by carlcarlsoniv | Apr 12, 2021 | Featured Strategy, No Limit Hold'em
The Problem With Questions on General Situations There’s an inherent problem with trying to answer poker questions about general situations, and that problem is that the answer is almost always “it depends” followed by a list of things that it could...
by FTR Poker Admin | Apr 9, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Every post in the spoonitnow strategy series has been leading up to this moment. While there is obviously going to be some math involved when it comes to basic things like pot odds, a lot of people are under the impression that things like balance and exploitation...
by carlcarlsoniv | Apr 9, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction In last week’s column on dealing with ranges, I talked about how to incorporate both your range and your opponent’s range into a single, cohesive thought process that allows you to exploit players and deal with balance issues at the same time....
by carlcarlsoniv | Apr 8, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction In part 1 of this series, we introduced the common idea of not knowing what to do when you miss the flop. We covered a number of ideas to think about to show that there’s a lot to learn, and now we’re going to look at the specifics of some of...
by FTR Poker Admin | Apr 7, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Addendum to Preflop adaptations that must occur Dealing with reraises- When you get reraised from position from a typical player, it sucks, and you’ll have to fold most hands if the reraise is substantial, such as AJ/AQ/KQ and weaker cards than that. Oftentimes it is...
by carlcarlsoniv | Apr 7, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
I’m going to pick back up on the NL 2-7 Single Draw series later, but because of popualr interest, we’re going to look at a different topic today. This week’s topic is that of multiway pots, why they are different and how you should adjust to them....
by FTR Poker Admin | Apr 6, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In no-limit hold’em, the most popular form of poker in the world, what poker hands you choose to play pre-flop is mostly dependent on how well the hands are going to play post-flop. How well hands play post-flop depend on a few main factors, like the ability to...
by FTR Poker Admin | Apr 5, 2021 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
This is the third installment in the No-Limit Hold’em Foundations Course. Before you read this lesson, you should have completed lesson 1 and lesson 2, and this includes doing the exercises and posting them in the forum threads for each lesson. Also make sure to...
by FTR Poker Admin | Apr 4, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
There is a tremendous sub-culture of players who see small pocket pairs and get carried away with their profit potential. Personally I play pocket pairs very sparingly in full-ring NLHE games. The modern online poker environment is getting tougher by the month and...
by carlcarlsoniv | Apr 4, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction In this week’s edition of [spoonitnow strategy], we’re going to look at some considerations for bluffing. We’re going to look at the role of position, the role of outs and when each is important for improving the EV of your bluffs. What...
by FTR Poker Admin | Apr 4, 2021 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Wherever you go these days, be it on poker forums, poker websites or poker magazines, you will be confronted by a myriad of information concerning how to play certain hands in certain situations. Now before I go any further, there is absolutely nothing wrong with...
by FTR Poker Admin | Apr 1, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
Over the past few weeks, we have looked at exploiting our opponents in flop situations. Our focus has been on looking at our ranges on a conceptual level, but now we’re going to look more at the process of exploitation. The goal with this week’s article is...
by carlcarlsoniv | Apr 1, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Last week, we took an initial look at the [0, 1] model for ranges and looked at a couple of examples of how it can be put to work for us. We tied this into our previous discussion of how to calculate the EV of different types of situations, and we looked at how to use...
by givememyleg | Apr 1, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, Live Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In the past when live games became tough to beat players turned to online poker to hone their skills, get multi-table bonuses, and make money. With the games online getting harder by the day it is quite ironic the same players find themselves heading back to the live...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 31, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Lets face it, if making money playing poker was that easy then there wouldn’t be so many people who are still scratching their heads trying to figure it all out. There are many facets to playing successful poker but one of the least understood is in selecting suitable...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 31, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
(This is a post I wrote a while back which I hope will be useful for newcomers to micro-stakes NL. It should be useful up to 25NL, but it’s specifically aimed at the player of a few weeks’ experience, who understands the basics, but doesn’t know much...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 31, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I’m going to try to tie this in as much as possible the points I made in my post on blind stealing, Blind Stealing 101. I think that for the people who don’t already raise behind limpers often, it will be best if they think of it as an extension of blind...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 31, 2021 | Featured No Limit Hold'em, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Something I like to do, and what I always advocate people who seek poker help from me, is to break down the elements of poker so we can understand concepts behind them and further apply them. I feel like most of the problems with people stuck at low and midstakes is...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 30, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
Our objective here is to start to use second-level thinking principles to anticipate the strategies of regular opponents. This information will be used in tandem with other information we know about our opponents to formulate strategies used to exploit them. The State...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 30, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction A lot of the time in poker, we get caught up on the idea of wanting to know if something is profitable or not. We often make mistakes in our game because we’re taking an aggressive action that we have deemed to be profitable since we have made a...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 29, 2021 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
First, two hands…. $5/$10 No Limit Holdem 6 players Stacks: UTG fakker11 ($1594.00) UTG+1 GIVEmeSOME99 ($815.00) CO traheho ($1062.00) BTN Bttech86 ($1000.00) SB Hero ($1095.00) BB zero2lose ($2772.75) Pre-flop: ($15, 6 players) Hero is SB 4 folds, Hero...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 29, 2021 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Let’s suppose, just for purposes of illustration, that you and I are both playing in our local casino’s 10/20 Limit Hold ‘Em game. We both play about the same number of hours per year, and we are similar-style players. Let’s just be...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 29, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction Learning to deal with ranges is hard enough as it is, but there are a number of ideas about handling no-limit hold’em ranges that are a bit mislead. In this forum thread, I asked about the questions that people had about learning to work with...
