Author: horse-racing-free-tips

Sometimes in tournaments there come times when a special situation arises. One of these situations that a player can encounter during a poker tournament is known under the name of “The gap concept”.

The terminology of gap concept was first pioneered by an extraordinary poker writer named David Skylansky. This basically means that when you are playing poker you can find yourself in the situation when you just need a hand that is better than the one you are holding in order to play against another player. The opponent would have to open the betting and to play against him your hand has to be better than his hand you would have needed to open the betting yourself. That difference between you actual hand and the hand you would have needed in this case, to call his bet, is the difference that defines the gap concept.

This particular difference varies a lot during poker tournaments. It is defined mostly by the poker playing style of your opponents, whether it is tight or loose. The gap is smaller when others play loose poker and it growth bigger and bigger as they get tighter. This happens mostly because a tight player will not take so many chances but he will also hold on to his hand once he has a good one.

Let’s say you are first in and you hold a hand that doesn’t necessarily pushes you to bet. But another player bets or raises and you have to call or raise his or hers bet in order to prove the power of your hand or just to stay in the game and be able to play it the way you intended in the first place. The gap concept is not always a bad situation. Players can take advantage of this gap and turn the odds around. If your first choice was to semi-bluff, the gap concept gives the opportunity to do so without thinking about it. If you call a bet with a hand you wouldn’t normally do that, it doesn’t mean you will lose the round. It gives you and opportunity to enter further bidding rounds that you normally wouldn’t have entered and it also make you hope and maybe hit a draw with the help of additional cards dealt.

On the other hand, if you are positioned in late position when you play Texas hold’em and you have quite a few chips on your stack, then you can raise and call with lower hands. If you have hands like a small pair or Ace plus another unimportant card you can call a bet without many risks, but be aware of the aggressiveness of players in first position and blinds because if they are very aggressive and call or raise you back a lot of times then you can waste a lot of your stack for a hand that just isn’t worth it.

Timing is everything, or so they say. Well, I’ve noticed recently that in poker, virtual or physical, that you can tell a lot about your opponents’ hands by just watching the amount of time it takes them to make a bet; and you know what that means – it means that they can tell the same about you.

We’re not robots, we can’t produce results the same every time, according to the same timing pattern no matter if we have a royal flush or a pair of twos; however, what we can do is try to be a little aware of how quickly we bet, how fast our opponent is acting, and from that be able to portray the image that we want as well as read the hands of those who aren’t aware of the importance of this.

Now of course it’s not foolproof, and if your opponent is a weathered player he may be aware of the importance of betting speeds and over compensate the other way to throw you off your tracks, which is why general rules are good but no substitute for intuition or the reading of body language. None-the-less I think that there are general rules that can be identified even if they are not always to be followed.

If someone is very quick to check it may be sign of weakness; if he has something why wouldn’t he be betting on it, a quick jump to safe ground indicates a whole lot of nothing. A quick bet could also indicate the same; making up for lack of cards by over confidence. An instant call on the other hand, indicates strength and in an interim betting round this is important to remember. A quick call means that the player has no question about staying in the game, but doesn’t raise possibly because he doesn’t want to scare off the other players and thereby diminish what will ultimately be his pot. A pause before betting, in my opinion is usually indicative of strength, not necessarily a royal flush, but certainly good cards; the reason I think this is because it indicates honesty rather than a bluff.

These are just my observations, and for all I know it may be more a reflection of my poker buddies than indicative of what all poker players do. However, the point is, even if you don’t follow my general rules, start paying attention to how quickly people jump in, and try to fit together the pieces of the puzzle in order that you can understand what that timing means. For example a quick bet on the flop followed by a slow call on the turn, followed by a fold, will tell you that that person’s quick bet means nothing; useful information for the next time he jumps in with guns blazing.

Try it; start paying attention to timing and I promise you’ll be shocked at how much information you can pick up.

In the ever growing world of poker, being on tilt can be a poker players’ biggest fear. Poker players are said to be on tilt when they are just not at their best game. They often play many hands, the majority of them being losses, place bets on bad hands, place off the wall high bets on mediocre hands, or out of desperation try wild, obvious bluffs. Players on tilt are often reckless, and make bad decisions and errors uncommon to them. Once a player goes on tilt, it is very hard to break the cycle.

More often than not, by the time a player realizes they are on tilt, it is too late to avoid it. Many players have lost their entire stack before they would admit they were on tilt and walk away. It is important to look for warning signs of possibly going on tilt, so that you can stop before it is too late. Playing when you are tired is one of the most likely causes of tilt. When you are tired, you aren’t at your best no matter what you are doing. Your ability to make good decisions is impacted, and since that is a crucial skill in poker playing, you really should not play when you are overly tired. When you start to get sleepy, and feel your fatigue level rising, it is important to stop playing and rest. You can always come back later, and will probably play better because you will be well rested and wide awake, hence, making better decisions. This is a likely cause of tilt that you have control over and can stop before it starts.

Many players let their tempers get them on tilt as well. They often let comments made by other players get under their skin, which sets them on edge and makes them more likely to make costly mistakes. Mane poker players will do this on purpose to throw their opponents off their games, so it is easier for them to win. These obnoxious players are easier to ignore when you are playing online poker, you can always close off your chat screen, or many websites now have features where you can ignore chat from a particular player. For this reason, players who play online are less likely to go on tilt due to comments from another player.

If you seem to be in a cycle of getting bad cards, making bad bets, or catching yourself making mistakes that are uncommon for you, it should be considered an early warning sign of going on tilt. The more annoyed you become at the situation, the worse your game will be. As your game gets worse, your frustration level will rise even more, which will put you on a fast path to going on tilt. This is one of those crucial moments where you should be the responsible player and realize it is better to walk away than to keep playing and hope things will get better. Chances are that even if you do get better cards, or you do make better bets, you will still lose because you are already to the point of being off your game and on tilt.

During any poker game it is important to keep your attention focused on what you are doing. When you get distracted, you are more likely to make costly mistakes. With every mistake you make, you put yourself one step closer to going on tilt. So, when you catch yourself losing your focus, walk away for a few hands and come back, or try to remove whatever it is that is causing you to lose your concentration.

As a general rule of thumb, if you are having a bad day, or you feel as though things just aren’t going well, you should not allow yourself to play. Things that happen in our day to day lives affect everything we do, and are sure to impact our focus, concentration, and decision making abilities, therefore making players more likely to go on tilt. When things seem to be going wrong for you, it is hard to take your mind completely off of them no matter what you do. It is better to work out your problems before you play, so that you will have all attention on what you are doing, and can avoid the feared being on tilt.

It is important for every poker player to be aware of what tilt means and how to avoid being impacted by it. Everyone will have a bad game now and then, but when it is more often than not, chances are there is something else going on that is causing you to be off your game. Good players learn to recognize the difference between bad luck and tilt, and they know when to walk away.