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Lots Of people have taken the game seriously and spend a lot of time online games. People may never have tried a few games like sports betting have become a part of this sports betting by joining the online poker and started playing poker online.

Poker has always been very interesting, and thanks to online poker, online poker has been made available to all. While playing online poker you can play with people of different nationalities, and know their way of thinking and acting.

You must keep a very tight table image to use your poker strategy successfully. It’s a known fact that the background layer closest to your desk is more successful than one person at a loose table image.

One is very experienced in order to win the game of poker online. More should have a clear understanding of the game must be able to play online poker successfully. While playing they need to make sure that other players are not aware of the your poker strategy.

The implemented flop betting strategy is introduction and makes use of professional information. It is complicated enough to not hamper overall performance so that the focus can be put on flop play.

Flowing are different strategies that can be used in flop:

1. Over cards: If you have a backdoor or high pot odd then you can check and fold your cards.

2. Top pair with high kicker: In top pair with high kicker you can bet and raise your bet whenever required. If you don’t have highest raise then end your game and leave the table.

3 .Top pair with poor kicker: If you are losing the game continuously then try to fold your game. If you think that your opponents will lose the game then you can raise your bet.

4. Middle or bottom pair: If you are leading player of over-card or backdoor then you can take the benefit of the services that are provided by middle or bottom pair.

5. Two pair: In this bet you can raise your bet when required. In this you can get the benefit of re -raising your bet.

6. Pair of the board: If your pairs are low and there is a lot of action then it is advisable to fold.

7. Three of a kind: In three of a kin bet the player gets a chance to raise and re-raise their bets. You can take benefit of this service only when you are sure of your bet.

One of the key concepts to get your head around, which is probably as important as any strategy that you can learn or study, is how to manage the variance. Make no mistake, a career in any poker tournament, you have days or weeks, you fly where all your tractor hit, you win all your races and you get treated just the right cards at the right time. At the same time, there will be days and weeks where nothing goes, and the only thing you can be sure of is that you leave with an unprecedented ego and its tail between its legs.

I have seen too often in an explosion of new players on the scene, running ridiculously good for a short period of time, to have higher levels and be back by the battery faster than you can say &”all-in”. The reason for this is the variance. Every poker player has been beaten by the stick of the variance, and each player will be affected by this new. Poker is a game of probabilities and averages so that the record should be square, and we must prepare for the roller coaster.

So when the poker gods decide to release the curse of the variance on us, how we face, so that we can learn something and come out the other side a better player? Although most of the time, we slow down we just put it in a race accident, the first thing to do is stand back and assess your game.

A common theme amongst successful players is that when they experience a period of success, complacency can sometimes set in (usually at higher levels to what the player was used to playing as he now has more money and can afford these games), and mistakes can creep into their game. This could come in the form of playing too many hands pre-flop, being a little trigger happy with the all-in move, or just using those high-risk, high-profit moves too much, and they just aren’t sticking like they were a few weeks ago. If you assess your game and find this to be the case, then you probably just need to go back to basic ABC poker for a few sessions and let things iron out. It is also a good idea to use effective bankroll management principles and drop down to smaller games.

The other problem I find when being on the wrong end of variance is your mood and attitude to the game. When you are constantly getting your chips in with the best hand only for your opponent to get lucky and eliminate you, it’s hard not to feel the whole world is against you. It harbors negative feelings towards the game and you lose your focus. This has a snowball effect as you start to make bad decisions and lose your edge over the game. It is sometimes a wise move to stop registering and even take a few days off to refresh, get the negativity out of your head and come back with a clear mind hungry for success at the top of your game.

There is always no matter what you do, no matter how well you play, you are still only to be broken. Unfortunately, this is only part of the game and as long as you keep what you have to manage – you can focus and attitude – it will eventually turn around and you’re sitting on top of the new world.

Respect for the variance, and reconcile with it. It is part of this great game we play, and by being aware of it, and having positive and the wheel turns in your favor over time, will help go a long way in a poker career with long-term success.

