Tag: paul phua

In the third part of the Paul Phua Poker School series on poker odds, Paul Phua gives tips on predicting the future to improve your present strategy

Would it not be wonderful to have the power to predict the future? It would certainly be easy to make money at betting! Film-lovers will recall how using a sports almanac from the future made Biff Tannen a rich man in the second Back to the Future film.
We can’t all have a DeLorean time machine, but in poker we have the next best thing. We have the ability to predict what is likely to happen in the future, and to change our strategy accordingly.
In the first two parts in this mini-series on poker odds, I gave tips on why odds are important, and how to calculate them using a simple magic formula. We have seen already how knowing our likelihood of winning will affect how much we bet. Now here is an interesting application in practical play:

How to play a nut flush draw

As I said in my video on the best pre-flop hands, a suited Ace has great potential as a starting hand, even if your kicker is low. An Ace on the flop often gives you the best hand, though be prepared to fold to opposition if your kicker is weak. And if you flop a flush draw, you are in a very powerful position – more powerful than many people realise.
Let’s take the starting hand shown in my video: A4 of diamonds. The flop comes K5 of diamonds, with a 9 of spades. Another player bets. First, do what you should always do when someone bets: work out what hand they are likely to hold.
There’s no strong straight draw out there; if he has a flush draw it’s worse than yours; sets are uncommon. You can’t put him on AK, as he didn’t seem that strong in pre-flop betting, so you reckon he has a K: maybe KQ or KJ. So he likely has top pair, and you have nothing – yet! But you have great potential. Let’s work out how much.

Count up your “outs”

There are nine diamonds left to come that complete our flush, plus three Aces to give us a higher pair: that’s 12 “outs”. Using our magic formula for calculating the odds, that gives us 12 x 4 = 48% chance of winning by the river. [Mathematicians say the real figure is 45% –the magic formula isn’t perfect, but it’s close enough.]
That’s a nearly 1 in 2 chance of winning the pot! Pretty good odds. But the great thing about poker is it’s not all cold, hard math. It takes strategy and psychology to decide how to play those odds.
Your instinct here will be to call, and hope to hit. That’s a reasonable strategy, and the more people who are in the hand, the better it is. You will likely take all their money if you hit your nut flush – thus being paid several times your investment.
But let’s look at another, more advanced strategy, one that is particularly valuable if only one other player is in the hand.

Re-raising for “fold equity”

Unless you are keen to keep a number of people in the pot, a great tactic against a single opponent is to re-raise rather than call. Re-raising gives you “fold equity”. That’s a fancy way of saying it gives you an extra chance at winning: if they get scared and fold, congratulations! You’ve won the pot with the worst hand. And if they call, you’re still a coin-flip to win by the river.
To have fold equity, your bet should be big enough to make them fold. Simply doubling their bet is almost never enough. Even a weak King is likely to call and hope you are semi-bluffing with a flush draw (which you are!), or that they hit two pair on the turn.
So how much do you raise? That calls for psychology: is this player a holder or a folder? Some people are “calling stations” who will call almost any bet with a pair. With a person like this, you may need to raise bigger. Either way, do it confidently. If you are relatively short-stacked, you can even shove all-in. Don’t worry! You are nearly 50-50 to win even if they call.

If they do call – what next?

Maybe they realise you’re on flush draw. Maybe they’re just stubborn. Whichever, your opponent calls you, and the turn card is a blank – it doesn’t help. What now?
Usually now you have no fold equity: if they called a re-raise on the flop, they will often feel committed to call a bet on the turn. And now you have only one card left to come, not two, so your chances of winning are halved to than 1 in 4.
Unless you are a very experienced player with a strong read that your opponent may fold, it’s not worth inflating the pot with what are now poor odds of winning. You want to check. The good news is, your opponent will be wary of you and will usually also check, so you get a “free” card to see the river.
To sum up: when you re-raise on the flop, you have maybe a coin-flip chance of them folding to give you a small pot; and a coin-flip chance of them calling, in which case you then have a coin-flip chance of winning a big pot. Three quarters of the time, therefore, you are winning with a re-raise!

