You start to lose faith in the poker strategies that had been doing well initially and suddenly you are following your own methods. Because you have no real confidence in using these strategies and that they are still untested in your own mind then this makes matters worse.

This is what it all boils down to at the end of the day…confidence! Lack of confidence is a killer in poker because it can cause you to alter what you were doing. It can cause you to change successful methods for losing methods and when this happens then the end is not far away. This is precisely what I mean when I say that limit hold’em will mess with your head. In no other form of poker will you be forced at some stage to endure terrible bad runs and beat after beat even at the higher levels.

It is a common fact that top no limit players will experience a far greater percentage of winning sessions than top limit players. I see it all the time on forums, players experience what they see as a bad run and then come onto the forum looking for advice. They perhaps are losing after a few sessions of no limit or maybe after playing 20 SNG’s and are now looking for what to play next. They try Pot Limit Omaha or heads up play, in short, anything that will lead to success.

In a way I feel sorry for them because many of them will never ever get to where they are trying to be and that is to be winning poker players. But I suppose it is a good thing for the winners that we have such people otherwise without winners there would be no game as who would play a game that they couldn’t win at? But the thing is that with poker, everybody starts off by thinking that they can be successful at it.

There are no proven tests of a player’s ability other than winning and losing and most of the losing players hear about the winning players and want to be like them so they persevere. They buy more books, read more magazines, join coaching websites and all the rest of it. In their mind, not cracking poker is an indication of a lack of intelligence and if some eighteen year kid can do it who they have read about in some magazine then so can they! Look out for part three coming soon.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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Well let me tell you right here and now that anyone who thinks along these lines is massively wrong. Limit hold’em is a game that requires you to see flops and this is where the most skill is in any form of poker. Many players who start out playing no limit hold’em cannot play good post flop poker because they simply do not get enough practice. But let me tell you another more subtle and equally dangerous problem with limit hold’em. This is a problem that few people talk about and is rarely discussed in any book.

This is how limit hold’em plays with your mind. Some of you will no doubt have read numerous books advising you of how many big bets you need as a potential bankroll. Most books start the bidding at 300 and go all the way up to 500 and even 1000 depending on your skill level and type of opposition. Why do you think the books tell you this? Simple, because you will need them that’s why!

Maybe not straight away, maybe not tomorrow, next week or even next month but if you play long enough then you will need them. The problem many novices face is that they read this stuff and then still have no experience of going through a bad run and even worse, they don’t really understand what a bad run actually is.

They have a bad day online and lose 40 big bets and some think that their entire world is caving in. But it is one thing to theoretically read about a bad run in some book but it is something else to play through one. When that horrible run of 50 big bets that you thought must be due for turning around suddenly turns into 100 and then 150 then if you have never experienced this type of run before, it will seriously mess with your mind believe me. Well I have news for you, take that 150 big bet loss that you thought was the run from hell and then double it and see how you feel then?

That’s right, most full time or semi- professional players have endured swings of 300 big bets at some stage. These runs are bad enough for experienced players to handle but for novices or for someone who has never experienced one, it will be perhaps the biggest and toughest test that you will ever go through in your poker life.

Well let me tell you something else, most players never live to see the other side of that storm. They mentally self destruct along the way and the exact point in which that happens depends on how tough and resilient the player is and how soon they encountered the run. You start off with a few beats and you start to frown. Then you get beat by a two outer on the river followed by some player rivering a gutshot draw that he never should have played and now you are slightly upset.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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They need cards and to be hitting flops to survive and is probably how they got to the final table in the first place in many cases. But as soon as they start playing short handed and the bets and raises are coming from all angles they don’t know how to handle it. But yet as I have previously stated, heads up and short handed situations crop up all the time in ring games the world over and a failure to adjust properly to the smaller field will make you a loser in most poker games.

Once again there is no one glove fits all policy here. Players who only ever desire to play low stakes games and micro limits simply will not have the same need to practice heads up play as someone who plays sng’s for instance or middle and high limit cash games. As I have said, I am not preaching to anyone or telling anyone to follow my advice because I know more than most that what works for one does not work for everyone else.

But I will draw a veil over this topic now by saying that your poker game is seriously lacking if you cannot play short handed and heads up or are unaware of the nuances of this type of poker, much of which comes with experience and feel. How will you be able to cope in the ever growing number of tight aggressive games at the higher levels if you cannot play short handed or heads up?

Sometimes in a game like no limit hold’em, it can only take one player who is throwing a party for the game to be profitable. When you are sitting in a $1-$2 game of no limit hold’em and a live one buys in for $200 and plenty more in his account in which to reload then the game can be very good indeed. More than likely you will notice a waiting list in the lobby of players who are all waiting to take a seat in this particular game.

