Smack Dog Blog

In The Middle of a tournament is where you can start to exploit the odds. All other things being equal, the fewer the players at the table, the greater your odds of winning a hand (rhe best odds – 50/50 – are with Heads-Up or 1-on-1 play). Now that several opponents have been knocked out for you, you can sneak in and start attacking the weakest players remaining to swipe up their chips for your stack while the lucky sharks who brought them to this point are tired and overconfident.

You’ll need to accumulate a sizable chip stack in order to survive the later stages of a tournament, when the blinds are so high that folding out of almost any hand has a prohibitive price tag. Since you’ve been sitting back (more or less) in the first stage of the play, this is the time to jump in with both feet so you can stock up for the final battle ahead. Don’t worry so much about your cards as much as you should be sniffing out weakness and attacking it.

To boot, during the beginning stages of play, you should have taken those moments sitting back from the action to observe your opponents and their styles of play. By the middle of the tournament, you should have a calm and cooly assessed gauge of each of the players, their strategies, their styles, their tells, and their weaknesses. In addition to exploting weakness, then, you now have the opportunity to exploit all that as well.

Try and make all the hands you play head-up hands. If there are too many other players vying for the same pot, let them fight over it (unless you have the Nuts, of course). Save your strength, and your chips, for the battles you have the best chances of winning, and more often than not, those are one-on-one battles.

Check back for the final portion of this 3 piece article and learn how to close the deal at the end of an online poker tournament.

All Tournaments Have a Beginning, Middle, and End

Strategies suitable for doing well in the beginning of a tournament will do less good, and could even go so far as to be harmful, in the latter stages of a tournament and vice-versa.

In The Beginning of a poker tournament, you may just want to sit back and let some of the more erratic, inexperienced, and wild players duke it out a bit before you jump into the fray. Play tight, check and fold often, play only those most killer of starting hands. Take note of your position and play it to the hilt, though. Jump in occasionally, when the opportunity seems right, to take down a few large pots with a minimal investment and some crafty bluffing – mainly so you don’t tip your hand that you’re really just warming up, waiting around for the inevitable to happen – for a few hasty players to get themselves taken out of the game and for the short stacks to start showing themselves.

Warning – if you do get pegged as trying this Staying-Under-the-Radar tactic, players will react by folding anytime you bet big. Initially, this is a liability, as to discover this has happened requires you lose out on a chance to win a pot or two with some genuinely great cards. Once you’ve clued in however, you can use this turn of the tide to your advantage – knowing that your fellow players see you as always folding except when you have killer cards, you can then start bluffing them out of several large pots with lousy cards.

Don’t worry too much about their initial read on you, though. You have plenty of time to show them how much of a daring and aggressive risk-taker you are later on when the field has whittled down and the stakes are higher. For now just be sure to give yourself plenty of outs.

Tomorrow we will cover how to play through the middle portions of a tournament.

Lately I have been playing poker at Full Tilt Poker. I have been playing the usual $3/6 limit games as well as a couple tournaments over the weekend.

While I had a nice run at the 3/6 tables, I ended up about even for the weekend. On the tournament side I played in the $8,500 guaranteed tourney. Had some great plays to boost my stack to 10th position initially. However, I ran into 2 ball busters in a row that crippled my stack and eventually knocked my out of the tournament just 5 positions away from the money. aaaaahhhh.

Oh well, I have been thinking about exploring playing options at a new online poker room with the PlayersOnly.com Promo Code.

This new room has a sleek web site and a nice 10% instant deposit bonus. The room also offers horse betting and be sure to check out the PlayersOnly Sportsbook Review.

I will let you know how PlayersOnly.com plays out in the near future.

My new computer finally arrived so I spent yesterday and today setting it up. Gonna get back into cards tomorrow. Till then GL HF Joe.

Decided to follow a donkey to 1/2 where he had a 800 stack and was bluff happy. Watched this table a good hour before sitting so this effect the call. It was a raise happy table as well so I limped AA in first. No Raise with KJ9 k9 dimes. The bluffer fired and cleared it down to just me and him. I was going to be happy to take the pot right here so I popped it to 24. He smooth calls. I put him on K9 or j9 or k10 j10 After this call. A turns - A dimes I fire 36 feeling pretty good. he insta calls and poof worst card in deck hits. the 2 of dimes. 4th dime on board. I check fast he bets my stack. I ponder and make the top set call with 4 dimes on board knowing he atleast had a pair. So 1 in 4 he has the dime or not at all in my head. Use my timer make the call he shows 2 pair no dime. I take the 400 pot. Good last sitting sleep time now. Joe.

