admin, Author at Paul Phua Poker

**With poker millionaires Charlie Carrel and “Xavi666” making headlines for their big wins, Paul Phua explains why it can take years to become an overnight success.**

Two players deserve particular congratulations this week. One is a player from Panama known by his online name of “Xavi666”, who has just won over a million dollars in the PokerStars Guaranteed Sunday Million tournament. He is the 200^th poker millionaire created on the online poker site.
The other is the personable young player Charlie Carrel. He proved a good ambassador for the game of poker when he was interviewed on a Channel 4 series in the UK called How’d You Get So Rich? It’s not often poker stories cross over to the mainstream media, but many national papers reported on the TV programme’s featurette on how Charlie Carrel turned his initial online stake of just £10 into £3 million.

The reason these stories have attracted so much attention is that they feed into a common dream about poker: that it’s an easy way to get rich quick.

The most famous example in poker history is when humble accountant Chris Moneymaker turned a $39 investment on PokerStars into $2.5 million in 2003. He entered a $39 satellite tournament, which got him into a $600 satellite, which won him a seat in the Main Event at the World Series of Poker – at which this gifted amateur won the whole thing.
But the truth is, all these players have put in a lot of work behind the scenes that you don’t see. I touched on this subject before in my blog on The Iceberg Illusion. Take young Charlie Carrel. He told the TV presenter Katherine Ryan that he started off at very low stakes, playing for 16 hours a day to improve his game, while living with his grandmother. Having studied Maths, Further Maths and Physics at A-Level, he made a detailed study of all the odds. He applied sensible bankroll management, only moving up to a new blind level when he was sure he had mastered the one he was on.
As to Xavi666, after winning his PokerStars million he said that “finally everything came together”. In other words, he had been working and playing hard to reach this point.
There’s a couple of old sayings that I find very insightful. One is, “It takes years to become an overnight success.” The other is, “The harder I work, the luckier I seem to get.”
What they both mean is that every time you see an actor, musician or poker player suddenly become famous, or seemingly “get lucky”, the chances are they have been perfecting their craft, unnoticed by the general public, for many years before that. When opportunity knocks, they are ready for it.
Certainly when I started at poker, I treated it as a challenge, something to work at. I had fun, of course, as I love the game, but I also had the desire to learn and improve. I regularly sat down to marathon high-stakes cash games with some of the world’s top poker pros, not because I felt I would “get lucky” against them, but so that I could learn from their strategy. That was nearly a decade ago, and I still analyse every big hand at the end of a big poker session to see if I could play it better if faced with a similar situation in the future.
So think about it. Are you going to play poker just for fun, staying in more pots than you should do with poor odds of success, in the hopes of getting lucky? Or are you going to play for fun and for profit, improving your game and learning new strategies over time so that, when you do get your shot at a big tournament, you have the skill and experience to become the next “overnight success”?
If it’s the latter, there is good news: some of the poker pros I often play with have kindly agreed to share their top tips and strategy advice with you, my loyal Paul Phua Poker School followers. There’s quite a line-up to my new video series. We have two big Dans (Cates and Colman), as well as Phil Ivey. Discover the full list of names and watch the trailer here.
So if you do dream of becoming the next Xavi666 or Charlie Carrel, a good first step is to go to the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel and subscribe, so you don’t miss any Paul Phua Poker School videos. It’s free!

Do you want to watch poker tips and poker strategy advice from Phil Ivey, Dan Colman, Dan “Jungleman” Cates and many more top Texas Holdem players? Of course you do!

Hi, it’s Paul Phua here with some very exciting news. My new series of “Tips from the pros” and “In Conversation” videos is almost ready for you to watch! Three months ago I released a series of poker videos on my YouTube channel, and I noticed that the two “Paul Phua In Conversation With Tom Dwan” videos were the most watched, with more than 20,000 views.

So when some of the world’s finest poker players joined me in Manila this February at the Triton High Roller Series, I asked my video team to capture some of their best poker tips and strategy advice. Which poker pros will appear in the video series over the next four months? Watch the trailer video on this page, or read on:

Phil Ivey. That’s right, Phil Ivey! Phil is an incredible player, absolutely fearless, brilliant at reading his opponents. He has ten World Series of Poker bracelets and nearly $24 million in live tournament cashes, even though he primarily plays high-stakes cash games.
Dan Colman. Dan Colman ranks above even Phil Ivey in the list of the ten biggest live tournament earners, having defeated Daniel Negreanu heads-up for a massive payout of $15.3 million in the Big One for One Drop at the 2014 World Series of Poker, only a few days after his 24^th birthday. This February he won the 2017 Triton Super High Roller Series Manila HK$ 250,000 6-Max Event, and then, just two weeks later, he won the Aria $25,000 High-Roller as well.
Dan Cates. Also known as Daniel “Jungleman” Cates, after his online poker name, Dan passed the $10 million online cash earnings milestone nearly three years ago. His famously aggressive playing style has made him one of the most formidable heads-up and shorthanded players in the world.
Timofey Kuznetsov. Playing under the name “Trueteller”, Timofey Kuznetsov is another online poker specialist. He hit the headlines in 2015 for a marathon 30-hour high-stakes heads-up session against Phil Ivey on PokerStars during which they played nearly 5,000 hands, and last week he was revealed to be the biggest online winner of the year so far.
Winfred Yu. As President of the Poker King Club, Winfred Yu runs the world’s highest-stakes cash games, in Manila and Macau. He is, of course, a terrific player himself, and has been active on the poker circuit for more than a decade.
Wai Kin Yong. Poker is in Wai Kin Yong’s blood – he is the son of the businessman and high-stakes player Richard Yong. In November 2016 he took down one of the biggest prizes in tournament poker (over $2m) at the Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event in Manila.
Rui Cao. Rui Cao emerged nearly a decade ago as one of France’s strongest players. He built his reputation online as “PepperoniF” before challenging the Macau high-stakes cash games as far back as 2011.
Go subscribe now to the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel, so as not to miss a thing. It’s free!

Poker is a fun game, but in order to keep playing, let alone make a living from it, you must learn to manage your money responsibly.

Paul Phua explains why you must be a rock with your ’roll

Last week one of my readers emailed the Paul Phua Poker site with a question: “Paul Phua, please tell me: how can someone make a living from poker, how much cash and/or income would they need, and what stakes should they be playing?”
This is a great question. In fact, I will soon be releasing a video of tips from top players including Phil Ivey, and he says in it that managing your money is one of the most important things for beginners to learn. I hope the following insights will be helpful to players wishing to take poker seriously:

Bankroll management

When poker players talk of their “bankroll”, it means a sum of money they have set aside exclusively for poker. It is very important that this money, whether it grows or shrinks through playing, is kept separate from all your other funds and financial dealings. One reason is so that you don’t start dipping into money you should be using to pay important bills. Another is that it enables you to tell whether you are making or losing money at poker.
Equally importantly, your bankroll should be money you can afford to lose without giving you problems in your daily life. We all hope to win, but no one can guarantee to make money at poker – even the world’s best players can simply have a run of bad luck.
How big should your bankroll be? It could be $500 or it could be $5 million. The principle is the same: it’s money you feel you can afford to risk at poker. The only thing that will change, according to the size, is what stakes you are able to play at.

Choosing the stakes

The bigger the bankroll you have, the higher the stakes you can afford to play. This doesn’t mean you have to play at the highest possible stakes – billionaire Bill Gates supposedly enjoys a bit of poker, but only plays at $1-$2 blinds – but it does mean you shouldn’t play at stakes that are too big for your roll. For one reason, you may be playing scared, and that never results in the best decisions. For another, if you play for too large a proportion of your bankroll, just a few unlucky games could wipe you out.
Poker is a marathon, not a sprint. Only once you are making money consistently at one level should you consider moving up to the next.
So where do you start? Typically, the cheapest live cash games you will find in casinos are $1-$2. Since it is recommended that, in No-Limit Hold ’Em cash games, you sit down with 100x the big blind (some might say 200x is preferable in order to maximise your potential winnings from big hands), you would need $200 to play each time; with another $200 in reserve in case you need to rebuy. And since you may lose in that game no matter how well you play, your total bankroll will need to be several times bigger than $400.
Tournaments are a superficially cheaper option. Though entry to one-off tournaments can be anything from a few hundred dollars to many thousands, regular casino tournaments can be found for $50 or so. Bear in mind, however, that only the top 15% or so of players get paid anything at all, and only the top 5% or so get back a significant return; so again, you will need to have enough in your bankroll for many tournaments.
If your bankroll is not big enough for the above stakes, you will find every possible size of cash game and tournament in online poker sites.

Can you make a living from poker?

