What hands should you play
When playing poker, your starting hands are very important, but when to play them is even more important.
In the last year, I’ve read a small amount of poker books and pokersites to get my game better.
Especially the sections with starting hands interested me. After trying different methods from different players or sites, some successful, some not.
But by time I started out using a combination of a few charts, matching my playing style.

Hands I play in every position
Pocket pair: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 1010, 99
Suited cards: AK, AQ, AJ, A10, KQ, KJ, K10, QJ, Q10, J10
Unsuited: AK, AQ, AJ, KQ
With these hands, you should raise whenever you’re n middle or late position. If on the blinds, only raise whenever you’ll have a pocket pair or suited AK or AQ. Remember, you’re first to bet in the next draw so a weak hand isn’t good to bet on the blind.

Middle position
Pocket pairs: 88, 77, 66
Suited: A9 to A6, K9, Q9, J9, J8
Unsuited: A10, K10, QJ, Q10, J10

When you’re holding these cards, you have gained a little info about your opponents in front of you and depending on what they’re doing, you could call or raise. Remember there are still people behind you on the table and most of the times you still need to hit a card to win the hand. So don’t bet to much unless you have a good feeling about the table.

Late postion

Pocket pairs: 55 to 22
Suited: A5 to A2, K8 to K2, J7, 107, 98, 97, 87, 86, 76, 75, 65, 54
Unsuited: A9, A8, A3, A2, K9, Q9, J9, J8, 109, 108, 98, 97, 87

These hands aren’t hands to raise, just call to get to see the flop for as cheap as possible. Maybe you’ll hit a monster.
Also if a player in front of you raises big before the flop, throw your hands away, only call small raises.

Other hands
The hands I didn’t mentioned are practically unplayable, you should only play them on the blinds and hope you’ll flop a monster that will turn the tables in your favor.

If you play poker and watch a poker game on TV from time to time, you probably already know Phil Ivey, a Pro Team member at Full Tilt.
If you’re like me and also listen to what the players on these shows have to say, you can hear that most of them have the upmost respect and fear for Phil Ivey with statements like: “I’ll play anyone, except Phil Ivey” or “You can choose anybody in the world to team up with, except Phil Ivey”.
Every other Pro seems to be afraid if Phil Ivey joins the table.

What makes him so feared? Is it that he reads hands like the best? Or that you can’t put a tell on him? Or the way he rolls his eyes searching for information on the table?
Probably it’s this combination that makes him the most feared player in the world and he has a record to prove it.

In the WSOP he made 35 money finishes so far and won 7 Bracelets. He’s also the youngest player ever to win 7 bracelets.
In this year’s WSOP Main Event, he played one of his best Poker ever and earned himself a place in the November Nine where he finished 7th, earning $1,404,014.
Besides the WSOP tournaments he also plays games in the WPT and EPT which made him a stunning $12,000,000 so far.
Makes me wonder what his winnings are with regular cash games?

A special hand I recall that shows Phil Ivey is also human like the rest of us, is a play during this year’s WSOP main event where he’s folding a winning hand.
He’s holding pocket 8’s and after the river card was drawn he made a flush. Smith (his opponent) checked as did Phil Ivey. Smith showed his pair of Aces that he made on the river.
But Phil Ivey who always tries to look at his cards only once and very quick, made a mistake. He probably was thinking he had the 8 of diamonds and of clubs. Instead he had had the 8 of spades and a Flush on the river. After he saw Smith’s Ace, he mucked his cards without even looking at them again. (See video for the play).

Whenever I see Phil Ivey play, I try to learn how he’s playing, what hands he plays and how he’s playing them. If anybody can teach you to play poker it’s Phil Ivey.
You can also learn from him if you follow the lessons on Full Tilt

Joe Cada, is this year’s Main Event winner of the World Series Of Poker. By winning he also broke last year’s winner Peter Eastgate (22) record for the Youngest WSOP Winner ever with his 21 years.
Together with the $8.547.042 prize money he won his very first Bracelet.
In the 3 hours heads-up session against Darvin Moon he proved to be the better one. He had a big advantage at the start with his 135.950.000 chips against Moon’s 58.850.000 chips but it proved to be a tight game.
The last and winning hand #364:
Cada: 9s9c
Moon: QdJd
Cada raises pre-flop to 3 million from the button, Moon think’s about the bet and re-raises to 8 million chips. Cada looks at his cards 2 times and decides to go All-In. Moon does the same and call’s the All-in risking his tournament.
The crowd is going wild. Dealer flops: 8c 2c 7s. Cada is still in the lead and only 2 cards away from WSOP 2009 victory.
On the Turn the dealer draw’s a Kh, still no help for Moon who senses his tournament is over with only 6 outs left.
When the dealer turns a 7c on the River, the crowd is ecstatic. Moon congratulates Cada with his winning and takes home the $5.182.928. 2nd prize price money. Not bad for a logger from the state of Maryland. Moon said that he initially was thinking about cashing his Main Event seat which he had won. A good thing he didn’t

