious that you want to select a table with higher player preflop so that you might get a chance to play with more looser players. A rough guide would be to find table with 30% or higher, but also remember that this stat indicates what the table action that has been ongoing, this doesn't naturally means that those players might still be there.

You would have to actually play a few hands in the table to find out.



FT Points and Happy Hour
Yup, it seems that happy hour is no longer confined to people getting wasted on cheaper beers on certain hour of the night, Full Tilt Poker also sets Happy hour which allows you to gather more points each time you play. Just click on My Promotions and it will show all the goodies that is available to you. Click on My Happy Hour to show the hours when you can get double points. Note that all the time shown are in Eastern Time, therefore if you don't live in that part of the world then know that Eastern Time and Greenwich Meridian Time GMT differs by about +5hours. So just calculate from there what your local time is.

Sign me up, Ivey!

Why Full Tilt?

Well first of all the first thing that you see when you fire up the interface is Chris Jesus Ferguson ugly mug on your left and the model lookalike Patrick Antonius to your right, you gotta start think that man, it's freaking cool to be a poker player in this site!

But if that still doesn't convince you then you might want to go back and read up on this again!

Plus i find the interface to be quite easy to use, and if you fancy yourself to be good enough, you get to play with some freaking awesome monsters in this site, namely Ivey, Durr and PA to name a few. If you're that good and that deep stack :)



In the beginning, there was the App
First thing first, go to this link and download the FTP app. All the magic mumbo jumbo that you can and will be doing will all be from this small little app.

Click on the third button label, this will shock you, Create New Account to start creating your shiny new account.

Choosing a username
-use whatever that you fancy but perhaps nothing too descriptive, i.e. imasuckynewpokerplayer probably not that good

Choosing a password
-after the recent hacking incident on gawker.com, you probably wanna avoid anything that is too obvious, i.e. password probably isn't a very secure password,
-try to use a combination of alphabets+numbers+symbols, i.e. haha123,mypwd,rocks! is better, and please don't use that one too, we wanna lose our $$ through our gambling habit and not hacked by nosy teenage hackers.
-note: used the password strength indicator to know how strong is your password

Email:
- this is where they will mail you, codes, spams, i mean news, updates and other stuff. So don't give a fake one, as you would need the authorization code later too.

Referral Code:
-This is where you get to keep in whatever sweet, mouth watering freebies promotions that is available out there.
-For our starting code, i would actually prefer that we use the HoldEm Manager code, which is another shocker here, HoldemManager, so that we can get it for free :)

Change your avatar:
Here you can choose what your poker face will be like, from a rock solid err rock to fish to shark and even a gender change.



Whew, that's a lot of typing, but that's completes your registration.

Next up, just check your email and cross your fingers and wait for the email from the FullTiltPoker people to arrive. Once it does, open it up and get the validation Code inside. You should be able to fill it into the smallish window below after you click on the button Start Playing! after you complete the registration.



What the heck is play money?
If you're played before at zynga's texas hold'em or some other fake for fun texas hold'em game, then this is the same thing. If you feel like you're not ready to play for real moolah, then you can just play in this mode for a while.

WARNING:
Since it's play money, most people don't really play tight or seriously here thus beating a million dollar worth of play money here doesn't mean that you're going to be on High Stakes Poker or Poker After Dark anytime soon.

Show me the moneyyyyyyyyyyy!!
So enough of fluff talk, here's comes the benjamins.
Click on the round red chip button with the label Deposit Now.

And the windows comes alive immediately showing you all the available options that you can use to shove your money to them.

I've only had experience with two of them, MoneyBookers.com and straight via your Visa credit card. Where's the heck is PayPal you ask? I'm not sure, i guess they don't like to be linked to Poker or Gambling site?

MoneyBookers(WTF is that) or Visa?
Basically moneybookers.com is sort of like paypal, in which you setup an account, they ask some painful long and slow question to verify that you are who you claim to be, no more sandra bullock and identity theft issues, then you can deposit some $$ to that account and you can move money around via this account like how they used to do it in The Sopranos.

