Given the catastrophic loss of the US market it was fairly inevitable that many of the major online poker houses were going to start courting the European markets more heavily and so sees the announcement from PokerStars that they are to move the start times of all of their regular major tournaments to earlier times in the day.

This is a smart move by PokerStars and one that will inevitably snare more casual players to tourney play. We all know that a decent finish will see an investment in time of several hours so the earlier start times will be welcome to most in Europe.

A round up of many of the tournaments and start times are –

Sunday Kick-Off – 17:00 GMT
Sunday Warm-Up – 19:00 GMT
Sunday Rebuy – 20:00 GMT
Sunday Storm – 21:30 GMT
Sunday Million – 22:30 GMT
Sunday 500 – 23:30 GMT
Sunday Second Chance – 00:30 GMT
Sunday Supersonic – 02:30 GMT

These new tournament start times begin on Sunday 5th June and as a kicker PokerStars are adding more than $200,000 worth of entries to a selection of daily satellites. Check out the lobby at PokerStars for details on the satellites if you are interested in getting a cheap entry.

There are a range of factors that you should consider before automatically making a play with a starting hand in Texas Hold ‘em. These can differ between whether you are playing cash games, multi table tournaments or short handed sit n go’s.

Try to commit these to memory and before long these considerations will become second nature to you.

Cash Game Starting Hand Factors to Consider

There are 5 main considerations when deciding what to do with your hand when you are playing in a cash game.

Table position

This is arguably as important as the cards you have been dealt in many instances. Considering your position in relation to the other players is critical because if you are in late position it can give you the opportunity to view what the other players do before you make any commitment to the pot. Position is important both pre and post flop and you will need to alter your hand ranges depending on what position you are dealt on the table. For example, if you are in early position you will want to play hands with a higher range than you would if you were in late position when you have information on what the other players plan to do on the hand pre-flop.

Cards dealt

This is probably the first consideration that will pop into your head. The cards you play will depend on the factors listed here and the hand ranges you are prepared to play.

Number of players

The number of players on the table is a factor that should be considered in conjunction with your table position and consequently what cards you are prepared to play. A very simple fact to remember is that the more people playing around a table, the more chance there is of a player having stronger cards than you so bear this in mind when playing on full tables.

Playing style

This can both relate to yourself and your opponents. It is important that you do become predictable to the other players so it is your interests to mix up your play a little so that your opponents have to second guess you. This could be a conscious decision you make in terms of playing in a certain style when you are in late position or you are playing against a particular opponent.

If you study the playing style of your opponents it is sometimes possible to pick up a “tell”. Clearly this is more difficult playing online than in a real cash poker table in a casino but if you are able to spot a weakness in an opponent it will increase the chances of you being able to bluff the player out of chips or lay a trap that will maximise your chances of being paid off in a hand.

Pot odds

Finally when all other factors have been taken into account you should consider the pot odds in playing a given hand. You need to work out whether the number of “outs” you have in terms of making your desired hand is favourable when compared with the size of the pot and the amount of chips you will need to add to see a showdown, etc.

Multi Table Tournament Starting Hand Factors to Consider

Certainly take into account the cash game starting hand principles mentioned above when you are playing in an MTT (multi table tournament) but also consider the following 3 factors.

Prize money offered

When playing in an MTT the prize money will be split down the field to a varying degree based on what type of MTT you are playing. A rule of thumb can be that the top 10% to 20% of the field will receive a payout. You need to consider the prize structure continuously because players’ styles will invariably alter depending on what stage they are at in the tournament. If you simply want to get in the money first and take it from there, you will likely want to play a quite tight game and loosen up once the “bubble” has passed and you are guaranteed a paid place in the tournament. However, take into account that more experienced players will take advantage of tight players in these circumstances and will attempt to steal blinds where they can.

Monitor the blinds

The blinds (and antes) will increase over set periods of time during an MTT so you need to consider the size of your stack of chip relative to the size of the blinds. You don’t want to become short stacked because this will lessen your options when in a pot and will reduce any fold equity.

Your chip stack size

Your decision making process will be informed by number of chips you hold in relation to others around the table, their positions and to some extent the average number of chips held by all the other players in the whole tournament. For example, if you are entering a pot against multiple players who all have chip stacks larger than yours you should be aware that any one of them could potentially knock you out of the tournament if you are playing no limit hold ‘em and one of them decides to go all in against you. Try to only enter pots with players with equivalent or small stacks compared to yours unless you hold premium hands.

On the other hand if you hold a chip lead over others on your table you will be able to bully them by making large raises and stealing blinds against tight players.

If the number of chips you hold is ten times the size of the big blind (or less) you will be short stacked in most tournament schedules. Try not to allow your chips to become reduced to this level if at all possible.

In order to help you to calculate pot odds and the probability of you making particular poker hands pre-flop and after the flop you should carefully study the following percentage odds of you making your desired hand.

