Would you believe that even if there is no physical aspect in online poker you can still read your opponents tell? Well you should. What is a tell? A tell is a player’s involuntary actions that shows the strength or weakness of his card. Kind of a giveaway price for the most observant poker player.

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“A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over with a working simple system.”

This passage of John Gall was written at his book named Systemantics: How Systems Work and Especially How They Fail.

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I’m not a big fan of this poker issue but it deserves to be mentioned here thought its a bit unethical. You cannot avoid the possibility that in the near future you are going to play with or be acquainted with someone who is going into a full blown life tilt while playing poker.

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Before someone experiences a full blown tilt there are other levels he must go through. Tilt starts off as a harmless feeling, where in a person feels slightly distracted in the game due to personal problems, a bad hand and many more. This is the first stage of tilt, in which a player can still play the game at his best.

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Behaving in a controlled and calm way on hard moments is what you called discipline. Discipline also means to follow acceptable forms of behavior when the situation demanded.

Its the common definition of discipline that you can find in on line and traditional dictionaries. However, this meaning holds through with playing poker. This is because poker players relies on discipline to become better in playing this game.

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If you don’t want to play bad poker avoid steaming wholly. Or don’t be influenced by it. You don’t want to play without your mind on it. Steaming can led to bad poker and that’s true.

When a player is losing, their composure becomes poor and they lose their discipline. Some players will get downright mean and angry. Players in this condition are “stuck and steaming,” or more commonly “steaming.” Obviously, steaming does not promote optimum play. Players who are steaming tend to bet, call, and raise when they shouldn’t, in a desperate attempt to get their money back. Steaming persons tend to make loose decisions, check out an example of a person full of steam below.

Her credit card bill’s payment deadline will be tomorrow and she needs money desperately to cover it up. Do you think that she can make sound decisions when she has this problem?

Poker players experience steaming once in a while but the most disciplined individual won’t be affected when he feels steam. He just avoid to show it and tried to look calm despite of what’s happening on his life. A poker player who’s mind set is on the game can make a good decision making system when it is demanded at the game.

The other thing about steaming is that it won’t stop. The best thing that you could do is to stand up, regain your composure and don’t forget to kiss your mom. The best example of steaming can be read below.

The game started with a bad beat and you lose. You are starting to get pissed and started to think why do someone had the lucky cards and not you. Then the second turn came. Your hand is a waste of time but you played it in..and you lose again! Your steaming for the lucky player who got both the pots and angry at yourself for playing a bad hand.. It doesn’t end up there.

You played for almost an hour and you have won several hands. But then again the ugly head of lady luck came in and you lose in an outdraw. You begin to think about the first hand and second hand where you lose. And then you also think about all the problems you had at home… and all the problems you had in your lifetime.

With this kind of attitude, it won’t be long before you lose all your chips and you will eventually use your savings. And then you still played an inferior card even if it has no chance of winning.

Don’t you hate it when you’re playing against someone and you want to fold your semi-decent to worthless hand but you can’t because your opponent makes it too cheap for you to give up hope? Chances are, you should probably be folding at this point anyways, but instead of being the guy that gets suckered into giving a little bit of extra cash away every hand you should be the one doing it.

Poker is not only about winning hands but maximizing your profits as well. Value bets keep people around and it gets them to cough up the cash. You should always try to give the extra bet to squeeze out as many chips as possible from your opponent. Let’s look at an example.

Let’s say you have King/7 and the flop comes King / 7 / 2 in no particular order and there is no flush draw on the board. You’re the button and your opponent checks to you. Are you going to check? -  No! First of all you really shouldn’t ever slow play 2 pair because it always comes back to haunt you. Make a small value bet, maybe he is holding a decent hand and thinks you are just trying to buy the pot. A hand that you would love your opponent to have right now is Jack/8 or Jack/9 suited, because then you know his undisciplined mind will not allow him to fold his hand. The turn comes Jack and look at that, your opponent thinks he just caught top pair. He checks to you, since after all you did make the initial bet, perhaps he wants to see if that Jack scared you. This is a very important value bet here.

A bet to high and he might be 100% confident that you do have that King. You to make it a little smaller, maybe he will still think you have the King but it will be cheap enough for him to call you so he does.  The Flop is a dud - 3 off suit - and he once again checks to you. Throw in one more small value bet. If he doesn’t call, which if you make it cheap enough for him he should, then you have already taken two value bets from him, but if he does call, the relatively small pot that started all of the sudden looks like a large one in the blink of an eye. You are killing him softly and slowly and plays like that can really dismantle players and throw them off their game.

The trick to Value betting is showing as much weakness as humanly possible all while knowing you have the better hand. You’re forcing people to do what they don’t want do, and when you do that, you take people out of their game, which is why you as a value better should always be on the constant look out for people trying give you a couple value bets.  Value bets are also a good way to get a good idea of what hand your opponent has. Sometimes they serve a good purpose as “feeler bets” especially on the flop. Don’t over value bet however, because you could quickly be facing a re-raise and that will definitely put you in a tough position that you did not plan on. Remember, poker is about maximizing your profits and that is what you are establishing with value bets.