How To Play High Stakes Poker

Table Of Contents

'High Stakes Poker' was back last night on PokerGO, but in a departure from the past few episodes, it featured a mostly new crew of players.

Gone were the likes of Tom Dwan and Jason Koon, who were at the center of much of the prior action, and in their places were Phil Ivey and Doug Polk, making a rare appearance outside his favored online battleground. A few holdovers like Phil Hellmuth and Jake Daniels were back, though.

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Action started off at $200/$400 and pretty much without a straddle the entire time.

Here's how stacks looked early on:

• This fan-favorite poker cash game television show started it all. With minimum buy-ins of $100,000, enjoy the wildest high-stakes action highlighted by the biggest players, including Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein, and Antonio Esfandiari. Watch classic seasons.
• The players should first decide what form of Poker they will play. The main forms of Poker are Draw Poker and Stud Poker. In Draw Poker, all the cards are dealt face down to the players. In Stud Poker, some of the cards are dealt face up as the betting progresses, so that all of the other players get to see a part of each player's hands.
• HIGH STAKES POKER: Season 4 promises to be the richest cash game on TV. Get set because the last seven episodes of this new season will showcase $5 million+ on the table. Once again the world's top players and personalities face-off against newcomers putting-up at least $100,000 of their own cash in a private, no-limit game of Texas Hold'em.
• It’s important to be prepared both mentally and physically for a long grind any time you start a tournament, but especially so in a high roller that will require a long time to play, and usually multiple days, particularly live. No matter the format, try to be well rested and at least get a good night’s sleep the night before playing.

Hellmuth Bluffed Off of Kings

Hellmuth opened the action with a limp from early position holding . He opted not to spring the trap preflop, though, just calling when James Bord popped it to $2,000 a couple of seats over in the cutoff with .

Everyone else folded, and the flop came . Bord continued with a decent-sized bet of $3,000 and Hellmuth stuck around for the turn. Hellmuth checked again and Bord barreled big with $15,000, more than the $11K pot.

'I'm just gonna bluff it off now,' he declared.

'This kinda doesn't feel fair,' Hellmuth griped. 'Man. I almost stuck the whole hundred [thousand] in before the flop.'

'I wish you did.'

'I don't have anything at all,' Hellmuth said, flashing the kings and mucking.

'Good fold,' Bord said, casually tossing in his rags, much to the delight of the rest of the players.

'Good play Bordy,' Hellmuth allowed.

Bluffing into a Straight Flush

Hellmuth limped in late position with , Brandon Steven made it $2,100 in the small blind with , and Bord called with in the big.

Hellmuth let them go heads up to . Steven bet $3,000 and Bord called. Steven nailed the on the turn and bet again with $5,000. Bord responded with a sizable raise to $17,000. Steven stuck around with a slowplay but Bord didn't put any more money in on the river, so Steven cursed and showed his nutted hand with a smile to win the $45K pot.

'Didn't have another barrel in ya, huh?' he asked.

'I had value,' Bord replied.

Old-Fashioned Three-Barrel from Dwan

Steven opened to $1,100 early with and faced a three-bet to $4,000 from Dwan, who had recently sat with what looked like $100K, on the button with .

He peeled and they went to a flop of . Dwan flicked in a $5,000 chip and they continued to the . Steven check-called another barrel of $14,000, and the river bricked off with the . Dwan had $62K left, a bit over the pot, but he opted for a smaller bet of $30,000.

Steven snapped it off and Dwan could only shake his head and show his bricked combo draw, with Steven winning a pot worth $107,000, the biggest of the session thus far.

Aces Cracked?

John Andress took Phil Ivey's seat and hadn't been down long before he looked at the dream: on the button. Bord already had opened to $1,100 with , so Andress made it $3,500.

They went heads up to . Andress bet small with $2,500 and Bord check-raised to $10,000. Andress peeled and the turn was a . Bord fired a pot-sized bet of $30,000 and Andress continued to the river, which brought the .

Andress had only about $57K left with almost $90K in the pot, and he snap-called it off when Bord shoved. Bord knew immediately something had gone wrong.

'A cooler then?' he asked as he tossed his sevens in. 'Yeah.'

Ship the $203,200 pot to Andress for the dreamiest start possible.

Massive Cooler

Hellmuth opened in the hijack to $1,100 with the , Bord called on the button with , and Polk tagged along out of the big blind with .

High Stakes Poker Youtube

The flop arrived to give Polk and Hellmuth straights. But it was Bord putting in money with $2,000 after they checked to him. Polk made it $7,000 and Hellmuth moved all in, splashing a pile of $5,000 chips casually in there.

