The main thing you have to understand here is that value betting is your friend. If you strongly feel you’re ahead based on an opponent’s tendencies, you bet the maximum that the opponent is willing to call. In most cases, micro stakes players are the easiest to value bet against because the money is so insignificant, and they just want to see more cards.

Just be sure to watch your opponents for a while before making any huge raises so that you can identify their playable range of hands, which should be pretty wide in the micro stakes. Sure there will be times where you go all-in with pocket aces and get called by a couple of players – one of which cracks your aces. But thinking long-term, if you keep making strong value bets, you should have little trouble with these stakes.

Along with value betting, you need to keep a very tight range of hands and avoid bluffing. The latter is a downfall of many players who lose in the micro stakes because they try to make steals from the cut-off and button, only to get called by one or two players afterward. Simply put, there will be enough spots where you can make money without bluffing in low stakes play, so don’t spew off money trying to steal.

Another point worth mentioning here is that you need to select your tables carefully as well. When looking at the lobby statistics, a high flop-viewed percentage coupled with big average pot sizes highlights where the loose players are. Furthermore, these represent the best players to value bet when you’re ahead because they’re highly likely to call.

One more point worth making is to always consider the possibility that your opponent actually has a hand when they’re betting big. Many players make the mistake of thinking that micro stakes players are constantly going all-in with bottom pair and ace-high, which isn’t always the case.

As long as you rake just $1 at Carbon, you’ll receive free poker training at DTB for the remainder of February and the entire month of March. Assuming you like the DragTheBar poker training ($30 value), you can keep it going beyond March by raking $500 before the full months-end.

To get started, you simply need to have a Carbon Poker account and opt-in here. Once you rake $1, you’ll have access to all of the membership benefits that regular DTB members get with no extra hidden costs involved. Perks to being a DragTheBar member include having access to their 1,000-plus video library, and watching training videos from over 30 poker coaches.

If you’d like more free offers, keep in mind that Carbon Poker is running a $25,000 Bankroll Booster Freeroll on February 26th. To get into this huge freeroll, you can play in the free qualifiers that are running every day at 13:30, 17:30 and 21:30 server time. The top 10 players win a seat for the $25k Bankroll Booster Freeroll, so if you keep entering the qualifiers, you have a good chance to win.

Those looking for less crowded freerolls should consider the VIP Points Earned Qualifiers. With these, you need to earn a certain amount of VIP Points throughout the day before entering. What this does is limit the field sizes, and gives you a much better chance at winning a seat for the $25k Bankroll Booster Freeroll. And keep in mind that the winner of the $25k Freeroll will earn $5,000, which is definitely quite a bankroll boost!

He has recently turned this love of poker into a new site called RobbieWilliamsPoker.com, which, at first glance, seems like a free poker site. The words at the bottom of the home page say so with the following:

Our online poker room is the place where poker players and Robbie Williams fans play each other to score great prizes and create the craziest avatars! So get your poker face on for free online poker tournaments and perfect your Holdem Poker skills. This is NOT a Gambling Offer. You play in all games with virtual game money with no value.

It is worth mentioning though that not all poker games at Robbie Williams’ site are entirely free. In fact, a lot of the poker tournaments feature real money buy-ins, which makes this just about like any other poker site.

And this has the media on his back because it’s something else to rip on the former drug addict for. Liberal Democrat MP Tessa Munt told the DailyMail, “I’m outraged by this. It directly targets his fans, including children. The money he makes should go to addiction charities.” A fan also wrote the following on his website, “Taking advantage of vulnerable people for financial gain does not sit right with me.”

Unfortunately, the new Robbie Williams poker site seems to have turned into an attack on the game itself. And it’s unlikely that a mainstream media site like the DailyMail is going to understand this. Furthermore, don’t expect them to mention anything about how much skill poker involves either.

