YOUR PokerIQScore™ IS 101! (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR SCORE)

Congratulations! You performed better than 50.38% of the players that have taken the test so far. Most people will have a PokerIQScore™ between 70 and 130. In fact, 95% of all scores fall somewhere in this range. 68% of all people who have taken our test scored between 85 and 115. Your score indicates you already have excellent poker skills in many areas, and with this document you will become an even stronger player!

Click here to print out a Certificate of Achievement to document your outstanding poker skills!

How to use your personal Dominate Your Opponents™ report

What you are looking at is the fastest way to poker improvement known to the poker world.

That’s because, this document was created just for you.

Know that you will become a force to be reckoned with at the poker table if you learn the material in this document and apply it. No other poker training program can promise improvement as fast as the TestYourPoker.com Dominate Your Opponents™ course.

This system has been tested, and it does work.

We suggest you take the following steps to best utilize this information:

1. Read through all the material first, but don’t expect to absorb it all at once. By focusing on one skill and practicing in a real poker game you will absorb it quickly.
2. Watch the replay of the test you just took (see the next section below).
3. Use the training chart (we have made the chart available for you in pdf format), but don’t feel like you have to complete all four hours practicing one particular skill all at once. You can also skip around (practice skill #1 for one hour, skill #2 for one hour, etc).
4. If you play online, you may feel more comfortable practicing at a lower stakes table (or even the “play money” tables) when you first begin testing out your new skills.
5. We encourage you to email us (info@TestYourPoker.com) with suggestions to improve these documents!

Put a poker pro to the test!

In the test you just took, did some hands give you trouble? Would you like to see how a professional poker player would have played them? And, do you wish that pro would make a comment on every single action to explain their thought process?

Well, wish no more! Please don’t let anyone else watch this replay (it will affect our ability to accurately assess their poker skills).

WATCH A SAMPLE REPLAY NOW! (The full replayer is only available with your paid membership.)

PERSONAL TRAINING CHART

Practice each item for four hours, and check off when completed.

How to use the “Improvement Needed” documents

These documents were prepared exclusively by TestYourPoker.com, and they were selected for you personally based on the areas of your game that can most use improvement. Each document has four sections, described below.

NARRATIVE SECTION – This section often contains a historical account or story of some kind that will help put you in the right frame of mind to understand the skill being demonstrated.

SOLUTION SECTION – This section often sums up or contains a conclusion of the Narrative section.

SUMMARY SECTION – This section contains specific advice on how to apply the principles of the document to your game.

EXAMPLE SECTION – This section contains example hands that demonstrate the skill you need to improve.

Especially keep in mind the material in the Summary and Example sections as you try to apply them to your game.

Your PokerIQScore™ broken down into categories

Of course, there is much more to No Limit Holdem than a single score. Your PokerIQScore™ has been calculated based on your performance in approximately 35 critical skill areas for no limit holdem poker. These 35 skill areas have been aggregated using a formula created by poker experts and a Ph.D. with statistical expertise to calculate not only your overall score, but also your PokerIQScore™ on each street and in 7 general skill areas that apply to all streets. These overall score areas are described in detail below.

Pre-flop – Your pre-flop PokerIQScore™ is determined based on important skills such as identifying appropriate hands to play, stealing the blinds and defending the blinds, appropriately knowing when to limp and when to bet, knowing appropriate actions when facing limpers and/or raisers, identifying likely hand ranges for opponents based on your reads, understanding your position relative to the dealer button, and a range of other skills based specifically on YOUR style of play, as identified by our artificial intelligence engine. Because you play pre-flop on every hand, your ability to play well pre-flop can have a huge effect on your overall profitability as a poker player.

Your Pre-flop PokerIQScore™ is 102 (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR SCORE)

Flop – On the flop, the skills you must perform change substantially …

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Your Flop PokerIQScore™ is 98 (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR SCORE)

Turn – The turn reaches yet another stage in the hand where the skill …

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Your Turn PokerIQScore™ is 101 (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR SCORE)

River – Although many hands end prior to the river in NL Holdem poker, solid players know that …

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Your River PokerIQScore™ is 85

Bet Size – Knowing the correct amount to bet at a given time may possibly …

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Your Bet Size PokerIQScore™ is 113 (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR SCORE)

Appropriately Aggressive Play – Let’s face it – not everyone plays the game of NL Holdem the same. Professionals like Daniel Negreanu …

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Your Level of Aggression is Very Passive

Adjusting to Opponents’ Style – Would you respect a raise from all of your opponents the same? If you said no, you understand the idea …