There’s an old saying about poker: “It’s a hard way to make an easy living.” And that’s never been truer than today, when so many players have understood that they need to read up on strategy. All the same, it is at least possible to make a living from poker. There is no such thing as a professional roulette player, but there are professional poker players!
Most people will start out losing money, until they develop the experience to become winning players. My advice at that level, when you are still likely to lose, would be to spend no more on a session of poker than you would spend on a typical night out. Poker is, after all, a fun game. A lot more fun, in my view, than most forms of entertainment!
Whether you can then convert that experience into making a living from poker, that will depend on you. You will need skill, strategy, an understanding of the odds and of psychology, a calm temperament, the ability to learn from your mistakes. A good start is to follow the above rules on money management – and to keep reading my strategy blogs on Paul Phua Poker, and watching the videos on the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel.
— Paul Phua

Paul Phua looks at the recent heads-up Hold ’Em contest between Cate Hall and Mike Dentale that was billed as a “Battle of the Sexes”.

“Are men always better poker players than women?” It might seem strange that we are even asking this question. There are so many talented and successful female poker players: from the States, there’s Vanessa Selbst, Kathy Liebert, Annie Duke, Vanessa Rousso and Jennifer Harman, to name just five. From the UK, there’s Liv Boeree, who also has a first-class degree in Astrophysics, and Victoria Coren Mitchell, a successful newspaper columnist and TV presenter who became the first woman to win the European Poker Tour, then the first person – male or female – to win it twice. From Canada, there’s Xuan Liu, and Isabelle “No Mercy” Mercier. From Norway, Elisabeth Hille, and Annette Obrestad before her. From France, Gaelle Bauman, the bubble girl for the final table of the 2012 World Series of Poker Main Event who this month final-tabled the Winamax Poker Tour Final Main Event.

Most of these formidable women have millions of dollars in tournament winnings to their names, and none is a player I would be confident of taking money from at the tables.

But not everyone is convinced. Recently, veteran poker pro Mike Dentale and rising star Cate Hall played a heads-up Texas Hold ’Em grudge match at the SugarHouse Casino in Philadelphia. Though the Twitter feud which started the conflict was not initially about gender, the contest between the two quickly became pitched as a Battle of the Sexes.

The proportion of regular female players is thought by some to be as low as 5%. I am often struck, as I look around me at a big tournament, by how few women are in the room. There are usually no more than one or at most two on any given table. Some say this shows women are no good at poker. But an alternative explanation is that a poker room is not always the most female-friendly environment.

Victoria Coren Mitchell, in her poker memoir For Richer, For Poorer, has a memorable description of being drawn to the game by its wonderful “secret” language of flops, trips and rivers, and by its intricate strategy. Yet when she first tried to enter the very male world of the poker room, it was like in those saloons in old Western movies where the piano music stops and everyone turns to stare at the stranger in town. She turned on her heel, and it was months before she summoned up the courage to return.

Cate Hall herself has written that “in an average session I probably receive at least 10 comments, ranging from innocuous to outrageous, that call attention to my gender… the routine never ceases to be taxing.”

We all have a responsibility to be respectful of others at the table. Poker is a hard game, a competitive game, an expensive game at times. But it can and should also be fun, a pleasant way of passing the hours in convivial company. Women should be treated with the same respect as any other player.

Apart from anything else, it’s good for the game. Having more people who feel comfortable with playing poker is beneficial to all: it swells the prize pools in tournaments, and brings in fresh faces who, until they gain more experience, are likely to be the ones donating to the table rather than raking it in.

And even if you do believe you can make generalisations about the differences between men and women, differences that might affect their playing styles, some of these are positive advantages at the table. You might think women tend to be more cautious and patient, with an emotional intelligence that makes them good at reading people. You might think that men tend to be more aggressive, risk-taking, and apt to dominate and become “table captain”. Perhaps, if so, each gender has something to respect and to learn from the other.

So are men always better poker players than women? Of course not. When the heads-up contest finally took place, the result was decisive: in a best-out-of-three-games format, Cate Hall won 2-0.

Paul Phua

I know a lot of my readers are amateur players, practising at home to perfect their game so they can place bigger bets and play bigger tables.

For that reason, a lot of the stuff on my website is given over to advice on strategy and tactics of play. However, there is one important aspect of poker I haven’t discussed yet – the cards themselves!

The deck you use to play poker won’t necessarily make a huge difference to your success at the game, but I thought it might be interesting for me to tell you a bit about the different types of card deck out there, what brands are being used by pros in casinos, and which might be best for your home play.
A standard deck has 52 cards – a tradition that has been around for more than 500 years. There are more than 80,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different outcomes to the order of shuffle of the 52 cards. The fact that number has 67 zeros means you are extremely unlikely to get the same arrangement twice.
In a casino, it’s pretty standard practice to have more than one deck of cards to hand – this is a good idea in any poker game because if one deck gets damaged or marked, you can switch to the back-up. A marked deck can give an advantage to any player who can spot the marks. In poker rooms, the two decks will usually be two different colours so they are easily distinguished. Most of the cards you buy online will come in sets of two decks and have these contrasting back colours.
For a game at home, I would recommend changing deck every two hours or so. That’s because even an undamaged deck can become marked with fingerprints, or food and drink stains – common for games at home.