Jon “FatalError” Aguiar has traveled the globe playing in the world’s richest poker tournaments. In the last five years, he’s accumulated $1.1 million in winnings in live and online tournaments. Aguiar’s latest trip was to Monte Carlo for the European Poker Tour Grand Final.

PokerNews caught up with Aguiar to talk about two hands he played while in Monte Carlo, which both illustrate this week’s concept: relative hand strength.

Before we talk about these two hands, can you better explain what relative hand strength means?

Relative hand strength is the value of your hand versus your opponent’s potential range of hands, whereas absolute hand strength is just the value of your hand on the hand chart like a flush beats a straight. A lot of times, that doesn’t matter because of the way your opponent has played a hand up to that point, he can only have certain things.

Tournament: EPT Grand Final Main Event
Blinds: 50-100

An older online qualifier raised under-the-gun to 250. A middle-position player called, and I called on the button with king-queen. The big blind called too. The flop came queen-ten-four rainbow. It checked to me on the button and I bet 650. The big blind folded, the preflop raiser called, and the other player folded. The turn was a nine, which completes one of the straight draws and gives me a gutshot. He checked, and I check for pot control. The river comes a jack, and he checks pretty quickly again. I bet 1,425. He thinks and takes five 1,000 chips and gingerly places them into pot.

What are you thinking after he check raises this river?

I’m like, what the hell does he have here? He doesn’t have any bluffs. No online qualifier check-raise-bluffs on this river. It’s either a king, or ace-king. I basically figure I’m chopping 30 percent of the time and losing 70 percent of the time. Even though I have the second best straight, my relative hand strength is the worst possible hand against his range. I can only chop or lose. I showed him a king and folded. He looked pretty dejected and slid his cards into the muck.

Later on, I saw him play a hand where I check-called him on two streets after raising preflop with eights on a board of like ten-five-four-X. The river came a three and he just checked behind with a set of fives, so I’m pretty sure he wasn’t doing anything crazy with just a king in the other hand.

Can you sort of explain in more detail why you decided to check the turn for pot control?

I have a pretty good hand and a pretty good draw, but if I get check-raised, I have to fold. I just don’t see him check-calling many worse hands.

Hand #2
Tournament: $5,000 no-limit hold’em full-ring side event
Blinds: 150-300 with a 25 ante

The next hand was against a Finnish player or some sort of Scandinavian player who seemed to be competent. He raised under-the-gun plus one, got a caller, I called with king-queen suited on the button, and a bad player came along from the blinds. The flop came queen-seven-four rainbow. It checked to him and he made a standard continuation bet. The caller to my right folded and I called. We went to the turn heads-up.

The turn was a queen, giving me trips, but putting a flush draw on the board. We had like 1.7 times the pot left in our stacks, and I decided he’d be check-folding a ton of his range if I bet here. He checked and I checked, and unlike the other hand where I checked the turn for pot control, this was for deception and to get value.

The river was a jack, which completed the back-door flush draw. He wakes up and bets 9,000 into 11,500. In this spot, I should have been thinking about the fact that betting flop-checking turn and betting river is a very, very uncommon bluff line for people. They are either going to barrel all three streets, or bet-bet and check river. Just like the last hand, his range just doesn’t have much air in it at all. When you look at my relative hand strength, the only hands that I’m really beating at this point that make sense are like a really thin value bet from a hand like ace-jack that bet the flop, or a hand like queen-ten or queen-nine suited, but people aren’t always raising a hand like queen-nine suited or queen-then from under-the-gun eight-handed anyway. So, I made the call and he had pocket jacks. In this hand, I was like, “I have three-of-a-kind. I call,” but looking back at it, I really started berating myself for it. My hand really isn’t that good versus his range.

In hindsight, it seems like checking the turn was the perfect play against his hand.

