All Articles By James Sweeney (AKA SplitSuit)

Good poker players have long attempted (and sometimes succeeded) in harnessing the power of bet-sizing tells. The idea is that the bet sizes our opponents choose may give away important information about the types of hands they are holding. As a [...]

Straddling can be a fun element of live poker, but many players don’t fully understand what a straddle really does. For those of you who play exclusively online, the concept of a straddle in poker may be completely foreign to you. So what [...]

In episode #4 of my live poker journey, I head down to the Seminole Hard Rock Tampa. While the original goal was to play $1/$2 for the poker VLOG, I was told that recording at the table was a no-no. So I jumped over to $2/$5 and put in a short [...]

The idea of being a poker pro is alluring. You are your own boss. You play when you want. You study when you want. You have nearly infinite vacation days. You can travel on a whim to a tournament series on the east coast, or take a month [...]

Continuation betting bluffs is one of the first things players learn about postflop strategy. Read any poker book and the simplified advice essentially boils down to “raise preflop and if you get a single caller you should typically just fire a [...]

Poker is all about exploits. Your goal is to find leaks in your opponent’s strategy, figure out how to best take advantage of those leaks, and then implement plays to exploit their mistakes. This is poker in a nutshell. When bluffing your [...]

With all of this conversation about GTO poker amongst players, it seems like exploitative poker has gone the way of the dinosaur. Who even cares about exploitative play when we have GTO solvers and mixed strategies to worry about? Even though [...]

There are many differences between live and online poker. Online poker offers the ability to play a ton of hands in a very small amount of time. Live poker offers you physical information for each opponent. But one of the biggest differences [...]

Ace King is simple to play when it folds to you preflop: just raise. But AK becomes so much trickier when someone else raises before you. Should you call their raise? Should you 3bet? Should you do a bit of both? The answer isn’t always super [...]

Poker can seem like an immensely complex game given the large number of variables that need to be considered in every situation.  But if we create a plan, or at least a framework for considering our lines, poker becomes much simpler. [...]

As you increase your own preflop aggression you will invariably face more preflop shoves. The good news is that making a +EV decision when facing shoves is actually simple. The bad news is that it requires some practice and repetition for the [...]

I recently released a single-hand exercise for Red Chippers to practice their hand reading skills. This spot is not uncommon in live games and as such it’s useful to study it in more detail. So I took all of the responses, churned through the [...]

Hand reading is a powerful skill that all poker players need. The ability to put your opponent on a correct range of hands gives you a massive leg-up on your competition. By putting someone on a correct range you are able to value bet thinner, [...]

EV, short for ‘expected value’ is the focus of every poker player. Our goal is to make as many +EV decisions as possible, and the more +EV the better. In short, a play that is +EV is expected to net us money over the long term while [...]