There is an interesting lesson that I had to learn early in my online poker journey. There is a simple fact that when you are a cash game player, your losses matter more than your wins. This is just the way it is. (more…)

Being almost exclusively an online player, I hardly ever dabble in deep stack situations. When I am talking deep stack situations, I am going to be referring to stacks of at least 200 big blinds per person involved. There are times when you and another player have built up stacks on a table and you will make a choice rather to play deep or leave. If your deep stack play is lacking, you might be forced to pass up a mediocre player with a lot of money in front of them. Also, a lot of live games over 5/10 NL are uncapped buy ins that I have encountered, so you will want to be able to play those if they are soft as well.
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The first event I played this year was Event #31 the heads up tournament for 5k. I was really excited about this because I have really been playing well as of late and heads up is my favorite form of NL Hold’em. I was lucky enough to get a bye in round 1 so I was set to come back for round 2. The tournament was run pretty horribly, so instead of a noon start, they had a 1:30 start. The tournament reminded me of one of those NFL Blooper videos but replace the players with tournament directors. Enough about that though I was set to play at 5pm.
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A lot of people use the 20 buy-in rule (one should have 20 max buy-ins at the minimum to play a level) to manage their bankroll. This is a good rule and I used it to build my roll. With the new legislation that was passed last fall, my priorities in online poker took a bit of a turn. I was scared of companies (i.e. neteller) not being able to pay me my money and I wanted to get as much off as I could while still being able to play some online in case it kicked back up. My first priority with such a smaller “bankroll” left online than I was used to was to not go broke. I really had (and to some extent still) no way of putting money back on. I needed to keep my head above water.
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I recently received an e-mail from a player asking about playing a flush draw, with either 2 or 3 way action. A lot of times in poker, the answer is “it depends.” This is a cop out though, so I will try to run through a couple scenarios, but the best way to figure out things is just by practice.
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