As usual I'm obsessively thinking about poker hands/situations/strategies...here's what I've been thinking about lately.1) Defining the strength of your hand through betting2) Stepping up3)Why cash game players are better poker players than tournament players.4) Our new WSOP champion Defining the strength of your hand Lets say you raise (typical 3X the big blind) before the flop with AQ and get one caller. Assume the caller is a "typical" player, not too loose and not too tight. The flop comes Q 7 3, rainbow. You opponent checks to you and you bet the size of the pot. If he calls a pot-sized bet you can start to figure that he has a pretty strong hand. With no draws on the board you figure he has either KQ, QJ, a set, or possibly a slow-played overpair. Your pot-sized bet has allowed you to narrow down his possible hands to just a few. Now lets think about what will happen if you bet only half the size of the pot. This bet will appear weak to most players so when you start to think about the range of your opponents hands you have to include more possiblities. A reasonable player may call you here with KQ, QJ,Q10, A7 suited, pocket pairs 88 through JJ and maybe even bottom pair with an Ace kicker. Your smallish bet has changed the nature of this hand significantly. Stepping up What exactly does it take to step up? How much better are the players at the next level up from where you currently play? I used to think stepping up was all about how much poker-skill you had but after watching many hours of high-stakes NL ring game online I have come to a different conclusion . Stepping up in NL is all about your relationship to money. If losing a buy-in at the next level up will cause you to make a decision differently than compared to the same decision at your current level then you shouldnt step up. The players at the higher limits arent necessarily better strategists, instead they are simply able to apply their winning strategy regardless of the stakes. How many times have you heard poker authors write about not letting the value of the money interfere with your decision making process? I'm currently working on playing and not thinking about what I can buy/not buy with wins and losses. Cash game players better than tournament players? Cash game players definitely get more of my respect than tournament players. Paraphrasing Doyle, betting $100,000 in a tournament is nice, but take that same $100,000 out of your pocket and then decide what to do, much different! The best cash game players are quiet predators at the tables while the best tournament players seeem flamboyant in comparison. Win a big tournament and you can be in the money for the next few years, even if you are a losing player. Make a big score in a cash game and you still have to come back tomorrow no matter what. In the future I hope to be able to play tournaments as a pleasant diversion to my regular cash game. Our new WSOP champ Like most, I dont know a thing about Joe Hachem. I can only imagine what the ESPN footage is going to be like. Hours and hours of that stupid Australian chant "ozi, ozi, ozi, oy, oy, oy" or whatever the fuck it is. Without even seeing the guy, I dont like him.

Source: Live No Limit Holdem with Yogi Steve