Poker Tournament Tips for New Players

Poker Tournament Tips for New Players

In anticipation of SIG’s annual firm-wide No Limit Texas Hold’em Poker Tournament, we asked some of our experienced poker players what advice they would give to new players. Here are their answers: Blinds Don’t underestimate the importance of picking up the blinds. When it is folded to you in late...

Poker Quiz #2: Base Rates and Combinations

The use of base rates comes up often in poker, and can be useful when making decisions to fold, call, or raise. Most poker games involve hidden cards, but this does not mean we have to blindly guess what these cards might be. By using knowledge of the distribution of...

Poker Quiz #1: Expected Value

The idea of expected value is one that comes up often in poker and trading discussions. Expected value is the sum of the probability of each possible event times that event’s payoff. For example, if you were to flip a fair coin where you got paid $2 for heads and lost...

What are they Thinking?

Recently in SIG’s training class, there was a hand of 7 Card Stud/8-or-Better that had an interesting play worth discussing. This is a high/low game, where the best 5-card poker hand out of 7 cards wins half the pot, and the best low hand (that has no card higher than...

Playing Poker with Your Hand Face-Up

If you’re unfamiliar, check out a brief primer on the Stud 8 rules.  Playing poker with your hand face-up is not very much fun. If you don’t believe it…try it and see! Or think of playing against an opponent whose hand is face-up. Wouldn’t that be fun (and very profitable)? In...