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As 2020 has gotten underway, it’s time to look ahead to another year on the poker calendar. It’s set to be another interesting year as far as poker online, as online casinos are under scrutiny, but as far as the live poker scene goes, it appears this year will be one of continued growth.
In any event, once we get to December, 12 months from now, which poker player will we say had the best year? This list, in no particular order, takes a look at who we might expect to crush it in the poker world in 2020.
It’s “always” Stephen Chidwick’s year, and 2020 will almost certainly be no different.
Considered by many of his high-stakes peers as the best tournament poker player in the world, Chidwick added to his resume with another outstanding year in 2019. The English crusher posted six wins over the course of the year, finishing third on the 2019 money list (according to Hendon Mob) with $13,146,265 in earnings.
Photo Courtesy Poker Central
Chidwick finished fifth in the Global Poker Index 2019 Player of the Year race, took down a pair of wins at the 2019 U.S. Poker Open, and added his first career WSOP bracelet to the resume in Las Vegas over the summer.
It’s probably a pretty safe bet that Chidwick will end 2020 with another unbelievable record of tournament results.
The man who topped the 2019 GPI Player of the Year rankings, for the second straight year, was Alex Foxen.
Foxen and Chidwick spent 2019 going back and forth trading places as No. 1 and No. 2 on the overall GPI rankings. Foxen ended the year in the No. 1 spot, regaining that ranking after a string of final table appearances at the World Poker Tour Five Diamond Classic at the Bellagio in December.
Foxen put the finishing touches on another exceptional year with a win in the $10,000 main event of the Five Diamond, adding $1,694,995 to a career earnings total that now sits at over $15 million, and he’s already started off 2020 strong with a third place finish in the $10K partypoker MILLIONS UK event in Nottingham.
You’ll have to tune in to Andrew Neeme’s poker vlog to get some insight on how he’s actually faring at the poker table; there are always ups and downs for cash game grinders. Neeme’s YouTube exploits, however, are flourishing, with Neeme ending 2019 at over 130,000 subscribers, and counting.
READ MORE: Interview with Andrew Neeme
Neeme, as well as Brad Owen, make this list for their places in the 2020 poker world in general. These guys have really built an important brand in the Meet Up Games, with huge numbers of poker players showing up wherever the MUGs are scheduled.
The success of the MUGs are an indication that live poker in the U.S. is alive and well, and Neeme and Owen are two of the most important figures in poker because of it.
— Poker MUGs (@Poker_MUGs) January 3, 2020
For the same reasons listed above for Andrew Neeme, Brad Owen will continue to be a vital figure in the poker industry in 2020.
I don’t say this often enough: Support @TheBradOwen‘s poker vlog work!
That is all.
(His vids speak for themselves, and they’re great! 😃)https://t.co/wt8KkLJAl3
— Robbie Strazynski (@cardplayerlife) January 11, 2020
Owen’s YouTube channel is over the 165,000 subscribers mark as of this writing, and that following has translated to big success with the Meet Up Games series. The MUGs ventured into new territories in 2019, including Deadwood, South Dakota, and every event in the series packs the poker rooms, the waiting lists, and whatever properties are on the schedule.
The MUGs will hit London at Aspers, Casino, later this month, and there’s no reason to think 2020 won’t be an even bigger year for Owen, Neeme and their Meet Up Games brand.
Members of the Upswing Poker lab know exactly who Fried Meulders is, as the Belgian cash-game crusher is one of key members of the Upswing coaching staff.
The man known as mynameiskarl on PokerStars is also well-known and respected among the 500NL Zoom pool, where he has resided as one of the best online poker players in the world for years. Meulders might be a bit under the radar for the rest of the world, however.
Meulders is the creator of what’s currently one of the best poker strategy YouTube channels in the world. If you’re into high-level (and highly entertaining) poker strategy content, Meulders’ channel is must-see.
He’s already one of the very best 500NL Zoom players on the planet, as well as a world-class poker coach. Perhaps 2020 is the year that Meulders’ YouTube channel blows up as well.
It takes a while just to scroll through all of Danny Tang’s 2019 cashes when you look him up on Hendon Mob.
Tang took down the GPI Asia Player of the Year award thanks to 37 total cashes and earnings of more than $6 million for the year. Tang enters 2020 as the No. 14-ranked player in the overall GPI, and his 2019 included five wins, two seven-figure finishes and a $944,789 payday for a second-place finish in the €100,000 Super High Roller event at EPT Barcelona.
A force to be reckoned with in both traditional and short deck hold’em, Tang has established himself as one of the world’s finest, and that trend should continue in the next year.
If anyone deserves to have a great year in 2020, it’s Veronica Brill.
Brill’s actions led to the exposure of a cheating scandal that was unfortunately one of poker’s biggest stories in 2019. Brill was a first-hand witness to an ongoing pattern of strange play, and unfathomable win rates, from the individual at the center of that scandal.
This was the last show I did commentary on for Stones Live Poker. A lot of what @Mike_Postle was doing didn’t make sense. It was after this show i decided that i wanted to take it to the MF streets.
This clip shows how confused I was by his play
https://t.co/fTJ9gyZlod— Veronica 2.0 (@Angry_Polak) October 4, 2019
That story is still unfolding as 2020 begins, but perhaps it never comes to light in the first place without Brill’s gutsy decision to say something publicly about what she was seeing. If karma is a real thing, 2020 will be big year for Brill.
Imsirovic was the GPI Breakout Player of the Year for 2018 and he followed up with another fantastic year in 2019. Imsirovic finished No. 10 in both the GPI Player of the Year race, as well the overall GPI rankings at the end of 2019.
3rd for £112,000! Was a fun run 🙂
Now time to eat some ramen & go run hot in the next 25k 🔥🔥— Ali (@aliImsirovic)
He bookended 2019 with major wins, beginning the year by taking down the U.S. Poker Open’s $25,000 No Limit Hold’em event for $442,500 in January, and finishing with a victory in the $50,000 Bellagio High Roller at the WPT Five Diamond Classic in December, a $600,000 payday.