'How much is that?' Polk said with a smile. 'I'm almost certainly calling but let's just see how much it is first.

'This is insane. It's just such a monster raise. Phil, whaddya got over there?'

It was $97,200 and Polk winced as he continued thinking.

'Phil, I'm considering making a very big laydown here,' Polk said. 'Very, very big laydown.'

'I mean, I could easily have...' Hellmuth trailed off.

'What could you easily have?' Polk asked skeptically. 'You just bet a lot into very, very little.'

'I could have a set.'

'Could you have a set? I don't think you could have a set here. Come on Phil, you're better than that.'

'I could have the blockers, the tens.'

'God, now you're busting out blockers. If I fold this and I'm wrong, oh my f****** lord.'

'I mean I think I'm either dead — and I think I'm dead a lot, given this — or like, you just have a ton of equity against me. This is gonna look so dumb if this is...this is completely absurd. He has to get through him then he has to get through me. Nah, this is just a fold.'

He tossed his hand in, much to the shock of some of the other players. Steven in particular wondered how he could let it go.

'If he's got queen-ten, he's got queen-ten. Pay the man and let's go on to the next hand.'

Commentator Gabe Kaplan called it the greatest laydown in the history of the show.

Relive the hand here:

Stacks to End the Episode

Remember, High Stakes Poker will air every Wednesday but is only available to PokerGO subscribers. If you’re not currently subscribed, you can get a monthly subscription for $14.99, a three-month plan for $29.99, and an annual subscription for $99.99.

_{*Images courtesy of PokerGO.}

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  Doug PolkGabe KaplanHigh Stakes PokerPhil HellmuthPokerGOCash Poker

• Related Players

  Phil HellmuthGabe KaplanDoug Polk

Only starting out with poker in 2020?

I remember when I started with poker, I found remembering the important parts of the game challenging.

But your journey can become easier with this printable poker cheat sheet for beginners (I wish I had this when starting out!).

Table Of Contents

• How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet.
• How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing River Bet Example
• How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing Flop Bet Example
• Poker Hands Cheat Sheet: Best Texas Hold em Hands

Poker Cheat Sheet For Texas Holdem:

Download the high-quality Poker Cheat Sheet printable (PDF) version:

The cheat sheet includes hyperlinks for further reading on any material you may not yet know.

Click here for more information on pre-flop and post-flop. We also discuss Texas Holdem bet sizing in the highlighted link.

If you like the cheat sheet, you may also enjoy these these awesome starting hand charts from upswing poker. They are a more detailed version of the starting hands section in the cheat sheet above which supplement it nicely. Amazingly they have been downloaded almost 200,000 times!

How To Use This Texas Holdem Poker Cheat Sheet.

Step 1: Find your hand on the chart (example KT suited)

Step 2: Determine whether you should follow coloured or number schematic.

Either:

• If first to raise (no other player has raised before you), follow the coloured schematic.
• If facing a raise or reraise, follow the numbered schematic.

Note: If playing on a 6max table (6 players as opposed to 9), the yellow coloured hands will also be able to be played from any position.

See the image below for the numbered and colour schematic.

Step 3: Take into account information give under headings preflop and post flop.

How to play poker preflop is a tough subject to cover in detail. There are many factors you need to take into account such as:

• Your position and your opponents position.
• Your opponents likely holdings
• Board texture
• Previous history

A brief explanation of why position is powerful and why we play fewer hands when there are more players left to act (still with a hand):

When playing on a fullring table, you will have to contend with nine players, who each have a chance of picking up a big hand. Therefore, when playing a full ring game, you will play fewer hands. You can read more on this concept at fullring vs. 6max.

The difference in player numbers is also why we play a wide range of hands from the Button, but very few hands from UTG (first position). When opening the Button, we only have two players left to act (unlikely for them to have a strong hand), whereas when playing from UTG in a full ring game, eight other players could potentially pick up a big hand.

For more in-depth details on this see Texas Holdem Strategy and Position is King!

Step 4: Take home some cash

Hopefully, this poker cheat sheet will help you ‘bring home the bacon' as they say, but there is always something more to learn in poker. Keep reading for some more cheat sheets which might be of use to you.

Get Your Miniature (Credit Card Sized) Texas Holdem Starting Hands Cheat Sheet

This cheat sheet only contains the most vital information you need so it can handily fit in your pocket. The legends have also been squeezed onto the hand chart in front of hands we always fold.