Yeah, he’s check-folding the turn a substantially higher percentage of the time than he folds the river when it goes check-check on the turn and comes a blank on the river. There are only eight bad river cards that come for me versus jacks — the aces and kings, and only two cards in the deck that will lose me the pot. If I river quads, he pays off huge.

Understanding relative hand strength is one of the biggest problems amateurs have. When someone says, “They are just playing their cards,” is when players don’t think at all about relative hand strength and only consider their absolute hand strength. You get a lot of people, like at the Series, who are just face down in their whole cards and trying to catch and make certain hands instead of thinking what their opponents have and how wide or tight their opponent’s hand ranges are on any given or board, or any given river based on previous actions. That’s why it’s important to be able to put your opponent on a range of hands, and then evaluate the strength of your hand versus the strength of your opponent’s range.

Where should players start when trying to learn the difference between relative hand strength and absolute hand strength?

I think it’s important to be asking yourself questions throughout the hand like, “What type of hands would he be doing this with?” When your opponents are making bets and checks, ask yourself, “What does he want me to do when he does this?” or “What does the size of this bet mean?” Like when my opponent bet so big on the second hand, it was pretty obvious he was going for value. He probably would have been more like 60 or 70 percent of the pot with a weakish value hand. When he bet 80 to 90 percent of the pot, it looked like he wanted me to hero call the river and he wanted to get big value. Just think about what hands your opponents start with by what position he raises in and start eliminating hands after considering the actions.

Poker tournaments – especially large, multi-table events like those at the WSOP – are their own contained universe when it comes to poker strategy.

And they always create tricky hand scenarios very different from those you’ll find at cash games.

Rising blinds, fixed pay-out structures, a finite amount of chips, how much you can afford to lose. All of these can dramatically change the way you need to play any given hand.

A Common Scenario

You’re in a $1,500 No-Limit Hold’em WSOP event and have just been moved to a new table of 10 players.

You’re at the money bubble, with only a few players left to bust out before the remaining 500 players make it into the money.

Blinds: 10,000/20,000
Stacks:
UTG: 1,254,000
MP: 780,000
CO: 130,500
Hero (BTN): 620,000
SB: 430,600
BB: 1,890,100

Pre Flop: (Pot: 30,000) Hero is BTN with Q♥ Q♣.
One fold, MP raises to 60,000, CO folds, Hero re-raises to 180,000, 2 folds, MP re-raises all-in for 780,000.

Hero???

There are a lot of variables to consider here if we want to figure out what MP could possibly have.

He raised, then four-bet all in after you three-bet. This means:

• He has AA or KK
• He has JJ or a smaller pocket pair
• He has AK
• He thinks you’re trying to steal at the bubble and he is bluffing

These are all the options that make sense for this play. Let’s look at them in reverse order:

1) Bluffing

A lot of stealing goes on at the bubble, and that could be exactly what MP is trying to do with his original raise.

When you three-bet, he could be putting you on a re-steal, then making the four-bet thinking you won’t risk your tournament life on the bubble.

In fact, many players will fold KK or even AA in this spot, choosing to fold everything until the bubble bursts before risking his or her stack.

For this reason, MP could be making this move entirely to make you fold.

2) Ace-King

Given the action to this point there’s a decent chance he’s holding A-K.

Most players with A-K in this spot would like to end the hand here, without having to see a flop. There’s also a good chance you’d three-bet here with hands such as A-Q, almost any pair and maybe even A-J.

For this reason, it can be a decent bet for him to push on you. Even if you do have a hand like QQ, he’s got a coin-flip for the win if you call.

3) Pocket Jacks

If he has JJ or a smaller pocket pair, he could be making this move hoping you fold – but also content with a call, thinking he’s most likely in a coin-flip

Since he doesn’t have to risk his entire stack (just most of it), he won’t be completely out if he loses.

4) Pocket Aces and Kings

Finally, this is almost exactly how every player would play AA or KK.

Although he could try to trap, it makes more sense to take down the pot now and lower the amount of risk.

If you do call, he has a very strong hand and stands to win a big pot.