A few hands to go over. 1 cooler from a donkey and 1 well played hand by myself. First the cooler for plo8 kk23 me a2j10 him. Its potted preflop by myself then repotted by him. Flop comes kjj - I check raise after he pots and he repots committing himself for the 320 pot on 100max. Runner AA cooler. Kept my cool and ended up racing aak10 preflop against aa810, got lucky flopped high. We were both suited suited and could of gone either way. Bad race by me but Its hard to fold aa preflop in any game if your stacking off. Got it all back. Ok so the well played hand. 9 handed 200 max NLH. Nothing fancy about this play but its a good one and will make and save you alot of money. If you can put the tight aggro guy on hands - which most players are tight aggro on these 9 handed tables then this works wonders. You limp every PP under kk unless you have solid reads - then you can play around abit with jj-qq. So I limp 66 - AA pots it for 8 - 1 caller besides me. 24 in the pot. 68k flop im in first. Now this is how you get AA to commit his stack and figure out if hes slow playing KK You lead out 1/3rd - 1/2th the pot. This will make AA or AK think your on the K / draw and make him commit way to much of his stack on the raise. in this case he popped it to 51, i min raise. If he calls here hes done. He pushed in this case 520 pot for yours truly. Im not scared of KK here because you all know to slow play top set. . . atleast id hope. 88 would be bad luck but no ones really potting it with that type of hand now adays.  Anyways about 2k hands played over the last 5-6 hours whenever I last posted. Ended up 125 rake for the previous day with about 100 rake back for the last session. This also leaves me with 225 profit because I donked some off on PLO before calling it a night. So 350 day coupled with yesterdays 742 and im well on my way for my 10k month. Ill add whatever rake I get tomorrow for my midday session and add it to the 100. Hoping to sustain the min of 75/150 rake back aday and end up about 3750 for the month. Till tomorrow. Joe.

Well I thought id team up with smackdog and write a bit about my poker month - Goal - 3-4k Rake back 6-7k Profit. I cannot say where I’m playing so no questions - I’ll post interesting hands for games such as plo8 - NL - and plo as well as the profits or losses for the days - including rake. Long time player of 5 years first time blogger hope you guys enjoy what I have to say. Joe.

I used to think that Full Tilt Poker players were a notch above the average poker player, however, tonight proved I was wrong… dead wrong.

How many times must I be called down playing $3/6 limit hold’em only to find some joker chasing a hand from preflop? It is so frustrating to find players willing and trying to give their money away only to be the one they suck out time and time again.

I am going to be done with Full Tilt if this continues. I will however give them one more chance this weekend at their sit and go tournaments and multi table iron man challenge.

However, if you want to check out how to maximize your poker bonus, read about this Full Tilt referral code.

Let’s gamble.

Sometimes you just need a break from the poker table and to have some fun at your favorite online casino. This is what I did today and had a nice time playing some craps, roulette and even some caribbean stud poker.

While none of these games can stack up to playing poker, they are a nice release from the constant grind. It almost becomes like playing slots when compared to poker. Much less thought and much more enjoyment in the wins because you know they come few and far between.

A great piece of software, RealTimeGaming, provides these great games along with slots, progressive slots and all the table and card games you could dream of. Some popular casinos using RealTimeGaming software are Bodog and BetOnSports Casino.

So when you are in need of a poker break I highly recommend playing some casino games at one of these great RealTimeGaming casinos.

Well, here it is the biggest shopping day of the year and how many of you are hoping to turn today into your own Black Friday at the poker rooms?

I am running a little ahead this year, but have recently been down at a couple of rooms. However, today I believe is the day I run into the black and turn a profit for the year. I am planning on playing in a couple of tournaments today at Full Tilt Poker and possibly some $2/4 limit hold’em at Absolute Poker.

First, I am going to try the new Matrix tournaments at Full Tilt. These tournaments work like this:

When you enter a nine-player Matrix 4x Sit & Go Tournament -

* You’ll play the same 8 players on 4 different tables simultaneously
* There is a Sit & Go prize pool for each table
* Your overall performance will also be scored and paid out from a Matrix Tournament prize pool

So basically this format allows you to recover from a bad beat on one table and rewards those who play good consistent poker in my view. You can find complete details on these new Matrix Tournaments here: http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/matrix-tournaments-details.

Well, off to do some quick shopping before the tournaments begin. Let’s Gamble!