Winning Legal Online Poker (LegalOnlinePokerChallenge.com)

Winning Legal Online Poker 5

- Online Players' Guide 5

INTRODUCTION 8

Are you ready to create a monster poker game? 8

Who is Winning Legal Online Poker For? 9

Is Winning Legal Online Poker Really Different From Other Styles? 10

What Makes Winning Legal Online Poker Different? 12

STEP ONE 16

Realize You Don't Know How 16

To Play Winning Legal Online Poker 16

STEP TWO 19

“I always fold...” 19

STEP THREE 24

“I play ...” 24

THE MONSTERS - AA and KK 26

THE BIG BOYS -QQ, JJ, AK, (AQ) 30

SNEAKY HANDS - Pocket pairs 22 - TT 33

MEDIUM HANDS - AJ, KQ, KJ, QJ 35

STEP FOUR 37

“Betting Conversations ...” 37

STEP FIVE 49

“Betting 1.2.3...” 49

THE CONTINUATION BET 54

BETTER THAN TOP PAIR 61

MADE SET 63

NUT HANDS 64

STEP SIX 66

“Matters of Position” 66

STEP SEVEN 70

Poker Table Selection 70

What does average pot size tell you? 72

What does % of Players Seeing the Pot tell you? 75

What is the Value of Winning Legal Online Poker Beyond Winning or Losing any Particular Hand? 77

Poker Focus is Like Sports Endurance 83

“I Feel Lucky” 86

The Psychology of Losing 88

So What Do You Do? 91

How to Correct Any Poker Problem Quickly 100

Why Have a Poker Journal? 103

Write Down Lessons Learned 109

Never Hide Your Mistakes 111

Rule #1 – Winning Legal Online Poker's 90/10 Rule 115

Rule #2 – Winning Legal Online Poker's Contested Pot Rule 122

Making Moves; i.e. Bluffing 124

Making Reads? 127

Online Tells 129

Suited Sucker 132

The Min. Raise Freeze Play 134

Let's Play Poker! 137

Winning Legal Online Poker Play Chart for Bodog 138

Winning Legal Online Poker

- Online Players' Guide

In early 2006 online poker was THRIVING! Televised World Series of Poker Wins by the likes of Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer sparked a new boom in online poker. Existing poker sites were stuffed with new players, and new sites popped up every month. Online players had multiple options for both loading money onto sites and removing winnings from poker sites. On many sites players could even just use their credit card.

September 30, 2006 changed all that. Conservative lawmakers in Washington DC attached the “Unlawful Internet Gambling Act” to a transportation bill. The bill became law and the face of online poker changed.

The law didn’t target players and it didn’t even specifically target poker. But it made it illegal for BANKS and CREDIT CARD PROCESSORS to knowingly transfer money to “illegal online gambling sites” (whatever those are). The banks and credit card companies had to figure out what that meant. In the end they shut down pretty much every site to U.S. players.

What the banks and credit card companies didn’t shut down sites themselves shut down. Party Poker immediately withdrew from U.S. online play for money, as did others. That left a handful of sites, but more than enough for options for play.

About a year or so later the federal government started targeting the remaining sites. They would disrupt banking relationships and seize bank accounts controlled by poker sites. Finally, in 2011 they prosecuted owners and executives for the large remaining sites, effectively shutting them down.

The End of Online Poker?

Through all the mess and disruptions one site seemed to rise above all the confusion and fear… BODOG POKER. Bodog has been a major online poker and gambling site for over 15 years. While most of the other sites were located in some unheard of island in the Caribbean or in Europe, Bodog is operated and licensed in Canada.

In 2006, in response to the the UIEGA law, the original Bodog was sold to the Kahnawake Gaming Commission licensed Morris Mohawk Gaming Group (MorrisMohawk.ca) of the Mohawk Territory of Kahnawake, Quebec, Canada, making MorrisMohawk.ca the sole owner and operator of the Bodog online gaming brand in the United States.

I honestly don’t know why, but I’m assuming due to the tribal independence of the Native Tribe, Bodog has consistently flown above the fray and received little to no interference.

