When to Fold in Poker: Letting Go of a Good Hand
When to fold in poker is not decided with a chart of hands, but with criteria. They are what lets a player recognise the moment when a hand — even an excellent one — should be let go, and they are what this article is about. Because in live poker folding is not a surrender: […]
Bad Beat in Poker: Why It’s Not Just Bad Luck
Search for “bad beat” and you will find thousands of clips: the monster hand losing on the last card, the chair kicked, the frustration. This article is not one of those collections. Here the bad beat — what the discipline calls the “scoppio” — is not told as bad luck, but explained as a structural […]
Blind Stealing: Why It Changes in Poker Tournaments
Blind stealing is one of the first moves every player learns. And it is also the first misunderstanding they carry, without realising it, to the table of a live tournament. Because a strategy that is worth gold in cash game loses almost all its value at the tournament tables. And understanding why that move stops […]
Probability in Poker: What Calculation Cannot Tell You
Probability in poker: how much is it really worth at the live table? Calculation tells you almost everything — the percentages, the favourite, the possible scenarios — except the one thing that matters most in a hand: when. It is from this single crack that the entire method behind the Skill Poker Index is born. […]
Is Poker a Sport? Comparing Texas Hold’em with Traditional Sport
Is poker a sport, or merely an aspiration? Answering seriously takes more than intuition: it means measuring Texas Hold’em against what, by definition, makes an activity a sport. Sport rewards flawless execution, poker does not The five realities of poker, according to Taylor and Hilger What defines a sport Psychic condition: poker as empowerment The […]
Live Poker Skills (Part 2): Communication Beyond Mathematics
Communication in poker is the key that mathematics, on its own, does not hold. In Part 1 we saw why probability calculation, a winner online, is no longer enough in live tournaments: variance dominates and the few hands played prevent skill from emerging. So which tools are needed? The answer lies in a dimension other […]
Live Poker Skills (Part 1): Online vs Live Poker and the Limits of Maths
Online vs live poker: same game, different skills. In the previous article we analysed the skills that make an online poker player competitive: fast data selection, equity and expected-value calculation, and managing many tables at once. Online, that model works. But what happens when the same player sits down at a live Texas Hold’em poker […]
Online poker skills: the two cognitive paths of a professional
Online poker skills are not one thing: the study identifies two, distinct and inseparable. Anyone who approaches online play with a professional orientation exercises two different but intrinsically interdependent cognitive paths. On one side the rapid selection of data and the calculation of equity and expected value; on the other the critical interpretation of that […]
The Challenges of Skill in Texas Hold’em Poker
To develop and understand the Skill Poker Index, it is essential to analyze the concept of skill in Texas Hold’em poker. The question is apparently simple. But the answer determines everything: legality, regulation and the sporting recognition of the discipline. The main difficulty in classifying poker as a sporting activity, according to the criteria of […]