Being able to win one hundred big blinds in one single hand of poker makes many games that would be otherwise negative expectation games profitable. Quite often I have sat in a no limit game myself where everyone has been playing well. But there might be one player who I know from having played with him before who has the capacity to tilt after a couple of beats or who has a certain weakness with laying down big hands and in my mind, this makes the game potentially profitable.

But limit hold’em is not like that, you extract the money in limit piece by piece rather than in one big blow. You have to continually make better decisions over the weaker players and slowly but surely bleed their bankroll while also enduring many beats along the way. But the capacity to only be able to extract a very tiny amount of money from any one situation or pot makes game selection much more important in this form of poker.

Do not get me wrong here, I am not saying that game selection is not important in no limit hold’em. It is critical in all forms of poker and you simply cannot win in any game unless you have some kind of superiority over at least some of the players in your game. This is why it does not necessarily matter how good a player you are or how much you know about the game. That is only part of the overall equation. What matters most is how good you are and how much you know compared to the other players who are seated in your game.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson
Author – “Winning Cash Game Poker”

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Quite simply the bad poker hands play themselves, you simply fold them and no harm done. But as we begin to move up through the starting hands, the more a hand becomes playable the greater potential there is for trouble.

The differences in strategy between limit and no limit play and tournaments and cash games makes this quite difficult to answer. But being as the poker that’s played in the WPT events is No-Limit Texas Hold’em then I will keep it to that form of poker. Following is a list of what I consider to be six of the most misplayed and troublesome hands in the game but this list could easily be three times the size!

HAND 1 A – A

What’s that I can hear, oh it’s all those howls of derision as people are wondering just why I have selected the best pre-flop hand in Hold’em to be on this list. The trouble with the hand known as “American Airlines” is that people just simply fall in love with the hand when they receive it. It is 220-1 against being dealt aces so it presents a welcome site when a player looks at their hole cards to see two shiny aces staring back at them……most players would admit to a quickening of the pulse in this situation.

I on the other hand think “oh god, I really need to be careful here”. Players need to realise that aces are massively weakened when the flop comes if they do not receive any help. I have witnessed countless weak and intermediate players bust out with this hand. They bust out for two major reasons, firstly because their pre-flop play is predictable, for example they only raise with premium hands.

This means savvy opponents can call if the money is deep enough and they more or less know the content of your hand without you knowing theirs. The second reason is that many players simply do not know when they are beat early enough and cannot make a lay down at the correct time. This all boils down to players not being able to read the flop and assess the dangers of certain opponents connecting with that flop! With the help of poker software like Poker Office then trends can be seen far quicker.

Imagine for instance that a player raised to three times the big blind with the pocket rockets from early position and got three callers. The flop came JH-10H-8S, this is a highly dangerous flop for a pair of aces especially in early position. There is a potential made straight out there and many players call raises with hands like J-10 tricky players can even call with 10-8 hoping to outplay you later in the hand. This is not to mention the straight and flush draws that are also out there. So beware because even the pro’s can have trouble with the aces so show them some respect and don’t put them on a pedestal.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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Many successful live players have failed online and vice versa of course and wondered what the reasons were. Well you need to understand that if you play 20-40 limit hold’em in a live card room then it is not going to be the same online despite the fact that you are still playing 20-40 limit.

Your poker game should be workable in any environment and this was why I needed to add this because any player that can really only play in one or the other is quite handicapped, a bit like a car driver who can only drive automatics and not manuals. For instance many players who have only ever played live poker and especially the older ones can struggle with the vastly accelerated pace of online play.

Especially when those audio prompts start to kick in which I find really off putting when I am contemplating a big decision in a big NL Texas Holdem pot. When that starts to happen, it is very easy to just get swept along with the momentum in some kind of “brain freeze” where all you end up doing is staring at the screen blankly. Likewise if all you have ever played is online poker and you play in a real card room, you have been playing entirely in an environment where showing your emotions does not matter because no one can see you.

But behaving in a way that makes your hand strength an open book to savvy street wise players has turned many a good online player into a live game loser. Also the mentality of the players can change as well from site to site, do not make the mistake of thinking that all of the sites are the same. This was another mistake that I made early in my career. I used to assume that the players on any one site would be more or less the same mix….wrong.

I was a very good Limit Hold’em player early in my career and yet I was struggling to get ahead early in my semi-professional career (before I turned pro). Then the reason for me dragging my heels struck me. I was playing on a site that was populated very heavily by Americans and the players over there are far more skilled on average at Limit play than anywhere else, I mean that is the form of poker that they are brought up with. The Europeans just do not play limit poker in any quantity, it is pot limit over here and pot limit Omaha especially.