Flash forward to 2011 and Bodog is the ONLY ONLINE POKER SITE I know of where you can play poker for money without much worry of getting your winnings to you. I play and recommend Bodog. This book was written to win money on Bodog.

DEPOSITING AND RETRIEVING FUNDS

Bodog has continued to both allow deposits and make payouts to winners electronically and via check. These methods change from time to time, so go to the “Cashier” section in your Bodog account to see the current methods.

SIGNING UP ON BODOG POKER

To sign up on Bodog with the best deposit bonus and specials visit –

www.LegalOnlinePokerChallenge.com

INTRODUCTION

Are you ready to create a monster poker game?

Welcome to the Winning Legal Online Poker challenge. Winning Legal Online Poker is a winning oriented method of play for use on Bodog. We don't spend tons of time talking about abstract odds, poker theory, poker history, famous poker players, The World Series of Poker's past, or anything other than playing cards, pushing chips, and making money playing poker.

We're talking only about Online Texas Holdem; and, in this book, we're talking only about No Limit Ring play. Tournament play, Limit play, Sit n Go play all may be Texas Holdem, but this book isn't about them. It's about sitting at a table with 8-9 other players with unchanging blinds and no time-limit on play. In other words, your basic poker game, except No Limit! Finally, this book is geared toward Online play. You'll see why as you read it. If you want a book about Brink-and-Mortar (cardroom), single table, live play, then this ain't it. Why? Because it's easier to transition from a Hobby-Player to a Winning Player online than in live play.

Who is Winning Legal Online Poker For?

I'm assuming that you know the basics of Texas Holdem and you know basic terminology: flop, turn, river, set, straight, reraise, limp, suited, etc. If you don't know the basics of holdem, then you need to learn that first - it takes about 30 minutes. If you don't know all the terms, but do know the basics, then there is a glossary in the back of this book. If you come across a term you don't understand, look it up.

So, who is this book for? It's for anyone who plays Holdem (and loves it) but hasn't yet made the transition from "break even" or worse to consistently making money. If you want to step up your game to make increasing amounts of money, then you're in the right place. If you're frustrated because you've "learned poker" but can't seem to make reality match with the theory you've read, then you're in the right place. If you want to transition from the brick-and-mortar mentality that most other poker books teach, and learn how to exploit online play for steady, easy profits then you're in the right place. Winning Legal Online Poker is for you, if you love poker. If you don't love poker, then don't play it. Do something you love. If you do love poker and ache to be able to consistently make real money playing online, then you have found your happy place.

Is Winning Legal Online Poker Really Different From Other Styles?

Let me tell you why I wrote this book, and from where it gets it's power. I love poker. I learned poker, I read all the standard books, and I played for years... "Breakeven". I would be up a little and then slowly lose my little $50 or $100 bankroll in short order. I called myself "breakeven" but in reality I lost money. I don't know how much because I never kept any records or made any notes. I just played when the urge hit and the money was available.

Then one day I decided to put together a "professional level" game. I invented the Winning Legal Online Poker model (although I didn't know it at the time) and 3 weeks later I quit my job and made online poker my bill paying job. It took 3 weeks to go from break even to thousands of dollars per month playing poker online. Did it make me rich? No. But I went from "breakeven" to thousands of dollars per month in poker profits in 3 weeks, and that's no small feat. From that beginning I continued refining Winning Legal Online Poker; my wife quit her job; I wrote poker articles, tutored players around the world and served as a poker consultant for poker sites.

So does Winning Legal Online Poker just work for me? Am I just lucky? Well, I started helping other players transform their games, and again people saw rapid improvement, just as I did. Players who barely knew how to play were making money. Players who had studied poker only to be frustrated were breaking out with solid, strong wins. I had fans and students who were changing their lives with the money they earned following my advice. Where standard poker books failed them, Winning Legal Online Poker insights proved to be the key difference to making money consistently.

So, with their encouragement and help, Winning Legal Online Poker was born.

