Doyle Brunson is a living legend at the WSOP

There are plenty of poker players that are over the age of 65. Casinos all over North America are filled with seniors spending their retirement money. Many journey to Vegas each year to try their luck in the biggest poker event of the year. The WSOP has an event just for seniors, with a 6 figure prize; minus all the taxes of course.

Poker is a game that can be played well into old age. Doyle Brunson is still one of the best in the world and he’s in his 70′s.

The hardest habit for online poker players to break is the same as live players. The biggest leak that most players continue to have is tilt. Tilt occurs when a player has a run of bad luck and loses numerous hands in a row. This gets them upset, and they often play poorly because their emotions get the best of them.

The bad streak is unavoidable, but getting angry and making moves that you normally wouldn’t make will cost you bets. The easiest prey on a poker table is a player on tilt. They’re negative and expect to lose every hand, so getting into hands against them is almost always a profitable option.

Learning not to tilt is a lesson that only the calmest players are able to achieve. Some, like Phil Hellmuth and Mike Matusow, have never learned to control their emotions from getting the best of them.

Entertainer Kanye West is notorious for being a sore loser.

You don’t have to be in a game of hold’em very long to come across a sore loser. You know the guy I mean, he takes a bad beat then starts on a rant, berating the play of others or blaming the website, saying it’s rigged and pointing the finger at everything except themselves. There are two ways to deal with these players. First, you can just ignore them; if you’re online you can turn off your chat box, and if you’re live just don’t respond.

The other thing you can do is to feed the fire. If a player starts in on you, you can fire back at them. They are obviously in an uncontrollable emotional state, so feeding the fire will put them even closer to tilting. Every player makes mistakes, point out what they do wrong if they’re being a sore loser.

Theory for beating a loose poker table can be summed up in two words; play tight. If you find yourself at a table where everyone is in every hand, and every street has raises and re-raises, the best thing to do is stay out of the way until you have a premium hand to play. Once you get this premium hand you want to jump in there and be as aggressive as the other players are. You’ll want to force out as many players as you can, so your premium hand gets better odds to win.

Try and limit the hands you play to times when you’re in favorable positions. That will give you the opportunity to see what everyone else is doing before you waste any bets early in a betting round. If you play in poor positions, you’ll just get raised and re-raised when you make a bet.

Beating a loose poker table can be a difficult thing to do. It’s hard to win when numerous players are in the hand all the way to showdown. You’ll usually lose more hands because your winning percentage goes down with all the extra opponents in the hands. This type of situation is ideal when you hit a run of good cards. You’ll win more than usual because there’s so much action out there.

The best approach is to only enter hands with a higher winning percentage. That means tightening up your game and waiting for premium hands in good positions. You’ll still be running a gauntlet to the river, but you won’t be in there too often, dumping chips to lucky fish. When you get the big hands you want to crank the aggression up even more, in an attempt to narrow the field of opponents in the hand.

Leaks in your poker game can take many forms. Some are common, and some will only appear in the odd player. One not-so-common leak is that rare player who calls too many bets with second pair. This is usually an experienced player who has put an opponent on a certain hand, and carefully concluded that their opponent is bluffing. Picking off a bluff is a skill that all good players possess, but this player tries to pick off bluffs that are not there.

Poor value betting is another not-so-common mistake. This player does not make good river bets. They will bet weaker hands from late positions if the action is slow or the pot was orphaned. They should make a very big bet or no bet at all. Instead they make a small bet that essentially tells opponents they have second pair, and get called by that top pair-weak kicker hand.

The late positions in no-limit hold’em give you a big edge over the other players. General rule of thumb is to play the late positions with aggression if there has been no aggression before you. Even with very weak hands you can make a raise from the button position if no other players entered the pot. You attempt to steal the blinds, and if you do get called, you still have good position.

If you have a premium pair you can slow play them in late positions. Perhaps one of the blind positions will make a raise that you can re-raise, and if they don’t, you can trap someone after the flop.

If other players limp in the hand, you can flat-call the blinds with just about any two cards. But, if you face a raise in a late position, you should have a half-decent hand to play.

Do you look like this after a bad beat?

If you have a problem with tilt, you have to try and evolve beyond this big leak in your game. Tilt is the fastest and surest way to dump money, and if you don’t work through it, you will always be a losing player. The best players rarely tilt. Even Phil Hellmuth, who seems to completely lose it, doesn’t throw away his chips after a bad beat or two.

The only way to get beyond this is to know that you’re playing to the best of your abilities and that over time you will be rewarded for your play. No matter how stupid things get against you, you have to realize that suck-outs are part of the game and luck plays a big role in the outcome. You need to find a place in your mind that reminds you that you can’t control results in poker, only how you play.

Stealing under the gun is a simple concept of raising pre-flop from under the gun. That’s the position right after the blinds. Most poker theory dictates that one should only play premium cards in these positions, because one is at an instant disadvantage. So if most of the players are under the assumption that players will only play premium cards in this position, adjusting to this can be profitable.

By occasionally raising from under the gun, especially at a tight table, a player can steal the blinds from the early position. This trick can easily backfire if you raise into someone who has a good hand. You end up in a position where you have a poor hand in a poor position. It’s usually better to have something like connector or suited cards, to give you a better chance to hit something on the flop if you do get called.

I admit it. I’m a podcast junkie. Most of the time I have my head phones on and it’s not because I’m listening to music. Most of my learning now a days comes from podcasts and if you can think of it, there is probably someone out there doing a podcast about it.

As most people like us, we are into poker and I just found a great podcast from Full Tilt. With all of their great poker pros on the Full Tilt team they have just put out a “Tip From the Pros” show. They also have a video cast too!

Now you never have to read again and you can dominate the poker table!