Imsirovic has established himself as a world-class player at the highest of stakes, and there’s no limit (pun intended) to what the young superstar can accomplish in 2020.
For the third consecutive time, Kristen Bicknell earned GPI Female Player of the Year honors in 2019.
The partypoker pro finished the year as the No. 16 ranked player in the overall GPI rankings, and Bicknell’s 2019 included three wins and more than $2.4 million in earnings. One of those wins came at the Poker Masters, which saw Bicknell take down the $25,000 No Limit Hold’em event for a $408,000 payday.
Photo Courtesy partypoker
Bicknell has also already started off 2020 on the right foot, with a 13th place finish in the $10K partypoker MILLIONS UK event in Nottingham, and there’s no reason to think she’ll slow down over the next 12 months.
The year 2020 will almost certainly be a good one for Bryn Kenney, even if he decides not to play in a single poker tournament.
Kenney has risen to the top of the all-time tournament earnings list, where he sits with more than $56 million in career winnings as 2020 begins. He made the giant leap to the top with $30,321,414 in earnings in just 2019 alone, the highest one-year total of all time, with much of that total due to a second-place finish at the Triton Million for Charity event, netting him $20,563,324.
Last year marked the second time Kenney topped the annual earnings list, as he accomplished the feat in 2017 as well. Kenney’s record-setting 2019 also included three other seven-figure finishes, and it’s probably safe to say the outlook on 2020 is looking quite rosy, indeed.
The ascension of @BrynKenney on the All-Time Money List per @TheHendonMob:
May 2007: 7,523rd
June 2008: 4,783rd
July 2010: 1,033rd
Jan 2011: 450th
Jan 2012: 333rd
June 2014: 189th
May 2015: 90th
Feb 2016: 49th
Jan 2017: 20th
Jan 2018: 10th
May 2019: 4th
Aug 3rd 2019: 1st— Remko Rinkema (@RemkoRinkema) August 3, 2019
When I first started playing poker, it wasn’t that big of a deal playing as a girl. Something I hardly paid much attention. Now I’m conscious of being a female almost always.
What changed?
The biggest difference was that I rose up in stakes.
I expect to see at least one woman at a $1/$2 table. At a $2/$5 game? Not so much.
And even though I’m a poker writer — author of the book A Girl’s Guide to Poker and head quizmaster at amandapoker.com — I’m not some zillionaire poker star with several WSOP bracelets. Having previously worked as a research associate, I’m better at aggregating data than I am at holding a poker face. Figures.
So usually I’m one of the only mid-stakes female players I see.
Anecdotally speaking, most female poker players tend to be very bad or very good. This is because there are fewer opportunities for women to learn Texas Hold ‘Em casually, so women tend to either be highly studied or learning the hard way. It’s rare to see a woman at a poker table. It’s even rarer to see one playing well (who isn’t already a pro).
This doesn’t apply to $5/$10 tables by the way, where there indeed are a noticeable amount of skilled recreational players. It’s the $2/$5, $3/$5, $5/$5 levels that I liken to the “dead zone,” where women are either fish or sharks.
So I definitely stick out more than I did playing lower stakes. And there’s also subtext: you’re playing $5/$5? you must really think you know what you’re doing.
When I began my poker journey, I started at pretty unique stakes: $1/$3 with a $100 – $500 buy-in at the MGM Casino in Maryland. There was no lower-stakes game. This $500 max was entry level. Needless to say it attracted all skill types from rookies to pros, given the cap, so no one assumed you thought you were hot stuff just by sitting down. Now that I play elsewhere at games $300+ minimum buy-in, I sense a hidden, “Just who do you think you are, young lady?” vibe.
Partially this is my fault.
As I gained more knowledge and experience, I began to play differently. I “checked” without speaking. I mucked my cards right. I riffled my chips, creating that shuffle-shuffle sound between my bright-polished fingers. Chip towers. Hoodies. Lingo. Three-bets. Everything about me now screamed it wasn’t my first rodeo, and I believe that made me a target. Goading men into a battle of the sexes, if you will. Now I was a threat. Now I was one of them.
Before, I was rather silly. A goofy little girl who couldn’t even hold her cards right, let alone know what the dealer means when asking, “wait or post?” I didn’t seem like I knew what I was doing because I honestly didn’t.
Sometimes I consider going back to the persona of a rookie, but the fact that I have a book title out blows my cover. (Get it? Book title? Cover? There’s gotta be a joke there! 🙂 ) It’s hard to pretend you don’t know how to play poker when you really did write a book on it!
One last comment on moving up in stakes: there isn’t the same camaraderie. People are on the hunt, either to win financially or even just competitively. As chip values get bigger, egos do, too. You’re playing against a lot of aggressive businessmen who want to dominate in all areas of life. Including you.
Playing poker at a $1/$2 table almost has a sense of “us against the world.” Which, to be fair, is kind of true — you are all playing against the house. Your main opponent at low stakes in a casino setting is and will always be the rake. There’s a chapter in my book where I explain rake by asking this question: If you and 10 friends each take $200 to play poker, how much will you have left after 12 hours? The answer is zero. Zero dollars. You will each have nothing left because all of it went to the rake. Your night out cost two grand. And you thought bars were expensive!
Psst… want a breakdown? Here’s a clip from my book:
Grand total is $180 per hour being removed from the game.
Remember you each brought $200. That means your group started with $2,000 total. Ten hours later the casino will have taken $1,800 of your collective money.
Twelve hours later your wallets will be empty.
Pros know this. Many players do not. So when you sit down at an entry level poker table, the vibe has some similarities to craps or blackjack where you’re all trying to beat the house. Usually by winning a jackpot.
I’m not going to say the $2/$5 games are totally cutthroat (they’re not), but they certainly are more serious. Hands move slower, bets are counted more frequently. People are paying attention. Especially to you.
My hope would be for more women to join me at the mid-stakes tables. I’d like a friendlier, cheerier, more upbeat atmosphere where I don’t feel like I’m the only one making conversation (women talk!) And I’d also rather us fight together, as in “us against the world” rather than “us against the house.”
