Circuit Tips

On The Circuit, Poker's Biggest Names Offer Tips And Tales, and Trash-Talk Each Other From The Tournament Trail.
Here Is A Peek Into The Studio:

Erick Lindgren On What It Takes To Be A Great Poker Player
"The first thing you must have to be a good poker player is the ability to gamble. It's not math, it's not people skills; it's just a sick ability to gamble. The best players, the highest-limit players, have an innate ability to gamble. They're just born gamblers. To be at the top of this game, that's what you must have."

Mike Matusow On Early-Level Tournament Strategy
"I've been told, and I have always played like this, that until the antes get into the pot, you should play snugger than a bug in a rug. And that's the truth. Mike Sexton will tell you that Stu Ungar never played a pot, never played a hand, until the antes went in there. So, I always stuck with what Mike Sexton told me. So, my advice to everybody out there is: Until the antes get in there and you can start playing a little poker, just play solid and tight and try to wait on some cards and hope they come your way."

Layne Flack On Keeping The Betting Lead In No-Limit Hold'em
"Not a lot of good can come out of paying off with a big hand when you're beat. I mean, that's the worst feeling in the world. So, you're better off leading, and if they move in on you or make whatever play they make, you're out only the original bet. But if you play it in a way that you don't know where you're at, and you have to call huge bets, you might lose a lot more with two aces than you were willing to risk on a bad situation."

Kenna James On The Qualities That Make A Good Poker Player
"The qualities that go into making a good poker player are discipline, patience, understanding, and empathy, which is feeling what the other person is feeling so that you know whether he's weak or strong. You know, we don't really talk about empathy as a quality that goes into making a good poker player. But I'll tell you, it's one of my strengths when I can look across the table and feel what a person is going through, because I've been there."

Tim Phan On Low-Limit Cash Games
"If you play at a lower limit, a lot of people are going to call. They're going to try to draw to a funky hand so that they can bust you. That's not bad. But in a higher-limit game, the money is the pressure, so you don't actually need to be sneaky. You can put pressure on by betting a big number, knowing that another big number is going to follow another big number. In a lower-limit game, I say, always go for a sneak attack. Just play it slow and sneak up behind them."

Harry Demetriou On Betting The River
"People are very afraid on the river. They're afraid to bet big. They think they're going to lose their opponent. A lot of people don't think about pot odds on the river, and you can get away with betting a lot more. What they tend to think of is, do I have the best hand or not? You can actually get a lot more out of people than they think. When good players make hands, they can lose more, but they win more with those hands when they stand up. That's just the nature of the beast."

Joe Sebok On Showing An Opponent Your Cards When He's Made A Good Laydown
"Stupid, stupid, stupid. The stupidest thing that you can do is to play somebody, a great player, who makes an amazing laydown and then say, 'By the way, let me show you how great you are, as you made an amazing laydown. Get some more confidence and let's keep playing.' It's the stupidest thing that you can do."

Blair Rodman On No-Limit Hold'em Tournaments
"If you make mistakes in no-limit hold'em, make them on the side of being aggressive, not on the side of being scared."

Barry Greenstein On "Running Bad"
"Running bad is a statement about the past, not the future. I can look back and say I've been unlucky over the last session or last few sessions, but it doesn't dictate what's going to happen in the future, and people forget that. It actually does (affect the future) for a lot of players, because if they've been running bad, they now start playing badly."

Victor Ramdin On Adjusting To Tough Players
"I switch it up against certain players who I know can very easily outplay me. So, you have to give certain players that respect, especially when they have position on you. That means so much in this game: position. It's incredible what position means in this game."

Mike Matusow On Playing Big Slick Preflop
"You never put a chip in with ace-king when you're the third one into a (raised) pot. Never. Ever. Ever. Never."

Gavin Smith On Heads-Up Strategy
"If you're not a very strong heads-up player, probably the number one thing you can do is not play hands from out of position unless they're particularly strong. Don't just call raises because, 'Well, we're heads up and I have king-four, and king-four is pretty decent because it's a king.' Or, an ace-six. The guy on the button's raising. He's got position. Give it to him. But just make sure that you play your button aggressively - very aggressively. What's going to happen is, he's going to play more hands from out of position with you. You're not going to play hands from out of position. So, you're going to end up having the power of winning the bigger pots."

Greg Raymer On Amateur Mistakes In Large-Field Tournaments
"A common mistake I see people make in bigger tournaments - you know, big full-field tournaments - occurs when they're convinced that I'm bluffing them or that some well-known player is bluffing them. So, they call before the flop, and they call on the flop, and they call on the turn. And, finally, they throw their hand away on the river.

If you're going to call a guy down three times, call him the last time. Unless there's some new tell that you just spotted, that you didn't see on those first three rounds of betting, you can't fold your pocket pair on the last round unless that last card is a scare card that you think completed his hand."

Haralobos Voulgaris On The 50-50 Rule
"I don't really want to fight anybody, but I do have a 50-50 rule for when I'll fight. The only time that I'll fight is if it qualifies in the 50-50 rule. If you're over 50 and under 5 feet tall, I'll fight you."