Another big change is that the November Nine won’t actually be playing in November this year, but rather late October. The reason why is because the WSOP wants to avoid overlapping their Main Event TV coverage with the 2012 Presidential Election. In essence though, this still keeps the big delay in between the start of the WSOP Main Event (July 7th), and the date at which the final table concludes.

Some brand new WSOP poker tournaments besides the aforementioned $1 million buy-in tourney include the following events:

Event #3 – $3,000 Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em/Pot-Limit Omaha
Event #6 – $5,000 Mix-Max No-Limit Hold’em
Event #28 – $2,500 Four-Handed No-Limit Hold’em
Event #49 – $1,500 Ante Only No-Limit Hold’em

WSOP Tournament Director Jack Effel discussed his excitement over the new changes by saying, “This year’s WSOP schedule is very exciting. We’re introducing some fantastic new events, while bringing back many successful stalwarts that our players love.” He continued by adding, “We will expand our footprint this year to include extra tables dedicated to cash games, as well as plenty of satellite and single-day tournament space, so players will have an easy time finding a desirable game without ever having to leave the Rio Convention Center.”

With all of the new changes taking place in the 2012 WSOP schedule, it will be interesting to see how this event compares to last year when over 75,000 players competed for a collective $192 million. Considering the fact that there’s a $1 million buy-in tournament already on the schedule, you can probably bet that the $192 million prize money number will be shattered.

To make your selection, all you have to do is visit your Player Admin area, and pick between the New England Patriots and New York Giants before the game takes place on February 5th. If your prediction is correct, your $5k freeroll ticket will be available on February 11th. As for the $5k freeroll, this happens on February 11th, and the field is limited to those who make a correct Super Bowl prediction.

If you’re looking for some guidance on which team to pick, the Patriots come into the game as the favorite at most sportsbooks. After all, they did finish with the AFC’s best record at 13-3, and easily won their division.

The Giants, on the other hand, struggled during certain portions of the year, and had to win their final regular season game just to make the playoffs (9-7 record). But since sneaking into the playoffs, the Giants have played excellent en route to wins over the Atlanta Falcons, Green Bay Packers and San Francisco 49ers.

In addition to their recent good play, the Giants also got the nod from the video game ‘Madden NFL 12.’ Every year there is a hyped Super Bowl simulation on Madden NFL, and this time around the Giants won 27-24 over the Patriots. In regards to its accuracy, Madden has made plenty of oddsmakers look foolish by successfully predicting winners in 6 out of the last 8 Super Bowls. Could they make it 7 out of 9?

As for entering this freeroll, players will have two different options. The first option is the regular freeroll qualifiers that run three times a day. What’s great about these tourneys is that there’s absolutely no entry fee, and the top 10 players win a seat for the $25k Bankroll Booster. In regards to finding the regular freerolls, you can catch them daily at 13:30, 17:30 and 21:30 (server time) in the Scheduled > Special section of the lobby.

The other option for winning your way into the Bankroll Booster includes the VIP Points Earned qualifiers. With these, you need to earn a certain amount of VIP Points before a specified time of the day. Your points start being tracked at 00:01, and here is a look at how many points you need to earn to enter each specific qualifier:

- 00:30 qualifier requires 100 points
- 04:30 qualifier requires 20 points
- 08:30 qualifier requires 50 points
- 12:30 qualifier requires 100 points
- 14:30 qualifier requires 300 points
- 16:30 qualifier requires 75 points
- 18:30 qualifier requires 15 points
- 20:30 qualifier requires 100 points
- 22:30 qualifier requires 500 points

The big advantage to playing in the VIP Points qualifiers is that there will be far less poker players in these fields than what you can expect in the open entry qualifiers. But no matter what way you make it into the $25k Bankroll Booster, it’s well worth the effort because of the huge prize pool that’s available.

And as far as structure goes, players will start off with 3,000 chips in this tournament, and the blind levels go up every 10 minutes. This being the case, it gives players plenty of time to use skilled play to inch closer towards that $5,000 first place prize.

