Love to Grind?

I would now like to announce a project that I have been working on for quite some time in connection with Poker Pro Europe and Online Poker Pro magazines that I currently write for. This is “Project Poker Pro” or in other words, a coaching program that is designed by me to try and bring as many players as possible into being winning poker players using the very same system that I use and have used for many years…….a system that I affectionately call “The Sniper”.

Hopefully some of the students will be so successful that they become fully fledged poker pros’ and the ones that do well will be featured in either of these two widespread and widely read poker magazines. There will be an initial sign-up fee and that is both for my time and for access to the Sniper program and course lessons. Also I am available 24/7 to answer questions on the course and also to provide back up for any poker related questions full stop.

This in my opinion makes the sign-up fee almost irrelevant as I wish that I would have had the advantage of working with a professional poker player years ago back in 2000-2002 instead of buying countless books and going down numerous blind alleys. So the initial sign up to come on board with Project Poker Pro gets you access to the program and being able to work with me, access to the 130k word Sniper documents which will give you the entire blueprint for no limit hold’em cash games including my unique FERN system.

Also the student gets 24/7 back up while all the time being coached to a level where I will then stake them when the correct stage is reached. The staking will go up to a maximum of $2000 for the players that show the most maturity and the most talent. However these two requirements are not just what I am looking for. I am looking for commitment and the desire to not only play poker but to immerse yourself within the game totally.

These are the types of players that I want to work with and we then enter a new phase where players are playing on my money and I get a percentage split of the winnings. So you can see that I have total confidence in my methods and system and I am prepared to put my money where my mouth is and who can argue with that? However I only have so much time in any one day and I work on my own and so I cannot take on loads of students at any one time.

So now can you see that I am looking for people to be committed into not just playing poker but also studying and wanting to better themselves as players? I also understand that many peoples’ lives simply do not allow for such things and so anyone that merely wants to purchase Sniper and the coaching but without wanting the commitment of the staking afterwards then I am cool with that.

It is a totally flexible operation but if I am going to tie up $2000 of my money in somebody then that somebody needs to be playing poker with that money and for at least 15 hours per week. That should be plain to understand but anyone that wants further details then simply e-mail me at deano1043@yahoo.co.ukdeano1043@yahoo.co.uk in the first instance to express an interest in either the Sniper professional poker system and or the combined system/coaching and staking on Project Poker Pro. Look forward to hearing from you.

Carl "The Dean" Sampson is a professional poker player at 888.com

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I was having a discussion with someone yesterday about the profitability of online poker games. I started playing full time in 2002 and I have steadily reduced my stake levels over the years as on a level by level basis the games became far tougher.

These days I play NL100 on fairly easy sites like 888poker and that is fine by me to be honest. I also play full ring where I think the average line up is softer than in a comparable six max. However I do feel that mistakes are punished more these days than they used to be. The game itself is much less forgiving and you simply don't get enough opportunities to win the money back what you lose.

So discipline is massive now but a few days ago I spewed $300 in a fashion that left me somewhat bemused. I hadn't done this sort of thing for ages and so it disturbed me to think that I was actually capable of this sort of behaviour. I pride myself on acting professionally but it just rammed it home to me that we never ever stop this battle with ourselves. I always think that the biggest battle is with what we have between our two ears.

So I am taking a few days off away from the games and coming back on 1st Nov after reflecting on where I am at this moment in time. There are still good profits to be made at the lower levels but you need discipline at all times and not just 99% of the time in a game like deep stack NLHE.

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There are many hands in no limit Texas hold’em that can be defined as trouble hands for all sorts of reasons. In his great book “SuperSystem” the great Doyle Brunson once remarked on how hands like K-J and A-10 were “trouble” hands. Well it really all depends on how you play them I suppose but it is certainly true that they have to be played carefully. For example if a middle position player makes it 3.5bb to go and you have the Ac-10c on the button then you have a clear call even though your hand may be dominated.

If you flop an ace then it overtakes all hands like KK-JJ and you can easily get away from dominated situations if you are careful enough. It is often said that dominated Broadway hands are trouble hands but any hand can be a trouble hand if you play it badly enough. For example imagine a hand like A-A played at NL100 ring on Full Tilt Poker in the hands of a novice with a 200bb stack. They make it 3.5bb and get two callers both of which have position on them. There are now 12bb in the pot and the flop comes K-10-4 rainbow our hero makes a c-bet of 9bb and the first caller makes it 27bb with the next player folding.

Our hero calls because he has aces and now the pot is 66bb. The turn card comes and is the 5d and our hero checks. His opponent bets 35bb and now for the first time our hero is feeling a little less comfortable. However he still cannot let go of the aces just yet and so makes a call thus pumping the pot to 136bb. Any experienced player would already be feeling that their aces were beaten. You need to remember that a solid player will already know that you must have a decent hand to raise from position.

