Archive for Strategies

Just a few tidbits about hand odds and poker in general… Have you seen the new Pepsi TV commercial featuring a can of diet Pepsi, Daniel Negreanu, and a few other poker players? The can of Pepsi wins the tournament. Exactly what soda pop has to do with poker, I don’t know. Kind of a […]

In Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book, he points out the importance of position in No Limit Hold’em - although I think it applies to Limit Hold’em as well. Being last to bet, he says, is having “good position”.
The importance of your position in a hand should not be underestimated. Being on the button (being the […]

In the intro chapter to Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book, he writes that great poker players share five qualities. Here’s a summary of those qualities:
(1) Aggressive
(2) Patient
(3) Courageous
(4) Observant
(5) Always improving
By aggressive, he does not necessarily mean playing every hand like a “jackal”. (Phil Hellmuth’s animal designation for a player who calls every bet, […]

The UPC Ultimate Poker Challenge with Phan vs Tahoe aired up here in the Toronto, Canada area over the weekend. Since most televised poker matches give very few cues as to when the match took place - a very frustrating fact - this match may or may not have been recent. (A few Google searches […]

If you’ve been to Vegas, are a Blackjack player, or just watch the semi-dramatic T&A eye candy jiggle TV show Las Vegas, you know that casinos frown on card-counting. In fact, it’s illegal. If you get caught. There have been many theories put forth regarding card-counting, and all of them have been mathematically sound - […]

Gaming columnist Alan Krigman has a fascinating article about French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal’s speculation on the existence of God. Pascal concluded that of the four possible conditions, the best was to wager on the existence of God. Krigman tries to extend Pascal’s wager to gambling, particularly slot machines, and suggests that “you’re ahead […]

One thing to remember while deciding whether to play a pre-flop hand in Texas Hold’em is that given a deck of 52 cards, there are 3 (K, Q, J) x 4 suits = 12 face cards. Add in the 4 As and 4 Tens, and you have 20 “favorable” cards in a deck of 52. […]

Up here near Toronto, Canada, we’ve been getting a lot of broadcasts of classic poker matches. My feeling at first is one of being a bit cheated. But the truth is, like watching old football or hockey games, there’s something to be learned here. You can definitely learn something from watching these pros, especially their […]

As a math + computer geek, I have this undeniable need to calculate averages and odds, even if the result is meaningless. Okay, well, maybe not that extreme. One of the first things that I asked myself when I took up writing for this blog was whether it’s easier to predict your chances of winning […]

Last night, I watched the penultimate round in a WPT (World Poker Tour) Celebrity Poker Tournament series, where comedian/ actor Brad Garrett made an ass of himself. The series, as I understand it, is a Canadian production that was filmed last year and possibly the year before. Up here in the Toronto area, it’s showing […]