What’s Your Plan for the Tournament?

As you can see, all of these hand scenarios make perfect sense.  There really is no way to know what this player is doing without having any additional information.

But because this is your first hand at the table, you don’t have any additional information; you’re playing this with blinders on.

The only way you can decide what’s best to do here is to decide what your plans are for this tournament. Are you playing to cash, or are you playing to win?

Is the chance to double-up worth the risk of not cashing in the small money just past the bubble?

The real question: how much is the tournament buy-in worth to you? Most tournaments pay out just slightly more than the buy-in to the first few players after the bubble.

If you can afford to lose this money, and are only playing for a chance at the final table, then calling might be your best choice.

If you spent every last dime you have to get into this tournament, then you might want to consider folding, waiting to guarantee your buy-in back before you put everything across the line.

Some poker hands have no clear answer, and the only person who can tell you what the correct choice is, is you.

In an ideal world, you have a big enough bankroll and are always playing to win the tournament – and not needing to cash to eat.

In the real world though, sometimes limping into the money is the best thing you can do. This choice is up to you.

Once a backroom game only played by professional gamblers in the corners of Las Vegas casinos, poker has exploded into mainstream culture. Poker has made it’s way into homes around the world as people watch major tournaments on their televisions and play at online poker rooms on their computers.

The largest live poker tournament in history was in 2006 when the WSOP Main Event reached 8,773 players, sending eventual winner Jamie Gold home with a first-place prize of $12 million.

Winning a tournament of that size certainly takes a ton of luck but that doesn’t mean tournament poker isn’t a skill game. The best players have an edge over the rest of the field and, over time, will win more than their less-skilled peers.

But it’s the element of luck that makes tournament poker so attractive. Anyone with a chip and a chair has the chance to beat the best in the world, and come home a millionaire.

What is a Poker Tournament?

Unlike a cash game which can run indefinitely, a poker tournament begins at a predetermined start time with each player buying a ticket to the event, and starting at the same time with the same number of chips.

Players play until they are eliminated by losing all of their chips. A set number of finishers (typically around 10% of the total starting field) get paid on a descending scale from the winner down to the last paid finishing spot.

All players who finish below the lowest paid spot (for example in a 100 person tournament, all players finishing from 100^th to 11^th) leave the tournament with nothing but a story.

Differences between Tournaments and Ring Games

Aside from being able to re-buy and cash-out whenever you like, tournament play sees the blinds increase on a predetermined schedule. This is very different from the static blinds of a ring game which will allow players to dictate their own pace of play.

Another major difference between cash games and tournaments are the stack sizes. The stack sizes in a cash game are typically closer to each other than in a tournament, where some players will have many times that of the average stack, while others may just hold a single chip.

A successful tournament player needs to understand how to play with all stack sizes, while a cash game player can choose to only ever sit behind a stack of a specific amount.

Stack Sizes

How you play in a tournament will mostly depend on two variables: the stage of the tournament and the size of your stack.

The size of your stack is measured in two ways:

1. Your stack in comparison to the average stack size
2. Your stack in relation to the blinds.

The more chips you have, the more risk you’re able to shoulder. In other words, you can make plays which risk 5,000 chips if you have 50,000, but the same play would be foolish if you only hold 6,000.

The most important thing to understand in a tournament is your chips are your tournament life.

Chips = Life

When you run out of chips, your tournament is over; everything you do in a tournament should be based on this one concept. Protect your chips like they’re your children, all the while trying to grow your family.

Stages of a Tournament

There are three basic tournament stages:

• Early
• Middle
• Late

Early Stage

Since everyone gets to play the early stages of almost every tournament this is the part in which all players have the most experience, feel the most comfortable, and have a lot of chips in relation to the blinds. Everyone’s on an equal footing and it’s hard to find anyone looking to gamble.

People in this stage are rarely looking to get it all in with anything but the nuts. If you find a player willing to play a large pot, they either have the nuts, they’re looking to gamble or they’re trying to build a big stack early through sheer aggression. More often than not, though, they have the goods.