Hope to see you at the $5/$5 tables. I’ll be the one sitting with a backpack decked in glitter.
Playing your first hand of online poker is no different than your first hand at a brick-and-mortar cardroom. You remember the day. You walked through the door and took an empty seat at a table full of other players. You exchanged a few Benjamins for a stack of chips and began playing with the first hand dealt to you.
There are only two small changes with online poker; you’re playing from home and on your computer. That’s it!
Live poker players can be daunted by the idea of the online realm, though. They hear online players like me in my Smart Poker Study Podcast using weird lingo like “poker tracking software”, “negative variance”, “heads-up display”, “VPIP” and “multi-tabling”. It must feel like I’m talking about an entirely different game.
But that’s not the case. Online players like me were simply willing to jump in and take a shot.
The good thing is, you can too because it’s easy to do.
All you need to play online poker is a computer. You don’t even have to deposit money if you don’t trust it just yet. There are loads of “free play” sites like Zynga or Play WSOP that allow you to start your online poker career for free.
Sign up for an account at one of those sites to see if you enjoy online poker at no financial risk.
This quick video shows my own hardware setup at home:
That’s entirely up to you because it’s not necessary for online play. Poker software just helps online players play and study more effectively.
These programs can be difficult and time-consuming to use, but the good news is that you don’t have to pay for any of them because many offer free 30-day trials.
Take poker tracking software for example. You can try out PokerTracker 4 for 30 days then when time’s up, try out Holdem Manager 3 for another 30 days. Each of these have built-in HUDs and equity calculating software, so you can use them for free as well.
This is 60 days of free software use before you have to make a purchase. What a lovely gift for first time online players!
Check out my software setup for online poker:
When I made the switch to online play, I didn’t take the time to do any research and I treated it just like playing in my local cardroom.
I wish I knew that players are better at lower stakes. I incorrectly assumed that a $1/$2 player online had the same skills as a live player at that same stake. I couldn’t have been more wrong! I blew through my first two $600 deposits in just a few days.
What a costly lesson to learn. I had to pick-up loads of serving shifts at the steakhouse to make up for that blunder (I was a server for many years).
You’ll find players at 25nl ($.10/$.25 games with a $25 buy-in) just as good as live $5/$10 players or even higher. I recommend new online players start at either 5nl ($5 buy-in) or 10nl ($10 buy-in) games. It might sound like chump change to you, but you’ve got to learn to walk before you can run. If everyone’s weak and you’re taking their chips left and right, great, move up in stakes. Don’t forget, you’ll be playing many more hands per hour online than live.
The other thing I wish I knew was to follow bankroll rules. I recommend using a 40x buy-in rule for cash games (5nl = $5 buy-in x 40 = $200 bankroll). Use a 100x buy-in rule for tournaments. This will help you avoid “scared money” play and will keep your online career alive for a long time.
So, give online poker a shot. If you play free games, there’s nothing to lose at all. Once you switch to real money, you can play games for stakes as low as $.01/$.02 with a $2 buy-in. If you start your online bankroll with $80, you already have 40 buy-ins at your disposal.
In my next article. I’ll discuss the 3 reasons why every live poker player should play online as well.
For more great coaching, strategies and tips from Sky Matsuhashi, check out his poker training site, The Poker Forge. Here’s our review.
Inside straight draws, or “gutshots” as they’re known among poker players, are probably some of the most misplayed draws in Texas Hold’em. While more experienced players usually know how to handle inside straight draws, those new to the game tend to overvalue them, which costs them a lot of money in the long run.
In this article, I will try to offer three useful tips for playing these draws, which should help you avoid some of the most common mistakes and make more money in the long run. These hands aren’t that hard to play at all as long as you approach them correctly.
The first and the most important tip I can give you about inside straight draws is that you need to know the math behind them. With just four outs to make your hand, you’ll only have about 8% chance to improve by the turn and about 16% to make it by the river (provided you get to see both cards).
Without going into detailed math here, it should be quite clear that 8% isn’t a lot. In other words, when you call a flop bet to try to catch your gutshot, you’ll end up missing 92% of the time.
So, unless you’re facing a very small bet or have a backup plan, relying on the strength of your draw alone usually won’t be enough to warrant a call. I’m not trying to say you should never continue with your inside straight draws, but these hands are weak and need to be treated as such.
That being said, calling your opponent’s bet on the flop is fine because you are doing it not just to hit the draw. You can bluff later on even if unimproved, or your opponent could decide to give up and check on the turn and river where you can easily pick up the pot.
However, if you are up against multiple players or facing aggression on multiple streets, you should toss these hands into the muck without much thought. With some practice, it is not hard to distinguish profitable spots, and you can always train by playing, reading some articles, or taking a poker quiz.
If and when you decide to chase an inside straight draw, you should usually make sure you have a good, clean draw. What I mean by this is that you want to be drawing to the nuts or at least the virtual nuts.
For instance, calling bets to make the lower end of a gutshot straight is rarely a good idea. A bulk of your equity in these scenarios will come from bumping up the action when you get there and that’s very hard to do when there are better hands your opponents could make even if you hit your “gin” card.
For example, if you have 54 on a 782 board, the 6 can give you a straight, but your opponent with T9 could have you drawing dead and hitting that 6 would cost you a lot of money.
A similar idea applies to boards containing a flush draw in addition to your gutshot. In these scenarios, the number of your clean outs is essentially reduced to three as your opponents could have a variety of flush draws on the flop.
So, to summarize, you should stick to playing good draws and avoid the other draws as much as possible. With your odds of making the hand being poor to begin with and with all the reverse implied odds when you make your hand and end up losing, it’s just not worth calling even a single bet most of the time.
When you’re in position and driving the action, inside straight draws are easier to play. You’ll have the benefit of seeing what your opponent does and often win the pot without having to make your hand by simply betting. Out of position, however, gutshot draws are much harder to play.
