Your overall poker performance can generally be broken up into three levels of play: your A-game, Your B-game and your C-game. The extent of each of these levels varies from player to player, and determining exactly where each level starts and ends is your own responsibility.

Your A-game is the best you’re capable of from every respect. When you’re playing you’re A-game you’re virtually unstoppable. You’re hitting your draws, you’re keeping your opponents honest and you’re dominating your table. Playing your A-game fills you with confidence and offers you the best possible poker experience.

Your C-game is the exact opposite of your A-game. Nothing seems to click for you and as a consequence of the string of disasters that befalls you, you end up losing a lot of money. There’s absolutely nothing pleasant about the C-game and most players will naturally seek to forget about it as soon as possible.

Your B-game is between your A-game and your C-game. Parts of your B-game may be profitable, parts of it will cost you money. The bottom line is, the majority of the time, you’ll be playing your B-game.

The problem with most poker strategy articles and books is that they focus on the A-game alone. Quite naturally, the A-game is the part of the game players are most willing to discuss and tweak too. Since it’s a pleasure to play when on your A-game, you won’t find yourself disgusted of ever having to bring it up. The catch is though that your A-game is not where you can make the most significant adjustments. There’s only so much you can do to maximize profit when you’re playing well, but there are a whole bunch of tweaks that can turn your C-game into more of a B-game and thus to cut your losses. After all, you may not feel this way, but money not lost is just as sweet as money won. Those willing to get dirty and to take a closer look at the C-game will be in for a pleasant surprise: they’ll find it much easier to improve than those who continuously tweak and optimize their A-game.

How do you go about improving your C-game?

The idea behind it is quite simple really, and at the end of the day, it all comes down to discipline. Identifying the worst part of your C-game is your first task. Suppose you’re a really nasty tilter. Cut that part of your C-game out and toss it aside. Whenever you feel you’re on a tilt, just get up from the table and leave. Once you’ve done away with the absolute worst element, indentify the next worst factor and then toss that into the garbage as well.

This way, you’ll manage to continuously shrink the size of your C and B-game, while maintaining your A-game as it is.

The five biggest factors in cleaning up your C-game act are: Playing on scared money, tilting, simply being out-classed by the other players, being exhausted and being distracted.

Some of these factors are easier to defeat than others, but by knowing exactly what to look for, you’ll find that lopping off your C-game is much less challenging.

Tilting can be avoided by simply terminating play when you feel a tilt coming on. If you’re distracted, get up, take a walk and re-consider joining the table. After all playing poker is your goal and not staring at the TV or at a cocktail waitress.

Exhaustion is another simple matter. If you feel like the call of the sack is becoming too big to resist, you simply shouldn’t struggle on. There’s absolutely no point in it. Recognizing that you’re out-classed by the other players is a tad more difficult though, especially because ego comes into play here as well.

Playing on scared money is a matter of bankroll management: get that right and you will find yourself willing to lose money in order to make money.

Signing up for a rakeback deal can contribute to the lopping off of your C-game too. A rake back deal like the full tilt rakeback or the cake rakeback will offer you a significant edge over those who play without rakeback.

One of the most useful advices for a rookie can be summed up in two short words: Bluff less. Yes, I know you love to bluff and I know that having grown up on Hollywood movies like most of us, you probably think that winning poker revolves around bluffing, but it isn’t so.

Good poker players (those who actually make money and not just brag about it in the chat section of your online poker room) do not abuse the bluff. You’d be surprised to learn how few and far between bluffs are in a good poker player’s arsenal. Not surprisingly, dark tunnel (blind) bluffs are not among the tools a good poker player will never resort to.

Another reason for the popularity of bluffs among poker rookies may be sought in televised tournaments. Because TV only usually shows the final tables of various events, where game degenerates into a crapshoot and where players are actually searching for coin-flips on which to shove all their money in, these shows promote a distorted image of what really happens at a poker table where world class professionals play.

Before you can even dream of pulling off a successful bluff, you need to learn how bluffs are supposed to work. Only then can you add them to your arsenal of moves. Until then, you’re better off not bluffing at all. Non-dark-tunnel bluffs come in several shapes and forms. The quick bluff is what you’ll see most often: everyone at the table folds around to the player on the button who fires out a bluff and steals the blinds.

The semi-bluff offers two possibilities for players to win the pot they’re after: by making everyone fold (and this is always the primary goal of a semi bluff) or by hitting the best hand on a later street and winning the pot fair and square at showdown.

Pure bluffs also come in a few distinct variants: the second bullet on a flop following a preflop show of strength (raise) is a classic example. Floating and the probe bet (which is the only type of bluff fired out from early position) are also pure bluffs. Unlike semi bluffs, pure bluffs offer only one way for the player to win the pot, and that is by making his/her opponents fold.