Other flush draws

Let’s just look quickly at other flush draw combinations that you might not be aware of.
Two more outs: Let’s say there was a 4 on the flop rather than the 5, giving your A4 of diamonds a small pair. Now you have two additional outs (either of the two 4s still to come would give you three of a kind to beat his pair of Kings), so you are even better than 50%.
Three more outs: Or let’s say the flop came K52. Now with your A4 you additionally have an inside straight draw, giving three extra outs. (There are four 3s that would make a straight. One of these is a diamond and you’ve already counted that out in your flush draw, hence three extra outs not four).
Three fewer outs: The flush draw to beware of is where you have no extra outs, just the nine cards for your flush. The magic formula tells us that your chances then are just 9 x 4 = 36%, ie 1 in 3. It’s a big leak in less experienced players’ strategy to chase this kind of flush draw against a single opponent.

In my next article on poker odds and strategy…

I hope the above example shows how knowing the odds – our own probability time machine that lets us peer into future likely outcomes – helps dictate our present strategy. In my next article, I will give you a useful chart of the most common. Learn it well! Read the next article.

Paul Phua introduces the hugely successful Malaysian poker pro Wai Kin Yong, who is interviewed in the latest Paul Phua Poker School video

In the last few months Wai Kin Yong has made headlines in poker circles for winning more than $3 million across three different tournaments. Last September he won the Triton Charity Tournament in Manila, and then just two months later the Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event as well. This February he also finished sixth in the Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event.
Even more remarkably, Wai Kin Yong is mostly a high-stakes cash player, not a tournament player. He says in this latest Paul Phua Poker School video interview that he only plays tournaments two or three times a year!


What is the secret of his success? And what can other players learn from him?
Asked for his biggest strength, Wai Kin Yong says in the interview, “I would think it’s my craziness, aggressiveness. I love to be aggressive, I love to be in control, I love to put pressure on other people.”

A key hand against Koray Aldemir

One such hand was picked by cardplayer.com recently as their Hand of the Week. It was against Koray Aldemir in the 2017 Triton Super High Roller in February, where initial pre-flop bettor Aldemir called every street on a 4-4-4 flop. Wai Kin Yong, on the button, three-bet (re-raised) on the flop and then kept betting on every street. Though Wai Kin Yong held just A2 while Aldemir had AK, it was Wai Kin who was the aggressor.
This is indeed an interesting hand. Many players would have been more cautious, but Wai Kin Yong’s aggression here is more strategic than it might at first appear. When Aldemir called Wai Kin’s three-bet pre-flop without re-raising again (as some might do with AK), he appeared weak, and Wai Kin Yong decided to exploit that weakness. Being on the button, Wai Kin could also use position to his advantage.
The turn came a 9, and the river came a Jack. Wai Kin bet not much less than the pot each time. Coupled with his re-raise pre-flop, this might suggest that he had a big pair to make a house. So Wai Kin will surely have been hoping that Aldemir would fold to such strength.
Wai Kin’s strategy nearly succeeded. After he also bet the river, Aldemir “tanked” (that is, he thought for a long time about his decision). But in the end he did find it within himself to call with just Ace high, winning with the superior King kicker, and Wai Kin’s stack was badly dented.
In this particular case, it did not work out for Wai Kin Yong. But certainly, aggression has its place in poker, as it gives you “fold equity”, which is to say that you win when you induce a fold as well as winning when you have the best hand.
If you are over-aggressive in too many spots, however, you will soon lose all your chips. In the recent Paul Phua Poker School video interview featuring Wai Kin Yong and Rui Cao, Wai Kin says he learned a lot about patience from playing with me! He also analyses his game constantly to find ways to improve it, which is a valuable lesson for any player.

Why you should always question your mistakes 

“I question myself a lot, always,” Wai Kin Yong says in our new video. “When I go back into the room I will question myself: ‘did I do something wrong today?’, or ‘have I made any mistakes today?’ And then I’ll ask around, I’ll ask people that I know. I’ll ask my mentor and see if I actually made mistakes, and try to improve on them and never make the same mistake ever again.”
Wai Kin Yong’s mentor is the poker pro Mikael Thuritz, and Wai Kin gives him a lot of credit for his recent successes. This, too, is a good tip for players. You may not all be able to find a mentor of Mikael Thuritz’s level, but find someone whose play you admire, whether online or in live play, and ask them if you can run some hands by them occasionally and get their opinion.
You will be surprised how many people are happy to help. It’s flattering to them, I guess!
Enjoyed this video? Subscribe to the Paul Phua Poker School YouTube channel so you don’t miss the rest in this series. It’s free!