You’ll usually have to pretty much rely on the strength of your draw alone and, as explained earlier, that’s nothing to get excited about. Unless you have a good reason to believe your opponent is going to fold more often than he should against your c-bet, checking is probably a better option.
As a general rule of thumb, you can check-call once with a naked gutshot straight draw. If you don’t pick up any additional equity on the turn, you should be done with the hand unless your opponent makes a super small bet that gives you the right odds to call.
Every now and then, you can try to check-raise with these draws as well, but I would only suggest doing it if you have some backdoor equity you can pick up on the turn. For this play to work, though, make sure stacks are deep enough so that your opponent has enough room to fold, and you could be barreling on other streets as well.
It is not uncommon for me to dream about poker, but this dream was special. I have no idea why this came into mind as I slept. It was about a great home game we played years ago. It was so vivid and realistic, although it occurred about 60 years ago. Most of the players are no longer alive…
Shortly after moving to Los Angeles, having completed my graduate school education in 1952, my wife, Irene, and I joined a Young Marrieds Group at a local temple. We made great friends with whom we shared many happy – and sad – events along the way, long after we outgrew the Young Marrieds.
Some of our members were much into the game of poker – strictly for recreation. I imagine that nowadays similar friendly home poker game groups could take form online; at least that’s what I’ve read according to usafriendlypokersites.com. Anyhow, our home game poker group had nine regular members. We started playing once a month; before long, it was every Sunday evening. The men, in their 30s and 40s at the time, were all involved in successful careers. It was hosted by Stan and his wife, Margie, in their elegant home, just north of Beverly Hills. Stan was a partner in a growing real estate business that owned several commercial buildings and planning a new high-rise luxury apartment building. His partner, Rob, was also a member of our poker group. At Stan’s house, we played on a large oval-shaped table in an oversized dining room, adjacent to the kitchen. The table easily accommodated all nine players, and we had foldable rolling carts covered with fresh white towels for the food while we played.
Each of us brought food to share. As I recall, there was thin-sliced salami, corned beef, pastrami, and Swiss cheese, rye bread and fresh bagels, and cream cheese. A large tray of tuna salad included sliced tomatoes and cucumber. Apple pie with chocolate ice cream was the dessert – the favorite of one of our members. Sid owned a famous deli in the area. (He was not a very good poker player.) We each donated $10 to our hostess, who hired a maid to help clean up and keep the place tidy.
Among the other members of our poker group was the assistant rabbi at the temple where we originally had met. The big winner most of the time was Leo, a math professor at UCLA. I recall one occasion when we queried him about using the odds, while enjoying a snack before the game began. By the way, that was my introduction to poker skills.
In those days, seven-card stud was the game. (Of course, since then Texas hold’em has become the far more popular poker variant.) Occasionally one or two of our “regulars” were not able to attend. Several of our wives, including mine, were glad to fill in. As it turned out, Irene was one of the best – usually one of the biggest winners. The game broke up about midnight. We all said our farewells, and looked ahead to next Sunday night…
As I lay in bed, smiling about those wonderful memories of long ago, I could not help but think that home poker games may soon grow even more popular – considering the higher rakes the card rooms wish to start taking in California, and the likely impact of new casino regulations being planned by local legislators. Then, I thought, “George, you better get up and start typing this story into your computer.”
Fond memories, indeed…
The myths associated with online poker are so numerous and repeated so frequently that many have actually taken them to be true. However, in reality they give a totally wrong impression of poker play on the Internet. Many of these myths are actually spread by players wanting to blame something external for their online poker losses, not wanting to reflect on their own game.
Just as in sports betting, in poker too you must never start playing without doing some due diligence, and working upon a strategy. For instance, it’s so important to place your sports bets only with reputed betting portals, for instance the ones featured at this Canada sports betting information site. In the same way, you shouldn’t go ahead and sign up with the first online poker site that you find on the Internet. There should be some research going behind the process, depending upon your requirements and style of play. Let’s acquaint you with few such online poker myths and the facts behind them.
Fact:
It isn’t. Many people think that in online poker cards are dealt in a manner that the platform decides the specific hands, causing multiple bad beats for players. However, in reality, every reputed online poker platform uses something called a Random Number Generator (RNG), responsible for completely random dealing of the cards in every single hand. Although there have been instances of poker portals cheating players, they have been too few in number to tarnish the entire industry. Furthermore, poker platforms make ample amounts of money through rake alone that there is no need for them to cheat the players. In fact, they couldn’t even if they wished, owing to the regulatory issues.
Fact:
Online poker rooms don’t care about players enough to go out hunting each one of them down and teaching them a lesson for withdrawing funds that actually belongs to those players only! In addition, there are no financial gains made by poker rooms from anyone who loses money. Hence, it makes no sense for any such poker platform to rig games against the players.
Fact:
Many players consider it ideal for them to be not seen by their opponents, or the horrible condition of their apartments! Hence, they can freely play in any condition that they’re in, as much as they like. Despite the unavailability of physical reads, many players still manage to consistently win money playing poker on the Internet. In fact, here’s the case of Jonathan Little, a poker pro who has made millions of dollars playing Texas Hold Em poker, totally basing it on his poker skills. So, it’s possible!
Reads can be of big help, but the benefits offered by them are nothing compared to the players’ strategy and mathematics. While old school poker players still swear by reading other people’s expressions, many believe that someone not managing to win at online poker just because they can’t see their opponents, must reflect on and improve their game instead.
The New Year is upon us, and this is traditionally the time to make big decisions and important resolutions. Setting your goals is important even if you don’t manage to achieve them all, as it gives you something to work towards.
I’m sure many of you reading this have a long list of things you want to accomplish in 2020. If some items on those lists have to do with poker, it clearly means the game holds an important place in your life. Whether you’re already a hardened professional or poker is a competitive hobby you enjoy, it makes sense that you would want to get better at it.
Of course, this won’t happen overnight, and you have a long journey ahead of you. As such, I’ve decided to come up with the top 3 tips to make 2020 your best year in poker.
