Live Aid

Training sites like CardRunners and PokerXFactor have a lot to answer for. A few years ago, online poker rooms were swarming with fish readily handing over their money on a daily basis. Unfortunately those days are over. While you still might come across a dream table from time to time, it’s clear that there’s been a gradual improvement online to the point that even at lower limits such as $0.25/$0.50 you’ll find regular career players grinding out a living.

However, there is another way. More and more players are finding that the easy money nowadays is found in the world of live poker. It may be a pain to leave your comfy sofa and travel to your local poker club or casino, but the rewards are worth it as live cash games have never been more profitable. You’ll find drunken idiots, sick gamblers fresh off the craps table and innocent novices ready and willing to hand their chips to you. To make sure you don’t become one of them, follow these ten tips and walk out of the casino with a bulging wallet…

1 Don’t Drink

Just because Scotty Nguyen looks cool downing cocktails at the table (well, he did in 1998 at least) doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Despite the argument that you play better after a couple of beers (when it’s taken the edge off your nerves and you show more aggression), alcohol WILL cloud your judgement and result in you making more bad decisions and losing money.

However, if you happen to find yourself at a table with a few sozzled punters it’s a great opportunity to cash in. Your well-oiled opponents will most likely be playing too many hands (too aggressively) and calling too much. To combat their loose play you must be patient, wait for a good hand, and get as much money in as you can against them expecting a call. Remember, if you want to get drunk you go to the pub and if you want to make money you play poker.

2 Don’t Limp

If you’re going to play a hand you should virtually always come in for a raise. This is the case whether you have pocket Aces, suited connectors or utter junk.

Making a raise, instead of limping, achieves a few important things. First, if you have a strong hand, raising preflop helps to narrow the field and reduce the chance of your big pairs being cracked by speculative holdings. It also means you get more money in the pot so that you can get value with a premium hand.

Most importantly, raising helps cultivate an aggressive image, and that’s something you need to win big in live poker. Constantly raising (and reraising) will enable you to pick up pots preflop that you never would have won and steal heads-up pots on the flop with continuation bets.

3  Isolate Limpers

Live games tend to play very passively, with large multi-way limped pots and everybody trying to hit the flop. Don’t allow this to happen. Most of your profit in poker, live or online, will come from isolating bad players and taking their money after the flop. If you’ve targeted a player as weak and they are consistently limping into the pot, you should raise with a very wide range of hands in position to play solely against that opponent. Much of the time you will take it down preflop or with a continuation bet. Also, if you actually have a hand you will be able to play flops against the calling station where you often have them dominated.

The only time you should depart from this tactic is if players start to limp with big hands from early position in an effort to trap you. If you notice this happening, you’ll have to tighten up and target players who aren’t skilled enough to mix it up like this.

4 Forget Big Bluffs

Getting away with a huge bluff and showing it is one of the most satisfying feelings in poker. It can set up your image as a maniac and easily put opponents on tilt, which you can then take advantage of later when you have a real hand.

However, in loose live games getting away with a bluff is actually very difficult, and one of the major leaks in many players’ games is bluffing far too often against calling stations. Raising and three-betting preflop with marginal hands and worse is fine, but if someone calls your continuation bet in a live game, they’ll call you all the way to the river. Unless their hand is very easily defined, such as a missed flush draw, firing a third bullet with air on the river is often a case of style over substance.

5  Bet For Value

When playing live you need to remember that players call a lot. They don’t want to fold or be bluffed, and they want to see your hand at showdown. So when you have a big hand you need to squeeze every last drop out of your opponents by value betting them to death. While loose fish not folding can be a problem if you aren’t hitting cards, it’s great news when you’re running hot.
Let’s take a look at an example.

You’re playing in a £100 game (blinds £1/£1), and raise to £4 with A-T in late position. The big blind – a very predictable loose-passive player – calls, and you go heads-up to the flop. It comes Tc-9s-2d rainbow. Your opponent checks and you bet £7 into the pot of £9. He calls and then checks the 5d turn. You now bet £18 and he calls again. The river is the 6d and he checks a final time. At this point with one or two straights possible and a backdoor flush having arrived, some players would check and miss out on value. It’s a standard play to avoid being put to a difficult decision. The only thing is, he virtually never check-raises with a flush or straight – he would want to get paid. It’s also very unlikely he would have two pair or a set, as even the most passive players would surely have raised at some point in the hand with a holding this strong. His most likely hand is one pair that he’s calling all the way with. So you bet £45 – about three-quarters of the pot – for value, he calls with J-T and you win a £149 pot with top pair, top kicker.