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Your Ability to Adjust to Opponents PokerIQScore™ is 108

Knowing the Odds – Think fast: you have a flush draw on the flop, there’s $100 in the pot and you are facing a bet of $20. What do you do? The answer is …

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Your Pot Odds PokerIQScore™ is 100 (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR SCORE)

Respecting Previous Action – The correct play for you at any time during a poker game depends not just on your hand, but, even more importantly, on how …

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Your Respecting Previous Action PokerIQScore™ is 74 (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR SCORE)

Timing Your Strategic Moves – Most players enjoy the thrill of the check-raise. You have a great hand, you check it, and when an opponent bets you push a bunch of money into the center of the pot. But the timing of a move such as …

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Your Strategic PokerIQScore™ is 96 (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR SCORE)

Position – You have been dealt nothing for a while, and you finally get a marginally nice hand, but you are the first to act. Can you still play it? …

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Your Positional PokerIQScore™ is 90 (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR SCORE)

Bluffing – You just missed your draw. But the board is scary and there’s a good chance that the latest card to come on board would have improved a hand that your opponents thought you might have had. Is this the right time for a bluff (a bet indicating strength when the reality is weakness)? …

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Your Bluffing PokerIQScore™ is 103

The Professional whom you play most like is:

The greatest overall strength in your game is Bet Size

You are better than 83.08% of all people in this area. You have the ability to profit significantly from this skill. Continue to take advantage of it!

The greatest overall weakness in your game is Knowing Prior Action

Improving the correctable weaknesses in your game could potentially gain you $184 in profits per 1000 hands you play. In an online game, it is easy to play 80 hands per hour, so you can see that you could increase your winnings by this amount of money in a little over 12 hours of online play at $1/$2 blind NL Ring Poker! Over the course of a single year, this could easily earn you an additional $4784!

Improvement Needed (#1): Playing Weak Hands (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR IMPROVEMENT AREA)

Narrative:

Back in the early ‘60s, a consortium of the top poker players in the world gathered in Toledo, Ohio and passed a resolution which dictated that only certain hands would qualify as Minimum Starting Hands. By the rules established, players would be severely punished with fines, suspensions, hand slaps, or harsh glares if they bought into a pot with anything less than these hands. That’s not to say that you had to call with these hands – you could still fold them at any time – but they would still qualify under MSH guidelines. For example, big pairs like A-A, K-K, Q-Q, and even J-J all qualified under the MSH. Same with high card pairings like A-K, A-Q, A-J, and K-Q. After considerable debate, most other pocket pairs were given MSH status.

Okay – reality check. No one, not even someone in Toledo, Ohio, can legally bind you to a certain MSH standard. If they could, poker would border very dangerously on being predictable. But the fact is that certain standards are highly advisable, culled from basic percentages, years of experience, and enough lost money to finance the counter-terrorism efforts of several small nations.

But just simply listing what hands would qualify under some fictional “MSH Guideline” is not enough to understand the true meaning of what constitutes a Minimum Starting Hand. As Phil Gordon writes: “Poker is not a game best played by the numbers. Poker is a game of situations.” (Phil Gordon’s Little Green Book, p. 23) Let’s take a look at the various factors that help determine whether a hand is truly worthy.

CARDS

Yeah, okay, cards are important. As my mythical consortium would have ruled if they were real – and actually felt like spending any time in Toledo, Ohio – there are some hands that are no-brainers. Monster pairs and high cards are tough to lay down no matter what your position or your stack size or the bet necessary to call. But is there a minimum?

Based strictly on the cards, most pros will tell you that anything that dips below the face card level is pushing the odds. Again, this is advice comes from calculated percentages. Some poker experts will make exceptions for suited connectors, but that’s usually in keeping with some of the other factors as dictated below.

POSITION

The importance of position comes up a lot when talking about betting a poker hand, and for starting hands, it’s no different.

When in early position, such as under the gun or two from the blind, you should be a little more leery about limping in (calling) because there are still many players to act. If you’re not confident in your K-J offsuit, you’re really gonna be mad when the cutoff raises three times the blind. T.J. Cloutier: “If I am holding A-Q (suited or unsuited) or worse in the first four or five seats, I don’t want to put even a dime in the pot…” (Championship No-Limit & Pot-Limit Hold ‘Em, p. 128). So a standard sense of “dialing back” should exist in early positions, even as it applies to raising.

So does that mean you can go in with anything from late position? I think three guys just fell out of their chair in Toledo. Of course, the answer is no. While being in late position certainly relaxes some of the restrictions on a minimum hand, at least a little decorum is called for.