This first point may seem rather obvious, but it’s often the hardest one to achieve. If you look back at the past year, you’ll probably realize that you haven’t played nearly as much poker as you wanted (unless it’s your full-time job, of course).
If you want 2020 to be your best poker year yet, you’ll need to give it priority over some other activities. I’m not talking about your job or family, of course, but try to devote more of your free time to playing poker rather than going to movies or watching shows on Netflix.
That being said, if you only stick to playing, you won’t go too far. Often, players forget that the real improvement comes away from the table, so you should devote some time to learning new strategies and fine-tuning your game.
If you mainly play online, you can always spice things up and join a live tournament, or vice versa. This year, you can find plenty of low buy-in events on the WSOP schedule so you can have some fun in Las Vegas even without a huge bankroll.
The best way to get better at something is to have certain goals to aspire to along the way. While your overall goal in 2020 may be to become better at poker, this process will necessarily include a variety of limited-scope goals.
Do yourself a favor and don’t make any of your poker goals tied to money. While money is the measure of success in poker, a year isn’t a very long period in the grand scheme of things, so setting monetary goals could be quite demotivating.
Instead, come up with specific, measurable goals you can control. For example, that you’ll play a certain number of tournaments every week or month. Or, that you’ll spend a certain number of hours every week watching poker videos and learning about new strategies. Maybe you’ll just concentrate on your statistics, and finally reduce your VPIP poker stat that you know is currently too high.
At the end of the day, setting these smaller goals to help keep you going is very important and it gives you the best chance at achieving your greater goal, of improving at poker.
Poker can be very draining both physically and mentally, regardless of how much you love the game. It’s just the nature of the beast. So, if you want to make 2020 your best year in poker yet, I’d suggest you find the poker format you truly enjoy most and stick to it.
If you love playing tournaments, do that and don’t worry about people telling you how cash games are so juicy and you’re missing out. It may well be true from a financial standpoint, but it is much more important for you to be happy and excited about each and every session.
On top of that, if you devote your time and energy to mastering a single format, you will improve much faster and see the results that you like. It does not mean that you can’t enjoy various poker games for fun, but if you want to take it seriously, only one poker variant should be your priority.
So, let 2020 be the year when you truly master the particular poker format you’ve always enjoyed. There’ll be plenty of time to expand your knowledge later, and you may even grow to like cash games or mixed games, after all. But finding your poker groove is very important if you want to achieve success in the long run, so let that be one of your most important poker decisions for 2020!
There are two things that drive me nuts in poker. Excessive tanking, and the fact that professional poker players are paying their own buy-ins while big tournament venues are making money from broadcasting their play and using their names and likenesses. The good news is that I am a legend in my own mind and just cocky enough to believe I can solve both problems.
The aforementioned brilliance has allowed me to solve both problems at once. If we have invite-only events that are broadcast, the company running the tournament will only invite players who will be pleasant, interesting, and good for the broadcast. It’s actually something we have touched on with my own poker tour company where we had an invite-only single table freeroll. It worked well and was a lot more fun than a typical final table.
This idea has also been touched on in some of the invite-only cash games run by a few card rooms around the country as well as PokerGO. Unfortunately, many of these games are simply well-liked locals, people who are friends with the broadcast company, or whoever happens to show up, because they are still paying their own buy-ins. If actors, football players, or ice skaters had to pay rake, then pay taxes, and pay their own transportation and buy-ins, the competition would be miserable and the results would hurt those industries badly.
Like college football players, we are stuck in an industry that is dominated by a small group who has no interest in paying us. It’s not like just anyone can start running poker tournaments. You can start a tour on your own, but good luck finding venues, and when you do, you’ll be beholden to their rules. In many states you couldn’t start a poker room on your own no matter how much money you have.
In most other major competitions, the best competitors have sponsors based on both how well they perform and how likable they are. Golfers, ice skaters, even professional eaters have way more sponsorship dollars rolling in than any poker pro. To the best of my knowledge, the television deal for the World Series of Poker is similar to all but the very largest sports deals. There is no reason why the poker industry shouldn’t take the next step.
So why hasn’t it happened? Because no one has taken that next step. Innovation happens slowly in the poker world. Online, for instance, it took forever for casinos to start adding online poker rooms. The money for the house and the tours is just fine doing things the old (current) way. Why would they want to change the way things work when you have competitors paying you to play, television studios paying to broadcast the event, and a piece of the prize pool paying your dealers and staff?
I think a change will happen soon. The industry has been stagnant for too long. We haven’t seen a major innovation since it became possible to broadcast hole cards in the late 90s. We need a company to start broadcasting sponsored players, and only offering spots to players who act quickly, behave professionally, play well, and generate some interesting conversation at the table. While I hope that is my company, the truth is that we started with virtually no cash and big investors, so it will be years before we are able to break into the industry in a big enough way to make this kind of thing happen on a large scale. But — mark my words — someone will do it soon.
Last year I shared my Christmas wish, namely for tournament poker to hopefully get out of casinos if it is going to grow. Almost any other type of tournament can be held nearly anywhere. Nine-ball, chess, Magic the Gathering, you name it; it can be held in any convention center in America. The buy-ins are taken from the competitors and returned to the winners via a prize pool, just like poker. If any of those games were half as big as poker, the competitors certainly wouldn’t be paying their own buy-ins.
What if there was a professional poker tour that moved across America holding events like the UFC, WWE, or the Nitro Circus does? Something that swept into town, but allowed amateurs to join in on the fun. Something where the pros were entertaining and highly skilled, with their sponsorship deals as an incentive to stay that way. An event where amateurs were there to test their skills by paying their own buy-ins, hoping to do well enough to catch the eye of a corporate sponsor?
As the industry stands now, when a tour rolls into town, it isn’t a spectacle, it’s just an opportunity to play poker. Our satellite system is just a tournament that wins you into a bigger tournament. The PGA, and it’s qualifier system for getting into professional events and on the pro tour, is a good model. This would give amateurs something real to shoot for.