However, if a card becomes visibly damaged you should change it immediately. Players can track the damaged card. If you’re hosting a mini-tournament make sure if that you have a couple of packs per table.

Quite often in professional games, a player might ask for a “new setup”, which is them asking if the decks can be changed. Usually this is because they feel they have had a bad run with the deck of cards currently in use, and want to change their luck with a new pack. I am quite superstitious so I understand – but it can slow the game down quite a bit if you are changing deck every other hand!

When you are thinking about which cards to buy it can be quite overwhelming – there are so many brands and types of deck that you can buy online.

The two basic types of playing cards are 100% plastic cards and paper cards which have then been coated in plastic.
Casinos will always use the 100% plastic ones – and these are the type I prefer to play with. However, coated cards are the more common – they are the sort you will find at a supermarket. However, they are not durable enough for sustained play, and get marked or scuffed much more easily than plastic ones. So if you are going to play quite a bit of poker with your friends, I would go for the more expensive but better value 100% plastic cards.
Professionals use them. Casino dealers like them because they deal nicely and slide smoothly across the table. At a pro-table a dealer will usually use a machine to shuffle the deck, but at home these plastic cards shuffle nicely in your hands and carry a good weight.
It’s not too hard to find plastic cards online, and you can even find the same brands as they use in professional tournaments – which can be useful practice if you are working your way up to your first competition! The brands used most often in casinos are Kem, Copag, Gemaco and Modiano. Kem are probably the most popular because they are used on the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour.
One thing a lot of people ask is whether there are different rules for a standard size or design of cards in different countries, but in my experience the international standard is 63.5mm X 88.9mm with regular denomination, suit, and court cards.
But, as I said before – the cards should be your tool to win. It’s useful to have a couple of good decks, but if you are going to invest in something to improve your game, it should be your time.

Hello Paul here again,

In Chinese culture we talk a lot about luck. Much more than in the West. Objects. Dates. Actions. Behaviors. Numbers. Even buildings! They can be lucky or unlucky. It’s a big part of our lives. And for an Asian poker player you can imagine that the way the numbers and suits fall on the table is something I think about a lot. Is it luck?! Maybe!

But success isn’t the same as luck. You can make a good job of bad cards. And a bad job of good ones. My website is full of advice on how you can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, a phrase my English born teachers taught me back at school in Malaysia when I was young.

So through poker – and my wider business life in fact – I know that success doesn’t just come just from being lucky. Far from it. I wrote recently about the reasons I thought had been successful at Poker. But that got me thinking about a wider question. What makes a person successful in life? (I have been in a philosophical mood recently, maybe it’s because I am getting older!).

And then I came across a cartoon while I was looking on the internet. Or one of my friends sent it to me I can’t remember. It was called the Iceberg Illusion. We don’t get many icebergs in Malaysia! But it still made a big impression on me and I understood well the point it was making.

Iceberg of success by Sylvia Duckworth — Cartoon by Sylvia Duckworth ©

Success is something that is easy to identify. When a runner wins gold in the 100 meter race at the Olympics. When you get top marks in an exam at school so you can go to university. But the reasons for that success, how it was won, are often hidden from us. That’s what the cartoon shows very well.

Persistence. Failure. Sacrifice. Disappointment. Good habits. Hard work. Dedication.

Some of the best poker players I know have experienced or do on a regular basis all of those things.

Persistence. When they were young they kept joining games even if first they got beat. They would work out why they had lost, learned from their mistakes, got better so they stopped losing so much. But that first knock, or second, or third, didn’t put them on the floor or make them walk away. It only made them want to do better next time. Which they did. Persistence is key.

Failure. A lot of good players have been brave enough to ask other players for advice when a hand didn’t go so well. They learn from failure and don’t get beaten by it. This is something I have found very important myself.

Sacrifice. I have been lucky in life. That I fully accept. But I know that if you want to get good at something, anything, you have to really work at it. Cards, math, running, whatever. There are no shortcuts. Rarely do you see a purely natural talent. Lots of the best players I know, and the most successful businesspeople too, have dedicated so much time to learning that they have had to say no to other things. A night out. A holiday. It’s the price you have to pay to be really successful.