Whether you’re a rookie or an experienced player, you shouldn’t ever play without rakeback. Playing without rakeback is like bluffing the lights out: it’s counter-productive. Sign up for the Ultimate Bet rakeback or the Absolute poker rakeback and secure an edge that will take you one step closer to becoming a consistently winning player.

I suppose you all know the value of suited connectors in deep-stacked cash games (BTW, if you’re playing in a cash game, you should always play deep stacked). They are excellent implied odds hands because they carry the possibility for a straight as well as for a flush. Now then, being the cash game player that you are, you know that your suited connectors are going to miss both the straight and the flush the overwhelming majority of the time, but you also know that whenever you hit one of those hands, you’re going to take down a huge pot and you’ll probably felt an opponent or two. If you have a healthy stack, making money on such nice implied odds hands should be a cinch.

Tournament play can sometimes be quite radically different from cash game play though. While most players acknowledge these differences, only the best of them actually take them into account when it comes to tournament strategy. That’s exactly why you’ll have a bunch of people playing their suited connectors the same way in a STT as they do in a cash game. If you’re one of these folks you may want to know that there’s a gaping hole in your strategy and you may want to plug it up as fast as possible.

You simply cannot play suited connectors the same way in tournaments and in cash games and here’s why: suited connectors as well as suited one-gappers and small pocket pairs (all excellent implied odds hands) lose a lot of value in STTs (and in MTTs as well).

First of all, as I’ve pointed it out above, playing suited connectors for their implied odds value only makes sense in deep-stacked situations. Now then, have you ever been in a STT which gave you a deep stack to begin with? Even if you manage to knock a few players out early on, the escalating blinds soon catch up with you and your “deep stack” evaporates before your very eyes. There is no such thing as being deep-stacked in a STT, so your suited connectors are no good here, at least not in the conventional way.

Should you then muck your suited connectors whenever you pick them up in your pocket? By no means. Suited connectors are playable in tourneys too, it’s just that you have to know when they have no value and when you can actually squeeze some juice out of them. Don’t limp along to see the flop on them, especially when you’re faced with aggressive opposition and a preflop raise is always in the book. Don’t call big bets after the flop, based on your weak gutshot straight draw. If you play like this, you’ll bleed your chips away much faster than you’d like to.

Pick the spot for your suited connector carefully. Position has a great deal of importance in determining their value. If you’re in late position you can limp along to see a cheap flop on them, or you can even attempt a blinds steal if the circumstances are right.

Your suited connectors (as well as your suited one gappers) are the most valuable in the early stages of an STT. That’s when you’re the deepest stacked all tourney long. Play your suited connectors from late position and limp into multi-way pots that remain unraised before the flop. Early position limping is a big no-no and it will cost you a lot if you decide to go down that road.

If you hit your hand or a draw which carries reasonable odds, act on it, if you miss your hand, just fold it right there.

In the mid-stages of the STT, your suited connectors lose further value. Limping on them becomes unprofitable and the only time you should take them to a flop is behind several other limpers from the button. By this stage though, suited connectors slowly emerge as a blinds-stealing hands.

As the blinds reach the higher levels, you should definitely use your suited connectors for stealing blinds, again – if possible from late position.

Sign up for rakeback before hitting the STT tables. You may not generate poker rake on each hand you play there, but you do pay tournament fees, and rakeback deals offer you a great rebate on them.

You’ve signed up to a poker room, made your first deposit, got your bonus, hit the cash tables and everything is going wonderfully. You win some you lose some, but at the end of the month you are always in the black. You’ve even signed up for a generous rakeback or poker propping deal and you are doing nicely. Why on earth would you ever want to change anything in this mechanism that works so well? The reason is simple: more money. A good poker player is always on the hunt for new ways to generate revenue, and if something works out fine, it is always considered the lead-up to something much bigger.

Massive online MTTs (the kind that Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars host on a weekly basis, are excellent sources of poker money. MTTs in general offer much better investment/potential revenue ratios than cash games and STTs put together. These MTTs offer a great opportunity for an online player to take down a prize which can potentially change his/her life for a relatively small buy-in.

I’m not saying that there’s little money in cash games. There’s plenty there as well, and the ultra-high limit games see entire fortunes change hands in a few orbits. The problem is that in order to play in these ultra high limit games, one needs to have an out-of-this-world bankroll, and very few people can afford to take that much money to the poker tables. It is safe to say that in order to win $100k, you need a minimum of $100k in theory, but in practice you need much more than that.

