Tag: playing poker hands

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!
 

The recent success of the Lengpudashi poker AI in China, on top of Libratus’s victory in January, adds fuel to the skill vs. luck debate and may have implications for the legal status of poker, says Paul Phua

Last week a team of poker players in China were resoundingly defeated by “Lengpudashi”. Meaning “cold poker master”, Lengpudashi is the new, even more improved version of the Libratus AI (Artificial Intelligence) programme that I wrote about back in January.
Not surprisingly, this latest AI victory has been big news: people have worried for years that robots equipped with AI will take over human jobs. Now not even poker is safe. Though computer programmes long ago proved their superiority in the classic skill game of chess, until now the bluffing and intuitive elements of poker – its very human elements – had made it hard for a machine to master.

Skill vs. luck in poker

But there is one interesting aspect to this story that people don’t seem to be talking about. Any poker player will tell you that poker is a game of skill; that a pro like Phil Ivey may lose several pots to an amateur through misfortune, but let him play a thousand hands, and Ivey will surely come out on top. The law, however, does not always see it that way.
In many countries, poker is legally classified as a game of chance, which places it under the more restrictive legislation reserved for gaming. It’s the reason why online poker is illegal in America (except within certain states). It’s also the reason why, in England, poker pros do not have to pay tax on their gains – they are classified as winnings, just as in a lottery, and not as earnings.
For many years, people have tried to demonstrate scientifically what we poker players know from experience to be true: that poker is a game of skill, albeit one in which luck plays a significant part. As the renowned poker expert David Sklansky puts it, if only luck was involved, everyone would get to the river and show their cards, letting random chance decide the winner. Whereas, in fact, an analysis of a million PokerStars hands by the software company Cigital in 2009 showed that 75% of them never made it to showdown.
There have been other studies. Levitt and Miles, for instance, analysed the results of more than 30,000 players in the 2010 World Series of Poker, and found that players classified as “skilled” earned an average return of 30%, whereas unskilled players on average lost 15%. Set against that, a 2012 study by the Journal of Gambling Studies found no difference between the performance of skilled and unskilled players out of 300 participants, and argued from this that poker is a game of luck – though others have countered that this study only took place over the course of 60 hands, which may not have been long enough to allow skill to assert itself over luck.
Suffice it to say that luck vs. skill has been a hotly contended issue, with very important legal consequences hanging in the balance. Does the success of Libratus and its successor, Lengpudashi, finally provide the missing argument to demonstrate conclusively that skill is the determining factor?
No doubt it will take hundreds of thousands more hands to prove. Perhaps a human champion will yet emerge, like John Connor in the film The Terminator, to take on the machines. Or perhaps the cold, hard, application of science and probability, allied to an ever-improving computer programme that learns from its opponents and gives off none of the human tells, will implacably defeat even the best and brightest of our current poker generation.
Either way, no doubt legislators will be following the development of this poker AI keenly. And as for us human players, the lesson we can draw from Lengpudashi is that it’s more important than ever to brush up on our poker skills.
So keep reading my strategy blogs at Paul Phua Poker, and subscribe now to the Paul Phua Poker School YouTube channel, so as not to miss my exciting new videos featuring tips from the top pros.

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

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.

Paul Phua gallery image 9
deck of cards

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.