The year 2007 was another incredible one for poker. Fueled by global expansion, it was likely the first year that owning a passport was an absolute necessity for serious tournament poker pros. And when they got to places like London, Manila, and Sydney, they sat shoulder to shoulder with ...
Poker-Playing Professor Says Stay in School Global Poker Strategic Thinking Society: It's the Poker Way By Bob Pajich This summer, Steven Garfinkle's e-mail inbox was flooded with congratulatory messages from students and colleagues, with many ...continued
Joe Hachem, 2006 World Series of Poker champion and Team PokerStars member, can add teacher to his resume. A day before the launch of the largest poker tournament Asia has ever seen, the Asian Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Macau event, Hachem is huddled ...continued
It is not an army that we must shape and train for war; it is a nation. – Woodrow Wilson, May 18, 1917 In July 1917, Lt. Herbert O. Yardley was given a desk in the code room of the State-Navy-War Building, directly across from the White House. ...continued
As we went to press with this issue of Card Player, we learned of the untimely passing of David "Chip" Reese. Chip was arguably the greatest all-around cash-game player who ever lived, and was highly respected for not only his skill at the ...continued
Most poker players love the High Stakes Poker (HSP) television show on the Game Show Network on Monday nights. It is a one-hour television program that is a high-stakes no-limit hold'em cash game in which the minimum buy-in is $100,000. HSP is ...continued
Gerber would be proud to sponsor this tourney, and its host, as well. It is the Scotty Nguyen Poker Challenge IV, held at the beautiful Cherokee Casino, just a 15-minute drive from the Tulsa airport. They refer to it as a tournament, but a major poker ...continued
Florida is home to 24 legal cardrooms. I have a Christmas gift for the millions of Florida poker players. My buddy John can be found, bankroll in his pocket, prowling the Seminole Hard Rock Casino in Hollywood and the Isle of Capri in Pompano Beach. ...continued
When the money goes in the middle, of course you'd like to be a favorite - better yet, a big favorite - but that's not the nature of hold'em. Granted, the biggest mismatch, overpair versus random undercards, wins about nine times out of ...continued
In no-limit hold'em cash games, you have several options of how to play a hand. Most important is not the exact play you select, but the reasoning that goes into choosing it. If your reasoning includes the correct factors, you can refine your game ...continued
My last few columns have been about the advantages that short stacks have over deep stacks in no-limit hold'em and about how to harness those advantages to beat wild games. I want to step back now and explore what I mean by the advantage a short ...continued
In a previous column, I explained that in regard to preflop raise sizes, I vary my play within a certain range (on a random basis) rather than using "one size fits all." My new student and I subsequently had a thorough discussion on ...continued
In my last column, I outlined my view of how to play A-K as the first one in when playing no-limit hold'em with blinds of 50-100 and a stack size of 3,000, about 30 big blinds. My recommendation was as follows: With A-K suited, usually make a ...continued
I think I've discovered my greatest poker pet peeve: players who posture endlessly. You know the ones I mean. If you bet, they spend at least five seconds in disbelief, wondering how someone would actually have the nerve to bet into them. Then ...continued
In August, I spent several days in beautiful, modern Stockholm, the capital city of Sweden. Stockholm has a population of more than a million, spread out over a large number of islands. The downtown areas are highly Americanized. McDonald's, ...continued
Everyone loves stealing blinds, and with good reason. In no-limit hold'em tournaments, stealing blinds and antes is one of the most surefire ways to keep your stack growing, especially in the middle to late stages. It's good tournament ...continued
Editor's note: This is an excerpt from Chapter 4 of The Poker Mindset: Essential Attitudes for Poker Success, by Ian Taylor and Matthew Hilger. Some players tend to react very well to losing a big pot (and, indeed, other adversity in poker), while ...continued
I don't usually write about poker protocol here. There are other people who care a lot more about it than I do, and mostly I think it's pretty boring. But I've had a handful of occasions recently to think about how we play poker (rather ...continued
I haven't written about my friend Oklahoma Johnny Hale in a long while. I had begun feeling guilty about picking on him all the time, so when I met a poker player named Alabama Eddie who was a lot like OJK, I decided to let Eddie take his place in ...continued