No matter how good you are at poker, there are going to be plenty of times where you need to take coin flips to survive in a tournament.

If you’re unfamiliar with tournament coin flips, this simply refers to when you go all-in with around a 50/50 chance of winning a hand before all the cards are dealt. So if you held 77 and went all-in, and your opponent held AK and called, this would be a coin flip. Also, it’s important to realize that you decide whether you’re going to be in a coin flip situation based on your opponent’s range; if your hand covers 50% of your opponent’s range, then it’s probably going to be a coin flip.

Moving past the basics, many players often wonder what time in a poker tournament, if any, is the optimal point to take a coin flip. And the truth is that most situations will make it favorable for you to take a coin flip. After all, there is usually plenty of dead money in the pot, and it’s +EV to flip your opponent for the dead money. However, there are other considerations to take into account before you decide to take a coin flip.

Besides the amount of dead money in the pot, another thing you need to think about is the payout structure. For example, if the payouts are really heavy at the top, versus a relatively normal structure, you would be smart to take the coin flip so you can build up chips and go for the win. On the other hand, if the payouts aren’t so uneven, you would be better off avoiding the flip if your stack is doing alright.

Speaking of this, your chip stack will play a huge part in when you take coin flips. As you may have guessed, the lower your stack is, the more actively you should be looking to double up through a flip. Assuming you have a large stack, a good rule of thumb is to never flip for more than half of your stack because you can wait for more +EV opportunities later.

Finally, the blind structure is also important when choosing to take tournament coin flips. When the blinds are really starting to put pressure on your stack, you should think about taking a flip so the blinds aren’t as much of a factor.

The internet is a wide open place, which means pretty much anybody can put information out there. Unfortunately, the online poker world is by no means void of this fact, and there are plenty of terrible poker tips floating around. This being said, here is a look at the top 5 worst poker tips.

Terrible Tip #1: Determine an Opponent’s Hand Strength by how quickly they act

This tip is usually offered in regards to online poker tells, and it calls on players to watch the speed with which opponents make moves. More specifically, if a player takes too long to act, they are probably trying to fool you into thinking they have bad cards. On the other hand, when players act quickly, they have a marginal hand and want you to think that they’ve got good cards. In reality though, you have no idea what a player has simply based on the speed with which they act. After all, it could be taking them forever because they are multi-tabling.

Terrible Tip #2: Only play Premium Hands when starting out in Online Poker

Some common advice for beginning players is to only play premium hands when starting out. The reason why is because you supposedly don’t know enough about the game to play anything else than the best hands. Honestly though, if you don’t know how to play anything other than pocket aces, kings, queens, jacks and AK, you shouldn’t be playing for real money. Instead, a better idea is to learn enough poker strategy to where you can play a slightly wider range of hands. Of course, you should avoid difficult situations by keeping a somewhat tight range of playable hands – just don’t overdo it.

Terrible Tip #3: Aggressive Players are Always the Most Profitable

One supposed given in the online poker world is that aggressive players are always the most profitable. And while this may be true in an overall sense, the most profitable players are the ones who can adapt their playing style to each situation. For example, if you’re on a cash game table with four maniacs, playing aggressively isn’t going to force any folds, and it may get you into more trouble. Likewise, if you have several calling stations on your table, playing aggressively with marginal hands will put you into difficult situations. The more opponents you watch and observe, the better you’ll become at adapting your playing style to the situation.

In order to properly know what hands your opponents are willing to raise with, what they call with, etc., you need to have some information on them. This isn’t so hard to do when you’ve been at the same cash game table for four hours with little table turnover. But when you’re in poker tournaments, and you get moved to a new table, the process gets a little more difficult.

The obvious thing you need to do after moving to a new table in poker tournaments is play fundamental poker. You don’t have enough info on the other players to call 3-bets with borderline hands, or steal from the button with ATC. Of course, this thinking goes out the window if you are short-stacked (10 BB’s or less), and you need to play a much wider range of hands in pretty much every situation.

