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March 1 – Pay attention to who is up and down In the short term. Many people cannot control their play when they are losing

In the current Internet environment there is a load of poker training information. If someone wants to become a better player they can simply Google material and if they have the discipline they can use this information to become a winner. The math may seem a bit complex at first, but in reality poker math is just simple arithmetic. If the math is easy and the winning information is readily available, why is it that there are still a great deal of losing players? The simple answer is that people do not have the emotional control to play their best when they are losing.

Poker is such a great game to gamble on because the effects of the outcomes of situations affect the quality of the play of individuals in the future. How often have you seen someone sit and play tight for hours and hours on end just to endure a bad beat like A-A versus Q-Q preflop and then go off? It is like they think they have an absolute right to win the hand and if something goes against them “all bets are off.” The simple fact of the matter is you will rarely get it in more than a 90 percent favorite in any form of big bet poker when all of the money goes in. When you get it in as a 90 percent favorite that means that you will lose 10 percent of the time. It is how we handle that 10 percent that separates winning players from losing players.

People that have been playing poker for years still struggle with this concept. They get angry when they take bad beats and they think that the world is against them. It then causes them to play poorly. But no single person takes any more bad beats than anyone else. It is how we handle bad beats that differentiate us from everyone else. You would think that this would be different at the higher levels but in reality it is not.

I am still amazed at how badly some professionals play when they are losing. In fact, a good lineup at the higher stakes will sometimes be entirely dictated by who is winning and who is losing. And if this is the case at the higher levels you better make sure you are paying attention to the short term winners and losers at your level.

March 2 – If you are playing the game for profit, try and make the table a welcoming environment for the recreational players around you.

If you are playing poker for profit, whether you are a professional or just a serious recreational player, you must win money from the people that lose. These players are of weaker skill than you, usually have less patience and in general are just at the casino to gamble.  They are playing to derive enjoyment from the game. You should treat these people like they are your customers because if there were no losing players there could be no winners.

I never understand the professional players that are rule sticklers against the amateurs.  It is just ridiculous to call string bets and pull other angles when the amateur player had no intention of gaining any advantage with his action, but players do this kind of thing all of the time.  We should all make these losing players as comfortable as possible at the table. Banter with them.  Let them have fun.  They are here to blow off steam, get away from their wives, etcetera.  There is no reason to make the table an environment where people don’t want to come back.

This concept is a lost art on a lot of younger players, especially those who started out on the Internet. These guys come in with their backpacks and hoodies, put on their headphones and don’t interact with anyone. There is a very big social aspect to live poker and proper behavior should be learned just like proper poker skill. Why do you think that guys like Antonio Esfandari get invited to some of the biggest, juiciest games in the world? It is because he is well liked and a lot of the huge whales want to play with him. He makes it so that they have a good time but he is still quietly taking a lot of their money.

March 5 – Turn bet sizing is an often overlooked art when trying to form a nicely sized river all-in value or bluff bet.

No-limit really is a game about getting the most value when you have the best hand. Television and movies glamorize bluffing and live tells, but in reality, when you see a really good player play, you should notice that they are dragging in enormous pots with their nutty hands because they know enough to build a pot. Bad players play trappy and win small pots with their big hands.

In games where the stacks may be capped at 100 big blinds (BB) it is so critical to correctly size your previous street bets so that you can get in a large bet on the river. One of the most overlooked aspects of this concept is turn bet sizing. You should be paying hyper-attention to the effective stacks during a hand and closely size your turn bet so that on the river you can leave about a half-pot sized bet all-in if possible It amazes me how this simple concept is lost on many people. Let us say that on the turn in a $5-$5 game we have a hand which we are almost certain is best and we also think that our opponent will continue to call bets with worse. The pot is $500 and he has $700 left.

It is our action in position. How much should we bet? If we want to leave him with about a half-pot size bet to call on the river, you can see that betting just over $200 on the turn will do the job. You do not have to blast him out of the pot, and making this smaller turn bet leads him to believe that he is getting proper odds pot odds, which he is. But we don’t care about the pot odds that we are laying him if we do not think that he is on a draw. Say we have A A and the board is K 5 2 2. We are very sure that he has a king. A-A in this spot is basically a nut hand. We want to make it appear like we are giving him too good of a price to fold, and then cause him to continue to lose more money by making a bad call on the river.

The next time you are in a turn betting situation, think about the fact that you want to leave your opponent with about a half-pot sized bet on the river and size your bet correctly. Poker is sometimes like chess and when it comes to bet sizing in particular, you must think ahead street by street. ♠

Follow Bart for daily strategy tips on Twitter @CrushLivePoker and @BartHanson. Check out his poker training site exclusively made for live cash game play at CrushLivePoker.com where he produces weekly podcasts and live training videos.