Planet Mark's Blog. Thoughts, News And Strategy For Poker Tournaments Of All Sizes

Planet Mark's Blog

Kens Hand Of The Week - Playing Against Aggressive Check Raisers

One of the things that a lot of players struggle with is dealing with a lot of aggression from opponents.  They find it more difficult to play against these players.  Now it is true that aggression can be a real weapon at the poker table if you know how to use it properly, and there are a lot of players who at least know enough about what they are doing to possibly give us trouble if we don’t know how to handle it properly.

Submitted by Planet Mark on Thu, 08/02/2012 - 10:01

All The Stars / Full Tilt Links (And No Respin Of The News!)

Great news yesterday, Full Tilt are coming back and everyone looks like getting repaid. I have collected links to the main news sources / parties involved and key commentators below. I do not have any personal insider information, and do not wish to join the hordes of 2nd / 3rd tier cloned poker ‘portals’ adding no value at all to the universe by blandly respinning the original news articles… So for now I’ll just say that I am very happy indeed, both as a player and as a webmaster!

Submitted by Planet Mark on Wed, 08/01/2012 - 09:51

Kens Hand Of The Week - Limping Along With The Best Hand

This week’s hand involves a question I had recently from a student concerning whether or not he should value bet the river or not.  So this is something that a lot of smaller buy-in tournament players wonder about, so I felt it would be a good topic to cover. So our friend was dealt JK On the button.  He had the biggest stack at the table although not that much more than several other players.  It was mid way through the tournament and a time where you want to keep building your stacks, especially with a good sized stack like this.

Submitted by Planet Mark on Wed, 07/25/2012 - 15:50

Back Motivated And Historically Bemused

Happy to be writing this from my home office in Budapest. After 12 excellent days  in my native England my motivation is well and truly topped up, and after a day of catching up with everything poker-related I am ready to get working on new ideas and material for my network of sites. There has always been a lot of background ‘chatter’ comparing the poker games of 2004 to those of 2012… I agree that they are different beasts, however there was always something that made me a little uncomfortable when I read / heard the stories. While away I finally put my finger on it.

Submitted by Planet Mark on Wed, 07/18/2012 - 17:21

New Post Series - Ken's View From The Tables

A new month, and a new idea! Explaining poker involves a lot of 'theory'. A lot of principals such as position, aggression and bet sizing need to be conceptualized before you can become a long-term winner. Now, this site is full of articles which explain those principals for beginning and improving players... What I felt we were a little lacking is some real-life examples of when and how to use them at the tables. To get back to balance I have asked Ken, from King Cobra Poker, to provide a weekly post for readers which demonstrate core poker principals in action. These will be experiences directly from the tournament and cash game tables, and will give you the link between 'principals' and the individual hands which you will find on forums and some blogs. What I am hoping is that you will be able to better understand the situational factors, and when to use the knowedge you gain from the huge number of articles already here. Your feedback is welcomed, I will post the link each week on our Facebook Group. Alright, here goes with the first installment of Ken's view from the tables - about taking advantage of those who play too tight at the bubble.

Submitted by Planet Mark on Mon, 07/02/2012 - 13:51