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Barry Denson Plans to Set New Record for Playing Poker for the Longest
Barry Denson, a poker player from the UK, has announced that he plans to set a new record for playing poker for the longest. On the 1st of July, he will play at G Casino, Manchester. The game will go on for five days. Most of Denson’s activity at the felt has been in live poker league tournaments.
Help for Heroes, a charitable organization that assists injured people in the armed forces, will benefit from the money made during the … Read the rest
Card Rush Promotion Running at PartyPoker
PartyPoker is running an attractive promotion called Card Rush in February. It will start on the 1st and continue for the rest of the month. Real money players of the site will have an exclusive opportunity to win prizes and freeroll entries through the promotion.
Card Rush promotion operates in a simple manner. Every time a player earns 15 Party Points, the poker site rewards him with a Card Rush ticket. On scratching the card, prizes are revealed. Every card … Read the rest
Joe Hachem to Continue Playing in Major Poker Tournaments
Joe Hachem has announced that he will continue participating in major poker tournaments. This dispels the belief many held that he will limit his tournament activity and focus on developing the Asian Poker Tour and AsianLogic Group, now that he is on board as their new ambassador.
Hachem, who briefly held the record for the all-time biggest tournament prize when he won $7.5 million at the 2005 World Series of Poker, has said that most of the tournaments he’ll participate … Read the rest
How Folding Can Help Your Bankroll
It’s strange when people think of good poker they usual think of the fantastic bluffs or the courageous calls they’ve made or seen on TV. We all know that Texas Holdem favors the aggressor in most situations and that’s true in most cases but there’s also a tatic that seems to be overlooked in poker.
Folding.
I’ve seen too many players go bust because they couldn’t or wouldn’t let go of their huge pocket pairs or their top pair top kicker hands.
I’ve also seen too many players call off small bets on the river with marginal hands even though they knew they were beat.
Besides nobody wants to fold, it’s a sign of weakness, it means that you can get run over at the poker tables, it means that you’re too passive, the list goes on and on why a lot of players think it’s a weak play. And of course nobody wants to be bluffed out of a pot.
Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not a weak play if it saves you money.
If we are to believe that poker is one long game and your decisions over the course of tens of thousands of hands determines if you’re a winning player or not then it becomes even more essential that folding is part of that equation.
For example, a friend of mine asked me how he could improve at the online cash games. He’s a winning player but he wants to improve his win rate.
He’s likes to play 25NL online. He was running a win rate at about 5x BB/100 hands. Basically he’s winning $1.25 per 100 hands he plays.
He’s a solid player and he’s pretty aggressive for the most part. The only hole that I could see was that he wasn’t folding his marginal hands enough or wasting too many bets on calling stations. We calculated how much money he was wasting by calling down with marginal hands or calling on draws that were marginal etc.
The results were interesting. Over the course of 100 hands he basically wasted $5 making bad/marginal calls on hands that he lost or when he was chasing without proper odds. That may not be a significant amount but over the course of let’s say 20,000 hands that adds up to $1,000 in lost profits.
Again, I’m not advocating folding every hand or even folding against a maniac whose range can be as wide as the Grand Canyon but I’m suggesting that playing smartly is also folding smartly. Aggressive poker is good poker but even the most aggressive players I know have learned how to fold, especially in tight spots where they have a pretty big hand. Learning or knowing when to fold in a tight spot can really save you significant amounts of money.
That’s one of the keys to being a winning player. I know it’s boring and it’s not exciting but it’s winning poker.
Money saved is money earned, and over the long run that can really add up. Do the math and you’ll see what I mean.