Hate maths? You’re in luck. Paul Phua reveals the magic formula poker players use to make calculating poker odds simple

On my poker odds page, I explained why knowing the odds is vital to being a money-making poker player. Here I will show you how to calculate those poker odds.
Let’s take the example from my last blog: you have a “gutshot” draw, where there is only one card that will complete your straight – for instance, you have 6-9, and the flop is A-5-8, so you have to hit a 7. I said that would only work 1 in 6 times.
How do I know this? And how can you work out the odds in any poker situation? There’s an easy way, involving a simple “magic” formula; and there’s a harder way, which means relearning some maths you’ve forgotten since school. The easy way is all you need for basic poker; but if you’re more mathematically inclined, read on to the second way.

Step 1. First calculate your “outs”

“Outs” is the term used by poker players for the cards that will help you win. In the above example, only a 7 will help you win. Since there are four 7s in a deck of cards (one of each suit), you have four “outs”.

Step 2. Now apply the magic formula

If you don’t want to be bothered with the detailed mathematics of probability, just follow this simple formula:
* To find the percentage chance of hitting your card on the turn, multiply the number of outs by two
* To find the percentage chance of hitting your card on the turn or the river, multiply the number of outs by four
Is it really that simple? Yes, it is. It’s not absolutely accurate, but it’s very close.
As an example, let’s apply this magic formula to our gutshot draw. We have four outs, so to find out our chances of hitting one of them by the river we multiply 4 x 4, getting 16. So that’s 16% — or to put it another way, 16/100, which some quick mental arithmetic will tell you is roughly 1 in 6. Simple, unless you have no idea what fractions or percentages are, in which case I’m afraid that’s beyond the scope of this blog!
My next blog will explain how you can use these odds in poker to decide whether a bet is worth calling. And that’s it for now. Unless you want to know more about probability, in which case, read on…

Calculating probability the hard way

First, let’s look at probability in general before looking at poker. To find the chance of any particular outcome, you divide the number of desired outcomes into the total number of possible outcomes. Let’s take rolling a die as an example: if you need to roll a 6, your chance of doing so is 1 in 6. That’s one desired outcome divided into the six possible outcomes (since it’s possible to roll any one of six numbers: a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6). And if what you need to roll is a 5 or a 6, that’s two possible outcomes, so you divide 2 into 6, giving you a 1 in 3 chance.
Now let’s apply this to poker. There are 52 cards, so there are 52 possible outcomes when you turn a card over. On the flop, you know what your two hole cards are, as well as the three cards face-up on the flop, so actually there are only 47 cards left that might contain your outs.
In the gutshot draw example above, there are four 7s that will help, so to get your odds, you divide 4 into 47. We don’t all have a calculator in our heads, so when you’re at the poker table, make sums easier by rounding them up. In this case, 4 into 47 is nearly the same as 4 into 48. So, we now know we have a roughly 1 in 12 chance of hitting a 7 on the turn.
This isn’t too hard, but it gets trickier when calculating several rolls of a die, or turns of a card. When you are dealing with probabilities over multiple attempts, you actually first have to calculate the chance of something not happening, rather than the chance of it happening.
The chance of not hitting a 7 on the turn is 43 out of 47: 43/47. The chance then of not hitting a 7 on the river is very slightly different, since there are now only 46 cards left that might include your hoped-for 7. So the chance of not hitting on the river is 42 out of 46: 42/46.
To find the chance of not getting a 7 by the river, you must multiply these two fractions. (Remember, with fractions you have to multiply the tops and bottoms separately.) From this we get: 43/47 x 42/46 = 1806/2162.
To make this complex figure understandable and useful, we need to express it as a percentage. To do that, we want to turn the number under the fraction bar (mathematicians call this the “denominator”) into 100, and find out what that does to the number above the bar (the “numerator”).
If we divide the denominator of 2162 by 2162, it becomes 1. Multiply it again by 100, and it becomes 100. So now we do the same action to the numerator (we do need a calculator for this). 1806 divided by 2162 is 0.84. Multiply that by 100 and we get 84. So now we can see that 1806/2162 is the same thing as 84/100 – 84%, in other words.
Remember, the figure of 84% we just calculated is the chance of not hitting our hoped-for card. So our chances of hitting our card will be 16% — or to put it another way, 16/100, which is about 1 in 6.
If this all sounds a bit tricky, well, it is! But don’t worry: you always have the magic formula to fall back on.
Read the next article in my mini series on how to play a flush draw.

