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Poker Tournaments for You This Week
There is never a dull moment in a poker player’s life. Obviously, the main reason for that is the constant existence of poker tournaments and poker events that one can participate in. These events are not just for making money, but also to have some fun and get better at the game in the process. Several live poker tourneys are lined up for this week and the coming weeks. Here is a note on some of the tournaments you can … Read the rest
2012 PokerStars Macau Poker Championships Announced
PokerStars is one online poker room that never takes a break from hosting tournaments. The poker room recently released details about its upcoming event, the PokerStars Macau Live Tournaments. The Macau tournaments hosted by PokerStars is one of the biggest and richest poker events held in Asia. It includes 4 major poker series – Macau Poker Cup (MPC) Red Dragon, Asia Championship of Poker, Macau Poker Cup Championship or MPCC and the yearly Asia Pacific Poker Tour event at Macau. … Read the rest
The $30,000 Winner Wednesday Dozen Unveiled
Winner Poker has partnered with pokernews.com to bring a new promotion to its new members. The online poker room announced its new promotion called Winner’s Wednesday Dozen Freerolls, which literally lets you win free money. The new promotion is open to all the new players who register with Winner Poker and make a deposit. The promo will run for three months, and all you need to do is play poker and earn as many Winner Points as you can. Here … Read the rest
Full Steam Ahead
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008 by Phil
I think I figured out why I have never been able to make it big as a PL Omaha cash game player; it’s because I steam. And I don’t mean that I play bad when things aren’t going my way. I mean that when people suck out on me, I become a 15 ton steaming locomotive on a one-way path to destruction.
I guess one of the reasons for this is that it’s so easy to make a hand in Omaha. This lets me get away with a fair amount of aggressiveness. Even when I run into monster hands on the early betting streets, I am often getting the proper price to call my opponent’s bet. It’s just too easy to suck out in this game.
One of the reasons that this has such a diminishing effect on my profits is not so much that I am giving away all of my chips by making bad calls with weak hands. It’s because bluffing is such a huge part of this game and I lose the ability to pull off “The big bluff”. This takes away a huge edge that I would normally have over my opponents.
In the game of Omaha, there are so many scare cards that can fall on the board that a player in position will often have the opportunity to bluff a player who flopped a premium hand. When you start to steam and the table is aware of this, you begin to lose your ability to bluff in these big pots. To make matters worse… players who are steaming will usually try to bluff in these spots anyway, thus finding out the hard way that they have lost their ability to outplay their opponents.
Even when I am steaming really bad I am just below being a break-even PL Omaha player. I’m able to off-set most of the negative effects of steaming aggressively by making good decisions on the later streets. It is only a small mistake to get caught bluffing before the flop or on the flop. It’s not until the big bets start to go into the pot that players need to be concerned.
When the cards start to fall your way, you can usually exploit your opponent’s perception of you and get them to put a lot of chips in with a second best hand…one that they might have folded to most other players at the table.
