If you’ve just started playing poker for fun or even for money you may not be aware that you have a playing style. You just enjoy the game without thinking about the different playing styles that you notice at the table. Even though you may not be aware of it, you represent one of the four types of poker players which is not difficult to figure out after you read this article.

Poker players fall into four categories depending on how tight and aggressive their play is. As a result we have 4 types of players: the tight-passive, the loose-passive player, the tight-aggressive and the loose-aggressive.

1. Tight (plays very few hands) vs. loose (plays a lot of hands)

2. Aggressive (raises and bluffs) vs. passive (calls other players’ bets)

When playing, you should always pay attention to the other players at the table to see what types they represent. Be aware, though, that good players switch between these playing styles very easily in order to confuse their opponents.

Tight-Passive player

This type of players raise or call only when they have a very strong hand so, if you ever have to deal with such a player and he calls your raise, be sure that you have a strong hand to backup your bet.

Loose-Passive player

Loose-passive players are also called “fish” or “calling stations”. They usually call you down to the river even when they have weak hands so the best tactic to employ against them is to value bet your big hands. Don’t bluff because they rarely fold once they’ve seen the flop and they will follow you with any two cards.

Tight-Aggressive player

Tight-aggressive players are also known as “sharks”, they are very good players and rarely bluff. They play only good hands and play them aggressively. You should be very cautious when playing against them.

Loose-Aggressive player

Most famous poker players can be found in this category. They have no problem going “all-in” as if this is the safest poker move. The best poker players use a mix up of aggressive and passive play to confuse their opponents. They sometimes go all-in with a pair of aces and other time with a simple 7, 4. Their unpredictable style puts everyone in difficulty and there is no wonder why they are the high-rollers of Texas Hold’em.

This post comes as a follow-up for my previous one on smart aggressive players because there is a resemblance between the two types though they are in fact quite distinct. Maniac players are often met in low-stakes poker at the beginners’ tables. Therefore, you should know how to exploit their lack of exprience and their maniac style.

Maniacs’ main feature is to make a lot of raises and re-raises in spite of the position in the hand, the cards they have or how many players have called before them. They are extremely active players so it is best to sit at their left at the poker table because this position permits you to respond to their actions.

Maniacs are consistent losers but on occasions they can do a lot of damage to your bankroll. The best tactic to use against them is to play by the book and forget about creative and fancy play. ABC poker gives the best results with this type of players.

Here are some basic rules to follow:

1. When you have a good position you should better lead with strong hands but if your position is not favourable then you must check/raise because maniacs bluff at almost all flops. Make them fall into your trap with strong hands on dangerous flops.
2. When out of position, never engage in a pot with them with medium hands.
3. When out of position don’t chase flushes and straight draws because maniacs overbet and you will find yourself forced to pay and pay and pay!
4. When you are BB don’t re-raise preflop because that won’t throw him out of the pot. Additionally, when in BB you must lead when you hit ( i.e. bet on the flop, a strategy that fails against smart agressive players) because they will most probably call.

Maniacs are addicted to pots so try to lure them all in if you are sure that you have the strongest hand (but only if you think he has a good hand too, otherwise you should just bet).

“Setup play” is the play you make at the beginning of a game to make the other players believe that you are a maniac. Generally, it is done when someone raises from first position and you make a re-raise from last position even though your hand is weak hoping he will follow you to the show down. At the end, when you both show your cards, he will see with what type of cards you played like this and he will consider you a maniac. Since this impression will last in his mind, you can change your strategy over the course of the game hoping your initial setup will pay off at some point.

I’m sure you all have had, at some point, a hard time figuring what tactics to use against the smart aggressive players at the poker table. Before delving into this topic, it would be better to emphasize some of the characteristics of smart aggressive players.

This type of opponent usually makes raises from last positions (cut off, button) trying to steal the blinds when everybody has folded or when a tight player has called. He is a very active player so it is advisable to sit at his left at the table so that you can take advantage of the information provided by his actions. When you are not positioned well try not getting involved in too many pots with him/her.

On the other hand, when you sit on any of the first two places at his/her left, you will lose position when you have the small or big blind. Since you know that he will make a lot of raises from button and cut off positions, you have to challenge him from time to time to keep him honest. Under no circumstance should you let him abuse you every time and steal the blinds. The blinds are the soul of the poker game as they bring in the action, without them everyone will just wait for the best hand preflop to come: pocket aces. When the smart aggressive player raises button and there are already players in the hand it would be better for you to fold because you will be out of position. If nobody enters the hand and he raises you have to take some time to analyze if he is bluffing or not, taking into consideration the frequency of his raises from last position. If the aggressive player does this quite often, you must protect your blind with hands stronger than his range (range is the type of hands that you assume he has when he raises on the button). You must never call with any two cards. If you don’t hit the flop, you have two options: to check/fold after he bets on the flop, or the check/raise bluff that can fool him you have a stronger hand. Of course, the bluff can’t be used too often.