by givememyleg | Mar 29, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Poker should not be thought of as a game that starts when the cards are dealt and ends with the showdown. At its core, poker is a game of competing strategies. This is why when we classify players, we classify them by their strategy and skill level. Here, we will...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 29, 2021 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Let’s face it, we all know how important aggression is in poker. But years ago I used to remark how easy it was to be aggressive and that anyone could do it. If I told a novice player to empty the clip every time he entered a pot then his violent aggression...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 29, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A lot of people don’t think about their bet sizing much. They have a “standard” bet size they use in nearly all situations, in hopes of not giving away further information as well as not wanting to make a mistake by betting too much or too little. However, some go a...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 29, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
The terms attack and defense in poker are almost always used in an effort to describe the idea of initiative. We have this idea of aggression in poker as being represented by the actions that put more unmatched money into the pot like betting and raising, and then we...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 28, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Live Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
For many U.S. players, Black Friday has meant the end of playing poker online. For those players, the only way to currently play poker without the worry of legality or cashouts is to go to a brick and mortar cardroom and play honest to god live poker. I happen to be...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 28, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Last week, we looked at one of the scenarios that helps to form a foundation of poker understanding. This scenario was when we are on the river, heads-up, in position with a single bet left behind. More specifically, we looked at the bluffing frequency of the player...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 27, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
The most repeated advice in poker. We’ve all heard it before. Position, Position, Position. The proof is in the pudding. Our statistics show that we win much more money on the button than we do UTG. But the advice to play in position is not very powerful when we have...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 27, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I’m sort of at a weird spot in the development of my game. I’m going to type out a bunch of random crap about common drawing spots with straight or flush draws in hopes that it’ll internalize some things I still probably screw up occasionally. Also,...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 27, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Meeloche presents an interesting approach to table selection. Perhaps there is an alternative to just looking at preflop percentages and pot sizes… My contribution to table selection, maybe even a new idea… When it comes to table selection, we still should...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 27, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Last week, we started a series called Back to Basics which is going to look at “basic” concepts in more depth than players have probably used before. Our first part of this series was on Implied Odds, and we’re going to continue with this theme in Part 2 this...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 27, 2021 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
This seemingly simple topic might be one of the most misunderstood by beginners in poker. Learning about reverse implied odds was quite eye-opening for me and led to a large improvement in my ability. Most players, even those new to the game, understand what is meant...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 27, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Last week we started looking at the relationship between bluffing and semi-bluffing for the purposes of being able to construct examples to study that allow us to build our intuition, or our feel for the game. We specifically looked at scenarios where we only had nut...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 26, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Group 0: AA KK Group 1: QQ JJ AKs Group 2: TT AK AQs AJs KQs Group 3: AQ 99 88 77 ATs KJs Group 4: AJ KQ QJs KTs JTs AT Group 5: 66 55 44 33 22 KJ(?) QTs(?) A9s(?) A8s(?) QJ(?) Group 6(?): KT QT JT A7s K9s Q9s T9s J9s A5s A6s A4s A3s A2s Group 7(?): A9 K9 98s 87s (?)...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 25, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In poker, we attempt to make money by playing the best we can, making what we feel is the most profitable play in every scenario, making as few mistakes as possible. Assuming you know the exact hand range of your opponent, there is almost always a clear best play, and...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 24, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Out of all the strategic aspects at play in any given poker game, there is none more important than table position. Players who can manipulate the hand-to-hand shift in the betting patterns will have a greater chance to be successful, regardless of the cards in their...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 24, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
This is the beginning of the Back to Basics series. The point of this series is to use basic EV calculations to examine basic concepts in more depth than a lot of players probably ever have before. You will have needed to work through the EV Calculations Tutorial...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 24, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
The key to table selection is having a good seat at a great table. Beware, there is such a thing as a bad seat at a great table. I primarily look at games with 6-8 players and a large pot size. I do this so I’m less likely to join a game that’s already...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 24, 2021 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
In any poker game, we have a strategy, and our opponents have their own strategies. How these strategies match up determines who makes money and how much money is made. So far, this series has been looking at concepts and ideas that have the point of developing one...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 24, 2021 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
The Fundamentals Poker players have a really bad habit of getting seduced by what appear to be fancy tactics like over-the-top bluffs, laying down big hands and making huge calls with weak hands. In an effort to emulate the professionals who they see making these big...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 24, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