STACK SIZE

Another determining factor for whether you should play a hand is how much money you have. Doyle Brunson reasons that you should think of your stack in terms of “chips” rather than money, for psychological purposes. “Always play for Chips, rather than cash.” (Doyle Brunson’s Super System: A Course in Power Poker, p. 31) But the bottom line is – chips or money – if you don’t have any, you’re out of the game. And, if you don’t have many chips, you can’t win a huge pot – so don’t play speculative hands.

BET SIZE

While you never want another player to dictate how you should play, sometimes you just have to bow down and genuflect. You may hold a marginal hand in a good position to play, but the guy before you lays down a sizable bet. Suddenly that marginal hand looks downright ugly. Such is the way of the poker world.

NUMBER OF OPPONENTS

Being in late position not only allows you to see a lot of the action before you have to respond, but you can also get a solid count of how many people remain in the hand. But “number of opponents” really refers to how many people are at the table to begin with. Simply put, if it’s a short-handed table, you may be more tolerant of a moderate hand as one to start with. Playing against fewer people with fewer cards out of the deck usually means there’s less likely to be the monster hands as found at full tables.

QUALITY OF OPPONENTS

It’s always good to have a sense of how good your opponents are or at least how they play, especially as it relates to deciding whether to enter a hand. David Sklansky: “When the players in the game play loose, you should play tight, and when the players in the game play tight, you should play loose.” (The Theory of Poker, p. 149)

Another key barometer is simply the size of their stack (and don’t ask any embarrassing questions to get them to reveal it, like “show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”).

There’s no way to truly know how good an opponent’s cards are, but if you know he’s got money behind him, he’s likely to play just a little bit looser – as might you (see Stack Size).

Solution:

Taking all of the above into account may seem like a lot to do before each hand. Well, it is. But as Dan Harrington says, “If this were a short list, the game would be much easier, more people would do it well, and fewer players would make any real money.” (Harrington on Hold ‘em, p. 18-19)

Probably the easiest thing to do would be to employ a consistent MSH guideline for use in general circumstances. Then make adjustments to that as conditions dictate.

Summary:

• There are many factors that affect what hands you can play before the flop. Some of these include:
1. your stack size,
2. your opponent’s stack sizes,
3. whether your opponents are loose or tight,
4. the quality of your opponents (how good they are),
5. whether anyone has raised yet,
6. and, of course, your position.
• Being able to balance all these factors while at the poker
  table just takes time, training, and a little bit of experience.

Examples:

• You hold Ace – Ten, unsuited, and are the first player to act at a 9 person table. Although this is the best hand you’ve seen in 30 minutes, you realize that there will likely be a raise behind you, and you’ll have to play a marginal hand out of position. You fold.
• You hold Ace – 7, unsuited, in a $5/$10 game, and everyone folds to you on the dealer button. While you normally wouldn’t play this hand, your poker knowledge tells you that on average, this hand will be a lot better than what the blinds have. Plus, you will have position on them for the rest of the hand. You raise to $35.
• You hold 8 -7, suited, in the big blind at a $1/$2 table. A player with only $20 in his stack raises to $6. You might normally call this raise and try to catch a lucky flop, but with your opponent only having $14 left, you realize that it isn’t worth playing a drawing hand – you simply won’t be able to win enough from him when you do hit your hand to make it worth it.

Improvement Needed (#2): Playing Too Tight Pre-Flop (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR IMPROVEMENT NEEDED AREA)

Narrative:

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Improvement Needed (#3): Passive Play (SAMPLE – THIS IS NOT YOUR IMPROVEMENT NEEDED AREA)

Narrative:

…

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1. Hand Selection:

One aspect of the game of No-Limit Hold’em that causes beginning players much grief is deciding which hands to play and which hands to dump. NL Hold’em is much more difficult than Limit Hold’em because the value of a hand depends on so many factors other than just the cards in your hand. Despite this difficulty, our team of experts believes that following some general guidelines and adjusting from these is a better solution than having no guidelines at all. Given that well over half of your profitability in NL Hold’em is based on hand selection alone, we have developed these charts to help you better determine whether to play or fold.

There are no perfect No-Limit starting hand charts. That is because there are many factors that affect your decision, and charts cannot account for all of them. Some of these include:

1. The size of your opponent’s stacks.
2. How loose or tight, passive or aggressive, your opponents are.
3. Where these opponents are located at the table – for example, does an aggressive player still have to act after you?
4. Your image at the table – for example, how tight or tricky you are perceived.