Paul Phua introduces the latest in a series of “In Conversation With Paul Phua” videos, in which the thrilling young poker pros Rui Cao and Wai Kin Yong discuss how to improve your game

How long would you play poker for in a single session? Eight hours? Twelve? Fifteen?
Try 40 or 50 hours!
As you will see in this three-way video interview between myself and the brilliant young players Rui Cao and Wai Kin Yong, we often used to play for two days and nights without stopping. We don’t do that so much anymore, but a round-the-clock game is still pretty common. As we say in the video, one skill you definitely need to develop as a player is stamina!
As I think comes across in this video, when you play poker together for such long periods, you develop a kind of bond, a friendship. But you also develop an awareness of each other’s strengths and weaknesses – and, if you are a good player, you will become conscious of your own.


Rui Cao admits in this interview that one of his weaknesses is playing too loose, wanting to show the table who is boss. “I think it’s an ego problem,” he says.
Then again, it’s also what makes Rui Cao one of France’s most exciting players. It’s six years since Rui Cao first came out to Macau to test himself in the high-stakes cash game against some of the world’s top poker pros (poker players call it “The Big Game”), and I could tell he was instantly drawn to the thrill of those huge pots of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As for Wai Kin Yong, he admits his weakness is probably being too “sticky”: “I always find the hands to call,” he says in the video.
Is that a bad thing? Well, on the one hand it’s exciting to make that “hero call”, where you call down a bluff with just Ace high. But on the other hand, if you don’t learn when to lay down a hand, even a hand as good as two pairs, you will lose a lot of money over time. You must ask yourself: are you calling because you’ve thought through the action on every street, and you really think the other person is bluffing? Or is it because your ego won’t let you back down, or you can’t stand not knowing and must see the other person’s cards? It’s something I think you learn as you get older: the patience and humility to fold, and to wait for a better spot further down the line where you are more certain of making money from the hand.
That said, Wai Kin Yong is an exceptional player for one so young. You could say it runs in the family: his father is my friend, the businessman Richard Yong. But Wai Kin Yong also very much has his own style, and has been doing very well in live tournaments. Last September he won the Triton Charity Tournament in Manila, and then just two months later the Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event as well. This February he finished sixth in the Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event. These three pay-outs were together worth more than $3 million!
So it was a pleasure to be able to sit down with these two excellent players, and talk about poker for this video. I hope you enjoy it, and pick up some tips for improving your own playing style.
It’s your decision whether to play loose or tight, aggressively or by trapping other players into making a mistake. Whatever works for you, whatever suits your personality, style and the dynamics of the table you’re on.
But the one thing I think you can definitely take away from this video interview is that good players are always talking about poker with other good players: comparing notes on hands and playing styles, working out what they can learn from each other and how they can play better in future. If you can do this, the next big tournament winner could be you!
Enjoyed this video? Subscribe to the Paul Phua Poker School YouTube channel so you don’t miss the rest in this series. It’s free!

The latest in the new series of Paul Phua Poker School videos is a revealing interview with a true poker great, Phil Ivey. Paul Phua, who talks with him in the video, picks out the highlights

Phil Ivey, the subject of this new Paul Phua Poker School video interview, is definitely one of the all-time poker greats. He has ten World Series of Poker bracelets to his name, having won the first when he was just 23. He has more than $20 million in live tournament earnings, even though he spends most of his time playing cash at high stakes. His famously intimidating stare has become almost a brand in its own right, even though when you get to know Phil Ivey, as you will see from this video, he is actually warm and funny.


