Two excellent tools for keeping up with your poker success (and setbacks) are Poker Charts (a web based subscription service) and Tourney Manager (a conventional database program which resides on the user’s computer). While Poker Charts allows you to record all types of poker sessions (ring games, SNGs and MTTs) by manually entering your results, Tourney Manager is designed to track/analyze only single table SNG sessions, and conveniently imports your results from hand history files. If you play ring games as well as Sit N Go tournaments, then I highly recommend both of these. Poker Charts will tell you exactly where you are in terms of your entire poker game, and offers lots of charts/graphs to help you better understand the statistical analysis that the program gives. Tourney Manager, while limited to only single table SNG tourneys, will give you a more thorough analysis of that particular part of your poker game than Poker Charts.
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Not everyone likes to keep up with their poker sessions on a computer, preferring a pencil and paper approach. If that describes you, then I highly recommend this Poker Journal published by a poker player/instructor named Al Spath. It is a very fine journal for tracking your poker game, but it is much more than that. Al also includes many articles, tips, anecdotes…alot of helpful information.
Al has an extensive poker background, and is the “Dean” at Poker School Online. I have greatly benefitted from his advice and suggestions both as regards to poker playing in general, as well as in the refinement of the Pokerhomey.com Preflop50 Hand Strength System (a free PDF download by clicking on the banner at the top of this webpage).
You can order Al Spath’s Poker Journal at his website.
If you play limit Holdem and you want to be the BIG winner at the poker table, you have to play tight and play aggressive, which means you need to have a system, and you need to have heart. We can’t give you the heart, but boy, do we have a system for you! The Pokerhomey Preflop50 Hand Strength System has been improved!
Powerful and easy to use, the Pokerhomey Preflop50 system brings a big dose of Pokerhomey method to your limit game preflop.
No complicated starting hand charts to memorize. Just a simple formula (can you add a couple numbers together??) to determine your hand strength on the spot. Then, based on some easily remembered betting rules, you can play your hand preflop flawlessly
Click here to get your FREE copy (PDF)!
Some poker players have no trouble at all with the math that is necessarily a part of poker. Others, well, they have to play by “feel”, because the math just escapes them. If you are in the latter group, here is an easy way to approximate your chances of making or improving your hand.
After the flop, count your outs. For example, if you are four to the flush, you have nine outs. If you have an open-ended straight draw, you have eight outs. There may be several ways to improve your hand, so figure out the total number of outs. Now, multiply your outs by four, and that will be your approximate percentage chance of improving/making your hand. If you want to get more specific, subtract one percent for every out you have in excess of eight outs. So, if you have nine outs, the math goes like this: 9 x 4 = 36 – 1 = 35%. That formula works after the flop.
After the turn, the math is different. Multiply your outs by two and then add two to that number. So, if you miss your flush card on the turn, with one card left to come on the river, and still nine outs, your odds of making the flush are about 20% : 9 x 2 = 18 + 2 = 20%.
This trick won’t give you the exact percentage, but it gets you close enough to consider your bet as a percentage of the total size of the pot. If you have a 20% chance to make your hand, and you are required to call a bet less than 20% of the total pot, the math says you should call. If the required bet as a percent of the total pot exceeds your chances of making your hand, the math says you should fold.
Keep in mind that this does not take into consideration implied odds. Pot odds may say fold, whereas implied odds may say call. For instruction in implied odds, read any of the excellent books from Two Plus Two publishing, several of which are available further down this page.
Lee Jones has an excellent article in Card Player magazine explaining his SAGE/Sit and Go Endgame (TM) system for heads-up no-limit Holdem play. You need to read this article! This system, combined with the simple math techniques described in our earlier article (Poker Math Made Easy) will give you a significant advantage over MANY of the poker players you encounter in live or online tourneys.
The SAGE (TM) system will help you to avoid the deadly heads-up mistake of playing too tight. In addition to employing this system, our advice is to play alot of heads-up SNG tourneys online. It is invaluable to have that experience when you make the final two of a tournament. Especially if single table SNG is your specialty, then you really must play ALOT of heads-up SNG tournaments also as part of your “training”.
CRUSH LIMIT HOLDEM GAMES !
The Pokerhomey.com Preflop50 Hand Strength System (Copyright 2006) is a new technique we have developed, and we think this is going to be a great tool for poker players. After quite a bit of feedback from some very helpful poker experts, we are pleased to offer you this excellent system for limit Holdem ring games.
The most important decision we make as poker players is the initial decision to play a hand and bet the hand properly. If you have read some of the poker books we recommend here, then you probably already know how difficult it can be to memorize the starting hand charts the authors provide. And if you are successful memorizing them, then trying to recall the charts while at the table can be really tough. And you know it just isn’t cool to take cheat sheets to the poker game.
The Pokerhomey.com Preflop50 Hand Strength System eliminates the need to memorize these charts. Instead, we give you a simple formula to determine your Hand Strength. Then, based on your Hand Strength rating and some easily learned betting rules, you can play your hand optimally preflop.
This is a really easy to use FREE program that will take alot of the guesswork out of figuring handstrength. While it could be used for online play (Holdem Genius is ideally suited for that), Poker Stoveis better suited for research and “what if” scenarios. You may be surprised to find out how strong some of those suited connectors are compared to AJ offsuit, for instance.
This is an online poker tool that is very helpful, especially for Limit Holdem games. You can download Holdem Genius for FREE. In order to get a license/key and run the application, you will need to open an account with one of the online poker sites that Holdem Genius promotes. Once you have established an account with one of these sites, however, you can use Holdem Genius at any of the online poker sites that the program supports, and that includes virtually all of the major sites. We use this program all the time for Limit Holdem games, and it WORKS! You know, some of the links and recommendations we post here make us money when you click/buy. This one doesn’t. In fact, this link costs us money, truth be told. Nevermind that, you need to visit this site and download this program.
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