During this free poker article we’ll look at an example of this sort of play in which the players “suspicion itch” avoided a costly experience at the hands of another cunning player.

BLINDS 3k/6k

PREFLOP:

A has As-Jd and raises to 16k

It is a standard raise from early position. But notice B’s audacious, but well-timed reraise:

B has Ac-7s and reraises to 45k

B might be planning to pull any joiners to the Flop in order to try a big continuation bet (AKA C-bet) should other players check at the Flop. The reraise is also a deterrent for other players to come in, so that the C-bet will be more effective. In this example though the reraise was not enough for C:

C has 10d-10c from BB and calls 39k (Pot 117k)

At thus stage A might believe that B had something such as A-K. Also, B has position over A, so A folds.

FLOP: 10s-4c-Qh

C bets 30k

C, who has a Set, now bets very small! This is kind of odd as Sets should be played strong here since there is a high probability of a Straight draw on the Table (a KJ or AK will be good enough to justify calling a 30k bet on a 117k pot). Probably what he was hoping for is that B will interpret this as a C-bet, a bluff, and, considering how aggressive B was preflop, B will continue on his aggression by raising. That would be a better spot for C to move all in.

So if B believed that C did a continuation bet, he then should respond by raising. However, at a 117,000 pot, how large should a continuation bet be? Half the pot? Equal to the size of the pot? Is a small bet a C-bet? (Looks suspicious).

B can now think, rightly, that C had a strong hand when he called B’s preflop reraise (another suspicion), after which C strengthened his hand through the flop, and so is value- betting (third suspicion!).

B cannot raise this (if he did C will push all-in); also, B cannot call this for he’s got Ace-rag that is nothing, and so B folds. Good usage of a suspicious activity detector ability!

And so there ends the lesson, maybe not so much a how to play poker for beginners one as it is a bit in depth but if you’re more experienced I’m hoping this resonates with you. To get more practice and learn better how to spot suspicious actions but without risking money it is a great idea to play free poker tournaments at quality free online poker sites sites before you risk money on your hunches.

Or, on a less positive note, after two hours you’re down 300, and had only budgeted that much as your maximum allowed loss. Do you go get more money from the ATM or bail out and go home on a bit of a downer?

These scenarios seem quite simple, but the bottom line is, having the self discipline and awareness of your bankroll is extremely important. In games I’ve played I’ve done things like played 2 hours and won 600 and then lost it all over the next 6 hours.

Often times I am set on playing for a certain period of time, and will not call it quits until that time is reached. Discipline is a component of my game that I must continue to work on if I plan on seeing positive results at the poker table.

Let’s explore another scenario. I have been playing at a 1-2 NL table for 2 hours, I am stuck 600. Over the next 6 hours, I claw my way back to almost even, and am down 30 dollars.

What should I do? Seeing that I made my way back to almost even, should I continue playing due to my hot streak? Or seeing that I was able to make it back to even, should I just call it a day and walk away with a minimal loss?

Often times I make the mistake of continuing my play, only to end up losing the money that I worked on getting back. My advice based on personal experience, it is best to walk away after hours of clawing your way back from a large deficit.

Here is one more scenario for all of you to contemplate. You are at a table that is throwing chips around like they have no value attached to them. Players are going all in with Ace rags and they are losing hundreds of dollars and do not seem to care.

They clearly have big bankrolls or more money than sense if they look like they’re going to play so recklessly for hours. Your bankroll is small, but you feel that this may be an opportunity for you to double up or even triple up.

Is this type of table ideal? Or are you better off to play at a tighter table with more skilled players?

I have often made the mistake of staying at a table of reckless players with a minimal bank roll. When I lose a 200 dollar pot, I am half way to losing my entire bank roll. When those reckless donkeys lose 200, they pull out more cash like its monopoly money.

The bottom line is that a good skilled player should not fall to the temptation of playing with reckless donkeys.