If you have 15-20 BB’s after being moved to a new table, this gives you a little more freedom to steal pots and take advantage of desperate short stacks. But even with a moderate-sized stack like this late in a tournament, you need to be careful of big stacks. For example, you might be able to get away with a 3-bet shove while holding marginal cards against someone trying to sneak into the money.

However, if you try this against a player with 40 BB’s, your tournament might be ending very soon. Sticking with facing big stacks, if you’ve got one sitting to your immediate left, you might have to tighten up your range a bit since they’ll be more willing to re-raise and steal a lot of pots from you. On the other hand, you should consider stealing yourself when a medium or small stack opens the action in late position.

To sum this all up, don’t try bullying a new tournament table when you’re only a middle stack or less, and play conservatively until you have a better read on people.

Every week, hundreds of people show up to Carbon Poker’s $100,000 Guaranteed, which is the site’s flagship event. And it’s no wonder why since there is so much guaranteed money involved. Assuming you’re interested in playing for the $100,000 prize pool on Sundays at Carbon Poker, here are a few pointers that you should keep in mind.

Play Strong Hands in Early Blind Levels

One of the most common mistakes with the Carbon Poker $100k Guaranteed is playing marginal hands in the early levels. This is especially the case with satellite qualifiers who try playing average hands from early position while hoping to see cards for cheap. The first problem with this is that it’s too early in the tournament to be taking chances with marginal hands, and the second mistake here is that you can get put into some awkward postflop spots. In any case, don’t play mediocre poker hands from early position when the blinds are not a factor – unless you’re very experienced in deepstacked situations.

Realize that it’s a Long Event

There’s always the temptation to panic when your chip stack starts falling below the average stack in a tournament. However, it’s also important to realize that the $100k is a fairly long event as far as online poker tournaments go, and there’s no need to rush anything just because your stack is below average. This being said, don’t try to force things with bad hands or when opportunities aren’t coming your way. If you keep making +EV plays without panicking, you’re more likely to come back and build a decent chip stack, rather than by forcing raises and bluffs.

Play Pairs and Connectors in Position

Those making the adjustment from short-stacked tournaments sometimes have trouble with what range of hands to play in position. In most cases, these players overplay A-T, K-T, and similar hands so they can steal small pots and blinds. And this is certainly a good strategy…..later on in the tournament when blinds are actually factor. However, you should stick with playing solid pairs and suited connectors when you’re in position during the middle and early stages. At this point, you should be looking to take a large portion of somebody’s stack – not overplaying hands in an effort to steal a small pot.

One seemingly basic concept in poker bankroll management is that, when you’re winning, it’s time to move up in cash game stakes. After all, higher stakes eventually pay off for successful online poker players because they have the potential to make more money per hour. But as with anything in online poker, things don’t always work out so simply.

The biggest problem with moving up in cash game stakes is that you’re going to be facing a different level of competition, and some of the things that you did in previous stakes may not work at a higher level. In fact, it could take tens of thousands of hands before you start crushing higher stakes than where you currently are. This being said, it’s important to take a couple of things into consideration before moving up.

The first thing that you should think about is how badly you need money from your bankroll. Assuming you already have a good job and money is not an issue, you could benefit tremendously simply by sticking at the current stakes, and continually adding more to your bankroll. Once you’ve collected 30 or 40 buy-ins (100X the big blind) for the next cash game stakes, you can comfortably move up without worrying about your bankroll.

If you rely on online poker for a portion (or all) of your income, you may not have the luxury of sitting back and waiting – especially if you want to make a better living. On the other hand, you don’t want to force a move up in stakes and risk losing what you already have. This being said, you should try multi-tabling the current stakes (or add more tables if you’re currently doing so), and see where this takes you.

Now multi-tabling will take your win rate per table down slightly, but the extra volume of hands will obviously make up for this. To sum this up, only move up in stakes when you’ve comfortable got enough buy-ins for the next level, and money isn’t a serious issue.