The standard approach to playing in this stage is to play very ABC tight-aggressive poker. It makes no sense to make big moves to steal the blinds, since the blinds are worth relatively nothing compared to the size of your stack.

The idea is to make it through the early stage with average or above chips, giving you room to maneuver as you enter the middle stage.

Middle Stage

The middle stage will range from being deep-stacked at the start (lots of chips compared to blinds) to short-stacked near the end. In this stage chips are quickly becoming more valuable, each round of blinds potentially bringing you one step closer to elimination.

It’s at this point you can no longer afford to sit around waiting for only the best hands. You need to steal blinds and protect your chips to keep yourself from getting short. Once you get too short your only move left is all in.

As Dan Harrington wrote in his famous Harrington on Hold’em tournament strategy books it’s always better to take a risk to keep yourself sitting with a healthy stack than to wait until you’ve been whittled down, forced to take a risk just to stay alive.

If you take the risk to stay healthy and lose, you still have a handful of chips to try again with. If you wait until you’re in dire straits you have no second chance.

The goal with the middle stage is simply to stay alive and get yourself into the money (a tournament pro cares little about making the money, and plays to win at all times). Once you’re into the money, you’ve entered the late stages of the tourney.

Late Stage

The late stage will have many players with very few chips, and a few players with a lot of them. This is the time of a tournament when everyone’s willing to gamble. Once you’re in the money, people no longer care about going bust and are aiming for the win at all times.

You need to play very aggressively, make few or no mistakes, and get lucky at the right times to have a shot at the title. Luck is always a part of poker, and in tournaments it becomes a large factor of the game in the later stages.

With the blinds being very large, and many stacks being very short, most players will be playing a simple all-in or fold game. You need to be willing to take coin flips, and have the luck to win them if you want to finish in first.

How to Become a Better Tournament Player

Firstly, read every article, book, forum thread and webpage you can find. Watch poker on TV, listen to webcasts, and watch strategy videos. But above all else, you’re going to have to play as much poker as you can.

The more tournaments you play, the better you will become at playing them. Many of the best tournament players in the world play hundreds to thousands of tournaments each year. The more you play, the better you will get.

Many people disagree with this strategy, but I’ve found there are times when it’s profitable and times when it’s downright ugly. Knowing when to use this strategy is essential to make it successful and profitable.

Before discussing the best time to go all-in, let me discuss one of the worst strategies I’ve seen: going all-in pre-flop during the early stages of a tournament. Many people do this in hopes of doubling-up, but the problem with this strategy is that the read is simple. When you commit all of your chips to the pot everyone knows you have a decent hand. Players frequently do this with a pair of jacks during the early rounds, which usually results in only getting calls from the hands that are better than theirs pre-flop – queens, kings or aces.

That being said, I love going all-in when the opportunity presents itself. What separates a great tournament player from a good one is that he knows when the best time to go all-in is. Here are the guidelines I use to determine if I should all-in with a hand.

Late Rounds (Tight Image)

If you’ve played very tight throughout the game your opponents have probably realized that you’re only playing the good hands. You can use this against them by going all-in to steal the blinds. If you’re on the button and everyone has folded to you, don’t be afraid to push in A-x suited or any pair all-in against decent players. Always remember that it is much harder to call an all-in than to bet all-in.

Against Highly Skilled Players

The all-in strategy is great for players who know they’re out-gunned. When you’re up against highly skilled tournament players who can outplay you on the flop, going all-in before the flop can be a helpful move. Although this strategy can backfire on you, it can be profitable when done in a certain way.

A player once went all-in on me repeatedly during the late stages of a tournament. In chat, I asked him why he would want to risk all of his chips each and every time. His response was that he knew I was the more skilled player and would outplay him on the flop. By going all-in, he significantly cut down how many times I would’ve called and taken him to the flop because I would’ve been forced to risk all of my chips on marginal hands.