My advice is to stick to a table with more tighter players in order to win more smaller pots rather than losing large pots and your entire bank roll. In addition to this start small and play poker online free first to learn the in’s and out’s of the game. As they say, learn to walk before you run then, when you are fully ready you can play for real money. If you are a beginner do some basic groundwork first and look for how to play poker for beginners sections on the free poker sites before playing.

This can happen a lot if you don’t play the situation correctly and is very frustrating, but there are ways to cash-in on such opportunities with smart play and in this article I am going to tell you what you need to know in order to be able to develop those smarts. Sadly there is no secret pill or magic bullet, the “not so secret” is experience, knowing about playable pockets, implied and pot odds and, in the all in pockets type example, playing your game in such a way that the others may think you’re bluffing and not fold.

At the start of a hand, in most cases having a pair is great and if you play according to the cards which open on the table, then you will definitely have chances to win. I will explain this with the following example: Your starting cards are a very nice pair, Ks, Kd, this is a great pair and gives you a strong winning opportunity.

Your options at this point are to either go all-in or wait for the flop cards to open. If you wait you must keep in mind that if a Ace opens on the flop then your winning chances are greatly reduced.

In such a case going on and betting more could be a waste and you would be advised to fold, because if someone else is betting then it’s likely they have an Ace in their hand. Or of course they might be bluffing or are maybe just a donk player hence the importance of learning to observe other players.

You might think that it would have been better to have gone all-in but you need to remember that in that case too the person having an Ace might have gone ahead and bet and you would have lost more money. As of now you are down but not out.

Now lets again take the above example of you having Ks,Kd, but this time the flop cards are 6s,6h, Qh. Well now you know that if anyone has a 6, you will face defeat.

The way to go is not to lose hope because it’s a small value card and chances are that the person having a 6 might have already folded. So just raise the stakes and see how the others go about it. If someone goes all-in then he could be having a 6 and the best option is to fold and minimize the damage.

Don’t be disheartened by the examples above, they are meant to give the impression that it’s not possible to play to win! What they are meant to convey is that unpredictable probability (also known as luck) is part of poker so you need to remember, if you are not winning, be smart enough and do not lose too much.

If you keep playing good cards in a solid way then probability is on your side and you will come out on top in the long run and as you have minimised your losses in the bad patches you will have money to bet when things are better.

To develop the poker smarts and experience needed to exploit good as well as weaker hands, start by learning poker online in quality yet lower risk games,learn by your mistakes but keep your mistakes cheap! Low stakes and play poker online free games are great ways to learn and also a lot of fun, and make sure you take advantage of the how to play poker for beginners and intermediates free poker lessons you will find on the better free poker sites in order to learn about things like pot odds and playable pockets.

BLINDS 3k/6k

PREFLOP:

A has Kd-Kc, raises to 16k
B has Ad-9d, is on BB, calls10k (Pot 44k)

A’s standard raise (about 2.5x the big blind)  raise is intended to hide the actual strength of his hand. B’s call is discounted, so he makes it.

FLOP: 9c-5h-Qh

A bets 22k
B calls 22k (Pot 88k)

The 22k bet looks like a continuation bet in a Flop which is not so likely to hit anyone, and at this point B may think A is on a draw (a Flush draw or a Straight draw) and so calls in order to make an effort to improve his hand.

TURN: 9c-5h-Qh-7c

A bets 109k

What did A wish to accomplish with his 109k bet in a pot of 88k?

Let us see, before we see what B does:

Question: Was he signifying that he hit a Nine-high Straight?
Answer: Possibly, since there are 2 Flush draws on the table that could threaten his Straight if he keeps going to the River. He wants to finish the hand, or he is aiming to give odds too low for an opponent with a Flush draw to call. Or, maybe he is representing all of these.

Question: Might he have A-Q or something?
Answer: No idea! Maybe I put him on that hand on the Flop, but I was not putting him on that hand after the Flop. Might he stack up 109k on just A-Q? What if I have K-K? He doesn’t know what I have; I called at a reduced price from the BB. Also, favorably, he may have a 10-9 or J-9, and I have a huge advantage.