The biggest problem right now is complacency: most poker players are perfectly happy with the current model, and of course we know that businesses are happy with it. Their customers pay to stay in their hotels for the privilege of playing in their tournaments where they pay for the staff, and get no cut of any of the extra business they bring in or the broadcasts that they are part of. Then they buy food and beverages and gamble in the pit and the only people who actually make real money are the CEO and the shareholders.
Unfortunately, this reality means that the poker industry may not see a big change until we see tournament fields get smaller, and that doesn’t seem to be happening. The live poker industry, at least for the owners of the businesses, is still growing. Fields are larger than ever before, prize pools continue to grow, and a business that is fat with cash is rarely innovative. Necessity is the mother of invention, and comfort is it’s enemy.
I don’t have all the answers. Even if I did, I wouldn’t have the financial or industry backing to implement them. But I’m working on it. And I’m sure I’m not alone. It won’t be long. There are some very smart people working on some very disruptive business models. Things are going to change. As a player, I hope it happens sooner rather than later.
Most poker players don’t put enough thought into their decisions.
Basically, all they do is look down at their cards, compare them to the board, gauge the strength of their hand, then simply make their plays based on this. This is first level thinking.
Players fail to take into account the plethora of information available to them, such as:
As a rule, the more information you take into account, the better your decisions will be.
The best way to train yourself to consider more information is to ask and answer questions before every decision.
Thoughtful answers to the useful questions above will guide you to the correct action to take.
You must work to develop a habit of asking and answering questions before every decision, and this begins with your off-the-felt poker study sessions.
While analyzing hands, force yourself to ask and answer a question with every decision you review. Focus on doing this same thing during your play sessions. It’s going to be tough at first, but eventually it’ll become a beneficial habit and your poker decisions and results will be improved for it.
You might be wondering “what are the best questions to ask?” Well, this knowledge comes with putting in the reps. Asking and answering questions repeatedly will develop an intuition for the best questions to ask and the information you need to answer it properly.
If you’re ever in doubt of a question to ask, fall back on Poker’s Ultimate Question: “What are they doing this with?”
You can ask this question in just about any situation and the answer is going to be helpful.
Susan called your open-raise in the big blind. “What are they doing this with?” The answer will force you to think about Susan’s pre-flop range of hands, and you’ll be forced to remove hands that she would normally fold along with the hands she’d normally re-raise. This will help you play against her post-flop.
On the flop, you hit top pair with KJ on the K92 rainbow board. Susan check-raised your continuation bet. “What are they doing this with?” To answer this question, you must compare her pre-flop range to the board, but also take into account what you know about her tendencies. You also have to consider the bet sizing she used and her remaining stack to see how “pot committed” she may be.
Let’s say you called her flop check-raise, making the pot on the turn 30BB. The turn bricks with an off-suit 4. Susan now bets 25BB, leaving only 60BB behind and if you call, the pot will grow to 80BB. She seems pot committed with this bet and with the prior street’s aggressive check-raising play. “What are they doing this with?” If the answer contains hands worse than your top pair, then you can call or raise as you feel is correct, but if she’s only doing it with better than your top pair, it’s an easy fold.
Your answer to Poker’s Ultimate Question on every street has led to the realization that your lovely top pair hand is beat. Your best option now is to fold, so you fold and Susan shows 22 for the flopped set. Good fold.
If you simply relied on the strength of your hand, KJ on the King-high board, it’s possible you would’ve called the turn and then lost it all on the river. However, as illustrated, asking and answering questions forced you to consider everything Susan was telling you and you made a better decision for it.
Now get out there and take action to develop asking and answering questions as a beneficial habit before every poker decision you make!
For more great coaching, strategies and tips from Sky Matsuhashi, check out his poker training site, The Poker Forge. Here’s our review.
There are very few feelings in poker that beat the one of flopping quads or a straight flush. There you are, sitting with the absolute nuts and your only job is to figure out how to milk your opponents most money you can.
But if you’ve been playing poker for a little while, you’ve probably realized these rare hands don’t come around nearly as often as you’d like.
This is because the odds of being dealt a royal flush or other top-ranking hands are quite small. If you want to know more about exact numbers and the math behind rare hands in Texas Hold’em, keep on reading. Committing these facts to memory will probably make those rare occasions when you actually do manage to make one of these hands even more exciting and profitable.
A royal flush is essentially the best possible hand that you can get in poker, but it’s still just a straight flush. So the odds of being dealt a royal are exactly the same as being dealt any other straight flush. You just need to have two hole cards that can make a royal, i.e., anything between a 10 and an Ace.
In this article, we’ll focus on the instances where you’ve got to use both of your cards to make your straight flush since doing it with just one card is neither as rare nor as lucrative, as you’ll have a four-straight, four-flush board that most players will tread very lightly on.
For two cards to be able to make a straight flush on the flop, they need to be suited and connected. However, not all of the starting hands meeting these criteria have the same odds, as some of them have more options than the others. Below is the table showing chances of flopping a straight flush with different types of suited connectors.
| Hand | Number of possible combos | Percentage |
| A2s | Just one (2-3-4) | 0.005% |
| Suited connectors (i.e. 78s) | Four (4-5-6, 5-6-9, 6-9-10, 9-10-J) | 0.02% |
| One-gappers (i.e. 68s) | Three (4-5-7, 5-7-9, 7-9-10) | 0.015% |
| Two-gappers (i.e. 69s) | Two (5-7-8, 7-8-10) | 0.001% |
If you’ve been wondering why that straight flush never comes in when you decide to peel the flop with your suited connectors, the table above probably offers a bit of a new perspective. The odds of this happening, even with the best possible candidate, are very slim.
More often than flopping a straight flush, you’ll actually flop a straight flush draw. It will be either an open-ended draw (with two possible cards to complete it) or a gutshot draw where only one card from the whole deck can improve you to straight flush.
