I often get asked about my playing style. Rather than answer the question myself, I'm more interested in what my opponents say. And I've heard it all: "You're too tight." "You're too loose." "You're tight aggressive." "You're too passive." Actually, I never hear that last one, but I've heard all the others, which makes me believe I must be doing something right. Loose, tight, aggressive - my style is that I'm all of the above, depending upon the circumstances.

One essential element of playing winning poker is forcing your opponents to make difficult decisions. That's why raising is almost always better than calling - because it forces an extra decision on your opponents. To take this a step further - you'll win more money by forcing your opponents to make decisions when they are out of their comfort zones. Here are some examples: Your opponent is on your left, playing too tight before the flop. You want to punish him for this. The best way to do that is to raise more often, and be more aggressive. Either you end up stealing a lot of blinds, or he adjusts his play. If you get the blinds? Great! If he adjusts?

Read Full Tip

I'm almost a year into an experiment on Full Tilt Poker. I'm attempting to turn $0 into a $10,000 bankroll. With no money to start with, I had no choice but to start out playing Freerolls. Starting out, I'd often manage to win a dollar or two, but I'd quickly get busted and have to start over again. It took some time but, after awhile, I was eventually able to graduate to games that required an actual buy-in.

Even today, people don't believe it's really me when I sit down at Full Tilt's small stakes games. They ask what I'm doing down here, and often tell me stories about how they turned $5 into $500 or $100 into $1,000. Usually, these stories end with the person telling me that they went broke. There's no surprise there. These folks tried to quickly build a bankroll by gambling. They'd play in a game that was beyond their bankroll and, if they happened to win, they'd move up to a higher limit and risk it all one more time. Inevitably, they'd lose a few big hands and go broke.

Read Full Tip

There's no question that aggressive poker is winning poker. If the world's top players have only one thing in common, it's that they take control of the hands they play with bets and raises. Usually, among the world's poker elite, calling is the least attractive option. For this tip, however, I thought I'd talk about a couple of instances when playing passively - just checking and calling bets - may be the preferred option.

Top Pair, Favorable Board. Say I'm in the early stages of a tournament and I have an ample stack. I find Ace-Jack in middle position and raise to three times the big blind. A player in late position, who I know to be solid but fairly aggressive, calls my raise, and everyone else folds. The flop comes As-4d-8h. I've got top-pair, with a decent kicker. First, I want to think about the hands my opponent might hold. It's likely he called my raise with an Ace or a pocket pair, maybe in the range of 66-99. He may have also called with two high cards like KQ, KJ or QJ.

Read Full Tip

"Should I quit my job and play professionally?" "Should I drop out of school and just play poker full time?" I get these questions all the time and I always give the same answer: "Unequivocally, absolutely not. No way." Clear enough? If you want to explore being a professional poker player, you have to start out doing it part time. Spend your off hours thinking about poker and studying the game. Read and play and learn.

Before you even think about quitting your job to play full time, you should be making more money at poker than you are in your current employment. Don't think that one big tournament win provides all the evidence you need that you're ready to play professionally. You should be showing consistent profit over a period of at least six- months. Only at that point should you even entertain the idea of becoming a full-time pro.

Read Full Tip