Question: What else do you think he had?
Answer: A Flush draw or a Straight draw. In either case my pair of Nines is leading, so I call.

Question: Even though it’s for all your chips?
Answer: This is the best hand I’ve had for hours!

B calls all-in 109k (Pot 306k)

But he forgot to ask himself if A might have KK or AA. If you followed the hypothetical question and answer above, what B’s answers meant is that B was looking at the Board and that he now believed that A ‘s cards are related to the Board in such a way as to Pair up one of A’s cards, complete a five-card hand (Straight or Flush) or a potential five-card hand. So, what he was thinking about is the board, and not A’s hand, and by thinking about the board too much he forgot to put A on other hands that may not be readily linked to the Board cards. And also, he was tired, fatigued, and so called with a marginal hand to have it over with and was knocked out of the tournament.

So be careful when you play not to overplay and play tired and if you are keep back to basics or play poker online for free else your head may play tricks on you. And if you’re new to poker online then you do get mind fried more quickly so try some how to play poker for beginners games and free poker lessons first before stepping into lengthy tournament poker games.

Even the blind mouse finds the cheese sometimes, and no matter how unlucky you think you are, how many chips you have, or how many people are left in your tournament, the most important thing is that you are patient with yourself.

Sometimes you get so tired of seeing terrible cards and your chip stack starts to drain enough to the point where you get desperate, and start calling with J5 off-suit, or other hands with the same idea. Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt, so have many of us and it’s a killer 95% of the time.

A key to patience is not only pre-flop, but throughout the rest of the hand too. Let me show an example, You draw a K (c) Q (d), and you call with 2 other people in the hand. The flop comes out K (h) A (h) 8 (h). Clearly this is a very risky hand, and most of the time you will fold no question.

But to the desperate, sometimes I would get a false source off confidence in my hand, and 85% of this time I will get burned, despite only having two others in the hand.

Patience then is clearly a core traits for poker success. But even more so is that you are consistent with your patience! Some people get carried away sometimes, so it’s important to be consistent in your poker playing or risk losing all in a moment of overconfidence. To build this consistency try to make rules on what you are willing to call pre-flop and what you won’t.

Obviously free online poker is a much different game than live, as online is much more fast-paced and live is more in-depth and slower. Despite many complaints from my peers, I like to milk out every second of my time limit for each decision. I recommend this to any competitive and casual online poker players, because it may be the difference between a bad beat and a great fold.

Many times in online free poker play you will run into, what we call “Donks”. Most of the time they will have a much larger chip stack, and will win hands using brawn and bluffing. It?s important not give into his bullying, and play it slow. If you get a good flop, let him make the mistake. The classical check-raise works well, but if you move too early, your chance will be lost to cash in. “Donks” can be a great source of chips, if you be patient and play it out right.

You will get bad beats, sadly they’re unavoidable. Bad beats happen to all poker players, no exceptions and there is not a thing you can do about them. What you can do however, is play clever, play slowly and think about your moves, yes, be patient.

These are all extremely important no matter who you are playing with or how long you have been playing the game, which brings me to my final point. Experience. You can read all the articles, books and magazines and watch all the TV and take online courses and classes but nothing can replace or shortcut true experience, so get out there and play poker online for free if you’re new to it all, build your skills and understanding and work hard to develop that crucial patience habit.

And what better place to learn patience than to play poker free at http://www.NoPayPOKER.com where you don’t have the fear of losing money like you do at on money sites or live tables yet you can still win real cash.

Plus the NoPayPOKER blog at http://www.NoPayPOKER.com/articles contains a huge pro written free poker games training series, with lessons from basic at how to play poker for beginners courses to masters level. Complete the intermediate level course at least and you will find yourself in the top 10% of online poker players worldwide.

Physically, if there are just a few very unlikely cards that your opponent needs to catch in the river in order to win a very large pot and one of them falls, you cannot recover the hefty stack of chips that passed from your hands to an undeserving adversary. Unlucky you just got bad beat. You might even be knocked out of a tournament because of it. You may not be able to recover your physical seat in the poker table (unless it’s a rebuy tournament, and you rebuy).

