Poker Tournaments

Making Poker Tournaments Fun Again

If you are like me and have played solid no-bluff poker tournaments most of your life and it is starting to become to boring waiting for cards and then waiting for them to hit then this is for you. First off adding these skills to your solid game is not in anyway dumb or make you a “donkey”. Well timed thought out moves are never stupid even if you’re wrong. Maintaining that solid image is the key to your success.

Have you ever played a game where it seems like no one ever calls you? This is most likely because they know you haven’t played many hands and haven’t made many moves. If your only playing 20% of your hands for prolonged periods of time people start to take notice. Even worse is if in the 1 in 5 hands you play you only bet say 10% of them. Now people notice you’ve only moved money in once in the last 50 hands!

A great way to make poker tournaments fun, is betting more often. Once you have that solid image at a table no one who has noticed will call you without a top notch hand unless you price them in to do so. Last to act is usually the best place to try when starting out. Later try when ever you feel no one has anything. Some clues would be hands where there is a draw on board with a high card and no one bets. This can be one of two things. They don’t have the high card or flush draw or they would have bet it to stop the flush draw or to build the pot. Or they have something much better where they don’t care what hits like top two pair with the flush draw as well or top pr with a high flush draw.

Keeping the bets low enough that you don’t go bust fast if your wrong and high enough that people will fold unless they have a top notch hand or draw. Depending on your chip stack you may want to hold off on this all together or only when you have that solid image at the table. Once you’ve been caught and are required to show your bluff it’s time to go back to playing solid poker until the next table or at least a cool off period to re-establish your solid image.

Another one I use to help pass the time is to just flat out bet big with whatever off suit non connector you have. Throwing out a 5x bet pre-flop with a 5 8 suited can help you get called later if you get the chance to show it, it can actually hit something believe it or not and it’s a ton of fun! There is nothing I love more then watching people fold and showing them junk only to have someone, if not that same person, call when I hit. Better yet don’t show it, have them tell you they folded something only an insane person would then telling them they made a great fold!

Being dishonest, honest, or both can help make the game fun as well. It may not change anyone’s mind about what they will do but then again it may. Either way you can mess with people. If your being honest they may be the kind of person who thinks your being dishonest and the other way around. If you don’t like to lie just say “I had a hand” or “what a flop that last hand was!”. Talking at the table is the best way to give out info that may or may not be true and also receiving information that may or may not be true. Figuring out which is which isn’t easy but at least you have one more thing to go on.

Keeping poker enjoyable for yourself is really what poker is all about. If you still have fun waiting an hour between wins that’s great so do I from time to time. These tips are mainly just for players looking to add to an already solid game just to keep them interested between made hands. Never bet more then you are willing to lose and never bet less then they are willing to call. If you can’t do both don’t do either!

We hope to see you on the NoPayPoker poker tournaments soon!

Free Online Poker Tournaments Guide to Tells from Online Players

There are a few ways to get ‘tells’ from playing poker tournaments online. This may seem weird due to the major fact your not seeing any of the other players, but keep a few of these in mind, and hope it helps.

Every poker room has a set number of seconds that each player has to respond before he is declared either in the hand or folded. Sometimes, due to internet issues, a player’s actions will almost always be slow and laggy. However, often, the speed of play can be a good tell. Typically, a quick bet is a sign of weakness, and a delayed action is a sign of strength, as the player is calculating his strategy with what he thinks to be a big hand. Watch how much time it takes the other players to make their action, and mentally make a note of it. If you get a chance to see their cards at showdown, see if you can determine what they “slow bet” with and what they “fast bet” with.

Now would also be a good time to think about your own play and whether or not we exhibit these tells by our speed of play. A good strategy is to try and take the same amount of time for every action, so that observant players cannot draw any conclusions from your own speed of play. A very good example is a great live game player Chris Ferguson, he plays exactly the same way, even if folding a hand.

Another good tell when playing poker tournaments, is based on the number of hands played by an other players, While you cannot mark this percentage down exactly, you should over the course of several games get a sense of whether or not the player folds a lot of trash hands or if he is staying in almost every pot. This can be used both online and offline, to help you determine the strength of a players overall game.

If he folds a lot of cards, beware. If he stays in almost every pot, you can probably run over him if you play good cards.

In ring games, a good tell is when you sit down at a Hold ‘em table, many times you’ll have the option of “waiting on the big blind” to get to you, or you can post a matching big blind and start playing immediately.

This a good tell on how patient and online player will be. If he is not patient enough to wait on the big blind to get around to him, he might not be very patient about waiting on good starting hands. Expect him to be a loose player.

The opposite holds true for players who do wait on the big blind. Either they are patient or cheap. Both are pretty good qualities to have if you are playing online poker. Cheap players, even when they are not especially skilled will tend to wait on better hands since they hate to throw away their bets!

Have a go at my tips by playing some poker tournaments at NopayPoker and see how you get on.

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