In order though to make the successful jump from cash poker to the tournament tables, you need to address a few issues regarding strategy. There are a few apparently minor differences between game mechanics that induce some extremely significant differences strategy-wise. This is why some good cash game players suck at tournament play and why some good tourney players never seem to be able to get it right at the cash tables.

For starters, you need to get used to the idea that your stack is a finite one in tournaments. In cash games – provided you are properly bankrolled – keeping your stack near the maximum levels is a question of re-buying whenever you lose, or simply keeping the money in the game whenever you win. In cash games, your stack is a weapon, but you can afford to throw it around because you can easily replace it if lost. In a tournament, you stack will still be a weapon, but it has a dual mission to fulfill here: it also represents your tournament life. Lose your stack and you’re out. There are tournaments which allow you to re-buy once or a few times, but these re-buy opportunities are not significant enough to downgrade the importance of your tournament stack to cash game levels. In tournaments, you need to wield the weapon that your stack is masterfully: you need to cause damage to your opponents with it, while keeping it unharmed in the same time.

This is the reason why you’ll have to give up certain marginal EV+ situations. In a cash game, you should always act on EV+, even if your value is marginal. In the long-run, you‘ll recover your losses anyway. In a tournament, there will be no long-run if you take a serious hit to your stack. You’ll have to avoid marginal EV+ situations in order to be able to exploit hands in which your EV+ is much more obvious down the line.

In tournaments, the blinds grow bigger as you level up. Now there’s a shocker: you can never actually rest on your laurels, you need to be continuously tweaking your strategy to adjust it to the requirements the relationship between the blind size and your stack size calls for. Dan Harrington has devised a system in this respect, which offers players strategy recommendations in various BB+SB-to-stack-size situations.

The rakeback deal for which you’ve signed up in order to recover rake at the cash tables works in tournaments too: it offers you a rebate on the tournament fees you pay.

C-betting is one of the most efficient tools in a good poker player’s arsenal towards winning money on hands that would probably lose at showdown. The theory behind the continuation bet is that by firing a second bullet, the player makes use of the advantage he has created by placing a preflop raise.

The preflop raise usually tells opponents that the one who makes it has a hand which he would like to play for more chips: obviously a hand which he reckons might be the best at the table. The continuation bet says the preflop raiser still likes his hand and he’s still willing to put chips into the pot on it.

Generally speaking, the continuation bet yields a good return because most of the time flops miss most hands. Players who are caught with nothing on the flop will often fold even if they suspect you don’t have anything either.

The only problem with the continuation bet is, if you abuse it, get read about it, or fire it out in the wrong moment you stand to lose some serious money on it. You should never reach the point of continuation betting every single preflop raise you make. That will ultimately make you exploitable and it will cost you serious money. The conclusion is basically that firing a second barrel does indeed work sometimes, other times it doesn’t. Figuring out when a c-bet is a good idea and when it isn’t is the key to the whole equation.

In order to figure out when a situation is good for c-betting you need to pay close attention to the board-texture and to your opponent, trying to get into his mind and to put him on hand-ranges all the time. A good situation to c-bet is when the flop looks like (from his perspective) it may have hit your hand. Any time there’s a high card like an A or a K on the board, such an opportunity is ripe. When you make your preflop raise, people tend to assume you have high cards in your pocket: either a high pair (which is a made hand which can be hit for a set) or something like A,K.

When you find yourself heads-up against a single opponent on the flop is also a good opportunity. The likelihood of the flop missing your opponent’s hand increases dramatically under these circumstances, and a high percentage of the time, the c-bet will give you good value for your money.

A flop which is likely to have missed your opponent is also something you just have to exploit. He’ll be readier then ever to fold his hand under such circumstances, all he needs is a little nudge to send him over the edge.

It is not wise to fire a continuation bet into a table with multiple preflop callers. These guys have already committed money to the pot so they’re more likely to try to keep you honest. The fact that there are several hands still involved in the game also increases the chances of the flop hitting one of these players.

Calling stations are excellent sources of revenue. They’re like rakeback: they keep giving players money on every hand that they play. They’re not good opponents to c-bet against though. If you’re faced with a calling station, better err on the side of caution, than walk away with a chopped-up stack.

Being out of position generally makes things pretty difficult in poker. If you plan to c-bet against an opponent who has position on you, you get called, you eventually fold and you do this several times, you can rest assured the table will take note and exploit your weakness.

Sign up for a rakeback deal to recover money on the rake you pay for every real money hand that you play. Rakeback is an excellent way to open up an additional revenue stream in your online poker undertaking, one that doesn’t require any effort on your part to maintain.