So this means that they can read your hand a lot easier than you can read theirs. This is the underlying problem with playing hands out of position. You can never know with certainty or enough certainty that your hand is losing. At least when you have position then you are in a better spot to know this because you will already have seen your opponent check or bet or even check-raise. There is a line that I often use to good effect that highlights even more when your opponent has a good hand.

This is called the delayed c-bet and is simply what the name implies, a c-bet that is made on the turn instead of the flop. This works well when your opponent has nothing and will be suspicious of your check. It also works well when you have almost no equity on the flop. For example if you raise a limper with the 10c-9c and the flop comes Kh-4s-3d then you have very poor equity. So you may decide to check and if the turn card comes and is the 8c and your opponent checks again then your fold equity has increased alarmingly.

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In poker then there is a reality that dictates that you are either ahead or behind your opponent at any one given time. If the flop is 10c-8d-2h and you have Ac-9c and your opponent has Ad-3d then you are ahead……if they have Qc-10d then you are behind.

Taking away the rare times when you are tied with your opponent then you are other ahead or behind. If you are ahead of your opponent then you need to assess how far ahead you are. This is relevant because it helps us to establish on whether or not we can bet or raise for value. For example if we have say 10c-10d on a 10h-4s-2d board then we are certain to be ahead……however the question is “can we bet for value”? For a bet to be a value bet then we have to be called or raised by a hand that is worse than ours.

If there is no chance of this happening then you are not value betting but simply betting and if you are betting without a good reason then you are betting badly. So most of the time with very powerful hands then we should be checking to induce optimal value on either the turn or the river if there is no chance of us extracting it on the flop. However this boils down to us betting for value because either correctly or incorrectly then we deduced that we had the best hand.

If we deduce that we don’t have the best hand then we are either betting or raising as a bluff. However bluffing is the flip side to betting for value because if there is very little chance in our bluff working then we really shouldn’t be bluffing. You are only betting as a bluff if there is some chance that a superior hand will fold (or inferior hands fold that could have bluff raised back) in the same way that you are only betting for value when weaker hands can call or raise.

So it pays to remember in poker that there are only two reasons to initially place money into the pot and they are because you are value betting or bluffing and all of this is based on whether or not you are ahead or behind in the hand and by how much. Thats it for now and I will be playing another session this evening mainly NL50 cash at www.888poker.com

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Comments (6)

Its been a while since I posted my last blog entry and so have to apologise for that. Been busy grinding the NL50 levels on Stars and I seem to have found my optimal earning level. I can only describe my game as "automated" for want of a better description.


Many people would say "ABC" but that is just another way to say the same thing. Over the years I have practiced my ABC to should a level that it is almost as automatic as basic strategy in blackjack. I know that I will never be a mid-stakes player playing this way but I am doing well at my level and multi-tabling isn't harming me because I am not watching the players closely enough.


I use a HUD but only in a basic way and look at VPIP, PFR and 3/bet stats which are crucial around the blinds. But also in full ring then the tendency is for players to be more risk averse. I went through a bad run of results in the summer where my earn rate dropped over a 100k period. Luckily someone who I trust analysed my game and I was opening my ranges too much.

I just don't think that full ring allows you to do that but back on track now. I am also playing at better times of the day as well on www.pokerstars.co.uk while before I was playing in the day so that I had more of a social life......the choice had to be made.....either man up and play in the evenings and around midnight or pack it in.

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One of the biggest leaks (perhaps the biggest) in losing and break even poker players cash games is having a poor non-showdown win total. Most decent online grinders do well at showdown because they usually have a playable hand. However it is the non-showdown winnings that often cause the problem and this highlights what has become known as the “red line”. This is the line in PokerTracker and Holdem Manager software that shows us how much money we are winning without going to a showdown.

As you play tougher opponents then your showdown winnings will decrease simply because better players will pay you off less when you have big hands and they will usually have big hands themselves when they stack off. This is why many players struggle to make money when they play higher levels. This is because their non-showdown winnings are wiping away their showdown winnings and so profits are not amassing.

There is really one big fundamental problem with why players have poor non-showdown winnings and it is basically because of placing money into the pot and then folding……it is that simple. If you win the showdown then you are not affected and if you fold pre-flop then you are not affected. So the lesson is clear and it is that when you decide to play a hand then you either want a lot of players to give you implied odds or you want to isolate and play the hand aggressively.

If you play better hands pre-flop and select hands with better equity then your non-showdown winnings will escalate and you will become a winning player. In full ring games for example then you really do not want to be playing poor hands because you will simply place yourself into too many tough spots post flop. Situations where you either have to run through multi-street bluffs or weakly give up is not very strong poker.

There are other areas as well in which we can improve our game but we need to start thinking about playing post flop when we play pre-flop. Unless you are receiving very good implied odds then you ideally should be looking to either fold more hands instead of limping or isolating against a single player. This alone will do wonders for your non-showdown winnings because you will be folding more of your junk, playing tighter and more playable ranges and getting yourself into fewer tricky spots post flop.

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