When final table play began, Speidel was sitting behind Bjorn Di in second place in the chip count. However, Li’s misfortunes along with Speidel’s dominating play propelled him to the final table lead. By the time it was down to just the Aussie and his head-up opponent, Kenneth Wong, Speidel had already built up a 4-1 chip lead. Wong was never able to make a dent in this lead either, and the tournament was over 20 minutes later.

Following the tourney, Oliver Speidel couldn’t believe he won the 2012 Aussie Millions Main Event as he said, “Words can’t describe it. I’ve just been incredibly lucky this week.” He continued by adding, “It’s almost a joke to me really how lucky I’ve been this week. It keeps amazing me and now to win it all, I don’t know. I don’t know what to say really.”

What’s interesting is that Speidel is now the fourth straight Aussie to win the Main Event title dating back to Stewart Scott in 2009. And no one is more happy about this than Speidel himself who added the aforementioned $1.6 million AUD to his career winnings. The 26-year-old now has $1.97 million USD in poker tournament earnings, which ranks him 6th all-time among Australians (just ahead of Scott).

Some of his other highlights include a $1k side event win at the 2011 Aussie Millions ($99.5k), finishing second in a 2012 Aussie Millions $1k side event ($25.5k), and winning the aforementioned Manny Pacquiao tournament in the Philippines.

The high stakes poker pro discussed the sale by saying, “I’m selling my place in New York because I don’t know when I’m going to be able to live there full-time again. And it’s pretty expensive. I have a mortgage….two mortgages technically because it’s two apartments.”

He continued by saying, “I’m not living there, nobody’s living there. And I considered renting it out, but I don’t really like the idea of someone in my space if I’m gonna be back there. And I realize that I don’t really know if I’m gonna be back there.”

Galfond continued to discuss the sale by saying that if he wants to live in New York again, he can always find another place. He also added that the sale of his $3.14m condo will be featured on the Home & Garden TV show Selling New York. No date has been specified on when the apartments will be shown on Selling New York since they’re still filming the segment.

While not the primary motivation behind selling the condo, it’s worth mentioning that Galfond has been struggling in PLO games as of late. The Maryland native has lost over $580,000 playing online poker in January, and he’ll be looking to get back on track in future months.

***

Double Quads, Live at the Bicycle.

The Bicycle Casino is the scene for this incredible round of poker, with both the winner and the loser holding four of a kind. Either one of the players could have reasonably expected to win – and in this case, both of them did! The presence of “double quads” kicked in the Bad Beat Super Jackpot. With $100,000 total at stake, the “winner” (who had four Queens) took home $25,000, while the “loser” (with four Threes) raked in $50,000. The remaining $25,000 gets divided up between all the other players who were dealt into the hand initially.

Danny Nguyen Gets His.

Before the final card was dealt, legendary pro Danny Nguyen was looking at two pair (Fives and Sevens), while his opponent was staring at those same Fives and a pair of Kings. The chances of of the last card being turned coming up a 7, given the cards that were already on the table, were one in 274. It popped up, and Nguyen became about half a million dollars richer. With his nerves of steel, Nguyen looked like he expected it the whole time.

Daniel Negreanu Takes a Bath.

Veteran gambler Gus Hansen found himself squared off with Daniel Negreanu – the Bobby Fischer of poker – in a classic poker-face bluff fest, televised on High Stakes Poker no less, with hundreds of thousands of dollars in the pot: Negreanu gives a big sigh, Hansen digs crumbs of out of his tear duct, they both bet their banks and then… Negreanu turned over a full house. Hansen had been sitting on Quad Fives ever since the Turn and was just soaking the over-confident Negreanu the entire time.

Phil Hellmuth Goes Off.

Phil Hellmuth, a former World Series of Poker champion, is running his mouth as usual in this classic poker beat-down. From the Flop on, he keeps trying to run his opponent off the table with brash attitude and big bets. Brian Brandon, preternaturally sure that Hellmuth is sitting on “a middle pair” and is bluffing, holds on until the end. The River gives him a third Seven to go with the one he’s been sitting on and the first card in the Flop. When he calls the big-shot bluff master, he wins big, but the best part by far is watching Hellmuth lose his composure at the end.

