Tag: poker tips

The Paul Phua Poker School chart of common poker odds will dramatically improve your game. Paul Phua gives tips on how they should affect your strategy

In my last three articles in this mini-series on poker odds, I explained why they matter; how you can calculate them with a simple magic formula; and how to apply the odds in your play using a nut flush draw as an example.
But in the heat of the moment, you may not have time to calculate the odds, even using the magic formula. So be sure to learn this list of the most useful poker odds. I promise it will revolutionise your game.
I have added playing tips to each one, to show how knowing the odds can improve your strategy.

Odds of getting these cards dealt pre-flop

Pocket Aces: 1 in 220

If you are so tight that you will only play with Aces, you will have a long wait! You’ll be dealt pocket Aces – or Kings, or Queens, or any specific pair – just 1 in 220 hands. That’s no more than once a day in live play. You’ll get AK, however, once in every 82 hands.

Pocket pair: 1 in 17

It’s rare to be dealt a pocket pair, so don’t waste them. A large pocket pair (QQ, KK, AA, plus JJ or 10-10 depending on previous bets and your position) should raise or re-raise pre-flop, then bet the flop unless an overcard hits. A smaller pocket pair should usually “set mine”, ie call if it’s cheap, and hope for a set on the flop.

Two suited cards: 1 in 4

Suited cards look pretty, but can quickly drain your chips. It’s best to play them only when they are high cards in their own right, or when they are connected to give you an additional chance of a straight draw. Relax: now you know you are dealt them every four hands, you can afford to wait for better ones.

Odds of hitting the flop

A pair: 1 in 3

If you hold unpaired cards pre-flop, your chance of making a pair on the flop is just 1 in 3. The good news is that any single opponent is also unlikely to have hit.

A set from a pocket pair: 1 in 8

If you are dealt a pocket pair, your chance of hitting a set on the flop is about 1 in 8. Even so, it’s often worth “set mining” even with a low pair, as you can often win much more than 8x your investment if you do hit a set.

Odds from flop to river

Flush draw: 1 in 3

If you have a flush draw on the flop, your chance of completing it by the river is slightly higher than 1 in 3. If you can only double your money, eg you’re against just one other player, it usually doesn’t make sense to keep calling and chasing the draw.

Flush draw plus another draw: 1 in 2

As explained here, a flush draw with an overcard such as an Ace, or an inside straight draw, is a much stronger hand. Be alert to the extra outs that make flush draws much more profitable.

“Open-ended” straight draw: 1 in 3

An “open-ended” straight draw is where you hold four consecutive cards, so a card at either end would complete the straight. This gives you 8 outs: slightly worse odds than a flush draw. Beware too of someone else drawing to a flush. You then have only 6 outs, as two of your cards would also complete their flush.
“Gutshot” straight draw: 1 in 6
An inside straight draw, nicknamed a “gutshot” or “belly buster”, is where only one middle card will complete your straight – eg you have 5689 and need the 7. This is a huge leak for inexperienced players: you almost never have the correct pot odds to call with this hand. Look out for the “double belly buster”, where two middle cards could make you a straight, eg you have 467810 and need the 5 or the 9. This is nearly 1 in 3.

A full house from a set: 1 in 3

If you’re unlucky enough to flop a set against a straight or flush, you’re still in better shape than you might think. Your chance of getting a full house with the final two cards is 1 in 3. Your chance of two pairs becoming a house are, however, just 1 in 6.

All-in pre-flop: who wins by the river?

In the late stages of a tournament, short stacks are often forced to shove all-in with less than premium hands, and are then called by a player with high cards. As the following set of odds shows, there is always hope for the underdog (these odds will change slightly in different circumstances, eg if cards are suited or have straight draw potential):
Pocket pair v overcards, eg 55 v AK: 54%
Highest card v next two best, eg A6 v K7: 60%
Highest card v second highest, eg A9 v K8: 65%
Both cards higher, eg A9 v 72: 68%
“Dominating” your opponent by duplicating their kicker, eg A7 v K7: 74%
Higher pair against lower pair, eg KK v 88: 81%

In the latest in a series of video interviews with the Paul Phua Poker School, poker pro Dan Colman talks to Paul Phua about AI, tells, and the trouble with online poker

In the latest in the Paul Phua Poker School videos featuring top pros, I am delighted to have Daniel Colman sharing his frank views on poker. Dan is an exceptional player. He made headlines when he won the 2014 Big One for One Drop for a $15m payday, but it was no accident: he had already won $2m in the Monte Carlo Super High Roller Grand Final that year, and he has won many more since. With earnings of $28m in all, he is the second most successful live tournament player in the world.