Once you do flop that draw, the odds of making the hand actually improve quite significantly, even though they’re still low.
| Draw type | Chance to improve on the turn | Chance to improve by the river |
| Gutshot | 2.1% | 4.3% |
| Open-ender | 4.3% | 8.4% |
So if you have an open-ended straight flush draw on the flop, you have decent odds of hitting by the river. If your opponents will let you and if you account for the implied odds when you do hit this highly unlikely hand, these types of draws are sometimes worth chasing.
Quads are another rare Hold’em hand although not nearly as rare as a straight flush. You’ve probably seen quite a few of these during your time playing poker and have had them at least once or twice yourself as well.
Once again, I’ll focus on odds of making quads when you are dealt a pocket pair as that’s the kind of quads you want to have and that you can extract some value from.
First of all, if you run the numbers, the overall odds of making quads with a random pocket pair if you were to just deal five cards (flop, turn, and river) are 0.816%. This is not a very useful stat, though, as you’ll rarely get to see all five cards unless you improve on the flop (i.e., flop a set).
Below are some more useful numbers.
| Odds of flopping quads | Odds of turning quads (after flopping a set) | Odds of getting quads by the river (after flopping a set) |
| 0.245% | 2.1% | 4.3% |
If you compare these numbers with the aforementioned ones for the straight flush, you can see why you’ve likely seen quads much more often than straight flushes.
And, if you were wondering what the odds are of flopping quads with just one card (i.e., when not holding a pocket pair), that would be 0.001%.
Rare poker hands are at the top of hand strength charts for a reason. They’re very hard to get and when you do get them, you’ll almost always end up winning a pot. Even when you do lose with one of these hands, you might end up a winner as many cardrooms and casinos offer nice bad beat jackpots to tackle these precise scenarios.
Having seen these numbers, you’ll probably have a somewhat better idea of how (un)likely you are to be dealt a straight flush or quads during any individual session. Admittedly, this information won’t help you get any better in flopping royals. However, knowing the exact odds could save you a lot of money in the long run as you’ll know when to hold’em and when to fold’em.
We have plenty of televised poker to consume going into 2020, and some of the games on platforms like PokerGO and the Triton Poker YouTube channel are as entertaining as ever.
I can’t help but think about some of the names that haven’t appeared much, or at all, in televised poker games in recent years. The following list includes 10 players, in no particular order, that I’d love to see get back in the mix in 2020:
This one’s probably not going to happen any time soon, as the Upswing Poker founder has stated on numerous occasions that he’s done playing poker.
He certainly doesn’t have anything else to prove in the game. The last time we saw Polk grinding it out was on live stream, during his $100 to $10,000 bankroll challenge.
Image source: Doug Polk Twitter
Polk completed that challenge in August 2018, and at the conclusion announced his intentions to not play poker anymore. He did play a couple of events at the 2019 WSOP, but other than that Polk’s been true to his word.
Always an entertaining presence, and a genius poker mind, a return to poker from Polk in any televised/streamed form would be welcome.
Much like Polk, I’d love to watch Fedor Holz play poker in any televised form. The last time we saw the German phenom on a major broadcast was the 2018 WSOP $1,000,000 Big One for One Drop, where he finished second for a career-high $6,000,000 payday.
Holz’ brings an unmatched presence to any poker game his in, from a spectator standpoint. Maybe it’s staredowns of his opponents, the glimpse into his poker mind, and the mystique of a guy who’s won more than $32,000,000 in his poker career but is “retired” at age 26 and looking to improve the world.
Holz has made a couple of appearances in Triton Poker high roller events in 2019, including the €1,200,000 Triton Million in London. Televised/streaming coverage of Holz playing poker since 2017, however, is sparse.
With the recent release of Pokercode training course, Holz is still involved in the game, and I’d love to see him back in action at the table.
High Stakes Poker is still considered by most to be perhaps the greatest poker television program of all time, and Sammy Farha was the heart and soul of that show.
His unpredictable playing style and personality at the table made any poker show a must-watch when Farha was in the mix. He may have first appeared on our televisions as the runner-up to Chris Moneymaker in the 2003 WSOP Main Event, but Farha’s lasting legacy is the personality that we got to know during the run of High Stakes Poker.
It’s fun to imagine how Farha’s playing style and table talk would interact with some of poker’s modern-day TV regulars.
The preceding legendary hand doesn’t happen without Jamie Gold, who first appeared on High Stakes Poker in the Season 3 run, which began in January 2007.
Fresh off his win in the 2006 WSOP Main Event, Gold was the perfect person to add to the mix on High Stakes Poker, as his mix of speech play, fearless bluffing, and brash personality made for fascinating interaction with the game’s regulars like Farha and Doyle Brunson.
Gold has made a few appearances on PokerGO programming over the last couple of years. If we could get guys like Gold and Farha to appear regularly on televised poker shows in 2020, I’d watch every minute.
Much like Farha, Gus Hansen is one of the legends of poker whose presence would make any show must-see TV.
Hansen, like Gold, does make the occasional appearance on PokerGO programming, but most of his time at the poker tables in 2019 was spent in Bobby’s Room, playing high stakes cash games at the Bellagio in Las Vegas.
We can only imagine what goes down in those games, but perhaps none of the high stakes regulars that frequent Bobby’s Room are as intriguing as Hansen. The “Great Dane” gave us a glimpse into his life with his epic Instagram posts over the course of the past year.
There really isn’t a ton of footage to be found of Joey Ingram playing poker on television/livestream. Poker’s lead investigator has made a few appearances on Live at the Bike, as well as Poker After Dark’s ‘Run It Once’ week, which aired on PokerGO in April 2019.
Ingram has admittedly taken a step back from playing the game to focus on his YouTube channel and Poker Life podcast. In that respect, nobody is creating more essential and important poker content than Ingram, who’s at the pinnacle of investigative journalism within poker.
Seeing the 2020 version of Ingram mix it up at the poker able would be fascinating, and let’s hope we get to see more of that in the coming year.
We’re already seeing Tony G get back into the mix after taking time off from poker to focus on his political career. Like Farha and some of the other classic personalities from the Poker Boom era, Tony G was always an unmistakable presence on any televised poker show.