Suppose, in the example above, your opponent has A-J and you have A-K, and the board is A-3-7-10. You have top Pair and the best kicker. Your opponent has top Pair with the second best kicker that he thinks it’s the best, and he moves all-in. For you, to combat this and move all in will cost 90% percent of your chips.

You call with the hope that your opponent does not have A-10 or something, and he flashes A-J. Brilliant, the best of news! He can catch a Six only with a 6.82% chance, and it’s the only way he wins. A 6 comes.

Bam! Bad Beat!
You’re left with one-tenth of what you have before the hand started. Or you might even be the one bumped out.

Mentally how do you come back from a nightmare of this level? It’s easy. Think, would you want your opponent to call with A-J in this situation if you had A-K? If you say ‘Yes’, then there’s really nothing to whine about.

You played your hand in the best way you could (you might have even read him with, like, an A-5 or A-4, and you’re close to your read) So you’d like him to call. He did. All your circumlocutory plays like acting weak, betting small for him to pounce, etc., are effective.

He played as you wanted him to. If he calls, then you know that you’re a 93-7 favorite. Would you prefer to be on the 93 side or 7 side? Ask that question to yourself. You did not make a bad play, it was just a rare probability event, a 7% chance does happen…well 7% of the time! Your opponent made it.

You could be knocked out of the tournament after that hand, should you have lesser chips. But you have to be thankful that there is someone prepared to put his chips in on even just a 90-10 proposition in which he has the 10. 90% of the time he does it, he’ll be knocked out. Your loss will fall only on the 10% side.

So you can redeem yourself by stating that you made an intelligent play, after all. In other words, that you play better poker than the one who messed you up. This point made, later on you can exploit many players who may be willing to make bad plays but who didn’t know that these plays are actually bad.

Sometimes to feel the ease of victory in which you are a 90-10 favorite, you have to be ready to take the 10% hit sometimes.

But if you have not been knocked out you can try to save yourself. Don’t waste your mental energy from fretting and cracking your head on how that card emerged. The card fell and nothing can change that, it’s in the past now. Just use all your mental resources to make a very good play next time, maybe a calculated all-in, and resurge from the deep.

And when you’re on the end of a stream of bad beats go play free poker and get your confidence back before returning to the cash tables.

I’m afraid not. The 100% faith we have in these hands does not turn out to be 100% at all.

First, we will make a hypothetical poker tournament where players who move all-in preflop will decide their hands preflop.

Thus A-K is beat against 2-2, there and then preflop. A-K beats A-Q. And A-A beats everything.

Do you see how many callers there will be?

Callers must await premium hands before calling, which will prolong the poker tournament.

Bad beats are some of the anomalies seen in a poker tournament to shorten it.

a) Going back to out 100% faith in A-K against A-Q, our faith truly 100% after all.
b) It should be 75% only, since A-K is beat by A-Q the remaining 25% of times.
c) And with the amount of players who move all-in with A-K, a caller with A-x should win 25% of times.
d) If 50 players in the tournament move all-in with A-K and 50 callers call with Ace-lower, isn’t it expected that 1/4 of 50, or about 13 players, should get eliminated?

On pocket pairs against A-K, it is almost a coin flip.

a) It could be decided approximately by just flipping an actual coin.
b) In the long term, pocket pairs win, however, as a result of a slight edge.
c) But i am not saying that 8-8 will invariably win against A-K.
d) If 8-8 winning against A-K is an approximately 55-to-45 (or 11-to-9) favorite, then there are almost as many players winning an all-in with a small pair against two overcards as players knocked out in the tournament in the same situation.
e) The knocked out players should not fret; it’s the laws of probability which were hanging.

Whenever a player really wants to avoid bad beats, naturally that player will wait for premium hands. But waiting for premium hands will considerably diminish the player’s stack because of blinding out.

That player should move all-in, at some time, or else suffer the oblivion of blinding out. But moving all-in will not guarantee a double-up; it’s really a means of attempting to restore your stack to a comfortable level. Bad beats are plentiful.