That’s right, reverse implied odds are ugly indeed. Just as the implied odds help you make money and win big pots, the reverse implied odds – you got it – do the exact opposite: they cost you pots and they cost you big pots.

In order to understand how reverse implied odds work, picture the following: you play your low pocket pair in hopes of hitting your trips. You do hit them on the flop and your opponent hits top pair or two pairs or whatever. You pot commit him and you get him all-in. The implied odds worked nicely for you, didn’t they? Now put yourself in the shoes of your opponent. How do you like those reverse implied odds now?

The fundamental theory behind good-old basic tight aggressive play says you should play very tight on the flop and act decisively on hands where you think you have a definite edge. In practice though, things are much more complicated than that. You will run into situations when you do have something on the flop, something that may well be a pot-winner, but in the same time that same hand may well be dominated.

If someone bets into you on the flop on such a hand and you decide to make the call, you’re staring down right into the ugly face of the reverse implied odds. If the hand were to be over with that call on the flop, you’d be OK, however, there are still two streets and two more opportunities for your opponent to bet and let those implied odds work for him. This whole situation may end up costing you a lot of money. The dilemma in the above described situation is the following: your hand may well be the best one, but – due to the reversed implied odds – it may cost you a lot to find out, and therefore, if you happen to lose, you’ll lose big.

The biggest problem in flopping a marginal hand is that – especially if he has position on you - your opponent may decide to bail out on a later street if he feels he is beat. In this case, you win a small pot only. It’s a lose-lose situation for you, because if you are right in your assumption that your hand is indeed the best one at the table you win small, and if you’re wrong, you lose big.

If your opponent is short-stacked and you only have to call his bet on the flop, you’re OK because you’re safe from the reverse implied odds, but if he can make you pay for seeing a showdown, you’re in trouble.

One of the most frustrating hands that can hit you comes about when you make a weak top pair on a flush-draw flop, and your opponent bets into you. Such moves often turn out to be semi-bluffs, but you will probably have to cough up your entire stack before you find out.

How can you fight off the reverse implied odds? You cannot avoid getting into reverse implied odds situations, but you can learn to spot such situations and you can pretty well make sure you do not let the pot escalate when you do run into it. Here’s an idea you should always remember about reverse implied odds: it always costs you more money to try to keep your opponent honest than the money you’ll make when you’re right and you do indeed have the better hand. After all, it works the same way implied odds do, only vice-versa.

Sign up for a rakeback deal as it’ll take the bite out of your losses in a pretty efficient manner. If you’re a marginal loser, chances are rakeback will even turn you into a winner.

A pair is always a welcome guest in a player’s pocket as it gives him a variety of options to generate value. If your pair is a high one (like JJ, QQ, KK, or AA), your course of action is pretty simple. If you manage to get someone to call your all-in on anything weaker than that, you’ll have succeeded.

Sometimes it’s wiser to slow play your high pocket pair, but you should be aware that whenever you give your opponents free cards, they run a pretty good chance to crack your pair.

If your pocket pair is a small one though, things get more complicated. A pair will seldom improve with the board because it has very few outs to hit a set, and completing a flush or a straight is also less likely.

Should you just muck your small pocket pairs then? Well, sometimes you may have to do that (especially when faced with a huge raise), but if possible, you should attempt to see a flop on it. The implied odds make playing such hands worthwhile in the long-run. What are implied odds?

Whenever you call the BB (or whatever else you have to call) to see the flop on a small pocket hand, you give up value because the immediate result of your move is a negative EV one. You make the call in hopes of catching a set on the flop, and most of the time you will not catch the flop, so the call will cost you money. The few times that you do catch your set though will more than make up for your losses and that’s where your implied odds enter the equation, making an apparently bad call a good one over the long-run.

With that in mind, what you need to seek are cheap flops. By minimizing the money you spend on seeing the flops that do not land you your set, you’ll maximize your overall winnings. Tight tables are excellent for set-mining as they will allow you to see many cheap flops.

Many of the online poker cash tables however are ultra-aggressive, which means you won’t exactly be able to sneak under the radar and give your low pair the implied odds they deserve. If you stick to limping under such circumstances, you’ll lose the value you would’ve gained through your set-farming, so obviously, a different approach is required.

The strategy you need to implement when faced with a low pocket pair dilemma at a very aggressive table is to turn on your preflop aggression level. That’s right, you need to put more money into an apparently bad call. Why is that? By raising preflop, you’ll knock some of the players out of the hand early on, thus increasing your hand’s odds.

If you happen to hit your set, you’ll already have a nicely built-up pot on your hands, and if you miss it, well in that case you’ll still have good old poker playing to fall back on.

