Playing Against Calling Stations
The calling station, or loose-passive player profile, is one of the easiest to exploit. They are defined by their inability to fold and their lack of aggression. When you identify a calling station at the table, there are some easy strategies that you can utilize to maximize your EV. Just like the maniac, the calling station plays a wide range of hands. Rather than aggressively betting their garbage, however, they tend to call. Essentially, they have a ‘slot player’ mentality
Continuation Betting Like A Pro
Continuation betting, or c-betting, is a foundational poker play that you’ll see again and again. Before we get into how to effectively c-bet and how to play against them, let’s start by defining the term. A continuation bet is when a player bets the flop after a pre-flop raise. It seeks to take advantage of the initiative won through that early aggression. Basically, when we raise pre-flop, then we send a message to the table: “I have a good hand.” Because our range is gener
Get Ready for Open-Face Chinese Poker (OFC)
Open-face Chinese Poker, or OFC, has become all the rage recently, especially among high-stakes gamblers, because it’s a fun, quick, and exciting game that can be played at any time with just two to four players. Pokerrrr wants to help you get in on the action. Are you ready to get started? Well, first thing’s first—you’ll need to get a basic grasp of the rules under your belt before you start raking in the chips. Although they can seem daunting at first, once you get the han
Playing Cards vs Playing Spots
When most of us begin playing poker, we decide our actions according to the cards we’re holding. The way that we play the hand then varies according to the strength or weakness of our cards. While this is an important place to start for learning fundamentals like pot-odds and ranges, this approach can only take us so far. There’s a lot more that goes into poker than just the cards themselves. To make optimal decisions, we need to consider everything from position to stack siz
The Many Shades of Grey in Poker Strategy
There are few definitive, black-and-white statements that we can make during a poker game. While we may want to always maintain a solid mental game and always pay close attention to the action, there’s not many things we want to always or never do. We might find ourselves thinking along these lines, however. “I should always call the maniac,” or “I should always continuation bet the flop when I hit top pair.” One of the first step towards becoming a better poker player is eli
Playing Against Nits
The nit. The rock. The TPP. Whatever you call them, the tight-passive player profile is one that you’re sure to play against and that is ripe for exploitation. Though you might not be able to rake in as many chips against them as you would a maniac, this play imbalance is just as easy to use to our advantage. Nits are characterized by folding too often. They are risk adverse. They play as if they’re scared—and, of course, the shark can smell this weakness like blood in the wa