Here is a last note: Bad beats exist not only preflop, but also postflop.

a) Say Player X has 8-8 and Player Y has 7-6 in a board of 5-8-4-A.
b) Player X flopped a Set but Player Y hits a Straight.
c) If Player Y moves all-in and X calls, then Y’s win is not really assured yet.
d) X can still pair the Board for a Full House or Quads.
e) And if X does pair the board, you can refer to it as a bad beat.

And it doesn’t matter what their stack sizes are. Both players may be above chip average, with Y having less chips than X. So bad beats are methods to ensure speedy tournaments by eliminating anybody, short-stack or players at the top of the pack.

Hopefully this has been thought provoking. The base message being that you should not assume that particular cards will usually win, that’s simply not possible. Plus bad beats really are not bad luck, it is just that you’ve been picked by the laws of probability to get a bad beat!

With that said, think about some of the examples above. You can’t avoid bad beats but by comprehending probability in poker it is possible to reduce your risk and exposure to them by either folding some types of hand more often, not going all-in or betting less to ensure that if it does go south you don’t get taken out 100%.

But at the end of the day the only method to avoid bad beats 100% is just not to play poker! So hopefully whenever they come your bad beat games are on free online poker tables instead of in mortgage sized WSOP games!

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To start of we’ll check out popular nicknames for individual cards. Next come pocket cards, these are the 2 cards you get at the start of the game that only you can see, I’ve put these in ranked order of strength.

I’ve split pockets into 2 sections, paired and unpaired, in the case of unpaired I’ve listed the ones that are considered most playable. Finally you’ll learn some of more popular and famous hands.

The thirteen cards used for poker have a number of different nicknames. A letter or number symbol is also often used to identify the cards.

- Ace – Bullet, Rocket (A)
- King – Cowboy, Monarch (K)
- Queen – Lady, Dame, Dyke (Q)
- Jack – Knave, Hook, Fishhook, (J)
- 10 – Dime (T)
- 9 – Niner (9)
- 8 – Snowman, Fat Lady, Ocho (8)
- 7 – Hockey Stick (7)
- 6 – Boot (6)
- 5 – Spot (5)|Jesse James
- 4 – Sailboat, Sharp Top, Four spot (4)
- 3 – Trey, Crab (3)
- 2 – Deuce, Duck (2)

When a poker games starts the first cards out are called the pockets, they are ones only you get to see and are the basis of what you hope will be your winning hand.

Statistically about every 16 times you’ll be lucky enough to get a pair with the same value, for example, 2 Kings, such pairs are called pocket pairs.

In order of relative strength or potential they are:

- AA – Pocket Rockets, Rockets, Bullets, or American Airlines
- KK – Cowboys, King Kong, Gorillas, Kangaroos, Monarchs, or Krispy Kreme
- QQ – Ladies, Hookers, or Siegfried & Roy
- JJ – Fishhooks, Hooks, Jokers, or Jay Birds
- TT – Dimes or Tension
- 99 – Gretzky, Popeye’s, or Phil Hellmuth
- 88 – Snowmen, Fat Ladies, Dog Balls, or Race Tracks
- 77 – HockeySticks, SunsetStrip, or Mullets
- 66 – Route 66, Kicks, or Cherries
- 55 – Presto, Speed Limit, or Nickels
- 44 – Magnum, Sail Boats, or Middle Age
- 33 – Crabs or Treys
- 22 – Ducks, Pocket Swans, or Deuces.

Pocket pairs desirable as they are don’t come around often enough to wait on as your only playable option.

Unpaired pockets are what you will get 15 out of 16 or 93% of the time so you will be playing with them more often than not, not all unpaired combinations are worth playing, these ones though, in order of potential, are considered playable.