6 Practise Restraint With Small Pairs

Small pairs can mean big profits when you flop a set in a cash game, but it’s important you don’t get into the routine of set-mining in the instances when it’s clearly not profitable. The main leak that most people have with small pairs is calling raises and reraises, with the sole intention of flopping a set and folding when they miss. With effective stacks of 100 big blinds it’s very rare you have the implied odds to call raises and reraises. To make a profit from set-mining you need to make eight times your investment (the one in eight times that you hit it) – every time!

The problem with this is that your opponent must have a monster hand that they’re willing to go to the felt with. And it simply won’t happen enough to make it profitable to keep calling preflop. If you can see a cheap flop with a small pair in a multi-way pot, that’s great. If not, get out.

7 Be Aware Of Your Surroundings

It’s crucial to pay attention to a whole host of miscellaneous factors that can help win you money. When you play online the only relevant data are the numbers and virtual cards you can see on the screen (plus maybe the odd timing tell). Live, there are countless sights and sounds and other distractions that can draw your focus away from the game. Check out Nick Wealthall’s great article on live tells here.

One common mistake players make is not noticing that there’s been a raise in front of them, resulting in an accidental minimum reraise that could cost them a big pot. I once cost myself £300 by shipping a huge pile of £25 chips into the middle, thinking I was merely putting the short-stack all-in. My lack of concentration at the table meant I hadn’t noticed that another big stack had flat-called the original raise and was only too happy to call my inadvertent overbet with his Aces. Every careless mistake like this, whether it costs a single big blind or a few buy-ins, is something that can be easily avoided.

8 Approach Cash Games Like Tournaments

After watching the likes of durrrr and Ziigmund getting frisky with hands like 5-7, J-8 and K-9 on High Stakes Poker, it’s very easy to find yourself trying to play the same exciting style. Yet a far better tactic for us mere mortals is to treat cash games more like a tournament and adopt a tight-is-right policy.

Of course, the stacks are deeper in cash games and there is more of an emphasis on postflop play, but that doesn’t excuse fundamental errors such as calling reraises out of position with suited connectors and easily dominated hands. If you wouldn’t do it when your tournament life is on the line then don’t do it in a ring game. Stick with the fundamentals, such as continuation betting and value-raising, and only play the showbiz hands when you’re getting correct odds to call and have position.

9 Don’t Straddle

One distinctive aspect of live poker is the straddle bet. A straddle is an optional third blind placed to the left of the big blind and double it in size. It allows the straddler to have the last option preflop and is usually employed by gamblers in an effort to loosen up a tight cash game. It’s inherently unprofitable but is common in many live cash games.

Even if you’re getting abuse from the rest of the table you shouldn’t straddle, as it is a -EV move. The amount of time you end up playing in a bloated pot out of position will far outweigh the occasional time you pick up Aces and have a disguised monster. If you’re playing against a straddle make sure to exploit it. Your raise size should be slightly higher and you should be prepared to play a flop as players on the straddle defend more than they should. Crucially, though (as long as you’re not in the blinds), you will have the advantage of being in position throughout the rest of the hand.

10 Be Patient

If you’re from an online background then live play can be very boring. You’ll only see about 30 hands per hour and obviously can’t multi-table. It’s easy to have sessions where you’re card dead for two hours or more and the temptation is always there to play hands you shouldn’t, purely from frustration. This is where being patient and having discipline is vital.

You can’t win every pot in poker. In fact, your goal should really be to win one big pot per hour. The majority of your time at the table should be spent folding. It’s not fashionable, but it’s ultimately how you become a winner. If you find yourself getting restless at the poker table don’t start playing more hands. Talk to the other players, listen to your iPod or simply pay attention to the players and their betting patterns. If you’re patient, the cards and the pots will eventually come your way. And if they don’t, call it a night – there’s always another hand and another day.

Conclusion

If there’s one common theme through these ten tips it’s to keep it simple. Beating soft live cash games is not rocket science. It requires you to pick on the weak players, get a solid grasp of the fundamentals, and play a tight-aggressive strategy. It might be slow and you may bump into a few cretins along the way, but many live games are so soft that, for a good player, it’s like collecting a pay cheque every time you turn up.