By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Ok so I promised a few weeks ago to write a daily blog but this month has just not been possible for me. I have undertaken even more work and I haven’t even played poker in ages as well. Although starting 1st April I will be doing a 100-1 challenge in which I try to turn $100 into $10,000. I may even start as low as $50 yet but I have pencilled this in time wise so it is likely to happen.

This will run alongside the Vulture, Jackal and Fox systems so April should be a really exciting month. I am also in the process of trying to lose a couple of stone in weight as well so I am having to tough things out. The challenge won’t be to win 10k, it will be to keep my control whilst playing for tiny amounts. Seeing as I have no history of doing this for long periods in the past then it will be tough.

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By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

I have to apologise for not posting lately as often as what I have promised. But the good news……starting 1st Feb is that this will be a daily blog except for the 14th Feb when I am taking the missus somewhere special for Valentines Day.

Things have been really hectic lately and I have finally got someone lined up to play The Jackal properly from next month. We have agreed that he keeps all winnings and rakeback and simply pays me a kick back if and when he reaches $5k.

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By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

I was playing a NL400 heads up last night when the following hand came up. I was in the big blind with 10s-6s. I had bought in for $400 and had watched a certain player for a while. They had run well and had amassed around $1000. I was a little up on them so effective stacks were around $420.

They were very LAG even for a heads up and we were only about ten hands into the contest. They raise to $12 and I think that all three plays have merit at this stage but I decide to call for balance. The pot is $24 and the flop comes 4s-3c-2s giving me the flush draw, gutshot straight draw and two overcards.

Leading out with a draw of that size is a solid line and probably better than check-raising which is the line I chose. So I checked knowing that they would c-bet although I think that leading out is the better line. Anyway I check and they bet $16 and I check-raise to $72. They insta all-in shove for their entire stack! The effective all-in is for $336 as this is all that I have left.

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By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Played three more poker sessions since the last post and I seem to have started the year like a freight train! I had a huge near miss yesterday when I was considering backing Dave Chisnell to win the BDO World Darts Final. If I could have managed to get better than Evens then I would certainly have lumped on massively but just couldn’t get that price.

Chisnell was stepping into uncharted waters but then again Adams is dodgy under pressure so the game looked like a coin flip. If I can get better than Evens on a coin flip then I am seriously interested but the bookies know it as well and there wasn’t value anywhere in my book.

Lucky I couldn’t get the price though seeing as Chisnell got chinned 7-5 although he was just one leg away from taking it to 6-6. So I had a close shave there but I laid Man Utd at Birmingham and that came up nicely as did two sessions of $200 PLO which ended up a combined $411 ahead. I also played some NL50 as well to try and get back into the feel of it for my proposed challenge this year and won a massive $34 so no complaints.

The year has also gone reasonably well with regards my stable of players that I am staking. Now reduced to a far more manageable and streamlined six, they are starting to repay the faith that I had in them. I suspected that 2010 would be a profitable if unspectacular year and the ten days seem to be following that trend.

I was almost scared away from playing PLO200 after hearing of some very good players who were merely recycling money at it. Although in all fairness they were playing on Full Tilt Poker which is a far tougher site even though it gets the player levels. If you want to make consistent money in online poker then you are better off keeping it low and also off the big huge sites like FTP and Stars.

See you soon and take care.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson can be seen at www.pokerloco.com/thedean

By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

I have played two more sessions of $200 six handed PLO since last post and I have further success to report. I won $97 last night and a further $191 the previous session which now takes me nearly $900 ahead on the year so far. I have dropped down to one table and I find that I can read the play far better. I started out playing 3/4 tables simply because this was what other successful players were doing.

It was obviously a big mistake and not something that I want to repeat. I have not used tracking software but as the games get tougher than using an Omaha tracker will become inevitable. So far 2010 hasn’t provided me with a losing session as yet but after the bad end to 2009 then I am in need of things going my way somewhat.

I have been thinking about rejoining a coaching site that specialises in PLO but the thing is that I think that my system of play does quite well when one tabling so I am reticent to tamper with something that feels like it is doing well. It is hard these days to go anywhere without the latest scandal on Full Tilt Poker being talked about.

Isildur losing $4.2 million to Brian Hastings in a single day and then it comes out that him and Cole South along with Brian Townsend were sharing information on Isildur. Don’t like to say that I told you so (OK so I said it) but a quick flick back through my recent posts will reveal what I said. May have been last month or November but I said how the big boys would be plotting against him.