Most online poker players will agree that heads-up play puts you in the toughest situations. After all, the blinds are in your face every hand, and there’s no folding 9 out of 10 hands while waiting for pocket pairs. If you do this – especially against a really aggressive player – you’re going to bleed out a lot of chips.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who frequently raise in heads-up poker – even if it’s just a minimum raise. So you have to be equipped to combat their raises by being aggressive yourself. Of course, this doesn’t mean using blind aggression, where you randomly shove your stack in with ATC in hopes of forcing a fold.

Instead, the first thing to take note of in situations against an aggressive HU opponent are the blind levels. Assuming the blinds are low, you can expect a lot of minimum raises from your opponent; this being said, you need to be willing to 3-bet quite often when you’re holding half-ways decent cards. When blind levels get bigger, you can still 3-bet occasionally, but don’t over do it since there’s too much at stake here if your hand is weak.

Moving along, the button is your friend in these situations, and you should open up with a raise in most cases. By making minimum raises yourself, you force your opponent to decide if they want to call or 3-bet OOP. During the times when you have a weaker hand like small pairs, top pair w/ weak kicker, or just an ace, it’s important to control the pot and keep it small so the risk is minimal.

Aside from this general advice, it’s very important that you do as much research on heads-up situations as possible so you can develop a strong HU strategy.

One thing that I see on poker forums a lot is people asking what a good average tournament cash percentage is – i.e. do good players cash 50% of the time or more? And while it’s always nice to cash in a poker tournament, the reality is that your average tournament cash percentage doesn’t really mean a whole lot in the long run. Furthermore, you need to be focusing on your return on investment (ROI) instead.

To illustrate why this is the case, let’s say that you play in ten different $5.50 10-man SNG’s, and you take third place ($10) in five of them, which works out to $50 in total winnings. The good thing is that you cashed in half of the SNG’s you played; the bad thing is that you lost $5 total when everything is tallied up. So basically, your 50% average tournament cash percentage means absolutely nothing.

On the other hand, let’s say that you win two of these SNG’s ($25 top prize), and take second place in another tournament ($15). Here your average tournament cash percentage is just 30%, but you’ve won $65 in total winnings, which works out to a $10 profit. So as you can see, the amount of times you cash in a tournament is not nearly as important as the quality of your cashes.

Like I said before, ROI is the much more important number, and it’s not hard to calculate it either. You simply need to take your winnings, and divide them by your expenditures. For example, if you played in one hundred $5.50 SNG’s ($550), and had $650 in total winnings, your ROI would be 18.2% (650/550 = 1.182).

As far as figuring out what’s a good ROI, this all depends on the stakes you play since there’s more skill at the top. But in general, you’re a pretty solid tournament player if you have a 10% ROI.

When it comes to playing pocket aces, most people have a good idea in mind for what they’re going to do. For example, some people like to make a 3-4X the big blind raise, while other misguided souls shove their chip stack in without taking anything into account. In any case, many players have a one-track mind while playing their aces.

But truth be told, your ability to make money with aces in Hold’em will depend on how well you can adapt to the situation. For example, the stakes you play are going to have a large impact on what you can do with aces – especially preflop. After all, a 4X BB raise may not be enough to get the job done in micro stakes play, and you’ll get several callers afterward.

On the other hand, a 4XBB raise might force everybody to fold in the higher stakes – especially if you have a really tight table image. And this is never good since the goal with aces is to isolate one opponent and take their stack.

Moving along, you also have to consider what happens when someone 3- or 4-bets you. Are you going to merely call them and hope that your aces hold up on the flop, or will you risk making the opponent fold in order to get their stack into the middle preflop?

As mentioned before, these questions are going to be best answered when you take everything into account. For example, if you’re up against a tight opponent who 3-bets you preflop, it would be best to simply call instead of 4-betting because they might not be willing to call a 4-bet if they don’t have pocket kings of queens.

One more consideration to think about when it comes to playing aces is what turns up on the flop because in reality, all you have is a great pair; not a two pair, set, straight or flush. So if you isolate somebody and the flop looks pretty dangerous, you’re going to have to think about your opponent’s table image, as well as their betting actions. To sum this up, always keep analyzing your opponents so you know how to play your aces.