Hard work. If you want to know what the outcomes of a hand could be when you are chasing a flush with a suited pair on a wet board it helps to have played that hand thousands of times. You learn the patterns. It becomes a natural part of you. Hard work brings experience. Which brings, often, success.

Dedication. When I started out in Texas Holdem I played very long games. These were often 24 hour games, even longer sometimes, with no break. I liked them because I found I could concentrate for longer than my opponents. They would have a good 23 and a half hours, but dropped their concentration for half an hour. In that short half hour period they might make some bad decisions, some bad bets, and that allowed me very often to win the pot. Now I am not saying that you should all play 24 hour games. They are not for everyone! But if you are dedicated, concentrated and stick to your task, you can often come out on top.

Good habits. The guy who won the Aussie Millions in January, who had never played in a cash tournament before, was drinking orange juice throughout the tournament. No whisky for him! More and more players nowadays don’t drink alcohol at the table. In fact don’t really drink at all. They are so dedicated and want to win so much they won’t put themselves at a disadvantage. Especially the young players which is interesting. You might think they would live fast and play fast at the table. But no. They are serious now! I said above that when I started out in Texas Holdem I played very long games. This wasn’t by accident. I would work on my concentration. My mental strength. And also my fitness. I used to go swimming during tournaments and long poker sessions. It would help a lot. I was fit and it helped me gain an advantage over people who weren’t in such good shape. It’s harder when you get older but I still try to get the right amount of sleep and stay trim. Good habits are important for success.

So thank you Sylvia Duckworth for this good cartoon. I think there is a lot of wisdom in the iceberg.

Unpredictable poker players in live poker games

Poker used to be thought of as a game mainly of flair and emotional intelligence. A good bluff, or the ability to peer into your opponent’s mind were considered the primary characteristics for a Texas Hold’em pro.

This was the era of the “live” player. One who thrived off the occasion. The face-to-face. Reading their opponents’ tells. The pressure. The emotion.
Now though, if you fast forward a few decades, the poker world has changed beyond recognition. Players analyze betting patterns, they discuss bet sizing and scrutinize fold equity and expected value. Investment bankers and engineering graduates from the world’s best universities now flock to poker. Instead of trading volatility in the world of finance, they are exploiting “thin value for maximum pay-off” in high stakes games, often online.
Poker has transformed into a game of rigorous calculation. It has automated, you could say. It has taken a leap towards the world of math and away from old-fashioned emotional intelligence. A lot of the world’s best and most successful players play percentages and probability.
However, that doesn’t mean that all those players who thrive on the cut and thrust of face-to-face, live play have had to cash in their chips and leave the table. They have had to learn to play differently. And some have found a technique that works – using the unconventional and unpredictable, to confound the percentage and probability based systems used by so many players nowadays.
Unconventional live players tend to play the player, not the numbers, and work outside the rules of betting charts. It’s like they are playing in a separate world from the more mathematical players. They are able to weave in and out of convention. It is often a difficult style to play against because it’s so unpredictable.
Most young pros would say that this “out of the box” approach isn’t the best way to play in the long run (partially because it falls so far outside their own models). That’s a good argument. But one thing is for sure. The unconventional players are great to watch!

Here’s a great example of where unconventional play can overcome an opponent. Take Henry Tran in the WSOP 2016 Main Event — one of our all-time favourite hands at Paul Phua Poker.

Tran is dealt three of clubs and two of hearts and his opponent, Ben Alcober, is dealt King of diamonds and eight of diamonds.
Before the flop, Tran opens middle position to two times the big blind. Alcober reacts to this by three betting out of small blind to 25k. The pot has now grown to 43.5k, but the action does not stop here. Tran then makes an astonishing four bet which Alcober calls. The pot is now at 94.5k and the flop has not even been dealt.
The flop is nine of clubs, four of diamonds and seven of spades (a “rainbow” flop). Alcober leads out of position bluffing for 32k. Tran responds by re-bluffing and making it 65k. Alcober calls.
The turn peels off and it is the nine of spades. This gives the players a paired board and also puts two spades up there. Once the players see the turn they check to each other.
The river is the two of diamonds which completes no flushes and makes it unlikely that either player has a full house. But it does give Tran a pair of twos, together with top of the pair of nines on the board. Not enough you would think to win a big pot.
Alcober seizes the moment and bets 165k (which is over two thirds the size of the pot) even though the fans watching on TV know that all he has are the nines on the table.
Tran thinks for a moment and instead of folding, he then calls with his pair of twos and nines. Totally unexpected. Surely he couldn’t.
Alcober shows his King eight of diamonds, with a slightly meek expression on his face. Tran shows two, which makes his two pairs. Footage of the moment shows Tran hopping around the table, and other players open mouthed at what has happened. The commentators can hardly believe what they have seen either. Bluff, counterbluff, big raises followed by checks followed by raises. Unpredictable play. Great to watch.
Tran’s call wins him a huge pot at a critical juncture of the tournament. But the new generation of poker player would feel pretty uncomfortable making the sort of call Tran makes here, because the price is simply not right to be calling on the river. You are simply wrong too often for it to be a profitable call in the long run.
Looking a little closer it’s important to recognize that these guys have deep stacks in a multimillion dollar first-prize tournament. The amount of three-betting bloats the pot in a lot of ways which means that these guys are destined to play a huge pot from the start.
There are also a lot of mind games going on. These guys know each other’s style and they are trying to exploit that. Fortune favours the brave and in this case the bravest won the pot. Tran saw something in his opponent that did not add up and he acted on his read.
Tran’s big pot approach seems risky. But it demonstrates the enormous value of taking people out of their comfort zones and using it to the player’s advantage. Did Tran’s play affect Alcober’s decision-making and bet-sizing?