The Bubble

Although this also qualifies as late rounds, the situation is a little different. During multi-table tournaments, players tend to tighten their game considerably as they get closer to the money. This is when I love to build my chip stack by going all-in. I’ve won many big tournaments by raising tight players’ blinds during this stage of the tournament.

If you’re going to become a successful tournament player, you can’t be afraid to put your opponents’ chips to the test. The next time someone raises, you can say “I’m all-in” knowing you are in the proper situation to do so.

This is part one of a four-part series outlining everything the average poker player needs to go from sit-and-go noob to sit-and-go shark. Part one will focus on low-blind play.

One type of poker that has really gained popularity online is the single-table tournament (STT) – commonly known as a “sit-and-go.”

Online sites have these running continuously. A new one starts as soon as it has enough players registered, so there’s never any shortage of action.

Sit-and-go play is a completely different monster than cash-game play. It is more similar to multi-table tournaments inasmuch as the amount of chips you have is finite. There are no re-buys and once your chips are gone you are gone. So you need to protect the chips you’re given at the start.

In the course of this multi-part article I will take you from being a sit-and-go noob to a sit-and-go shark.

The Basics

When the blinds are low you should employ a very conservative strategy. There’s no need to get overinvolved and risk tons of chips when the blinds are low.

If you have any chores to do around the house, than feel free to start up a sit-and-go or six and then go sweep the kitchen, vacuum the stairs and put your pot roast in. By the time you get back you should be ready to play.

Well obviously that is a little extreme, but it’s a more advisable course of action than getting all aggressive early.

Avoiding Confrontation Early

In the early stages of a sit-and-go you’d like to avoid large-scale confrontations. There’s no need to run up large bluffs or overplay marginal hands. There will be plenty of time for being ultra-aggressive later, so don’t worry.

What we’re trying to do is stay out of the action early. While I advise you to play very tight, you should still be playing strong hands aggressively. If you have a premium hand, by all means bring it in for a raise. I would never advocate anything different.

What I am saying is there’s no reason to try to exploit small edges early. For example:

Effective stacks $1,500. You have 9♠ 9♣ in the big blind. The blinds are $20/$40. There are 4 limpers to you.

In a cash game, this is a very easy raise. In a sit-and-go I would argue this is a check. If you wish to raise this hand you will have to make it at least 5 or 6x the BB since you will be out of position for the rest of the hand and there are four limpers in front of you.

For the sake of the example, you raise the pot to $240. The first two limpers fold and both the cut-off and the button call. The flop comes Q♥ 4♠ 2♣.

This flop is fairly decent for your hand. Only one overcard and you took the lead pre-flop so you will have to continuation bet this flop.

You bet 2/3 the pot or about $500. The cut-off folds and the button calls.

Now look at the spot you’re in. You’ve just put half of your stack into the pot. What are you going to do on the turn? The pot is now $1,800. If you fire again on the turn it will be for all your chips. How much can you like your hand?

The answer is probably not that much. Although checking and folding is also a pretty bad move, as you have half of your stack in the pot. This is why I advocate the check pre-flop while the blinds are low. It allows you to avoid a sticky situation like this one.

There are lots of situations like this. With speculative hands that are most likely to be good now but are not a huge favorite there’s no need to balloon a pot to exploit some small edge you may or may not have.

The amount of chips you’ll have to put into play to find out if you do have that edge is far too many to risk when your stack is finite. Rather than trying to push your small edges now it’s better to conserve your chips for the higher blind levels.

Regardless of the overall structure of a poker tournament or the style you play, you’ll be forced to take some coin flips on your path to the title.

With pressure from the rising blinds and players fighting for a finite number of chips, it’s not possible – or rather it’s completely improbable – you’ll make it through any poker tournament without ever being in a coin-flip situation.

So how can you make the most of it?

You Have to Flip … But You Don’t Want To

For clarity: Naturally, we’re not talking about the actual act of flipping a coin here (although many poker players have won and lost large amounts of money doing just that).