Working for PokerNews, I had the opportunity to cover Tony’s win at the €25,000 Triton Short Deck High Roller at partypoker MILLIONS Europe in August. Watching him play poker and interact with some of poker’s other top personalities was a real treat, and that trip to King’s Casino in Rozvadov, Czech Republic was one I’ll never forget.
Over the course of that event, I saw Tony matched up against Phil Ivey, Leon Tzoukernik, Paul Phua, Cary Katz, and Rob Yong, just to name a few. Can we get more of that on my television screen?
Here’s a look at Tony G mixing up with the modern-era high rollers in a Triton Poker cash game, and let’s just say Tony’s personality hasn’t wilted at all since his break from poker.
Taking the poker world by storm during the peak of the poker boom, Annette Obrestad began racking up online accolades as a teenager. By the time she appeared on the live tournament scene as an 18-year-old, Obrestad was a force to be reckoned with.
She became the youngest player to ever win a WSOP bracelet with her win in the WSOP Europe Main Event in 2007. At that time Obrestad was one day short of her 19th birthday, and over the course of the next few years the Norwegian poker prodigy was a regular invitee to a number of poker television programs.
It’s been a while since we’ve been able to watch Obrestad play the game. Let’s take a look back at a big cash game hand between Obrestad and Justin Smith, with Doug Polk providing analysis:
Another one of the TV regulars from the poker boom, Vanessa Rousso was always a dynamic personality whenever she was in the mix.
We haven’t seen much of Rousso on TV/stream over the latter part of the 2010s, but it would be great to see her come back to the big screen. Rousso currently sit at more than $3.5 million in career tournament earnings, but her appearances at the poker table, televised or otherwise, have been somewhat sparse in recent years.
Here’s an infamous hand involving Rousso and another member of this list, Tony G:
The 1996 WSOP Main Event champion may not be as boisterous or talkative as some of the other entries on this list, but I still miss the days of Huck Seed as a regular on poker television.
Perhaps the all-time king of prop bets, Seed always carried a certain mystique at the poker table.
We haven’t seen Seed in a televised game in quite a while, and I’d be fascinated to see him match up against some of today’s TV regulars.
The New Year is just around the corner and with that, we have 12 months’ worth of fresh poker tournaments to look forward to. These days, you can of course find major poker events taking place all over the globe but the UK in particular plays host to numerous great tournaments every year. From what we know already, 2020 will be no different.
So, whether you live in the UK or want to plan a poker trip there for next year, this list of top UK poker tournaments to look forward to in 2020 should be quite helpful.
Kicking things off in style for the New Year, one of the best-known UK poker rooms is organizing the 2020 UK Millions poker series. Lasting from December 29, 2019 to January 9, 2020, the event will host several tournaments worth playing. The major one is, of course, the 2020 Millions UK Main Event featuring a guaranteed prize pool of £5,000,000.
🔎 Tournament Spotlight 🌍 partypoker MILLIONS UK 🇬🇧
📅 4-12 Jan 2020
📍 Dusk Till Dawn, Nottingham, UK 🇬🇧
🔗 Schedule: https://t.co/WN5OnESeDy
ℹ https://t.co/yN9XKLiaok
🐦 @partypokerLIVE @partypoker @DTD_Cardroom pic.twitter.com/UQlKD1OFlh— The Hendon Mob (@TheHendonMob) December 22, 2019
The Main Event will feature two starting days on January 8 and 9 and those wanting to get in will need to dish out £10,300 for the privilege. Historically speaking, Dusk Till Dawn has been very successful organizing poker events with great turnaround so the guaranteed prize pool for the Main Event will likely be shattered.
The massive Goliath event has already been confirmed for 2020. The tournament will take place between July 29 and August 9, 2020, at the Ricoh Arena and Grosvenor Casino. There is no detailed information about the event as of yet but — if past years are any indicator — it’s safe to say it’s going to be a big one.
In 2019, the Goliath gathered 9,300 entries, smashing records from previous years. The eventual winner ended up pocketing £64,000 for his efforts, which may not seem like a massive amount. However, considering the buy-in is just £125, it’s definitely not a paltry sum.
Next year will also mark the 10th anniversary of Goliath, so it’s possible the organizers will have some surprises lined up for the players. Stay tuned!
One of the best online casinos in the UK according to CasinoGuide.co.uk, over the past few years 888 has been building a network of live poker events across Europe. Just last month ago, their £1,100 Main Event at the Aspers Casino in London crowned a champion who took home not just the cool £100,000 first prize but also a free package for the 2020 WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas.
The 2019 #888pokerLIVELon 🇬🇧 Festival 🎪 might be over but we’re just getting started for 2020! See you at the next live event in Madrid 🇪🇸! 💃 pic.twitter.com/zeBqllOU7e
— 888poker (@888poker) December 3, 2019
888poker don’t release their schedule of live events all at once, so there is no official information about their plans for the UK in 2020. However, considering the fact the London stop was quite a success, with the Main Event attracting 518 entries, we’re likely to see 888poker LIVE coming back to the UK the next year.
Dates for the 13th Grosvenor UK Poker Tour have been announced and this is definitely something local players can look forward to. Namely, with the guaranteed prize pool in excess of £1.6 million and Main Events featuring buy-ins of £500 and £1,000, there’ll be plenty of cash up for grabs at all the different stops throughout the year.
GUKPT 2020
Main Event Dates, Buys In & GTDs pic.twitter.com/gmweRbfT5o— Grosvenor Poker (@GrosvenorPoker) December 12, 2019
The first leg will kick off in London on January 26, followed by events in Manchester, Edinburgh, Luton, Leeds, and Blackpool, so almost everyone in the country should have at least one of the legs taking place somewhere nearby. The 2020 Grosvenor Poker Tour will culminate with the London Grand Final event taking place November 21 – December 6, 2020.
While the above list isn’t a complete one as far as UK poker tournament events in 2020, it highlights some of the biggest and most important festivals and poker series to keep an eye out for. So, plan your schedules and your bankrolls accordingly!