Tag Archives: Poker

Gavin Griffin Discusses The Pitfalls Of Poker

Gavin Griffin

Gavin Griffin is a 30 year-old live tournament pro who has amassed $4,634,067 playing live tournaments, and a little over $70,000 online. The California resident is also a triple crown winner, having taken down a WSOP, EPT and WPT title between May 2004 and January 2008.

Soon after, Gavin Griffin was snapped up by Poker Stars but since then things haven’t gone so well for the US pro who has cashed for just $102,688 between 2009 and 2012.

Discussing some of the factors which affected his fortunes over the past few years, Griffin cites the cost of traveling and playing in live tournaments, payment to backers and high state taxes especially in California (he paid $1 million in taxes in 2007 and 2008). On top of that, throw in stock market losses, a better level of general competition, and the effects of Black Friday, and you have all the ingredients of a massive knock to a poker professionals bankroll.

However, Gavin Griffin emphasizes the fact he isn’t broke but has had to step down several levels in order to keep a tight reign on his bankroll. This has lead to a slight dent to his pride, but Gavin now feels he is turning a corner, and as he explains:

“I’m proud that I don’t have too much trouble playing at lower stakes…I was there [Commerce Casino] playing $8/$16 and in the past I’ve played $200/$400 on a regular basis and played as high as $1,000/$2,000 Limit. So to be there during the LAPC, the best time to play at the Commerce, and I’m playing $8/$16 and all these people I know are milling around, I found myself ducking my head a bit and avoiding people and stuff…So I felt like I was disguising myself a bit, at least until the article came out I guess.”

The 30-bet rule at poker

How can you tell whether or not you’re playing a good poker game? This simple rule will make it easier for beginner’s to judge their poker performance.

When you’re new to poker, it’s hard to judge how well you’re playing over the course of an entire game, and managing your bankroll can be difficult.

There are lots of different schools of thought when it comes to managing your bankroll while you’re playing on-line poker, but the simplest and most effective tip that I’ve ever heard is one that can be applied to all kinds of poker – limit and no limit, Texas Hold’em, and Omaha hi/lo.

That tip is known as the “30 bet rule”. Essentially, the 30 bet rule says that you should never lose more than 30 big bets in a game. The size of a “big bet” depends on the type of game you’re playing, but it should give you an idea of how much money you will be risking in a game, and has the added bonus of making sure you’re ready for your chosen limits – if you can’t afford those 30 big bets, don’t even sit down at the table.

The 30 bet rule is useful for many reasons. Firstly, it stops you from staying at a table when you’re losing. Secondly, it encourages you to think carefully before you play poker, and may help you to adopt a more conservative style.

Thirdly, it acts as a form of automatic bankroll management – even for more experienced players. If you are a good player, and you’ve lost 30 hands in one night, then it’s likely that you need to step away from the table for a while. Not necessarily because you’re playing badly, but because those 30 losses – even if they were simply down to bad luck, will have had a massive impact on your table image.

If you look weak to other players at the table, your performance suffers – even if you’re good, you end up getting called on more hands, and you’ll end up losing more often just because of the way the other players perceive you.

The 30 bet rule ensures that bad table image won’t be as much of a problem.

Texas Holdem Poker

The education procedure begins by acquiring a solid understanding of the fundamentals of Texas Holdem Poker. These essentials will engage information of the ranking of poker hands, accepting the concepts of gambling, checking, raising, re-raising, bluffing and folding. The capability to analyze numerical chances and probability is a huge ability to have. But for a lot of the players who are not so blessed, a basic considerate of hand power is necessary. Knowing which hands are tough and which hands are feeble and the chances of making a hand with the cards that are dealt is an essential skill. Without this smallest basic poker information and skill, poker triumph at any level will be hard to achieve.

Unluckily, today there is a rush to get it done, just does it! Endurance is not a asset, it is essentially non-existent. The main error that a start player can make is to rush off to a casino, a poker room or an online poker room such as PokerStars, Poker Party or Full Tilt poker and start playing for real money. This can be a very costly error.

The poker knowledge and expansion process should begin by playing poker at house in a low-risk surroundings with family and friends. At first, stakes should be restricted to playing for arrogant rights or for very low stakes. The poker crowd should include players who are at the same stage of knowledge, at least until there is an understanding of all the basic rules and procedures. At these very basic levels, the group of players might even want to share their knowledge to help each other develop their skills more quickly. It is at this level, that they should also begin to acquire a poker library of poker instructional books and DVDs. These instructional resources should provide basic poker training plus information on higher poker strategy and tactics.