When you hit the flop you shouldn’t bet because the aggressive player will probably fold making you lose money on the long term. Why do you lose money on the long-term? Because you hit the flop 1 out of 3 times. Let’s say that the first two times the button raises 3 times the Big Blind(BB), then you call, you don’t hit, you check/fold. After those two times you have -6BB. Third time you hit and let’s say you win the pot of 6BB (3 yours and 3 your opponent’s). This leaves you at the end with -3BB. In order to end up on profit you have to check/raise. In this case, let’s assume he will bet 4BB in a pot of 6BB, you raise to let’s say 10 BB and win. In fact you win 7BB: his initial raise preflop (3BB) and his bet on the flop (4BB). 7BB-6BB( the first two times you lost)= 1BB profit. Another alternative is to re-raise preflop hoping that the button will get intimidated and fold. However, to make a minimum raise in this spot is a mistake, your bet should be 3 times bigger than his in order to throw him out of the pot.

“Poker’s a day to learn and a lifetime to master” says Robert Williamson III, a well-known Hold’em and Omaha player. This sounds more of an exaggeration given the fact that poker is a 52-card game with 9 established hierarchical hands. It is true that you can fill a few shelves of your library at home with all the poker books out there but why does he talk about a lifetime commitment to poker in order to succeed?

The answer is: because today’s competition is so fierce, poker theory alone is not enough anymore to kelp you. Nowadays, you need something extra if you want to succeed and make a living out of poker. Back in the 70′s, when poker was much less developed, players such as Doyle Brunson, Chip Reese and David Sklansky were much more successful then now. That was possible because they were smart players ( Sklansky was already a very successful backgammon player and Reese had studied economics) and were familiar with the mathematics of poker. Mathematical probabilities represented a huge advantage for them in face of competition as most other players were either uneducated or played for entertainment.

Since nowadays almost every player knows the mathematics of the poker game, this is no longer a competitive advantage. So what is the fact that can make you a big winner? It can be the intelligent aggression and no respect for money of Tom Dwan’s game. It can be. It can be Daniel Negreanu’s ability to read his opponents. Reading your opponent requires you to have a history of thousands of hands played and many years of observation. In my opinion the most important thing is to ride the opponent who allows you to manipulate him and neutralize his aggression.

After a year of impressive losses, Gus Hansen has managed to end 2010 on the upbeat. He won the WSOP Europe bracelet a few months ago and recently, his title collection enlarged with the occasion of the Poker Million IX tournament.

Full Tilt is the organiser of Poker’s Million IX, a shoot out tournament that invited 48 players, some of them famous poker pros. The $1 million dollar stake meant quality action at the poker table.

After the first 8 stages of the event, the final table gathered the last 8 players: Gus Hansen, Tony Bloom, James Bord, Barny Boatman, Gary Peniket, Seth Webber, Howard Lederer and Patrick Antonius.

Patrick Antonius was the first to become victim at the final table after losing with A-9 to James Bords’ T-8 on a flop made of 9-7-6.

The next ones to exit the table were Howard Lederer, Seth Webber et Barny Boatman.

James Bord was eliminated on third position after pushing with T-5 only to be paid by Bloom who had 9-8 and for whom the flop brought 2 lucky pairs.

The heads-up between Gus Hansen and Bloom was quick to end. After just a few hands, Hansen showed A-8 against Bloom’s A-6. An 8 on the flop made Hansen the winner of the hand and shortly after he became the winner of the Full Tilt Poker Million IX tournament.

The 22 year-old Jeff Forest recently won the World Poker Tour Finals at Foxwoods, the most significant victory in his poker career so far. The $10,000 buy-in tournament hosted 242 players and ended with a final table formed of:

Thomas Marchese – 3.022.000
Jeff Forrest – 1.949.000
Mohsin Charania – 1.024.000
Nikolai Yakovenko – 624.000
Dave Inselberg – 344.000
Keven Stammen – 341.000

Therefore, Marchese entered the final table as chip leader while Jeff Forest was second in chips. However, Marchese was dethroned and eliminated by Forrest, leaving the table in 3rd position. This left the title to be disputed in a heads-up between Forrest and Inselberg.

As the heads-up got underway, Forest was surpassing his opponent in terms of chips and just ten hands later the outcome of the Foxwoods World Poker Tour Finals was sealed. It was when Forest held Qd-Qh against Inselberg’s 9h-6s.

Forrest mini-raised to 200,000 and Iselberg called and then check-raised Forrest all-in on a 9d-8s-5c flop. When the turn revealed a Qs and the river an Ac, Forrest became the winner of the WPT title and Inselberg won the 2nd place worth $325,608.

This victory was Forrest’s first major win since the beginning of his poker career. In just over a year of play, Forrest succeeded in cashing twice in World Series of Poker events and finishing 2nd in a $1,500 buy-in event at 2010 PokerStars Caribbean Adventure tournament series. His victory at Foxwoods increased his all-time aernings to $740,000.