Then it hit me, my edge would be seriously diminished by playing against more skilled players, sure I was earning money but it wasn’t enough. I am a far better Limit player now than I was then and I have to confess that this may have attributed for part of the problem at that time but the fact remains that you want to be playing on a site where your edge is at its maximum.

So I shifted my action to European sites whenever I was playing Limit Hold’em and never looked back. Suddenly I was playing the same game but this time against Europeans who did not understand that game on average as well as the Americans. Now that I have switched to playing No Limit, the game is so widely played and so well known that I cannot see any discernable difference between the players in Europe from America on the whole.

Also even in No Limit Holdem poker games, there are subtle differences from players that come from different countries. Some are more aggressive than others, some like to limp in and see flops while others will only enter the pot raising. It is well worth being aware of the geographical location of the players on your table and what this could potentially mean.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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Where do you think you will earn the most money over time. Let us say that you want to play 10-20 limit Texas Hold em poker and site A offers a $600 sign up bonus if you buy in for enough while site B offers nothing. But site A is populated by US players who on average are much stronger at Limit play than Europeans while site B is populated entirely by Europeans.

At site A, your earn rate is 1.25 big bets per hour ($25) while at Site B, your earn rate is 1.75 big bets per hour ($35). Playing even part time (20 hours per week), the difference in an average week will be $200 between site A and the much better site B. It would take you less than a month to claw back the difference of the $600 sign up bonus. For a full time working poker pro, the difference in sites is over $20,000 per year. Imagine the difference if the game was 50-100 and not 10-20 and we had the same differential in earn rates, that would make the difference $100,000 per year.

Who in heavens name can afford to throw away that kind of money, the point is that people don’t even realise that they are and all because they wanted the feeling of initially being ahead by $600 at the very beginning and some sites don’t even offer bonuses as high as that. But this is also the reason why many very good players fail in poker. They know that they are good and because they are losing money, they think that this should not be happening and that the poker site is crooked.

Game selection is a critical part of poker and is a major factor for why players fail. Let us take that difference of $100,000 in the last example. If a player who would have earned $64,000 playing at site B had played at site A, then this would have meant that he had now LOST $36,000 and would have left him scratching his head as to the reason because he knows how good he is.

But sometimes in poker it is not enough to be good or very good for that matter. Fine so we can say that many players think that they are good when they are not but I am talking about the ones who ARE good here and they could still lose because of poor game selection. So you not only have to be a very good player but you also have to measure your skill against the opposition. Let us finish with an obvious statement, if you are not better than your opposition then how can you possibly earn money? I think that the lessons are clear here don’t you?

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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This is a fact that is well understood by professionals and is a fact that underlines just how important position is in poker. You win money on average from the players on your right because you have position on them but you lose it to the players on your left because it is they that have position over you.

Note that I said “on average” because for every rule, there are exceptions. If you have position on a world class player then don’t expect to take him to the cleaners just because you have position. Position is so important in online poker and especially in a game like No Limit that a positional advantage can compensate for having a weak hand but having a strong hand cannot always compensate for having weak position. On the flip side, if the player to your left is very weak and passive then them having position over you would not have the same effect….like I said, on average.

So in an ideal world, let us say that you had the low down on all of your opponents on the table and that you could pick and choose where on the table to sit, what would be the optimum seat. You must understand that in poker, not all of the seats are the same and the quicker you realise this the better. Obviously in an online poker game then you cannot always pick and choose where you sit so please bear with me here.

If you knew for a candid fact that there were two professionals or very good players on the table then the last place that you would want them to be is on your left. Not only are they top players but they are top players that have position on you and KNOW how to exploit it as well. You want that edge negated so this means that you want these players on your right where their playing power is blunted to you.

If you could pick and choose then you would want weak and tight players on your left. Just the type of player that would not make the most of their positional advantage. Some seats can be so bad in a poker game that the best course of action could be to get up and go and find another game. In an ideal world of course you would like dummies in every seat on your table but life is not like that.

You cannot take a walk just because you have notes on a couple of players on your table and they happen to be good. As you move up through the limits providing that you do that is, then you will encounter games with players who know what time of day it is. It is important that you are aware of who they are and also where they are sat. Your earn rate in poker is dependent on many things but seat placement is a little understood concept and few players take it on board at all.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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But take that same A-Q on a flop like A-7-2 rainbow and you could end up losing your entire stack if you are pinned underneath someone else’s A-K. The penalty for being dominated in no limit Texas Holdem play can be very severe and many novice players get themselves into all kinds of trouble when they flop a decent but second best hand.

Brunson discusses the trouble hands pretty well in Supersystem and I would advise anyone who is contemplating playing no limit hold’em either online or in a live card room to study them.