#3 Value Betting and Bet-Sizing Being able to size bets correctly in No-Limit Hold’em is a critical factor in improving your win-rate. Bet-sizing as a concept is not the easiest to explain or master but I will do my best. There are many different types of bets one...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 23, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In my first strategy post on forming ranges, I mostly touched on preflop. But postflop, as we all know, is where the big money is at. And it’s postflop where forming ranges is the most important, it’s just a whole lot harder! The basic premise of forming ranges is...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 23, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Introduction As part of the free NLHE Foundations Course, I’ve been providing a “hold my hand” approach to different types of analysis that you can do to learn about poker. If you want to take part, go to the link above, post in the thread, and...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 23, 2021 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
It’s one of the scariest feelings in poker – You’ve just lost a huge pot to a three-to-one underdog and given up most of your stack. As you watch the opponent sort your chips and integrate them into his pile, a sickening realization creeps up on you…...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 23, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Late last year, I had a series of EV Calculation tutorials that offered players a way to do even complex EV calculations with simple addition and multiplication (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5). Recently, someone posted in the Beginner’s Circle asking...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 23, 2021 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
One of the things that a lot of people have a big misunderstanding about is the difference between equity and expected value. We’re going to look at a few examples in this week’s article that should help players to develop some clarity on this issue....
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 22, 2021 | Featured Strategy, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Sauce123 destroys the competition. Trust me. He put together a really solid, concise guide to beating the 6-max no limit holdem tables – particularly on US friendly poker rooms Post-UIGEA (when many poker rooms closed their doors to US players, ultimately making...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 22, 2021 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em
Introduction Back in my very first edition of this strategy column, I outlined what I believe to be a very efficient method for approaching the process of learning in poker. Later on, I expanded on these ideas in late 2014 in my original article An Introduction to...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 22, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In the context of poker, preparation could mean a number of different things, but we’re going to focus specifically on a few instances here. First, we’re going to look at how to and the advantages of preparing when you make a bet or raise. Second,...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 22, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Featured No Limit Hold'em, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Psychology, Poker Strategy
I feel like tons of the noobies in the BC have serious misconceptions about microstakes poker. Here are a few I’ve seen lately. 1. The micros are just too fishy to be beat for any decent win rate. 2. The micros are too hard to be beat since UIGEA. 3. The FTR...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 22, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Over the past twelve months, I have been observing the lower stakes no-limit games and playing in them quite extensively including around 100k hands at NL50. I have been observing the games on Pokerloco recently which is a site that is situated on Ongame. I have been...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 22, 2021 | Cash Games, Featured Cash Games, Featured No Limit Hold'em, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A few people have been posting stats threads lately and I’ve seen a trend that really needs to be addressed. Most of the people I’ve seen stats on are not stealing blinds nearly enough, and aren’t defending their blinds nearly enough. I’ve...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 21, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
This week’s article is the beginning of a new series about expected value calculations. A lot of people have expressed an interest in having a good set of tutorials explaining how to do more math-related things since that’s something I’m kind of...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 21, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction If you’re reading this, then chances are that you don’t check-raise enough and that you really have no idea when you should be doing it except when you decide to on a whim. We’re going to set out to change that today by giving you an...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 21, 2021 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Most of us have played poker in one form or another. The game is universal, reaching across the world to unite players of all ages and nations. Let’s get to the basics. Players are each dealt a set number of cards in a predetermined timing system (deal, flop,...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 21, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Some players at a full, 10 person Limit Hold’em table will play any ace at any time. Those who have read Sklansky know that Ace-little unsuited does not make it into his 8 hand groupings and often times should not be played from early position. Suppose you are in...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 21, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
If you haven’t read part 1 and part 2, then you’ll need to go ahead and do that before you jump into this week’s article because I’m going to assume that you know and completely understand the contents of those two parts. This week, we’re...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 20, 2021 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
I have to say that I absolutely love poker but I guess that I have written enough articles now for FlopTurnRiver for you to already now that. In this article I want to look at the concept of pot control. This is something that has been expanded over the past few years...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 20, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Over the past three weeks, we have been building up to this week’s material. This week, we’re going to look at how to use what we’ve learned so far to perform EV calculations for extremely complicated scenarios. The math involved does not change at...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 20, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
So everyone who reads and posts in this forum knows how to evaluate a HH, knows about preflop, knows about continuation betting and knows something about hand values and hand ranges. Perhaps the most important thing about poker though, and why some "bad"...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 20, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
A while back, I wrote the EV Calculations Tutorial series to help people to deal with the math side of poker. We followed a very simple process that kept our analysis organized and clean, and we did so only requiring basic addition and multiplication. While this is...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 19, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Online poker has blown up in the past decade. It has become the favorite past time of many people around the world. With the software online poker sites use, tables can be created at no extra cost. This means that online poker sites do not require all tables to be...