The poker equivalent of the coin flip is getting it all in against one opponent with your probability of winning approximately 50%.

Classic examples:  A-K vs. JJ; A-T vs. K-Q.

Anytime you flip, you’re risking your tournament life (or a portion of your very valuable chips) with a 50% chance at missing.

In case you’re unsure about investment odds and probabilities, those are not good odds. If the odds are poor, any decent investor would tell you simply not to invest. Wait until an opportunity arises in which you have more favorable odds.

This is sound advice, and is exactly what you should be doing (for the most part) in cash-game Hold’em.

Unfortunately, in a poker tournament, the increasing blind pressure adds other factors into play. These factors force you to flip simply to stay alive in the tournament. You’re forced to play the situation, regardless of the actual hands in play.

To sum up: You don’t want to be taking coin flips, but there will come a point where taking a flip becomes your best chance at staying alive or making it deep.

Make Your Opponents Make the Choice

While you can’t choose not to take coin flips, you can choose when to take them.

In the majority of all coin flip situations, one player moves all-in and the other player calls.

(Note:  there are times when both players have a pocket pair, or some other combination of hands that give one player an edge over the other. Since these situations will go both ways (between the pusher and the caller) we’ll exclude those situations from this conversation.)

After removing those situations, the player calling is calling for a 50% shot at taking the pot, but the player pushing actually has a better opportunity at making money.

It’s not possible to put an exact number to it, but the concept is simply known as fold equity.

Just by being the player to have pushed, you have the chance that your opponent will fold. When this happens, you win the pot 100% of the time. If the opponent calls, then you’re a 50% shot.

As you can see, the caller never has any fold equity while the pusher always does.

In other words, you want to be the aggressor, the pusher. If you’re never making any moves, it’s going to be terribly difficult to force your opponent into making a mistake.

Force your opponents to have to choose to flip with you or fold. If you’re always making that choice as the caller, you’re reducing your edge and counting on luck to bail you out.

30% is not 50%

If you’re at the point where your best chance at progressing in the tournament is by taking a coin flip, you need to think in terms of this: 30% is not 50%.

Basically, you need to avoid calling all-in bets with easily dominated hands.

Players will often call with hands such as A♠ 2♠ looking for a flip, knowing this hand is better than even money against K♥ Q♥ or any other non-paired, non-ace hand.

Unfortunately, matching up with any other hand with an ace in it has you at a little less than 30% to win – same as being up against a pair.

So a hand like this is a very poor choice when hoping for a coin flip. First, you have to get lucky to even be in a coin flip before you can have the chance at winning the flip itself.

This goes for hands such as 3♥ 3♦ as well. This is not a bad hand, and is ahead of anything other than a higher pair.

But if you’re up against a higher pair, you’re in a really tight spot. You need to know the range of hands your opponents will be willing to push or call an all-in with before you can choose your own range.

In many tournament situations, pocket threes might be a great candidate for a hand to take a flip with.

But if your opponent has a large stack, and is the kind of player only to raise hands with legitimate strength, you’re putting it all on the line on the hope they have a something like A♥ K♥.

The first step in being successful in tournaments is to make sure that the coin flips you take actually are coin flips.  If you get it all in with a dominated hand, you’re simply giving your money away.

Bottom line: You’re going to have to take coin flips in tournament poker; it’s up to you to make sure you take them when it’s best for you.

When you make the final table of a large multi-table tournament, one of the most important decisions facing you may be whether or not you want to make a deal.

With the 2008 WSOP Main Event final table now under way, there is no better time to talk about final-table deal making. As with all other aspects of poker, you rack up long-term profit by making the correct choice when faced with a decision at the table.

Before you can decide whether or not to make or accept a deal, you have to have enough knowledge of deals to make an informed and profitable decision. The first step is understanding the types of deals to be made, and how they work.

Types of Deals

The first type of deal is the chip-chop. This deal is the most common since it’s the easiest to understand, and seems absolutely fair and reasonable to all players involved.

