Molly's Online Poker and Sportsbook Guide

Most people have a pretty good understanding of pot odds - whether the amount of chips in the pot justifies making a call - but they fail to realize that making this calculation only solves part of the poker equation. Often, these players forget to think about how the rest of the hand is going to play out if they make a call, and fail to factor that information into their calculations. That's where implied odds come into effect.

In short, implied odds are a way to calculate the amount of money that you can possibly win if you make your hand. To put it another way, your implied odds are the total amount you could win divided by what you're putting into the pot. more...

If you want to win a HORSE tournament, you have to be good at all five games. You don't have to be the best player at any one game, but you can't be the worst. If you're really bad at one of the games, it's going to hurt you. People often ask me which of the HORSE games I'm best at and I always give them the same answer it depends upon who I'm playing against. Whatever my opponent's worst game is, that's my best game.

In a HORSE tournament, it's really important that you remember to switch gears from one game to the next. It can be easy to forget if you're not careful, especially in the Stud portion of the games. When switching from Hold 'em to Omaha, you get dealt a different number of cards. You automatically know that's it's a different game because you're holding two more cards in your hand. That's not so obvious in the Stud games because all three versions start off the same. The only giveaway that you're playing Razz as opposed to Stud Hi or Stud Hi/Lo is that in Razz, the high card is the bring-in instead of the low card. Otherwise, all of the Stud games have the same basic structure, so it's really easy for players to forget to switch gears. more...

During this year's World Series of Poker*, I talked with a number of pros about the problems that so many online qualifiers had playing Big Slick during the early blind levels. It seemed to us that a huge percentage of the field - we estimated as much as 70 percent - was more than willing to go broke with this hand if they hit a pair on the flop.

But many pros, myself included, feel that Ace-King is a very difficult hand to play in the early levels of big buy-in tournaments, when the stacks are deep compared to the blinds. The fact of the matter is, top-pair/top-kicker is probably no good if another player is willing to risk all of his chips. This isn't always the case - you may find an extremely weak player willing to go broke on K-Q, but that's the rare exception. more...

In an earlier article, Perry Friedman gave some guidelines as to what you should be looking for at the start of a Seven-Card Stud hand. Perry concentrated on third street, when you make your initial decision to proceed with the hand or not. For this tip, I'd like to go further down the road and talk about fourth street.

When playing Stud, fourth street is the last of the smaller betting rounds. On fifth street, the bets double, so if you decide to play beyond fourth street, your investment in the hand is going to be hefty.

On fourth street, I look to see if an opponent has picked up a card that has a relation to the door card (the first up card). If fourth street builds straight or flush possibilities for my opponent, I'm likely to muck a lot of hands; if it appears to be a complete blank, I'll usually continue. more...

In the middle and later stages of tournaments, there are often times when you're forced to make a pretty big commitment on a relatively weak holding. These are uncomfortable spots because you never want to risk a large percentage of your chips with a mediocre hand. Things get even more difficult when you're playing from the blinds and out of position.

For example, say you're playing late in a tournament. The blinds are $500 and $1,000, and there's a $100 ante. You're in the small blind with $18,000. It's folded around to the button, an aggressive player who raises frequently in late position. He has $30,000 in his stack and he raises to $3,500. You look at your cards and see Ad-9s.

You know that A-9 isn't a great hand, but you can't ignore it in this situation. First off, given your opponent's history, he may very well be raising with a hand that is far worse than yours. In fact, in this spot, he could very well have two rags. Another consideration is that there are a lot of chips in play. Between the blinds, antes, and your opponent's raise, you stand to pick up over $5,000 in chips if you can take down this pot, which would be a nice addition to your short stack. more...

Losing is part of poker and all serious players, including the world's best, can recount losing streaks that lasted for months. Often, the downswing starts with a particularly unlucky run of cards. A series of bad beats or impossibly tough hands eat away at the bankroll. As the bad run continues, and money continues to disappear, players are forced to confront one of the toughest questions in poker: Am I a victim of lousy luck or am I playing poorly?

John D'Agostino knows how difficult it is to find the correct answer. "Any time I lose a few sessions in a row, I start questioning myself," D'Agostino says. "But I know that some days, even if I play perfectly, I'm going to lose."

Erik Seidel notes that in tournament poker, months-long dry spells are to be expected. In the midst of such a run it's hard to know if you're a victim of expected fluctuations or if there's something wrong with your game. "It's really hard to determine," says Seidel, "but I think most of us tend to fool ourselves and tend to think we're playing better than we are." more...