It’s one of those spots that comes around quite frequently when you’re playing poker.
You raise with a marginal hand, miss on an Ace-high or King-high board and your opponent calls your c-bet. Should you start barreling now, trying to take the pot down or is it better to shut down and not invest anymore chips?
That’s the theme of this week’s podcast and we have a nice hand where I get caught double barrel bluffing with King-high.
This week we have Zachary Elwood on the show, author of three bestselling books on poker tells. It won’t come as a surprise that this episode is on, well, poker tells!
Zach shares some very interesting tips with us on how you can use tells to your advantage at the table. And how to defend yourself against giving off tells to your opponents.
The strat chat (33:00) focuses on a hand between Blumstein and Pollak from the final table of this year’s WSOP Main Event. Pollak lays down a straight on the river and probably got a verbal tell off of Blumstein that helped him in his decision.
When looking to improve, most of us are mainly focused on the technical aspects of the game. How much to raise pre-flop, when to c-bet, the Expected Value of a semi-bluff, etc.
Whereas we should definitely study these aspects closely, there is another dimension to poker that is often underestimated and neglected. I’m talking about the mental side of poker.
Tommy Angelo’s latest book Painless Poker gives a great insight into how you can improve your mental game by eradicating the “pain” in poker. He explains how to stop experiencing “thought pain” and tilt, so that you can instead focus your mind entirely on what poker should be all about: coming up with the best possible decisions at the table.
Painless poker = A focused mind = Better decisions = More poker profit
A simple formula, but oh so hard to attain.
In this blog post I’ll give you some top tips on how to achieve painless poker and increase your profitability. But first, let’s take a look at what poker pain is and what kind of effects it has.
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This week we have Matt Berkey on the show, a high roller cash game player who plays as high as $300/$600/$1200 NL.
But Matt is also a successful tournament player. We spoke to him a day after his 3rd place finish in the Little One for One Drop at the WSOP, which earned him $240,588.
The theme of today’s episode centers around bet sizing and the stratchat focuses on a hand from Ben’s new book (42m 09s), which will be released in September.
We have another special guest this episode. Dara O’Kearney, professional poker player and former ultra runner.
Dara is someone who likes to challenge himself to the max. He was the 2007 Irish 24 hour running champion and when he was a competitive runner, he would run between 100 and 120 miles every week.
Just as training that is!
In this episode, we talk about how he uses his physical fitness to his advantage at the poker table. Poker is an intense game and being in good shape definitely helps, especially for the longer poker sessions and tournaments, such as at the WSOP.
As usual, there is also some great stratchat. The hand we talk about leads to the longest analysis ever in the history of our Podcast. And Dara has some great ideas and insights that I’m sure you’ll enjoy.
This show comes straight from Las Vegas, where Merv is currently playing at the WSOP. Talking about heaven for poker players….this is it!
Today’s PPP Poser asks a question about huge laydowns. He asks: “There are some hands that seem too strong to laydown, even when I suspect I’m beaten. I see such crazy play sometimes in low stakes games, I can’t trust my read.”
We also have an incredible hand from last year’s WSOP Main Event where James Obst makes a huge laydown on the river.
Tilt….it’s a poker player’s worst enemy. Every player suffers from it at some point and it can have a disastrous effect on your win rate (and emotional well-being).
But what if there was a way to reach tiltlessness? A state where you don’t experience tilt at all?
Today’s Podcast episode features special guest Tommy Angelo, author of the revolutionary new poker novel Painless Poker. He shares his top tips for improving your mental state at the table and how you can reach that state of painless poker.
We’re also doing a giveaway again. Listen to the Podcast to find out how you can get a free copy of Tommy’s latest book (details revealed at 1h:08m:40s)!