My goal was to quit my job and play Winning Legal Online Poker full-time, but that's not the goal of this book for others. I turned poker into a 2nd career with Winning Legal Online Poker, but that's not the goal of this book for others. The main question I want Winning Legal Online Poker to answer for others is, "how do I transform my game from idle (or worse) to consistently winning?" What do you want online poker to do for you? (Pick One or Two):

• Make your car payment every month

• Save for a vacation

• Add to your retirement account

• Pay for your son's college tuition

• Fund your entertainment

As your skill and dedication increase you may be able to do all of the above and more. It's up to you.

What Makes Winning Legal Online Poker Different?

In my experience most of the poker books available today give you general knowledge about good poker theory but don't nail down exactly what you should do and how you should do it. Winning Legal Online Poker is different.

Most commonly accepted poker theory is based on LIVE, SINGLE TABLE PLAY. This is very important so I'm going to spend some time on it. Most Poker Books are based on LIVE, SINGLE TABLE PLAY.

Winning Legal Online Poker is based on multi-table, online play and there-in lies much of the difference. Why?

1. Live play is slow (about 35 hands per hour),

2. Live play is limiting (you can only pick one table out of a small selection),

3. To make money live you have to play higher stakes than necessary online, and at higher stakes you're generally playing better players.

4. Hand selection (the hands you play preflop) is different for live play compared to Winning Legal Online Poker,

5. The way you play hands is different as well.

So the difference between Live Single Table play and online multi-table play is huge. In other words, books that are based on live or single table play are not taking advantage of Winning Legal Online Poker methods and insights that make you money.

Next, theory poker books try to teach you "how to think" regarding poker, the books that teach technique also try to teach you "what to do", but none of them teach you "how to feel", "what to believe", "how to control and manipulate your thought processes to create success", they don't embolden, they don't inspire, they don't create - in a word - WINNERS. They create PLAYERS. Winning Legal Online Poker creates WINNERS.

If you read and internalize the lessons in this book then you will have no choice but to become a winning player who thinks and acts and emotes and reacts in winning patterns. You will become a player who can observe yourself, who can dissect and pick apart your own weaknesses and exploit others' weaknesses for your success.

In short Winning Legal Online Poker is about Making Winners not Whiners. "I can't believe you called me there. You only had a 20% chance of winning but called a 50% pot sized bet. Boo, hoo, hoo" That's a poker Whiner. He knows theory, he knows odds, he knows poker "think", but doesn't know POKER. He doesn't know how to win. He doesn't know how to absorb variance, he doesn't see poker correctly. He's a theory baby; a poker whiner, not a winner.

Winning Legal Online Poker doesn't ignore poker theory, but we adapt it to the situation, and more importantly we don't treat it like it came from the mountaintop on carved stone. Why? Because we know most poker theory was written by players who play... what? SINGLE TABLE LIVE PLAY!!!

Sir Isaac Newton said certain things about Gravity, and he was right! However, Albert Einstein come along later and said, "That's true BUT here's what you never knew that makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE." General poker theory is true, BUT...

Ready to get started? Me too. Let's go!!

PART ONE

19 HAND WINNING LEGAL ONLINE POKER – NO LIMIT!

STRATEGIES AND TECHNIQUES

STEP BY STEP

Without a winning strategy, the rest doesn't matter!

STEP ONE

Realize You Don't Know How

To Play Winning Legal Online Poker

There are many people in the world who know how to play No Limit Ring Holdem, obviously. However, out of the many millions of people playing No Limit Ring Holdem, only a very small percentage actually know how to play poker. The question then is: Are you one of them?

So the question is: why are you reading this book? You want to play "better", right? OK. But I need to tell you something. I may not be able to help you play "better" unless you first realize that you play "terribly". In other words, you need to realize that there is a good probability that you don't know how to play. Even though you THINK you know how to play. And even though you know what hand beats what, and more or less how to bet the hands. And even though you have good knowledge of drawing odds, etc.

The reality is that you probably don't know how to play for consistent and significant monetary wins. And I can guarantee you don't know how to play Winning Legal Online Poker as outlined in this book.

The nice way to say it is, "there are some holes in your game". But if you want to improve dramatically, quickly and permanently, then you can't be nice to yourself. You need to be brutal. You need to face that fact that what you are DOING doesn't work in a way that will get you what you want. You need to realize that the way you are thinking is getting you into trouble and is preventing you from being a great player.