Probability of being dealt

Pocket aces – 0.45%
Any pocket pair – 5.9%
Any two suited cards to the river to make a flush – 6.4%

Probability of hitting on the flop

Turning a pocket pair into trips – 10.8%
Hitting a flush from two suited cards – 0.84%

Probability of hitting on the turn card

Making a straight from a gutshot draw – 9%
Making a straight from an open ended straight draw – 17%
A flush when you have 4 suited cards already – 19%
Making a full house from trips – 15%
Making a full house from two pair – 9%

Probability of hitting on the turn or river

Making a straight from a gutshot draw – 17%
Making a straight from an open ended straight draw – 32%
Making a full house from two pair – 17%
A flush when you have 4 suited cards already – 35%
A flush when you have 3 suited cards already – 4%

Probability of making on the river from the turn card

Making a straight from a gutshot draw – 9%
Making a straight from an open ended straight draw – 17%
Making a full house from trips – 22%
Making a full house from two pair – 9%

If you are a beginner or a poker player that struggles to make any profit over time then this post could help you towards becoming a winning online poker player.

The following advice is very simple but should be understood and appreciated in detail to help you to improve your poker game and make you a winning player.

Learn how calling ranges are determined by the scenario at the table.

An easy bite size sentence which when evaluated will in all likelihood become one of the most important poker lessons you will ever encounter.

What Do I Do Next?

As a casual player with a small ever dwindling bankroll you can find yourselves in a rut during games where you genuinely don’t know what to do with a given hand. If you believe you’ve suffered numerous bad beats over time, your judgement can become impaired and your play can suffer significantly.

If you find yourself in this situation you need to go back to basics. Perhaps even step away from poker for a while to allow yourself to clarify your mindset.

When you are ready to play, you need to refresh yourself with hand calling ranges and how this determines your play at the table. A bad player will play the cards. A good player will play the cards and their opponents.

Playing Short Handed Poker

It is acknowledged that short handed play is reserved for advanced players. This needn’t be the case when you have a grasp of calling ranges and how the calling ranges are affected by the number of opponents you have at your table.

I personally prefer playing heads up poker or sit and go’s with as few players as possible becasue my knowledge of calling ranges associated to the number of players around a table is so strong. Once you get a feel for these calling ranges, you game should improve exponentially when playing short handed.

How to Improve Short Handed Play

There are two key elements that you need when playing short handed -

• A strong understanding of calling ranges

• Bravery

In order to understand the calling ranges for a given sized table you can study charts or play theoretical ands through a program such as PokerStove which will give you odds on winning a hand based on starting hands, number of players, etc. However, this will not teach you the real game bravery that you need when deciding to raise big or push all in.

In my opinion the way to learn calling ranges for short handed play and to instil the bravery required to be able to push all in or bet big is to play a number of turbo or hyper turbo sit n go’s. This isn’t standard advice that you will see written on other poker tips sites, but the rationale is very sound.

Super Turbo Sit N Go’s?

A fairly standard super or hyper turbo sit n go will consist of 4 – 6 players max and the blinds will often increase every minute. In other words the blinds can increase after every hand or couple of hands.

In order to play turbo sit n go’s successfully you need to understand that unless you act decisively and statistically correctly you will likely fail. You could simply sit tight and either let the blinds knock you out or allow yourself to get so shortstacked that effectively you have no raise equity so realistically the whole table could call or raise you with no problems holding the worst starting hands imaginable, or you could play decisively according to your table position and calling range.

Therefore, in these sorts of poker games you need to learn a sort of push or fold game. In other words push all your chips into the middle or fold your hand. In doing so you will need to grasp the fundamentals behind what is a good starting hand on a table of say 2,3,4 or 5 opponents and when you determine that you have a strong starting hand based on the number of opponents you need to have the bravery to push all in. This is easy said than done when it is your tournament/game at stake.

Winning Short Handed Play Summary

By playing hyper turbo sit n go’s you will only win hands and progress successfully if you have a grasp on your table situation and the value of your starting hand. Of course there will be variance based on other players that are poor or just reckless but as a training exercise, using turbo sit n go’s should help to sharpen your poker brain as to when to push or fold and give you the bravery to do so.

You will then be able to take these skills to standard sit n go tables and clean up.

I thought I’d give Everest a whirl the other day only to find that after downloading their poker software, the lobby screen wouldn’t fit within the screen of my laptop. I use a netbook with a native screen resolution of 1024×600 so sometimes some sites need resizing a little. Not possible with Everest unfortunately.

I checked their FAQ’s and in black and white I could see that the minimum specifications for software download is a screen resolution of 1024×768.

Remember the 1990′s when occasionally you had to check the minimum specifications for a piece of software? Well apparently in 2011 a poker room wants to curtail its user base amongst an entire set of Internet users. Given that sales of netbooks are outpacing traditional laptops significantly and the native screen resolution for a typical netbook is 1024×768 you would think that software vendors would want to cater to users of netbooks.

I was sure that Everest wouldn’t be so stupid to design software so badly and that there would be a workaround so I got one of their support bods on instant chat and asked them to confirm whether only people using a 1024×768 resolution can use Everest software?

The entirety of our conversation consisted of my question and his rather enigmatic

“Yes”.

So that was it. My attempt to give an online poker room my hard earned money was scuppered by a software development team that apparently doesn’t do usability tests.

Everest poker uninstalled…