I think Isildur was a little naïve staying around for so long, I would have hit and ran and then come back at a later date with a different MO. Any player with a massive seven figure roll is going to be up there to be shot at and when you get the best in the world taking aim then your days are numbered…..the kid should have cut it short.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson can be seen at www.pokerloco.com/thedean

By Carl “The Dean” Sampson at poker loco and can also be seen on his blog at www.pokersharkpool.com

I was going to post another Vince Stanzione video today but I totally forgot about the World Cup draw in Cape Town yesterday and it’s a great draw for England…..is our luck finally turning?

I think that Capello will prepare us right and I think that we will have a good tournament at the least. We should top our group against Slovenia, USA and Algeria. Some people will say that these are not easy teams and they are right but there are no easy teams in the finals.

But if you want to win a World Cup then you have to come through against these sides. Alan Shearer got it spot on during the BBC commentary when he said that if we fear the likes of USA then there has to be something wrong somewhere.

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By Carl “The Dean” Sampson at poker loco

I think I must have answered or replied to this question more times than I can care to remember but I got an e-mail from a guy called Robert today who asked me a series of questions of which this was one of them. Actually Rob please forgive me if I don’t answer them all straight away but time is of the essence at the moment. Of course we have all seen cheating scandals associated with online poker. These have been the players themselves who have been breaking the rules and not the sites. Now of course the poker sites will not break their neck to divulge such things, why should they……that is just good business practice.

If you owned a large electrical store and one of your range of televisions was faulty then you would just correct the problem. What you wouldn’t do is make a big public statement saying how one of your product range was faulty but there is nothing to worry about as you are correcting the problem.

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By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Time Duration Tells

By this I mean the length of time that it takes for a player to make their play. If someone raises and it gets around to a player and their fold is instant then this is likely to be a player who has already clicked the “fold to a bet/raise” button. Of course knowing that someone intended to fold after the event is not of much use to us but it does in fact indicate a player who is prone to using pre-action buttons.

If you were to repeat this scenario and it was bet and called by two opponents and their call was visibly instant on a board of Ah-9c-8c then this could be an indication that this player is on a draw and is receiving the proper pot odds to call and has clicked the “call any bet” button.

Tells like these can be a great help and especially in games like limit hold’em where players are frequently receiving the correct pot odds to draw to hands. Taking this a stage further and if a raise was instant then this would indicate that the raiser was raising with a powerful hand and his action was something of a no brainer otherwise they would have needed at least a few seconds of thinking time.

If you raised before the flop with AK and it was called and then a re-raise was instantaneous then a fold could be in order here and especially in a game like No Limit Hold’em. Another possible tell when it comes to betting is when a player stalls for a long time as if apparently thinking and then either calls the bet or raises.

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By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

This is a very interesting topic and one that has been analyzed by many people. The simple fact of the matter is that whenever you play live poker, you will if you are skilled enough be able to pick up on certain tells by certain players. Many professional players who ply their trade in a bricks and mortar poker environment base their entire game on spotting and exploiting tells. It is also the opinion of many people that playing poker in an online environment eliminates being able to pick up on these tells, they are in a word….wrong! This is simply because there are all kinds of tells in poker and they do not necessarily have to be visual either.

Whenever you look for tells in an online game or a live game, all you are essentially doing is looking for different things. Most of the tells that players give off in an online game can also be picked up in a live game but the same is not true in reverse. So just what kind of tells can be picked up by glaring at the screen?

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By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

There is a tremendous amount of poker literature these days, not to mention websites, magazines, DVD’s and televised programs that are all connected with the game. All this exposure can either be a very good or a very bad thing when it comes to attempting to learn the game. Of course having all these avenues to explore is better than having no avenue at all. But too many avenues does create one thing….an awful lot of personal opinion. Once again getting access to as many opinions as possible in any subject can either be a good or a bad thing. It all depends on how you interpret that opinion and how accurately you follow it.

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By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

It is a very familiar story and I have heard it thousands of times and it goes something like this.

“Bought into Pokerloco for a thousand dollars a while back. I started playing some single table sit and go’s and limit hold’em. I was ahead by $700 after a couple of weeks and decided to cash it out. I played on with my initial grand. The games on $10-$20 limit hold’em looked really soft and players were calling with anything so I sat in on the game.

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By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

I have spoken with many people over the past few years who have or who are playing poker online both face to face and on forums and through other avenues. One of the things that struck me and still does to a certain extent are the large number of people who buy into a poker site and then stay there for good.

Do not get me wrong here, if you are purely and simply a recreational player then there may be nothing wrong with it. But even then, staying on the same site could be hurting you financially if you are not taking full advantage of the sheer volume of free money options that there are.

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