Cada self is a young professional poker player who quit school to play pro. His parents were against his decision, but after they saw how good their son was at it, they came back on their decision and gave him their full support.
Cada made the good choice and is living the dream.

To end up the post, the full result of the final table.
1 $ 8,547,042 Joe Cada
2 $ 5,182,928 Darvin Moon
3 $ 3,479,670 Antoine Saout
4 $ 2,502,890 Eric Buchman
5 $ 1,953,452 Jeff Shulman
6 $ 1,587,160 Steven Begleiter
7 $ 1,404,014 Phil Ivey
8 $ 1,300,231 Kevin Schaffel
9 $ 1,263,602 James Akenhead

Congratulations Joe!!!

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Till now, I mostly played freeroll tournaments to get my bankroll up. By almost reaching the $100 it’s time to stop playing freeroll’s and start making some cash.

In the time I started playing poker, I did experiment with cash games before, but overall it didn’t go well. I still was too much focused on playing tournaments.
A big mistake I made was that I didn’t make a bet or a raise when it was needed. For example, I’m holding pocket 8’s and the flop was Q J 8. Instead of making a bet here I just checked hoping somebody would make a bet so I could re-raise. But nobody did just that, so they all got a free run to the next card, a King. Not a good flop for me, with 4 other players in the game. Someone certainly has an Ace and will make a straight if the 10 flops. Or one has a 10 or 9 and also will make a straight if their needed card hits. So in a desperate attempt scaring them of I made a bet, 4 times the big blind. 2 players called and I could only hope the board will pair or no Ace or 10 will show up. And as expected a 10 was drawn on the river And I got forced to fold my set when the first player made a bet and was re-raised by the other player. They both had the straight to the Ace.
Ok, I made a very good laydown here, but it wasn’t hard at all to fold it as it was pretty obvious I was beaten. If I only made a good bet after the flop, maybe they folded already then?

I can name a few other hands like this that I played wrong in a cash game that would not harm me that much in a tournament. When playing in a tournament, you can make up for this loss, but in a cash game it’s actually real money that I was losing and we don’t like that do we?

So after a few misplayed games I decided to focus myself back on tournaments to get my bankroll up.
And although it took some time, I can say I did pretty good so far.
When I started out in February with $0 it took me a couple of games to win my first money. $2 to be exactly. A freeroll on Full Tilt set me on my way to success  
5 days later I again ended up in the money and with a few cash games in between I Managed to end the month with $4,73 on my bankroll.
March was awesome, I made it to my first Final Table, but got a bit too excited and tried to win the pot with deuce seven This immediately ended my final table experience.
Not too worried about that, the day after I made it to the Final table a 2nd time. This time I ended on the 4th place.
10 days later I did exactly the same, finished 4th again.

In April I started out playing on PokerStars also where I won my biggest tournament cash so far, $24 in a $500 freeroll. But this money was needed to deal with the losses I made in cash games. With a few other good tournament results, I almost made it to the $50 that month.
May was the best month so far with 13 money finishes in freeroll tournaments. I got my first real top 3 finish when I ended 2nd and on the last day of the month I won my first tournament with AK.
In June I took a well deserved holiday near Venice, Italy so I didn’t play that much. In July and August I enjoyed the nice weather here in Belgium so I didn’t play much. And in September I started out playing freeroll tournaments on PokerStars where the Pokerchamp of Flanders will be decided. Closest I got in the weekly final was a 7th place, just 2 places away from advancing to the live regional finals. But I did manage to qualify myself 4 weeks in a row for the weekly final.

So with the bit more experience I gained in the last couple of months, I tried to play some cash games again and so far with good results. Biggest win I had was in a $0,02/$0,05 cash game where I bought myself in for $2 and cashed out with $3,9. Best win was when my KK won over QQ and 66.
In the few cash games I played now, I certainly can see that my game evolved compared to how I was playing before in cash games.
So the plan for the next month is to play more cash games and less freeroll tournaments.
Now let’s play some poker!!!