Firing out a second bullet against a hesitant opposition may well win you the pot, but if you get called, your bluff will still just be a semi-bluff because you still have a chance to make your set both on the turn and the river. Make sure you do not commit the grievous mistake of chasing after your set though. Your final hand is about 70% made on the flop, so there’s not really much you can do after that.

Regardless of how you decide to approach the pocket pair matter, always play on a rakeback deal. The best rakeback deals will give you money back on every real money hand that you play, and that is extremely profitable, especially when it comes to cash games.

Poker is a game where psychology plays a major factor in winning. If you’re having trouble taking the pot home, then you may be doing something wrong. One of the most common mistakes both new and expert players make is being unable to conceal their tells.

Types of Tells
Tells come in several forms. If your opponents usually talk more loudly or show audible changes with a good hand, this type of tell is known as audible tells. If your opponents do certain gestures with a weak or good hand, these are known as visual tells. If your opponents’ behavior towards betting changes, this is known as betting tells. In traditional games, where you sit down in front of your opponents, all three types of tells are used in reading the opponents. However, players in online poker games only rely on betting tells.

Unfortunately, tells can be very hard to prevent, even for pro poker players. The slightest differences in breathing, gestures and eye contact can give out signals to your opponents. Many amateurs have no idea that they begin to talk loudly or continuously, recheck cards or make long dramatic pauses before making a significant raise – these signs often indicate strong hands. Advanced players usually give out subtler tells, but an observant opponent can easily catch these tells regardless of how obvious or vague they are. Whatever signs you may observe with your opponents, you may actually be doing them as well, so it’s important to avoid these tells at all cost.

The Secret to hiding Tells
Amateur and advanced poker players can benefit from standardizing their betting and body movements. You need to be consistent in playing, so if you usually push your chips out in a stack, use this method every time, regardless of having a weak or strong hand. As long as you become consistent in everything you do while playing poker, you can’t let your opponents read the quality of your hand based on how you react, move or speak. Here are some things you should consider:

1) Breathing – Most of the time, when players bluff, they hold their breath unconsciously while bluffing. Make sure to observe your opponent and learn a way to breath normally throughout the game.
2) Speech patterns – Many players become excessively talkative during the game. Depending on the player, this may indicate a sign of a weak or strong hand. Some players even start a conversation to try and read your tells, so be careful on how you react while the hand is in play.
3) Eye movements – Usually, players with made hands initiate eye contact, while those who are bluffing avoid them completely. The most effective way of concealing tells based on eye movement is to refrain from eye contact while the hand is in play.

When it comes to betting, make sure to learn how to standardize your betting, such as the size of bets and raises as well as the time it takes you to make a bet. Many players unconsciously bet too quickly if they have a strong hand and take several seconds to make a bet with a weak hand. Other tells can make or break your game, but as long as you learn from your mistakes and prevent your opponents from guessing your hand, then you can have a better chance at winning poker.

In any kind of game, players follow a set of etiquette and it’s no different with playing poker. Players who are ignorant of poker etiquette usually offend their opponents with bad poker manners, making everyone in the table hate the game. Before you play poker with other people, may it be online or in poker rooms, you must understand and follow poker etiquette to ensure everyone has an enjoyable experience while playing with you.

1) Avoid long conversations – Many poker players wish to concentrate on the game, instead of talking to you. If you need to make a conversation, keep it to a minimum. Similarly, make sure not to take calls from your cell phone while on the poker table.

2) Be organized – Every poker player has his own spot on the table, so make sure you manage yours by keeping your chips in order. However, don’t try to manage everyone else’s by touching your opponents’ pile. You should also keep your cards on the table at all times to avoid cheating.

3) Be aware of your speed – Although poker involves money and you need to think twice before betting or making a move, it is still important to watch your speed. Many poker players are annoyed with an opponent who takes plenty of time to fold, raise, bet or other moves. Every time your turn arises, make sure to keep up with the flow of the game by making a move quickly.

4) Be nice – Aside from avoiding any quarrel with other players, you should also apologize if you unconsciously broke a poker etiquette and not realize the transgressions you made until afterwards. If you feel you’ve offended everyone on the table, apologize to all your opponents. In addition, make sure not to begrudge a player due to their win.

5) Be reasonable – Don’t blame the dealer for a weak hand that goes your way. Whether you’re in a casino or online room, you should respect the dealer whatever the outcome of the game. Besides, it’s just their job to deal, the possibility of having a weak or strong hands does not rely on them.

When playing poker, make sure not to make comments about the game, the cards or your opponents. As long as you follow these simple codes of ethics, you can ensure to have a pleasurable game with everyone on the table.