To download printable PDF which is scaled to credit card size, use the Facebook unlock button:

Poker Odds Cheat Sheet (for Texas Hold'em)

Get your pot odds cheat sheet below. You can use this to determine the number of outs required to continue based on the pot odds you are being offered. You can also use it to convert between percentages, required outs and ratios for all kinds of situations in poker. The pot odds cheat sheet is explained in more detail below:

Click here to get a high-quality printable pdf version of the Poker Odds Cheat Sheet.

When your opponent bets you will be offered odds based on the size of his bet. For example, if your opponent bets half pot you will be offered odds of 3:1 on a call (call 1 to win 3). Essentially, it is your risk to reward ratio.

Pot odds will tell you whether is it correct for you to call or fold based on what size our opponent bet and how many cards that will improve our hand.

If you are interested in the learning poker math, check out our best poker books recommendation page here for some awesome books on poker math.

How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing River Bet Example

1. Work out pot odds

In this hand, our opponent bets $26 into a $41.5 pot making the total pot size $67.5. This gives us odds of 67.5: 26 (67.5 = 41.5+26). Or approximately 2.6:1. You can also see how to convert this into a percentage in our article pot odds.

2. Find 2.6:1 on the card (or as close to it as possible).

We locate 2.6:1 on the chart tells us that 2.6:1 translates to 30.11% pot equity. In other words:

• if we win 30% of the time, we will break even,
• if we win > 30% of the time we will make a profit on average in this situation
• if we win <30% of the time, we will make a loss on average in this situation

How To Play High Stakes Poker Rdr2

3. Determine our actual equity

This is the tough part, unfortunately.

You have to estimate how often you are beaten by your opponent in order to determine if you can profitably call or not. To do this you can use a program such as equilab to plug in hands that you think your opponent may have and the hand that you currently hold. To learn more about estimating what your opponent may be holding see the article poker hand range: the comprehensive beginner guide. From the example above, we plug in some hands we think our opponent may have and see that we have 34% equity:

4. Determine if we can profitably call.

Since our equity is greater than our pot odds, we can profitably call the river bet. If our equity were less than the pot odds being offered, we would have to fold as we cannot c call.

How To Use This Pot Odds Cheat Sheet – Facing Flop Bet Example

Let's take a similar situation (confronted with a bet), except this time we are on the flop with KQs, and we have a flush draw with nine outs. A King and Queen which could be considered outs, but they aren't clean outs. This means even if we hit our hand we still may not win (say for example our opponent has AA).

1. Work out equity percentage:

Since we have nine clean outs, we can simply go to the number 9 on the card and then determine our equity.

This means that we need a minimum pot odds of 1.9:1 or 38% when we have nine outs on the flop with two cards still to come.

3. Compare pot odds to odds given by bettor.

Our equity is 38%, so we need pot odds of less than 38%. The lower the pot odds, the more profitable the call.

Our pot odds are 12.5/33 which is 37%, and hence we just about have the pot odds to call. However, we are also in positon (and will act last with more information) and have two overcards to the board (both a King and Queen will make top pair good kicker). So this is an easy call.

4. Further reading

We need seven outs to continue, and we have nine outs with a flush draw. See calculating outs for more details.

For more information on how to use this poker cheat sheet see poker and pot odds.

Pogo High Stakes Poker

This video will also be useful to you:

Poker Hands Cheat Sheet: Best Texas Hold em Hands

How To Play High Stakes Poker Rdr2

In case you aren't familiar with the hand strengths, and hand rankings of poker check out the printout Texas Holdem hands cheat sheet:

(You may also be interested in the rules of texas hold em)

There are a few important things to remember when memorising at the poker hand rankings:

Best Five Cards Win

In poker, it is always the best five cards wins. This means it is not only the pairs that matter if there is no clear winner (nobody has a pair), the decision will go down to high card wins.

Kickers

Kickers decide the winning hand when two opponents have the same pair or three of a kind. For example, if one opponent has AQ (ace-queen) and another has AJ, the opponent with AQ would win on an A7522 board as he has the five card hand of AAQ75 whereas the second opponent has AAJ75.

Split Pots

Split pots occur when opponents have the same hand. For example, imagine one opponent has A4 and the other A3 on AQ752 board. Both opponents would have five card hand of AAQ75. Neither the 4 or 3 would play.

You can get more information about hand rankings on our web page here.

If you are more visually inclined, check out this video on poker hand rankings:

For more on Texas Hold'em strategy, see poker 101.

Make sure you check out the fan favourite posts:

Common poker mistakes & Texas Holdem Poker Tips

Good luck at the poker tables with your new poker cheat sheet!