This interview was conducted in Manila in February, during the Triton Super High Roller Series, but it seems especially interesting now, since it was announced this week that Phil Ivey will no longer be making videos for his Ivey League site.
And one of the things that strikes me about this interview is an irony that will not be lost on long-term players. When you first start playing, the adrenaline is incredible. If you dare make a bluff you think other players will actually see your shirt moving up and down, as your heart is beating so hard. That’s partly why I used never to bluff when I first started playing!
So you learn to calm your emotions and dampen the adrenaline rush, in order to be hard to read. But does that take some of the thrill out of the game? This is what Phil Ivey has to say in the video interview:
“When you’ve played so much and you’ve played for so many years, it’s really difficult to get a huge thrill… The actual thrill of like, ‘wow I’m betting a lot of money on it’, that’s not really there for me. I don’t really feel that. I haven’t felt that in quite some time, actually.”
Don’t make the mistake from that of thinking Phil Ivey is finished with poker! I am certain he will go on to win many more big tournaments and WSOP bracelets. Because, of course, Phil is still passionate about poker, as am I. As he says in this interview, “I don’t look at it like I’m going to work, because I love doing what I do.”
Maybe it’s just that with poker, as with so many things in life, you never quite recapture the same strong thrill of your first times, of your youth. So my advice to anyone still starting out in poker would be, “enjoy it!” Poker can be hard work, the bad beats can be upsetting, and you must study to improve. But poker is also a fantastic game: a mixture of strategy and chance, where no two hands are ever exactly the same, played against some of the brightest and most interesting people.
Phil Ivey definitely falls into that last category. I have had the pleasure of playing with – and learning from – Phil Ivey many, many times in the last few years, and we have developed both a friendship and a bond of mutual respect. He is kind enough to say in this interview, “What makes Paul Phua so amazing is that he started off playing with some of the best players in the world, and now he is playing in games constantly with the best players in the world and he’s winning in those games.”
Of course, what Phil Ivey is too modest to say outright is that he himself is one of those “best players in the world”! So enjoy this revealing video interview with one of the greats, then go and subscribe to the Paul Phua Poker School YouTube channel. There are many more videos to come in this series, including further interviews with and tips from Phil Ivey.

Paul Phua introduces the first in an exciting new series of videos for the Paul Phua Poker School YouTube channel featuring some of the world’s top pros

If you want to improve your poker and become a winning player, there is no better place to start than by watching strategy tips from the top pros. Phil Ivey, Dan Cates and Dan Colman have very generously given up some of their valuable time to film this video for the Paul Phua Poker School – and with these high-stakes cash and tournament players, “valuable time” is not merely a figure of speech!
Phil Ivey is a ten times World Series of Poker bracelet winner, and one of the most fearless and creative players of the game. Dan “Jungleman” Cates passed the $10 million online cash earnings milestone nearly three years ago. And Dan Colman has graduated from internet poker (he rose to fame in 2013 as the first hyper-turbo player to win $1 million on Pokerstars in a year) to take down $28 million in live tournament play.
The Paul Phua Poker School YouTube video team caught up with these players at the Triton High Roller Series in Manila this February, and their tips for beginners are just as insightful as you would expect. And it’s not only beginners who can benefit from their strategy advice.


Phil Ivey tells players that “an important thing is to be able to manage their money”. This is very true: many a player has gone bust by moving too quickly to levels they cannot really afford. For more detailed advice, see my previous Paul Phua Poker School blog on bankroll management.
Dan Colman recommends that you should “get out of your comfort zone”, and “play in difficult games”. This may seem strange: why choose a difficult game if you can find one with poor players instead? But this is something I myself did when starting out in poker. I challenged myself to play with some of the world’s top pros in high-stakes cash games, not because I arrogantly thought I could beat them, but because I humbly felt I could learn from them. If I have any skill at poker (and Phil Ivey has been kind enough to say that “Paul Phua is probably the best non-pro I’ve ever played poker against”), it is thanks to learning from the best.
And if you do find yourself up against more experienced players, Dan Cates’ advice in the video may prove especially valuable. He says, “The first tip for beginners would be to play tighter than they think.” Unless you are sure you can outplay everyone else around the table, you should pick your poker battles with care, going armed with only the best starting hands.
Those are just a few of the useful tips in the video that will improve your poker game. Watch it now to discover more, and subscribe to the Paul Phua Poker School YouTube channel so as not to miss new videos in the series. It’s free!
 

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 200th 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 $15.3 million in the Big One for One Drop at the 2014 World Series of Poker, only a few days after his 24th birthday. This February he won the 2017 Triton Super High Roller Series Manila HK$ 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