Bluffing – for the “layman”, it’s probably one of the first words that pop into their heads when they hear about poker. And in a certain way, they’re right to make that association.

See, bluffing is an essential tool to overrealise your equity in poker.

“Overrealising equity” is just a posh way of saying ‘win the pot more often with your hand than it would win if it went to showdown each hand’.

The Twitch Poker Twitter account recently shared this video of a player, “Cwien”, live on stream folding pocket Aces before the flop, when it is impossible that anyone has a better hand than you.

Why you should sometimes fold AA pre-flop by @CwienPoker 😂 pic.twitter.com/hlNl4qcIlX

— TwitchPoker (@TwitchPoker) April 5, 2018

In the footage, Cwien comments that “we made the right fold” since after the board is dealt he learns that he would have lost to a King-high straight. But we all know poker doesn’t work like that.

A fold doesn’t become “right” or “wrong” based on whether you won or lost a single pot.

A sample size of one hand is not enough if you want to be profitable over the course of thousands and thousands of hands.

But is there any time when folding the best possible hand pre-flop is actually the right move?

Poker, after hundreds of years of being played around the globe, is still changing.

The game is constantly evolving, whether it be the advancement of strategy, new game types emerging – think of short-deck hold’em, the latest fad among high stakes pros – or changes to tournament structures.

The focus of this article is going to be the last of these categories, more specifically the button ante.

If you choose to put most of the volume of your play into tournaments instead of cash games be prepared that you’re going to have a lot more variables on your mind than at the cash tables.

Because of that, the way you should play your hand can vary drastically even within the same tournament – there may be a case where Q7 off-suit is a clear shove pre-flop, while pocket tens are an obvious fold.

This is based on a number of things – payout structure, your and your opponents’ stack sizes, and many other variables.

This a whole new set of calculations.

While cash game players only need to worry about EV (expected value), tournament players need to have ICM (independent chip model) constantly on their minds as well.

Therefore, tournament poker is an objectively more complex game than cash game poker since EV calculations are still at play for each decision but on top of that comes the ICM factor.

In this post, we’re going to look at how you can cash in more poker tournaments and the knock-on effect this can have with your overall profitability.

Recently a new trend has swept across all of the major sites – knockout tournaments.

This fresh format puts a bounty on the head of all players, so if you knock them out you get that money instantly credited to your account. The more people you knock out, the more money you accumulate.

With this new trend comes a whole new set of variables to think about.

You need to adapt traditional strategy to accommodate this change of perspective because really, the game has changed. Let’s take a look at the main types of tournament.

We’ve all had the struggle of thinking of the best way to play small pairs in no-limit hold’em.

They can be difficult pre-flop and post-flop and leave us in some tricky spots.

We’ve also all scooped some pretty great pots with our pocket pairs, but more often than not they’ll lose us money.

So what’s the trick? How should we be playing them?

It’s no surprise that you want to learn how to win at poker.

Poker is a great game – it’s fun to watch, read about, study and most fun to play.

Whether it’s with friends casually or for serious money almost everybody has played a few hands in their lifetime and realised the excitement of poker.

Stu Ungar, three-time winner of the World Series of Poker, once said “show me a good loser, and I’ll show you a loser”

There comes a point for everyone where you want to turn a corner, take it more seriously and become a winning poker player.

There’s a big difference between winning once or twice and winning consistently for a long period of time.

There’s different motivations for everyone, some people just want to make money and others want to prove they’re the best.

Whatever the driving force is you’ve made the conscious decision to get better. It’s time for you to learn how to win at poker.

Online poker has taken the game to the next level.

The sheer number of hands you can play has let people experience all the different situations available.

This experience has translated into big profits for some players and allowed them to excel and crush the games.

Everyone is improving more quickly and coaching/training sites have added to the trend. 

As the industry has expanded, the tools available to assist you have become more varied.

These tools have let people take their game up a notch; allowing them to make better decisions and put in more volume.

The software is made to increase your win rate and help make more money for you.

Online poker has (almost) always been more anonymous, with a much greater focus on the maths behind the decisions.

Tracking software and HUDs let you track every opponent’s ways of playing and therefore allows you an insight into their thought processes.

This makes the game much more real, and brings back the person vs person element.

It also means you can profitably play multiple tables at once, as it’s not essential that you monitor the way every single player is playing.