The following hand took place in the €5000 six-handed turbo event, which always takes place on the last day of European Poker Tour series to give the players one last chance at a nice score.

With blinds at 200/400 with a 50 ante, I raised to 1,000 out of my 50,000 stack with Qd-Jd from the cutoff seat. Deep stacked 6-handed NLHE is fun! The Small Blind, a young European kid, and the Big Blind, a tight player, called. I thought my opponents’ ranges could easily be incredibly wide, although they were probably not too out of line.   …

A Bit Too Optimistic?Read More »

Hello everyone! In this blog post, I am going to share with you the most important hand from a $5,000 event I recently played. Nearing the bubble, I was cruising along with an 185,000 stack. Average once everyone got in the money would be roughly 175,000. When you have an average stack on the bubble, your general strategy should usually be to avoid playing a gigantic pot versus the big stacks while applying pressure to the short stacks. This will allow you to build your stack while avoiding going broke. It is important to have a rough game plan before you approach any poker situation. I have laid out my tournament strategies in my best-selling book, Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker.  …

Tough situation on the bubbleRead More »

While I feel like I have a fairly solid grasp on how to play fundamentally sound poker, I have found that I have been calling a bit too often with good, but second best, hands when my opponents seem to be willing to put all of their money in the pot. I have been working hard to plug that leak. This hand demonstrates my progress. …

Learning to foldRead More »

Today I want to share with you one of the concepts that has helped me combat good, loose, aggressive players who constantly apply pressure both before and after the flop. …

Lesson from the WSOP Main EventRead More »

I played with Antonio Esfandari in the World Poker Tour Tournament of Champions the other day and every time I see him, I am reminded of the time I bubbled the $25,500 buy-in WPT Championship event in 2013 at Bellagio. The following is an article I wrote after that excruciating bubble. I didn’t particularly enjoy the experience. I hope you do! …

Revisiting a tough hand from a $25,000 WPT eventRead More »

If you ever hope to become an excellent poker player, you must embrace the fact that you do not know the answers to numerous questions that constantly come up in poker. If you do not know something, as an active, engaged learner striving to improve your game, you should try your best to find the answer.

Most people simply read articles, books and poker forums, hoping to stumble upon the answers. While this is a reasonable initial step, it will not take you too far. In order to actually improve, you must find a group of like-minded peers who genuinely want to discuss your thoughts and questions. You should also hire a poker coach who can give you concrete answers to your problems. Once you figure out how excellent poker players tackle a problem, you should be able to notice where you lack knowledge and also learn how to figure out the answer. What makes an excellent poker player is not someone who thinks they know everything, but someone who has a broad base of knowledge coupled with the ability to solve almost any problem they encounter. …

Learning to think outside the boxRead More »

It is well known that if you are not constantly improving your poker skills, you are falling behind. In this blog post., I will share with you 3 steps you can follow that will immediately help you improve your poker skills.

Step 1:

Record your play. …

3 steps to improve your poker skills by reviewing your playRead More »

Every time I do a webinar where members of my training site, FloatTheTurn.com, can log in and ask me questions, I find myself answering one specific question: “When should I become a professional poker player?” To hopefully avoid re-answering the same question again in the future, here are my thoughts on the subject.

Let’s assume you play $2-$5 no-limit hold’em at a local card room, which is about the stakes most people play who ask the question. …

Should you go pro?Read More »

In one word, my trip to the 2015 European Poker Tour series in Malta was “brutal”. In almost every event, I doubled up in the first two hours only to either get unlucky in a huge pot or go super card dead, eventually busting near the end of the first day. This lead to me having zero cashes in the eight events I entered. Despite the abysmal results, I am very happy with how I played and focused throughout the trip. …

Tough hand from EPT MaltaRead More »