by givememyleg | Mar 19, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
If poker was all about exercising knowledge, then it would be basically all too easy to earn money at the game, but life is never that easy is it? For instance many authors have written excellent poker books without the effects of having written that book having any...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 19, 2021 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
We’ve all run across players who refuse to put their money in the pot without the benefit of premium cards. Indeed, players who wait on suited connectors, pocket pairs, or high face cards are practicing sound poker strategy, and will almost always make deep runs...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 19, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
In the Back to Basics series, we’re taking concepts that you probably learned early in your poker career and looking at them from a more detailed standpoint than you likely did when you first learned about them. This week, we’re going to look at...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 18, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
Introduction In last week’s edition of this series, we looked at some specific things that you can tell about the flop texture that will give you a good idea of which types of flops are good for continuation betting with all other factors being considered equal....
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 18, 2021 | Beginner Poker, Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A lot of people get caught up thinking about what cards are going to come after the flop when they are considering a continuation bet. However, it’s usually more important to think about betting and position. When you’re considering making a continuation...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 18, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
One of the recent trends in online poker is the introduction of No Limit Hold’em cash games with an Ante. Major sites such as FullTilt, UB (formerly UltimateBet), and Absolute Poker have added these games to their lobby looking to attract more players. Ante games tend...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 18, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Balance by Meeloche Simple Definition as it applies to poker: Taking the same line as a bluff as you would for value, example a cbet on an AK9 board with 78o. The point is not to bluff 50% of the time and value bet 50% of the time on the example board, but to credibly...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 18, 2021 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
In last week’s article, we looked at some of the reasons why equity isn’t the end-all, be-all of evaluating how two ranges will perform against each other. With that out of the way, we’re going to be able to get into the nitty gritty aspects of the...
by carlcarlsoniv | Mar 17, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em
This is part 3 in the Back to Basics series. In this series, we take basic concepts and look at them in a little more depth than beginners typically do. The idea here is to fill in some knowledge gaps and play better poker on a fundamental level. In this week’s...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 17, 2021 | Beginner Poker, No Limit Hold'em
Introduction More than seven years ago, I wrote a post titled Blind Stealing 101. A lot has changed in terms of what’s fashionable and what’s well-known in the online poker world. For a fun piece of evidence of this, note that the standard size of an open...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 17, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Progression through the micros naturally trends us toward unbalanced lines. We start playing basic TAGG, then learn to steal blinds more, to cbet more. Hey, it works. When we face better competition at 100nl or higher, the lack of balance is very exploitable. Trust me...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 17, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Recently I have switched poker sites again, I do this periodically if I find good games and plenty of fish. I don’t play anywhere near as much poker these days and most of that is at between NL50 and NL200 full-ring NLHE. Recently I have been watching the games...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 16, 2021 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Surprisingly I couldn’t find any posts detailing this, so I’m going to do my thing. A Common Scenario With 100bb effective stacks, EP opens for 4x preflop, there are 2 callers, and we call on the button with 9 8 . Both of the blinds call. The flop pot is...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 16, 2021 | Cash Games, No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
A few months ago when I was participating in my NL50 poker challenge, it soon become apparent that there were an awful lot of bad regs at this level in both six max and full-ring, but especially six max. In any form of poker, the fewer players that there is on the...
by FTR Poker Admin | Mar 16, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
As you begin to peel away the surface of no-limit Hold’em and in particular, no-limit Hold’em cash games, it becomes apparent that the game itself has design problems. What in heavens name do I mean? Well to put it in plain English, what other field of...
by givememyleg | Mar 16, 2021 | No Limit Hold'em, Poker Strategy
Importance of Table Position Location, location, location. This is the mantra for businesses such as retail stores and real estate. In poker, it’s position, position, position. There is simply nothing more important in no-limit hold’em than position. In...
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