That being said, these charts will serve you well in most typical low-stakes No-Limit cash games, such as games with blinds of $1/$2 or below, and home games. These games typically have several loose players at the table, and good opportunities for winning big pots with suited connectors (hands such as 87s) and pocket pairs. With practice, you will be able to be a consistently winning player with these charts as a starting point. As you improve, you’ll find yourself making adjustments to these charts based on the factors listed above, and more.

Never use a Limit Holdem hand chart in a No-Limit Holdem game. Some hands, like the previously mentioned suited connectors and pocket pairs, go way up in value in No-Limit, and can be played from almost any position in loose, passive games. That is because in Limit Holdem you might win a decent pot with these hands, but in No-Limit Holdem you are aiming to win someone’s entire stack. Other hands, such as AJ, which might be playable in a Limit game, are much less playable in No-Limit (see additional notes about AJ below the hand charts).

Do not attempt to use these hand charts before reading the Frequent Asked Questions directly below the charts.

CHART #1 – LOOSE, PASSIVE GAME

Raise Always

Call from Early Position, otherwise raise

Call always

Call from Middle or Late Position if the conditions are right (see notes!)

CHART #2 – TIGHT OR AGGRESSIVE GAME NO ONE HAS RAISED YET

Raise Always

Call from Early Position, otherwise raise

Call from Middle or Late Position if the conditions are right (see notes!)

CHART #3 – THERE HAS BEEN A SINGLE RAISE (3-5 TIMES THE BIG BLIND) BEFORE YOU

Raise Always

Call from Early Position, otherwise re-raise

Call always

Call from Middle or Late Position if the conditions are right (see notes!)

Frequently Asked Questions:

For the hands in yellow, what do you mean when you say to play these hands if the conditions are right? The hands …

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Why does Chart #2 say to sometimes raise with the hands in yellow, but Chart #1 does not? We have …

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What’s the difference between AKs, AKo, and AK? AKs means …

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What are early, middle, and late position? Early Position …

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How much should I raise? As a general rule …

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What if someone raises after I call? Whether you …

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How do I play from the blinds? From the …

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The chart says to fold KQo to a raise. Really? Yes, this …

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I was told to fold AJo from Early Position, why do you say to call with it? Folding AJo …

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Can I use these charts in a NL Hold’em tournament? The charts …

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We think you will find these tips useful, so we have made the chart available for you in pdf form (go to get.adobe.com/reader if you need to download the free Adobe Acrobat reader)

2. Check Raising:

Narrative: 

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4. Playing Strong Draws:

Narrative:

…

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5. Being Pot Committed:

Narrative:

…

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21 Tips from Professional Players

PHIL IVEY
“You sit around sometimes and wait for a hand and try to get your money in with the best hand, but sometimes you just have to make something happen.”

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Top ten tips that are guaranteed to save you money almost every time you play poker

1. …

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Top ten trick plays your opponents wish you didn’t know

1. …

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Where Do I Go From Here?

You’ve read all the material.   You’ve learned the starting hands.  You’ve completed the training plan.  Where do you go from here?  Here are some suggestions on how to proceed.

1. Play, play, play – Like any other sport, you can only theorize and practice so much, and then you have to get out there where the rubber hits the road.  Whether you play online, at home games, or at Bricks and Mortar casinos, you have to put in the hours until applying the information in this document becomes second nature.
2. Watch our videos – We have some great poker training videos that will supplement the training material in this document. 
3. …

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Additional reading list

There are a lot of poker books out there.  And though this document will have you well on your way to becoming a poker expert, you may be looking for additional reading.  So, we asked some of the poker experts who helped develop TestYourPoker.com to pick their favorite poker books.  Here are some of their responses.  These books are the best of the best.

Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, Volume 1: Fundamentals and how to handle varying stack sizes, Jonathan Little, D&B Publishing, 2011 Jonathan Little, renowned for his expert tournament play, gives great insight in this first volume of his tournament books. Finally master the constantly-changing blinds and stacks and how to adjust your play. This is an excellent choice for all tournament players, as well as cash players who want to transition to tournaments.

…

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MAKE $$$ FOR EVERY FRIEND YOU REFER!

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A Final Note about this Document

Disclaimer:  TestYourPoker.com, LLC, has provided this information to you and fully believes that, if applied correctly, it will help make you a much better poker player.  However, we cannot be held liable for your personal results as you attempt to apply these techniques.  Many factors will influence your individual results:  the quality of your opponents, the stakes, the house “rake”, your previous poker experience, and your skill at applying these techniques correctly and at the right times. 

Also, if you play for real money, check to make sure that poker is legal in your jurisdiction.