Another great example of where unconventional meets conventional in poker is Qui Nguyen at the World Series of Poker Main Event 2016.

Qui stunned the poker world with his play. Phil Hellmuth compared it to his own “white magic” style of play. Qui (like Hellmuth) is able to see beyond the realms of probability and pricing, and through to the core of the opponent, what they are thinking and how they are behaving. Poker wizardry.
This style has won Hellmuth 14 World Series of Bracelets. Hellmuth and Qui prove how effective emotional intelligence combined with deep understanding of the game can be highly lucrative.
The likes of Qui Nguyen, Henry Tran and also Scotty Nguyen are examples of traditional players who have adapted to modern-day poker, to take down titles or win cash whilst using less conventional methods and placing emphasis on playing the player, not just the cards.
On the one hand, yes, poker is at heart a game of math and science. Math, for obvious reasons, and science too because science simply asks the question: “Why?” Something we should all be doing at all times in poker. Keep evaluating, as Paul is always saying. And yes the top online players have a mathematical orientation, it is true. You have to understand probability and hand computations to a certain level.
But it is a mistake to forget the other half of the brain. Poker is holistic and the likes of Tran, Hellmuth and Nguyen show that. It is the blend of the old style pros (who love the ebbs and flows of the live game and who play out of the box poker), and more math orientated online pros that make Texas Holdem poker in 2017 such an exciting game to watch and play.

Poker tournaments are exciting, but also long and exhausting.

On TV you will see the bright lights and bundles of cash on the table with a bracelet or a trophy for the winner. But behind the victories lies a lot of dedication. Getting there requires discipline, patience, and usually a lot of practice.

The major difference between a tournament and a cash game, from the players’ perspective, is the amount of control you have over the conditions. In a cash game, you can leave any time: Feel hungry or tired? Grab a snack or a nap. Did all the bad players just leave the game and get replaced by pros? Go find another game. Notice that you are not focusing very well? Take a break. Did you play a hand perfectly but get a bad beat? Buy back in. Whatever else happens, you are on your own schedule, and you get to control which games you sit in and how long you stay.
In a tournament, you have essentially none of that control. The tournament organizers choose where you sit and who sits with you (usually by random draw). And the tournament organizers decide the schedule and when the breaks are. Moreover, you have to play until you are eliminated or you win the entire tournament—which can sometimes take a week or more, playing ten hours a day. And of course, once you are eliminated, you are out—no matter how unlucky it was (unless the tournament offers rebuys).
To make it in the tournament world, then, you not only have to be a skilful poker player, but you have to maintain your focus over the course of the entire tournament. You also have to keep at it: in any given tournament, you may play very well and be eliminated due to misfortune—but over time, in tournament poker as in cash game poker, the skilful players succeed.
To do this well, you have to treat poker like any other sport. Tournament poker is about mind, body and soul. All three need to work in rhythm and sync in order to make those key high pressure decisions over and over again. You may hear of players paying attention to mindfulness, meditation, exercise, and nutrition. These are all very important when you are playing days of poker with little rest.

