I had a very perplexing and heated debate with a poker pro a few weeks ago about the skill vs. luck argument in poker. The gist of the debate had to do with my making the assertion that poker is a game of skill. I know it sounds weird that that would cause debate with [...]
Talk to any poker player who is even slightly beyond the beginning level and they will be able to tell you that position matters. They can tell you that position should affect your hand selection. They can tell you that it is an advantage to be in position, closer to the button. What most players [...]
Before we get into any specifics about how to play certain situations after the flop in no limit hold’em, we have to first talk a little general betting theory. Here is the most important thing about betting post flop: All bets must have a purpose. Just as your life should be purposeful so should your [...]
Most Mondays I play in a pretty fun home game that is a $5/10 pot limit game, dealer’s choice. Now, obviously, I am not playing for the money. The buy in is only $300. I am playing because I really enjoy all the people in the game and it is just really fun for me [...]
When playing any game heads up there are large adjustments you have to make to your play over playing a ring game. Pot Limit Omaha is no exception. In all aspects ranging from how many hands you play, how aggressively you play them and how much trapping you do play in heads up is almost [...]
Pot Limit Omaha tournaments are often run as rebuys. Because the game has such high variance, it is one of the ideal games for rebuy tournaments, generating lots of rebuys and pumping up the prize pools. Also, because so many close all-in situations come up in PLO, rebuys are an advantage for the good player [...]
So I was wandering through Caesar’s the other day after a WSOP Players Advisory Council meeting when I ran into a poker player named June. He introduced himself, mentioned he reads my articles in Bluff and then made a special request of me to write an article on a topic that he passionately wanted to [...]
When I was in Graduate School studying Cognitive Psychology I learned about an error in decision making in Humans called Sunk Cost. Sunk Cost refers to resources, whether it be time or money or anything else, which have already been spent. The decision making error is that people tend to take sunk cost into account [...]
Playing out of position in any game is all about figuring out how to control the action when you are at a big decision making disadvantage, when you have to act first. Poker is a game of decision making. If we are better at making decisions than our opponents we will win. Good decisions are [...]
My brother, Howard Lederer, and I have recently been having some really interesting discussions about the luck factor in poker. Now we all know that there is skill in poker but the general consensus has been that there is a preponderance of skill, not that poker is a game that is all skill. Arguments for [...]