The final table cash outs at Foxwoods were:

1: Jeff Forrest – 548.752$
2: Dave Inselberg – 325.608$
3: Thomas Marchese – 211.759$
4: Nikolai Yakovenko – 170.773$
5: Keven Stammen – 128.650$
6: Mohsin Charania – 104.741$

Full Tilt recently announced the upcoming launch of their popular Rush Poker game on mobile devices. This announcement was made via an email sent to their Black Card members in which they are asked to assist in the beta testing of the mobile version of the game. The Rush Poker mobile application is available for mobile devices running Android 2.2 and Full Tilt members that possess such devices are asked to participate in the preliminary testing phase of this software.

The mobile phones that support this software are:
Acer Liquid Stream S110
HTC Desire
HTC Droid Incredible
HTC Evo 4G
HTC Google Nexus One
HTC Desire HD
Motorola Droid 2
Motorola Droid Pro / Droid 2 World Edition
Motorola Droid X
T-Mobile G2

The online version of Rush Poker was launched back in January and since then it has had a tremendous success. Rush Poker represents regular cash games played at a higher speed, with players randomly moving from one table to another when they click fold.

The mobile version was designed on the Adobe Flash Platform. According to some, the success of the mobile Rush Poker depends to a great extent on the signal strength of the phone.

“I think going to Rush first is a ballsy move – me thinks you’ll need a strong signal to make this work. Even if it sucks in the short-term, bandwidth will improve and phones will improve to the point where mobile will not perform differently from the PC-based Full Tilt Poker,” said one player knowledgeable about mobile phones.

One of the testers of Rush Poker Mobile was Leggo Poker instructor Brian Wilber. Some of the negative points he mentions about the application’s performance are that it is “a little clumsy” and that he couldn’t figure out the bet size because of the lag. “Sometimes you have to click the buttons a couple of times to get them to work, but I assume that is just the lag,” he adds.

Despite the limitations, there are elements that make the application easy to handle. Wilber mentions some of them:
“ The ‘Fold’ and ‘Call’ buttons do what they say and the ‘Raise’ to button brings up another prompt with a slider and ‘+’ and ‘-’ buttons where you can adjust the bet size and then click ‘Bet. [...] It is easy to see everything you would want to know like players’ names, stack sizes, your cards, and the community cards.”

Full Tilt wants to render Rush Poker Mobile available to anyone with a compatible phone. The Americans will be able to take advantage of this innovation while the French may not, according to a Full Tilt source.

Most commonly used for funding online casino accounts are credit cards and e-wallets. There is nevertheless a third and safer option in the form of prepaid vouchers. Below you can find details about all three forms of financing and the advantages of the prepaid vouchers.

Using credit cards means using borrowed money for wagering. The credit card allows players to wager until the limit of the borrowed sum was reached. Usually that amount of money is larger than what players can afford.

As far as the e-wallets are concerned, they can be funded either from a credit card or from a bank account. Regardless of the type of funding, e-wallets allow players to wager until they reach the limit of the sums they borrowed or possessed, which leaves them either with an empty bank account or in serious indebtedness.

In addition to the above funding options, there is the prepaid voucher. This is a small amount voucher that can be bought from a retail outlet for cash. There is a code printed on it that allows you to play at online casinos that accept the voucher. Given that the voucher has to be purchased beforehand with a relatively small sum of money, the prepaid voucher is a system that avoids borrowing and excessive wagering. As a consequence, this system promotes individual transactions with limited value.

The success of prepaid vouchers was ensured by two factors. One is the software technology that ties up the buyer, the seller and the online casino via the the code number imprinted on the voucher. The second factor is the availability of retail outlets spread all over the country.

Daniel Negreanu, a poker legend and PokerStars pro, has proved his poker and golf skills at EPT Vilamoura. He has won this innovative tournament that beautifully combines golf, poker and the exotic landscape of Vilamoura, a sea-side resort in Portugal.

On Day 1 players had to compete against each other on the golf fairways and their golf results were converted at the end of the day into chips to be used on Day 2 at the poker confrontation.

After Day 1, Daniel Negreanu boosted his chip stack with $2500 which shows that he had a good performance on the golf course. Day 2 was also a good day for him as he lasted to the final table where he went heads up against Pieter De Korver, whom he eliminated, Negreanu holding Q-J against Pieter’s J-2.

Though the prize money from Vilamoura was not as substantial as some of his previous winnings, Negreanu has surely enjoyed this tournament. The golf fairways and the poker action brought him more excitement than the modicum $8000 which he received for his victory.



In the last few months, attendance rates at the World Poker Tour events have plunged, due to high entrance fees it seems. As soon as the organizers reduced those fees from $10000 to $5000, the positive results soon appeared: 462 players were attracted which created a $2,15 million prize-pool, a little less than last year’s $2,63 million prize-pool, claimed by Prahlad Friedman along with his first WPT title.

The cream of the poker community has come together at WPT Legends at Bicyle Casino of Bell Gardens in California. Some of the poker masters participating at this event were Daniel Negreanu , Barry Greenstein,, Phil Hellmuth and Allen Cunningham, leaving the competition right from Day 2.

The top of the leaderboard so far is Phil“USCPhildo” Collins, leading with a $898,000 stack while the average stacks are around $192,500. Among the other most noticeable players, who stand a chance of winning three quarters of a million dollars, are Jonathan Little, JC Alvarado and Erica Schoenberg.