How it works: Each player receives a percentage of the total final-table prize pool equal to the ratio of their chip amount to the total chips in play.

Example: Let’s use the 2008 WSOP Main Event final table for our example.

First, the prize pool:

Total prize pool: $32,633,446

Second, stack sizes:

Total chips in play: $136,865,000

Finally, we can calculate the chip-chop amounts. If the final nine were to make a deal before starting play (and if they all hadn’t already received ninth-place money), this is how the numbers would work out:

The Even Spread

The second deal type to mention is the even spread, which really is as simple as it sounds. In fact it’s so simple, no chart is needed to explain it.

Every player receives an even share of the total prize pool. In the case of the 2008 WSOP ME, each of the final nine players would receive $3,625,938.

Haggle ‘n’ Swindle

The final type of deal making I’ll dub the haggle ‘n’ swindle. This is the deal process where anything goes. There are many tournament players who have an amazing aptitude at creating elaborate final-table deals that greatly benefit themselves – and then convincing the other players to accept.

A good salesman can sell anything, regardless of whether the buyer needs or even wants the goods up for sale. I’ve seen players in situations much like Kelly Kim somehow manage to get a share of booty equal to a finishing rank far above reasonable expectation.

For Your Consideration

So how do you know when to make or take a deal, and what type of deal is best for you? Hopefully by now you’ve come to realize that creating your own haggle ‘n’ swindle deal is much more difficult than you might have imagined.

You have to be able to do a large amount of math on the fly while at the same time creating webs of logic to convince or confuse the other players.

Because of this difficulty, more often than not you’re going to be facing the option of one of the first two deal types.

If you look at the charts for the chip-chop, you’ll see that by taking a chip-chop, Kelly Kim would actually lose a minimum of $300k.

When stack sizes are in the extremes, a chip-chop will rarely make logical sense. Even if you flip it, and put eight of the players with a combined amount of chips worth less than 50%, the ninth player holding the majority, a chip-chop is a rotten deal for everyone but the leader.

Before making or accepting a deal, you need to consider the following:

• Your skill level versus the skill of the other players
• Your current mental state
• Your opponents’ current mental state
• Your current financial situation
• The current financial situation of your opponents
• The confidence of your opponents
• Your opponents’ previous final-table success

The more of this information you have, the more profitable a deal you’ll be able to make for yourself. In many situations, a lot of these items will be little more than assumed. Use the information you have (or can collect) to your advantage.

As a rule of thumb, you don’t want to consider making a deal until there are four or fewer players remaining. If you look at the payout structure, the greatest increases in pay happen from fourth to first.

This is where the majority of the total prize money sits, meaning a deal with any more players than that will most commonly cost you more money than it’s worth.

Once you’re down to four or fewer players, you first need to take a very honest, brutal look at yourself. How are you playing right now? How are you feeling? And are you able to maintain your level of play for the duration of the event?

If you don’t have the energy to play your best poker until the finish, you may be better off making a deal to grant you more money than a regular second-place finish would.

If you are not sure you can win, but you are sure you can get more money in a deal than you can make from second place, you should always make that deal.

The same goes for the third-place payout, trying to make it to heads-up. If you are truly exhausted and unable to play quality poker, while your opponents are at the top of their game, getting guaranteed more money than a standard third-place finish is often your best choice.

After you consider yourself, consider your opponents. If your opponents are playing in a tournament above their bankroll, they will be more apt to make a deal than a player looking for the win.

A guaranteed $10,000 looks better to someone with $400 in their account than risking busting next for a $6,000 payday.

Take stock of who your opponents are, where they stand, and what they need. Get the numbers straight, ideally in front of you on paper. You want to actually see the payouts, the stacks and the percentages.

Know your options, and who stands to gain the most. Always figure out what is best for you at that very moment first, and then make the best choice based on what you know about your opponents.

If you take the time to consider all these factors first, chances are you’ll always end up in the good by making a deal.