You will get the most out of this book if you decide now that you don't know how to play professional level poker - the kind of poker that you aspire to play. If you agree to ignore everything you think you know, and everything you think is right, you will release your potential to become a great player. That's our goal together!

You have to learn a new way to play. You need to build a game from the ground up. You need to create a poker discipline, environment, game and mentality that Performs! You can't do that by tweaking a game that doesn't perform, that underperforms, or that sucks. Your current game is holding you back, causing you stress, and frustrating your dreams. You need to let go of it entirely.

Don't ask me to "improve" your bad game. Help me and yourself by realizing that "starting from scratch" isn't a bad thing. When you're done, you will have a MONSTER game, a RAGING INFERNO of a game, a BRUTAL WHIPSAW OF DEATH game. Or you can decide that you're OK with what you have and you'll just flip through the book and pick up some tips. Do that. Every table needs 8-9 crappy players so the good ones can earn their car payment.

Yeah, I know this is an abusive, arrogant, obnoxious, annoying, irritating, disturbing section. But it's important. When I personally train players, the first thing they have to convince me of - before I will teach them ANYTHING - is that they are willing to start from scratch. They have to give up all their preconceptions, beliefs and "knowledge". If you're willing to do that, then the rest is easy, exciting, fun, and powerful.

If you are not ready to do that, then just flip through the book. Maybe you'll pick up a trick or two. But your chances of creating a professional level game are very low.

Spend some time thinking about this and deciding BEFORE you move on to the remainder of the book. Are you willing to start from scratch? Are you willing to set aside whatever you think you know and commit to creating a new game? When you are, start reading again. We'll move on to Step Two...

STEP TWO

“I always fold...”

If you have come to believe that you are willing to learn poker from scratch, to build your game from the ground up and forget everything you "think" you know, then let's get started.

The first, most basic, skill in poker is folding. If you said, "no duh, yea I know that" then go back and read Step 1... Done?

OK, let's continue.

Folding is also the most overlooked skill by the majority of players. They can't fold. They won't fold. They find reasons to play when they should be finding reasons to fold. They think and then re-think, they try to read minds, they make "reads" to help them stay in a hand, they play pure position plays and know they can steal pots after the flop with any two cards. They think folding will make them look weak in the eyes of their opponents. It deflates their ego. They think they are poker geniuses. They are actually action junkies. These guys are going to be your new best friends, because they are going to make your mortgage payments for you.

The main reason people don't fold is because they want to play. They see each poker "session" as a thing that has a start and a finish. If they are going to play for 1 hour then they want to play some hands during that hour. YOU, on the other hand, are going to understand that your poker career is One Big Never Ending Poker Session. If you sit down to play for an hour and you don't have any situations, cards and scenarios where you should play, then you won't play. You will fold for an hour, turn off the computer and know you did your job!! If you want to play a game for fun, play Monopoly. If you want to play Winning Legal Online Poker then it's time to get a pen.

Get a pen and a pad of paper. On the top write "I ALWAYS FOLD..." then write the following. You have to write this out. Reading it is pointless. And if you really want to burn it into your brain then you can write the list twice. As you write each hand THINK about it.

If you decide you aren't going to ALWAYS fold some particular hand then you better have a fantastic reason why, and you better be able to create a strategy for playing that hand in about 15 different scenarios. Otherwise, just convince yourself that you will always fold it for the next couple months - while you're becoming a Winning Legal Online Poker player. Then, if you want, you can add it back into your starting hands with purpose and with a plan of action for the hand.

I always fold T8.

I always fold J8.

Now keep writing "I always fold" for the rest of this list. It's not every hand in poker, but it's enough for what we're doing right now. 's' means Suited, 'x' means "any numeric card". So KQs means “King Queen Suited” and Ax means “Ace plus any numeric card”.