If you're worried and would like to have all this added benefit, then you can setup a moneybookers account. Else you can just go the simpler way and deposit via your visa credit card.

So what's wrong with the visa credit card method, uhm, not much except that if you deposit the $$ via this card then when yo uwant to withdraw money out, you have to withdraw the $$ back into this card. But hey, if you have grind hard and earned big bucks, wouldn't you wanna go on a shopping spree?

And oh, if you did setup a moneybookers account later and link it to your Full Tilt Poker account, you can still withdraw $$ straight into your moneybookers account. But do know that they will charge your for withdrawal fee, and potentially some other fees.

So back again to the visa route, just click on the Visa button to continue or MasterCard if that's what you prefer to pay for your priceless moments.
So hopefully if your credit card isn't a stolen one after filling in the details below, and click on deposit now, your money will go through usually within 30 seconds and welcome, you're ready to play for the big bucks now :)

With that, we survived through the most boring part, in the next part, i shall walk through our first table selection, our first game and the basic interface and some other stuff that you would like to know.

First Grind towards the $8 million pay day

Caution: high doses of sarcasm ahead, please consult your physicians before proceeding.

Mehhh, why even play Texas hold em poker?
At the core because it's a fun game and it's getting more and more popular.
But also because big ass site like facebook and zynga is making sure that the next Phil ivey or Tom Durr is just around the corner.
You can play it almost anywhere these days from video games bearing WSOP brand, yes, that's wery special old palette for you alcohol lovers out there to your local casinos and even your weekly friendly game in your neighbourhood.

But besides $$, as if there's any other reasons necessary, the game also teaches math, psychology (if he think that I think he's bluffing then maybe I should do x..) and finally discipline, it takes a solid backside and zen like mentality to wait 244 hands to get pocket Aces in the hole and go all in.

And the game involve skills in the long run. That's why you always see the same face in the final table, ok, maybe just one or two faces.



24 hours, in your home casino.
In the good old days, dead beat gambler have to put on Uncomfortable garment called clothes and stroll down to their friendly casino to play in this game and with some luck sucker some out of town tourist and call it a good day while sipping margaritas with little umbrellas in them.

But these days with the advent of the almighty internet, people from all around the world can log on to these online poker sites with their tighty whitey and play against players from all around the world.

The best thing about this is that you don't have to be super rich to gamble all your wealth away. You can literally gamble for penny and peanuts with buy ins as low as $0.80 at $0.01/0.02 stakes and slowly work your way up toward buying that dream house or yours up in the hill.

And thanks to friendly competition amongst these sites, we can get a lot of perks such as points, deposit bonus and other goodies for signing up.



So how do I get wet?
The good news is that you don't need a lot to get started playing in this game, can't say the same for those mmorpg players.

If you're totally new to the game and just want to know what it feels like to play with the big boys then just start with an initial investment of $20. Pick a poker site and the hardest part of it all, pick a user name.

There's quite a few poker sites out there and depending on where you're from, *cough US *cough, you might get banned from starting up an account at all. But I'll like to stick with those that are bigger=stable/more players and with clean sheet=no cheating incidents... So I'll recommend starting with full tilt or poker stars.

So what will u get when you sign up?
- deposit bonus
- referral code : which you can key in from multiple sites to get awesome freebies, coolness!

For simplicity sake, let's just deposit $20 and get the referral code so we can earn two free license of hold em manager.

WTF is hold em manager you ask? Good question, basically it allows you to keep track of your plays, winnings, your opponents and other nasty stuff. You'll want this, trust me.

So how do you gift wrap and send your money to the poker site? Well first of all you need to download the poker application from their site. After installing it then you can choose to create account..

These next part, yawn, will walk you through creating your user account and make your initial deposit at full tilt.. Cos meh all I have is $20 for one poker site :P