If you have played much poker at all, you have certainly heard the term “pot committed”, which essentially means that you have put so much money into the pot that you can no longer fold a hand that is almost certainly in bad shape against your opponent’s range. However, most players apply this incorrectly, often justifying calling off the rest of their chips while drawing nearly dead. …

Feeling Pot CommittedRead More »

I am frequently amazed at how slowly some poker players play. Assuming you are a winning poker player, you make some amount of equity per hand you are dealt. Let’s assume you make $1 per hand. If you usually know what you will do within a reasonable amount of time, you will make around $30 per hour at the standard live poker table that plays 30 hands per hour. If instead, you take your time on every street and slightly increase your win rate to $1.20 per hand but now play only 20 hands per hour, you will cut your win rate to $24 per hour despite making (hopefully) better decisions. …

Playing SlowlyRead More »

This hand came up in a $1,000 World Series of Poker event I last year where I raised to 400 out of my 11,000 effective stack at 100-200-25 from middle position with 9s8s and an older, fairly straightforward guy called in the small blind. The flop came 9h-8d-5d, giving me top two pair. He checked, I bet 700 and he called. The turn was the Kd, making the flush possible. He checked, I bet 1,700, he raised to 3,400 and I called. The river was the 2c. He bet 2,100 and I called.
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Listen to What They are Telling YouRead More »

Quite often, when playing the major tournament circuit, you’ll find yourself with no chips at a final table despite recently having a decent shot at a title. When you go from having lots of equity to none, crazy things start happening in your mind. I’m going to let you into my world and enlighten you to what I do to stay sane when things go wrong when there is a lot of money on the line. …

Dealing with DisappointmentRead More »

By PokerCoaching.com coach Alex Fitzgerald

I love teaching the everyman how to play poker, because I can identify with them.

Growing up, I loved competition. Unfortunately, competition didn’t love me. I wasn’t athletic enough to excel in sports. I wasn’t intelligent enough to play chess competitively, or to compete within academia. My glacially slow mind wasn’t appropriate for video games. …

The Limitations Of Exploitative Play by Alex FitzgeraldRead More »