Write “I always fold” for each of the following combination:

Q9, A9, 74s, J7s, 85s 96s, K9, 54, 65, 76, 87, 32s, 42s, 43s, 53s, Q8s, T7s, Kxs, 64s, 98, t9, j9, 75s, j8s, k9s, 54s, QT, KT, 86s, AT, 65S, Axs, 97s 76s, JT, T8s, Q9s, 87, KTs, J9s, 98s, QTs, T9s, ATs, JTs

That's your list of unplayable cards. UNPLAYABLE, any position, any situation, the only time you will be playing these cards is if you post the big blind and check into a hand with them. Otherwise you're folding. You are folding on the small blind, you are folding on the button, you are folding with multiple limpers, raised pots, unraised pots, etc.

Before we continue though, I must state something that SHOULD be glaringly obvious to you, but might not be. When you check into a flop from the big blind with one of your "I fold" hands, it's extremely important that you do not get drawn into playing your cards unless you really strike it lucky on the flop. Let's say that you hold 83 as the big blind and it comes round to you unraised, so you check and get to see the flop for no extra cash, "free" if you like. The flop comes 864. You have top pair! You are DONE with this hand. Fold it. Don't bet it. Don't call with it. Just let it go.

In these instances your hand is no good. You are probably beaten already. If you aren't beaten already, it's highly likely you will be before the hand is finished. Very occasionally you will flop a monster - with your 83 big blind you could see a flop of 883, K33, or even 888 as some examples. It does happen - but these will be in the minority, and remembering this will keep you out of a whole lot of trouble. Just because you got to see the flop for free doesn't mean it won't cost you dearly if you play your mediocre flopped hand above its real value. We will cover this more in detail when we talk about playing the blinds.

Did you find that you said, "No way, I'm not folding this in 'whatever' situation"? ATs??? That's a good hand, huh? You get that nut flush draw, plus a fairly strong Ace, and it's oh so pretty especially in red. On the small blind!!! Yea, baby! Maybe on the button too!!! Right? Oh! and, one off the Button, maybe? "Well, if I'm on the small blind and call and just the big blind is left and he min. raises then maybe I'll call a min. raise. And if I'm in late position and there are multiple limpers then I'm getting 'drawing odds', right? So, maybe there too." STOP!!! For God's sake before my head explodes!

These are the thought processes that make good players bad, bad players worse, and sucky players out of everyone. Please, for the love of all that is pure and holy understand this one thing. All the books you read and all the advice you got from people who read those books are based on the same antiquated concept of playing ONE table LIVE. That means that you are physically sitting at a table and only one table since there's only one of you. The cards are being shuffled; you're seeing maybe 35 hands per hour - if not less. You are playing the maximum stakes for your bankroll, because that's what you should do if you are single table, live playing.

That's not Winning Legal Online Poker! Winning Legal Online Poker is a modern, multi-table, online style of play. Instead of playing one table at $2/$4, you're playing 4 tables of $.5/$1. Instead of seeing 35 hands per hour or less, you're seeing about 200 hands per hour. Instead of playing "whatever table is available" you are selecting only the best tables for playing your game, tables with huge pots and tons of passive preflop callers. Do you see what I'm saying?

The hands that you think you want to play preflop might be right for some other situation. But we're talking about a game where you can sit and play 4-5 tables at a time for hours on end and make money. This is a game that's designed for the 21st century online poker reality. Can you trust me on this on just a little bit?

Now, for whatever hands you have reservations about... Like ATs... write 25 times. "I always fold" and the hand. Each hand 25 times. Each time reminding yourself that you are creating a new game, a disciplined game, a money making game that will bring you hundreds of thousands of dollars over your poker career, a game that's going to make you into a poker monster.

Done? If you didn't do this exercise and you think you're ready to go to the next section, then do me a favor. Go to the bathroom, remove the roll of toilet paper, and place this book on the spool. You might as well put it to use, because you're not using it to learn how to play Winning Legal Online Poker. Do the damn exercise before you move on, please. It'll only take an hour, unless you're writing with your feet. And I know a guy who could probably do it in less than an hour with his feet as well.

Done? You have now completed Step Two of Winning Legal Online Poker and are ready to move on to Step Three...

STEP THREE

“I play ...”

Why did we go through the exercise of writing, "I always fold..” for almost every hand in poker? Two reasons. One, you need you face those hands that you like playing but shouldn't play. Second, when you eliminate ever hand that you fold from a poker deck, what are you left with? Only the hands you play.