7 tips on poker tournament strategy

For anyone who thinks they might want to play in a tournament (rather than just games with friends or at the casino):

Don’t get over excited in the first levels. The blinds are relatively very small. If you pick up decent hands or you think you can win a big pot with low suited connecters, then go for it. But be careful not to get too excited. The upside isn’t so big that it is worth taking a lot of risk early.
Tournaments are long. You are going to get some bad beats. See the bigger picture. It will put the bad beats into context. Your tournament strategy can survive a couple of bad moments if you don’t lose your head.
Try and spot weak players to play against. By the same token, stay clear of the really good players until you can figure out their play.
Always try to mix things up. Be very aware of your table image. For example, you’ve been playing for an hour and you have good hands. So naturally, you have been raising pre-flop a lot without having to show your cards. However, to mix things up try raising on some weaker hands too, and keep your opponents guessing. I myself did just that half way through my poker career. And once your opponents spot that you have loosened up, play tight again to get them to make mistakes.
Table assignment is something you need to be aware of. Which table you are on, and which players you are playing with, is out of your hands. Sometimes you can be with some very good players, sometimes less so.
Remember your position at the table. That will change over the course of the tournament when you change tables as you progress through the levels.
And be aware that because you will be playing against so many different players over the course of a few days, often players you have never been up against before, you need to be reading their tells, their bluffs and their traps.

5 tips for surviving the length of a poker tournament

On the human level:

Give yourself time before the tournament starts to sit quietly, collect your thoughts, and gather your energy.
Try and create some sort of playing ritual, so whenever you win or lose you are steady and focused. This could be inhaling to three, exhaling to six and repeating three times.
Come prepared. Bring healthy food and if needs be energy drinks, (but be wary of too much caffeine, it can make you impulsive and too aggressive at the table).
Try and find food groups that stimulate your brain. And remember to stay hydrated. It sounds obvious but the brain needs to be fed and water is vital in that process.
Make sure you know where the restroom is because if you are playing long levels with few breaks there will be times when you might need to rush out.

These are just a few of the things I have come across playing tournament poker. If you can include them in your game both in terms of health and playing style then you will be on your way to becoming a winning player.
Poker is not just flopping hands and winning chips, it is everything that goes on behind the scenes. A healthy lifestyle gives you an edge at the table and in life.

As we wrote about, many of the best players in the poker world arrived in Manila to play the Triton series in February.

The first tournament played over the first two days was the smaller of the two when it came to prize money. But it had a great field and a really exciting finish between two of the best players in the world. The third day though saw the start of the big one. There were 39 buy ins (from 29 players) into the HK$1,000,000 (approx. USD 128,800) main event. Would Dan Colman be able to repeat his good performance? Or would we see different faces at the final table than the ones we saw at the 6 max in the first couple of days? The answer was – as so often in poker – the latter. Different days, different outcomes.

The Main Event was a three-day affair. The first two days were all about getting to the money – whittling the 29 players down to the final six.

And some big names didn’t survive the process. 6-Max champion Dan Colman, poker legend Phil Ivey and the 2016 one drop winner Elton Tsang all didn’t make the final six.
There were two clear chip leaders, and therefore favourites, at the start of the money levels: Sergio Aido from Spain with 2,490,000 and Germany’s Koray Aldemir with 2,420,000, both a long way ahead of their four rivals. Would they be the last two standing? In third was Wai Kin Yong (1,705,000) who won the November 2016 version of this same tournament. Dan Cates (1,475,000) was also there (as he so often is), as were Devan Tang (1,045,000) and Bryn Kenney (615,000), who finished second in 2016 to Wai Kin.
With those sorts of numbers Bryn Kenney was clearly the most vulnerable with his smaller stack. He had just 20 big blinds. Would he play safe or go for broke? But, actually, he wasn’t the first player at the final table to go to the rail. That, very surprisingly, was Wai Kin Yong, previous winner and third chip leader.
Yong had been playing a lot of hands – losing pots as often as winning them – so he was unable to make much ground on Aido and Aldemir who were pulling away from the rest of the field. And he came out on the wrong side of a couple of hands with Bryn Kenney, who was valiantly getting his way into the game despite starting at such a huge chip disadvantage to the rest of the finalists.
In fact, he wasn’t the next person to fall away either. That was Devan Tang. He flopped two pairs, but was blown away by Aldemir who made an Ace High straight with a ten on the turn.
Bryn Kenney’s run did end, however: he was the next to go. Having started the final table with just 615,000 chips he had done incredibly well to get his way up to over a million. But he lost out to Cates on a close hand.
That win for Cates meant the last three players all had similarly sized stacks – 3.5m for Aldemir, 3.2m for Aido and 2.9m for Cates. Cates had done very well to pull his way back to almost level terms with Aido and Aldemir. And he was feeling confident enough to reject a prize money sharing deal between the last three at the start of the 3-way hands, proclaiming “I feel like a gamble!!”
He may have regretted that a few moments later, coming out second best in a series of hands, first to Aldemir, then in a big one and a half million chip pot to Aido. Cates then did agree a deal with the other two – which meant that he would take 28% of the winnings, Aldemir 35% and Aido the remaining 37% no matter the result from then on. Good work for all. But there was still the trophy and HK$400,000 the three players kept aside to make things interesting.
Just as well that Cates struck the deal, as he busted out a few hands later, as his king jack off suit lost out to Aido’s king queen suited with the kicker.