But despite the fact that much of the information that is in Supersystem is either very well known or past its sell by date, it is still beyond any shadow of a doubt…..a great book! It literally set the standard for which many other poker books followed. The old saying about “standing on the shoulders of giants” applies perfectly here.

I remember reading an interview from the 2001 World Series of Poker winner Carlos Mortensen some while ago who stated that the first time that the read the book, he could not believe that Doyle Brunson was literally giving away the secret of just how to play no limit hold’em.

Fine praise indeed from one of the most respected players in the world of tournament poker, an ex world champion and World Poker Tour winner to boot. In fact Supersystem was such a popular book that it led to a new updated version being published in 2005 called Supersystem 2.

The no limit section was left largely untouched but there was valuable input on a whole host of games from some of the greatest names in the modern game.

People like Johnny Chan, Daniel Negreanu and Doyle’s son Todd who is a world class player himself and regular plays in the big game in Las Vegas. The new version included the very popular Pot Limit Omaha as well as an updated section on limit hold’em written by Jennifer Harman.

Supersystem for me is the greatest of all poker books because it broke barriers and introduced to millions of people strategies that had previously been top secret and which were only in the possession of a handful of people world wide. There will never be another book like it that will have the same effect again in my opinion. For me this book will become the “bible” of poker books if it hasn’t already.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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So you have to inject some level of uncertainty into the minds of your opponents and uncertainty causes fear and fear causes them to fold.
You need your opponents to be guessing about the strength of your hand and you need them to be unsure whether that innocuous looking flop has hit you or not because you are just as likely to play an 8-7 as you would an A-K.

Brunson’s poker play creates uncertainty in the minds of his opponents. But even this is seriously negated in today’s modern poker game. Brunson’s opponents were not using note taking facilities against him and were not using software like Poker Office to break his game down.

The environment that is online poker in 2008 is a very tough one and your opponents (or at least some of them) may just know a damn site more about your game than you do yourself.

I have always felt that the real art to reading any poker book is not to blindly believe everything that is in it and to try and think for yourself. Unfortunately to get to this stage requires an awful lot of knowledge and experience. It is next to impossible for a novice player to pick up any poker book and find fault with it simply because novice players do not have the knowledge base to be able to do so.

But the problem with all poker books is that they are a constant in what is a forever changing poker environment. It is that constantly changing environment that makes much of the material out of date in many poker strategy books. But the real test is to try and distinguish between what material is still relevant in the book from the stuff that isn’t and that as previously stated can be a very tricky process for many people.

In fact most novice and intermediate players would simply not doubt anything what they read at all and many would just blindly follow what they read. This in my mind is a major factor for why many poker players fail to make money in poker, many are simply using strategies that are either out of date or attempting to use them in the wrong situations.

But Supersystem is still a classic poker book and one that I would recommend to anyone to read. It still has numerous pieces of nuggets of information that are still highly relevant today and even in online poker games. For instance it emphasises the use of aggression to win pots and aggression is vital if you have aspirations of becoming a winning poker player.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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This is certainly the case with online no limit poker games. Many players do not necessarily buy in for the maximum amount anyway and all of the online poker rooms impose limits on the amounts that players can buy in for and this limit is usually set at one hundred times the big blind.

This would equal $400 in a $2-$4 and $2000 in a $10-$20 game etc.This means that unless someone wins and gets ahead, that it can be quite rare to find a player with 200-300 big blinds on the table. Players tend to be less fearful when they have less to lose and it is this factor that would blunt many of Brunson’s strategies.

Plus there is another factor that also needs to be considered. Many people have now read Supersytem but even more importantly, the general thesis has been roughly replicated in many other areas of poker literature including books, magazines and websites. This means that most players now see the importance of aggression in poker and can also see when other players are stepping out of line.

What this means in a nutshell is that ultra aggressive poker will simply not be tolerated now like it was when this book was first written. Plus I dare say that it was the sheer presence and reputation of Doyle that enabled him to get away with many things a good percentage of the time simply because many players dared not tangle with him in a pot without a good hand.

It is very difficult to attain this level of intimidation in online poker where your opponents are merely staring at an avatar. In many of the games that I play in, unless you achieve the correct level of aggression then you will find that your opening raises will be getting re-raised frequently.

The fact of the matter is that if you raise to $70 in a $10-$20 for example and the player on the button re-raises to say $240, then that $240 will represent a much higher percentage of your opponents stack than it would have done in the games that Brunson would have been playing in.

In some cases it could represent as much as a third of your opponents stack and many players will get pot committed far more easily thus making it more difficult to get them off the hand.

But many of the stratagems and advice still holds good today all these years later. The section where Doyle talks about the small connecting cards and the dangerous trap hands is still highly relevant in today’s online games. It does not matter where you are playing poker or against who, it is still crucial to your overall chances of success to balance your game.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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