Why is it important to isolate your game to just the hands you play? Because to be a Winning Legal Online Poker player you need to know EXACTLY how you play these hands for every situation. Can you do that for 75 hands? NO! Can you do it for 25 hands? Maybe but it's hard. But you can do it for 19 hands.

If you're following the Winning Legal Online Poker plan in this book, then that's how many hands you play preflop. Just 19!! Remember one of the questions in Step 1 was "what hands you do play preflop and how do you play them?" after this section you'll be able to tell anyone, anywhere, for any situation preflop what hands you play and why. By the end of this book you will be able to EXECUTE a Winning Legal Online Poker strategy that will earn you money month after month after month in increasing stakes; however you want to make it.

So what are the 19 hands?

• All pocket pairs (that's 13)

• AK, AQ, AJ, KQ, QJ, KJ

That's it. So go play! Just kidding. Before you play you have a lot more to learn, and the next thing to cover is WHY you play these 19 hands, HOW you play them preflop, and WHY you play them HOW you play them. By the end of this section you should be able to write a 5 paragraph essay on each hand you play and why you play it the way you do. Ready?

We're breaking these hands up into 4 categories:

MONSTERS, BIG BOYS, SNEAKY, and MEDIUM.

THE MONSTERS - AA and KK

Everyone loves seeing pocket aces and pocket kings. They're GREAT! They're Powerful. They put you in the lead in a big way, and if played correctly will keep you in the lead. However, sometimes they break your heart and cost you a bunch of money. We're going to see if we can't reduce how often heartbreaks happen.

AA - Nothing beats them preflop. What are you going to do with them and why? First, you are NEVER going to slow play aces. Here's why. The biggest problem with aces is this: when you get BEAT with them, it costs you a kidney and a spleen and a piece of your heart. Everyone pays dearly when their aces get cracked. So you want to reduce that risk as much as possible with a strong preflop raise.

Raising should eliminate how many opponents you face to one or two. When you slow play AA you are inviting disaster from all sorts of weak hands AND by showing weakness you will have a hard time getting other players out of the hand after the flop. That means you may be Very successful in sucking the player with K8s (who flopped top pair) deeper into the betting only to get crushed when the 8 hits. Anytime you get beat by crappy cards when you have AA, it better be because the other guy was a raving idiot who called a strong preflop raise from you.

It's common for two things to happen with pocket aces that are wrong. First, people limp or make a smaller raise than normal because they "want action". In other words they think, "Ooo I have aces, I don't want to give away my hand so I'll raise less." Don't do that. It only makes the preflop pot smaller when you are a massive favorite to win the hand. Don't "trap" with aces and don't slow play them in a NL ring game. Play them for your normal 3-5xBB raise.

If you want to fake weakness, do it after the flop from early position. Check the flop if you want and hope someone bets into you. You can always fake weakness later in the hand to get action, but don't do it preflop.

Second, don't over-raise your AA. The other common mistake is for someone who usually raises 3-4xBB preflop to raise 10x with AA. Why do they do that? Believe it or not, it's a tilt move! They recently or repeatedly had AA cracked so they over-raise to keep that from happening Ever Again. The reality when you do this is that you are declaring to the whole table "I have AA, call me with your drawing hands and I'll pay you off if you flop your draw." Also, your aces will still get cracked at times - sometimes consecutively. That's why they call it poker. Don't declare your aces, make your normal AK raise preflop and then play the hand smartly.

So we raise pocket aces preflop. We don't slow play them because we don't want Joe Crappyhand to get lucky and we don't overplay them because we want appropriate action and we want a decent preflop pot built. So, you raise AA preflop ALWAYS.

What if someone raises in front of you? Reraise them back almost 100% of the time. There will be a couple exceptions, but generally you want to reraise the raiser with AA. Next, if you raise and you get reraised then you want to either reraise them back hard or simply push. AA is a hand where you want to take all the action you can get preflop. If the other guy is willing to go all in with a smaller pocket pair or AK, then praise the lord and pass the chips.

Purchase this book or download sample versions for your ebook reader.
(Pages 1-17 show above.)