Tom Leonard

If there was one, single word of advice I could offer regarding bluffing the short stack, it would be… don’t!

Back in the day when I was a regular member of a dedicated group of players that got together every Friday night to play our cherished game, we all got to know each other’s moves pretty well. We would all laugh and immediately fold when Mr. Rock, who never stepped out of line, would come out swinging after the flop.

I believe poker players would be in consensus if asked to vote on what the most egregious error beginning or intermediate players make. Would you not agree their answer would be playing too many hands?
 

I’ve written before about my pet peeves while trying to enjoy our wonderful game of poker. Today, I’m calling out the offenders of my favorite peeves and calling them pinheads. In no particular order allow me to offer up what I believe to be the five most egregious, teeth grinding rituals of rudeness and boorish behavior that are regularly perpetrated by the pinheads of poker upon all of us who aren’t pinheads. See if you agree with my list. Caution, if you do not agree, you may be a pinhead.

Staying grounded and emotionally composed is a winning formula in poker but may well be easier said than done for some players. As we've all witnessed, some players have the propensity to run off the rails into tilt mode quite easily, while others are emotionally grounded and can remain stoic in the face of adversity.

"Oh, no's" happen all the time in poker but I bet you didn't need me to tell you that. How we deal with them will many times determine if we book a winning session or not.

Have you ever noticed in live games some players muck their hands very quickly? This phenomenon is normally the result of one of two factors... first, some players, believing they are beaten, just do not wish to show their hands. Second, if a failed bluff is being called, they are embarrassed to have their hand revealed so they immediately toss it into the muck.

I've been penning the column Improving Performance for Poker Player Newspaper for six years and sometimes I wonder if I will run out of ideas for the next installment. To prevent that, I developed a habit of scribbling down stray ideas whenever they hit me and developing them into a column when I sit down at the word processor. Recently I was rummaging through several scraps of paper with ideas that never developed into columns. At least not until now ... today's effort will be a potpourri of quick tips that I hope you will find to be thought provoking. OK ... here we go.

Texas hold 'em poker is similar to many games in the sense that the basic rules and procedures governing its play are fairly simple to learn. This enables neophytes to be able to actually play the game quickly. I said, "quickly"... not well.

Pocket aces are certainly a thing of beauty to behold but more frequently you will be holding one ace and hoping to connect with one on the board to make top pair. That's the type hand we will explore today... top pair, an ace in your hand and one on the flop.