- AK – Big Slick or Walking back to Houston
- AQ – Little Slick, Big Chick, or Doyle Brunson
- AJ – Blackjack, Ajax, or Jackass
- AT – Bookend or Johnny Moss
- A5 – High Five
- A4 – Topped Four
- A3 – Ashtray or Baskin and Robbins
- A2 – Hunting Season or Acey-Deucy
- KQ – Marriage (if suited) or Mixed Marriage (if not suited)
- KJ – Kojak, King John, or Tucson Monster
- KT – Kate or Katie
- QJ – Maverick or Oedipus
- QT – Quentin Tarantino
- JT – Days of Old
- T9 – Paint Plus Connector
- 98 – Oldsmobile
- 87 – RPM
- 76 – Union Oil
- 65 – Medicare
- 54 – Jesse James or Colt.

There are many names for the bigger and final hand combos, here are a few of the ones you may hear more often.

- KKK – Alabama Night Riders or Three Wise Men
- TTT – Thirty Miles of Bad Road
- 222 – Huey, Dewey and Louie.
- AA88Q – Dead Man’s Hand
- AKQJT – Broadway
- A5432 – Wheel
- 3 of a Kind – Set (if you possess a pocket pair matched by a ‘board card’)
- 3 of a kind – Trips (if one is in your pocket and two are ‘board cards’)
- Full House – Boat or All The In-Laws
- 4 of a Kind – Quads or Quad Set.

I hope this was a fun and useful article, if you are at the stage of learning the card names then I suggest when you play you play free poker online where you can learn without fear of loss.

For even more learn to play poker free free poker online guides and to actually play poker online free go check out the http://www.NoPayPOKER.com free poker online blog and site. There you can not only learn how to play poker for free you can play poker online for free with no risk of losing money yet win real cash.

Tonight’s game is 10 of 31 paid, good odds here about 1 in 3 so lets play it smooth for a little and see what happens. Some hands that I’ve played early are 52 suited in the small blind and K9 off with 6 to 1 pots odds, AJ off I slip in cheap. Pot odds are simply the ratio of the cost to call to the size of the pot example $100 to see $600 pot would be 6 to 1.

I have built up around a grand playing the K9 forcefully with Q9Q flop and hitting a free ace on the river with an ace / jack. I find myself saying the same old thing time and time again: you have to gamble in the uncertain plays if no one else has or you will end up with nothing else to go on.

I bet 3x with my KK and get one caller, the flop comes up 5,8,10 and he bets so I string his J10 along for another 1k. Slow playing should most often only be done when you have an unbeatable hand but the action here is few and far between.

An example of cards I have had to limp off with are: A2, A3 suited, and 88 due to the poor odds. By poor odds I mean to work out how much cash your opponents are holding and to know if it’s possible to bankrupt someone with good cards calling five dollars with junk may not seem as bad if you can take their fifty dollars in doing so.

Some hands that I have passed on now that the blinds are higher and pot odds are getting slimmer are K10 suited, J10 suited and Q8 suited and the Q8 turned out to be a bad fold. About 1 hour 30 minutes in and I still have the 2k I made early plus another $560 with random small pots.

It’s too early to go flat out so I fold an ace / queen as I can smooth play to the final table. Being able to fold a decent hand has taken a lot of time, practice and control before the bubble- like all things- time helps master this habit. The bubble means the last person to leave the game before pay out. I finally finish in sixth place and I’m pleased with this- if you can regularly find yourself in these positions you can earn a wage. The idea is to start small, play free poker tournament sites and climb the ladder as you become more experienced.

The basic’s are pretty much the same with three simple rules that are bet, bet, and bet. Pre-flop you want to bet the pot as much as you can with your big hands and call the minimum with most everything from low suited connecters on up in the later positions. After the flop you want to bet with any made hands or draws equal to or greater then a flush draw taking the strength of the finishing hand into consideration.

The main idea is to just bring up the pot as much as you can whenever you think you may win the hand. The pro and con of limit hold’em is that it is much easier to chase a hand to the river for both you and your opponent and this is the reason that you should just bet, bet and bet. They will get their share and you will get yours when the time is right. Hopefully this guide will help, give it a go, on a free poker site if you can and see how it goes and above all have fun!