But enough about money! The point I am making is that Dan knows his poker. And what is even more remarkable is that he began as an online player, in his teens.
All this makes him the perfect person to ask about the difference between online and live play. Dan Colman is not afraid to speak his mind: “I think the way the online poker game works,” he says in the video interview with me, “is that it puts recreational players at a severe disadvantage.”
The problem is, he says, that professional players are equipped with all kinds of software and online trackers: “They mine hands from the days and weeks before to get a database on players they’ve never even played with to understand how they play.”
I agree with Dan. I have always preferred to play live. It’s more sociable, more fun than staring at a screen. And, as well, there is more psychology involved. You get a feel for how your opponents play. You may even get a read on them, which tells you what cards they are holding.
There can be a big adjustment for online players looking to move into live games. “When you go from the online realm and cross over to live poker,” says Dan Colman in the video interview, “you’re always uncomfortable at first. [Young players] might know ‘I have to bluff right here’, but then they think about it and they think ‘Oh, maybe they’re on to me, I check’. You have to get confidence to be able to follow through with your game plan in live poker.”
Here is a funny story, which I also talk about in the video interview. I have played for many years in what poker players call The Big Game, which is a cash game at extremely high stakes. Some of the world’s top poker players would fly into Macau, or Manila, and play for huge pots in this Big Game. One of them was Dan “Jungleman” Cates.
I can say this because now he has successfully plugged that leak in his game, but as a very experienced and skilled online player moving to live games, Jungleman had tons of “tells”! We so often knew exactly what his cards were, and when he was bluffing!
Finally, there is one other aspect of online play that both I and Dan Colman are concerned about, and which we discuss in the video. AI programs are now beating even the world’s best players. I have written about this before. How will that affect online poker?
This is what Dan Colman has to say in the video interview: “I think online poker will die down as a result of computers and machines playing. I think this will come in the next one, two, three years.”
So, all you online players, if you don’t want to bow down to our AI overlords, maybe you should try a little more live poker! Play some home games with your friends. Visit a casino that offers cash games. Enter some live tournaments. Who knows? You may well find it makes poker more fun.

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!

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!
 

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.
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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. 

I was asked the other day at a Texas Holdem poker tournament how I was able to become the poker player that I am now even though I started playing Texas Holdem at a pretty late age – only in my 40’s. It got me thinking. There are lots of things. Here’s a list of them in no specific order…

  • I was lucky in that I started play Texas Holdem with a bankroll. Most players start out with just a few dollars’ stake. If you are a beginner, you will pretty much always lose more than you win at the start. You have to get quite a lot of miles under your belt, played thousands of poker hands, made a few mistakes, and learned from them, before you can turn the tide. And if you don’t have much money and lose it can take a long time to get the confidence and game experience until you start winning as a habit. So, I accept that I was very lucky to have had a successful career as a businessman beforehand that gave me a bit of money. So that when I lost, as all beginners at Texas Holdem do, it wasn’t too much of a problem and I didn’t get too downhearted.
  • I am very calm under pressure, even when there is big money on the poker table. You can’t make good decisions if you aren’t calm. In business l learned how to deal with pressure. That’s useful for me at the poker table, particularly with some of the big hands I find myself in nowadays.
  • I am fit. Not as fit as I was though. The younger Phua Wei Seng Paul was very fit – swimming both before and after games! Physical and mental fitness are very important. Mental fitness has come naturally to me after so many years in business, particularly in the junket business. If a junket customer isn’t happy, you have to learn how to deal with it. You have to have an agile and patient mind.
  • Since I started when I was older, I had the benefit of life experience. As you grow older, you learn to deal with situations that are quite similar to those that have come before. You learn to recognise them. You get more patient when you are older too. That’s very useful in poker, particularly in cutting your losses when you are having a succession of bad beats.
  • I’m a humble person. I never tell myself “Phua Wei Seng Paul, you are a great player!” – pretending I’m better than I am. I am honest about my abilities. There are better players than me. There are worse players than me. I’m still learning the game. Even today, in my mid-50s, I still have so much to learn. If you have the time and the dedication you can use your humility and willingness to learn and move forward.
  • Learn from Texas Holdem poker players who are better, and from yourself. During big tournaments, after I have finished playing for the night I will go back to my room and have a beer before I go to sleep and think. I will write down the games where I don’t think I played at my best level, or I didn’t make the best decisions. So, the next day I will go and see some poker pros who are there playing with me and ask them, “what would you have done in this situation?” You improve a lot that way. It is human nature to think you did the best you could. It’s hard to admit weakness to yourself when you are around the card table or at the casino. But a neutral observer can evaluate you better. Not many players think this way, but I think more should.
  • If you want to play in big games, for big money, you have to make an effort. You have to learn, think differently, recognise that this is a serious business. That’s what I did. When I realised the sort of money that was needed to buy into these games, perhaps $200,000, I said to myself, “wow, this is no joke!” So I read books. I watched a lot of videos from the big tournaments, cash games. I spent hours and hours on YouTube.
  • I used to have a very good memory when I started. I trained it. Now I am older, it’s not so good. I have to learn to win using different methods. There are lots of ways to skin a cat luckily!

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