Phil Ivey Hits the Jackpot.

Ice-man Phil Ivey wound up on the winning end of a huge payday when he played high-stakes betting machine Patrik Antonius, an equally stoic card-sharp. Ivey’s River bet elevated the pot to over $550,000 – and no wonder, since he was looking at a Full House with Jacks over Aces. Antonius, knowing he only had three Aces to his name (two of which were in the Flop), called anyway. When they both showed their cards, Ivey’s total single-hand winnings cleared $800,000. A record at the time, it cemented Ivey’s standing in the world of professional high-stakes poker.

Million Dollar Shootout.

The diminutive but intrepid Tom Dwan wound up playing in one of the most exciting poker hands anybody’s ever seen. Post-Flop, he was sitting on the King and Queen of Spades, with the professorial Barry Greenstein holding a pair of Aces. On the table sat the flop, an enticing Queen, a Four and Deuce – both Spades. Before the Turn, Greenstein bets Dwan “all-in”. With the pot sitting at $919,600, the 22-year old Dwan declined to pull back $200,000 of his wager, and up came the cards. The Queen at the turn made the River’s Seven irrelevant, and Tom Dwan won the biggest pot in the history of televised poker (at the time), with three Queens beating Greenstein’s winsome pair of Aces.

Get the Money on the Table.

In this Full Tilt classic, even before the Flop, there are two things the viewers notice about Phil Ivey. One, he’s so emotionless as to make a Vulcan look like a cheerleader. Two, he wants to jack up the pot on this hand early, because he’s been dealt an Ace-Deuce and he knows that his opponent, Tom Dwan, likes to bite on the big bets (unaware that Dwan has the Six and Seven of Hearts in his pocket). The Flop helped each of them a little, but the Turn came of the Four of Hearts, giving both of them a five-card Straight before even seeing the River. Ivey coolly pushed $90,000 into the kitty; Dwan saw that and then raised him another $142,000. Without so much as a facial tic, Ivey went all-in. With $1.1 million on the table, the River turned an irrelevant Jack, and Tom Dwan once again became the richest single-hand poker player in televised history. Ivey’s typical goldfish-esque reaction: “Wow, good hand.” He had just lost half a million dollars.

3-betting Light Definition – The basic definition of 3-betting light is re-raising another player preflop without great cards, and/or when you know you’re behind. For instance, if a player out in front of you raises, and you re-raise with 8s-9s, this is a light 3-bet because your holdings aren’t that strong.

Example of 3-betting Light – To better illustrate how 3-betting light looks in action, let’s say that a player to your right (button) who’s been stealing a lot raises to $6 in a $1/$2 Hold’em game. The small blind folds, and you (big blind) 3-bet to $18 with 7d-8d. Obviously your cards aren’t overly strong and would be best played in a multi-way pot. Furthermore, your position after the flop will be bad, which all combines to make this a light 3-bet.

Best Light 3-betting Situations – Expanding on the situation above where you 3-bet light with 7-8 suited, the ideal situation is for your opponent to fold here. If they call, you’re going into the flop with cards that don’t play well heads-up, and you are out of position too. If they reraise, it would be silly to do anything other than fold in this situation.

Taking all of this into account, the best scenario for 3-betting light arises when a TAG opens the betting from late position in hopes of stealing the hand. The reason why this is ideal is because they’re far more likely to fold being a TAG because they were simply hoping to steal the hand.

Now some people might ask why we don’t light 3-bet a LAG because they play such a wide range of hands. The reason is because the LAG is less likely to fold to a light 3-bet than the TAG, and their range will probably beat your’s in light 3-betting situations. Furthermore, you should be looking to value 3-bet bet LAG’s with good hands because your range will normally be ahead of their’s.