So we were left with Aido and Aldemir, the two chip leaders when the final table started.

Aido had a 6 million to 3.7 million chip lead at the start of the heads-up, but that didn’t end up being the insurmountable advantage it appeared to be. Aldemir soon caught up – taking two pots in the first ten minutes of heads up play. He never looked back, taking pot after pot from Aido – and within the hour the trophy was his. What a comeback! An amazing hour of play from the German. Though he has had a string of good results since the summer of last year, this was Aldemir’s first major title in his career. We’re sure there will be more.
It was really exciting action, with some of the top players from around the world. And although we saw some big bets and pots, it wasn’t just about the winnings. Like the One Drop, the Triton Poker Series has a charity aspect too. The series donates a percentage of the prize pool to a number of charities, including: women’s cancer support group, project pink and the Red Cross. Giving in poker is something that players are increasingly passionate about. Players really want to do something outside the poker community, and to donate to causes that they feel strongly about. Winning means a lot to these players – but it isn’t everything.

When two of the best players in the world end up capturing the first and second prize in a contest that is not even the main event, then you know you have a great tournament on your hands.

That’s precisely what took place at the Triton Series in February at the Solaire Resort in Manila. Dan Colman, Dan Cates, Phil Ivey and others came to play at what is now one of the most established dates in the Asian poker calendar.
The Solaire is a great venue for this tournament. If you haven’t been, it’s a very new development right on the sea. The attention to detail in the rooms, the tables, and the restaurants is incredible. All in a friendly environment with excellent service. It’s a great place to spend a few days.
The pros arriving from all corners of the world had two bites at the cherry. One a 6 max tournament with a HK$ 250,000 buy in over the first two days. And then a HK$1,000,000 main event which took place after. The winners of both would have to beat some of the greats of the game – players firmly established in the all-time money earning list.

Triton poker tournament manila — Triton Poker Tournament at the Solaire in Manila

The first tournament had 43 entries (including eight re-entries) each withtheir eye on the HK$3.6mn prize.

At the start of the second day fresh faced Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsov was the early chip leader. Paul Phua fell away early, as did great players like John Juanda and Dan Cates. Rainer Kempe was the beneficiary. He quickly built up a big stack and got to second place.
Other players who fell away included Koray Aldemir, who would have a much better time of it at the higher buy in event starting the next day. You never want to be the bubble in a poker tournament but the tournament organiser Richard Yong graciously performed that role by bowing out in eighth place!

The last seven players left in the tournament congregated at one table to play out the remaining action.

Mikita Badziakouski lost to a pair of Kings with his ace-ten. The popular Italian player Mustapha Kanit was next.
Kuznetsov, who had done so well early on day two, went to the rail in fifth place – a prize of US$92,040 equivalent still not a bad return — losing almost all of his chips in just two consecutive hands. A tough sudden turnaround for the young Russian. Sergio Aido was next, narrowly missing out on a place on the podium.
So the last three players were Rainer Kempe from Germany – who had done so well during many of the early levels – against two Americans, Eric Seidel and Dan Colman, who are 2^nd and 4^th on the all-time money list. That shows you just how strong the field was at that last table in Manila.
Kempe was the first to go. His pocket queens were no match for Colman’s ace-six suited. A six appeared on both the flop and the turn too – leaving Colman with the winning hand.
So then it was Colman versus Seidel – two of the biggest poker prize winners in history facing each other off in heads up action. Colman started with almost twice as many chips as his opponent. But that was by no means the whole story. The lead would change more than once.
Seidel caught Colman bluffing for jack-high. But then Colman bravely called his opponent soon after and the lead went back to the young American again. The tournament ended in great style – the sort of hand you would want the first prize to be won with in this sort of company. Colman began what would be the last hand with ace-jack suited. His eyes must have lit up inside when he got two jacks on the flop. And, you guessed it, he scored an ace on the turn! With the full house in Colman’s hands, the six max came to an end, with the HK$D 3,641,600 (USD 473,408) prize going to the young American star.
However, despite the action-packed finish, that was only the starter to the main course that would get underway the following day. The million Hong Kong dollar 10 max tournament with unlimited buy-ins on day one. Another very strong field – but with a totally different outcome.