Playing on tilt is a bigger leak than most players think it is. Even if a guy has a couple of bad habits he can still make money on a good poker table. But if you’re the type who reacts adversely to negative results by playing with an “I don’t care anymore” attitude, you could be losing at a very inflated rate. If you record your playing results, you’ll see that it’s the most costly of playing situations in which you’ll find yourself.

Tilt occurs before all of your money is gone, and usually when a player has lost about 60% of their stakes, leaving lots of money left for a comeback or the next session. If you stay on tilt, any losses you incur will be 100% your fault. And will continue to be until you learn to alter your outlook, or reality, when this situation finds you.

You would think that with only three cards to play with this would be an easy game to learn, right? The thing is…three card poker is actually two games in one: Pairplus and Ante-and-Play. (It’s also an American version of the English game “Brag”.)

Here’s how to play 3-Card Poker:

Each player is dealt three cards. The hand rankings in 3-Card Poker is a little different than regular (5-Card Poker) because you’re limited to the following: Straight Flush, Three of a Kind, Straight, Flush, One Pair, High Card.

For the first type of game, Pairplus, it’s pretty straight forward. You place a bet on the cards with a payout for all hands of a pair or better.

For ante-and-play, you placesan ante bet before receiving your cards with the hopes of beating the dealer (who must qualify in order to play). After you’re dealt your cards and have had a chance to look at them, you can either fold your cards and lose the ante bet, or raise by placing out a bet of equal money to the ante bet.

If you want to learn how to play 3-card poker for free, the Wizard of Odds has an easy Java game available. For more free poker games, check out this reputable poker room.

One can only imagine the pressures of playing a final table in a televised poker event. Between the pressures of trying to win a big payoff and the fear of being on public display, it’s no wonder that the seasoned pros often win these battles. These high-profile situations require that the players often stop play for technical reasons, so the taping crew can get things right and interviews can be done. So getting into a rhythm is usually impossible.

If that’s not enough to get to you, playing under the heat of the lights can wear down anyone’s resolve. You also know that your cards will eventually be seen by everyone, so you don’t want to look like a donkey to the world if you play a stupid hand. All you can do is to take on all these obstacles the same way you take on your opponents.

Sometimes, when you’re looking at your cards, do you see this? Nothing but junk? We hear ya.

Junk Hands are pretty much useless, but if you don’t know what they are then you could be in for a world of trouble. Here’s what to look for:

They usually include only one face card, a weak ace paired with a crap low card. For example: A, 2 unsuited, 2, 7, 10, 7, K, 3 and J, 8 etc. Sadly, in a game of Texas Hold’em the majority of hands you’ll end up getting will be nothing but junk. My advice? Muck them preflop. If you don’t and you decide instead to play these cards, you’ll only lose money.

There are, however, a few situations were playing junk cards can work to your advantage. But before you get ahead of yourself and think that you can bluff your way out of every junk hand that comes your way, understand that these strategies require discipline and patience. When you are in late position, for example, and you’ve got a table of limpers, this may be a good time to limp in also with your junk hand. Still, be careful of flopping a big hand or you may end up on the losing end of a large pot.

Here’s another situation that may work for you…steal the blinds. If you are in late position and no one ahead of you has entered the pot, you can raise and hope to steal the blinds. However, if the blinds re-raise you — fold.

Keep in mind that when you play junk hands you also run the risk of putting your table on tilt.

Getting dealt the best possible hand in Texas Holdem will happen, on average, once in every 270 hands. How you play this hand depends on the playing situation in which you find yourself. If you can get the hand to a head-to-head situation, you will have at least a 77% chance or better to win the hand. So try and get yourself heads-up by either raising pre-flop if you’re in a late position, or flat calling and re-raising any raises that may come after you when you’re in an early position.

Aces can be slow-played if you’re at a table that has a lot of overly aggressive players at it. You can just let aggressive players bet into you until the board makes it dangerous to allow them another card. If that happens, you just put in a big raise and make it very expensive for your opponent to draw another card.

There has always been an endless debate on table talk. Does it help or does it hurt? Talking at the poker table can be used as a method to extract information from your opponent. We see many top players such as Dan Negreanu and Joe Hachem use this technique with documented success. It can be seen over and over again how players can give away far too much information during a tournament in what appeared to be an innocent conversation only to have it used against them later.

Many players consider poker to be a “social” game where meaningless banter is OK. However when listening is a skill of poker then you must then realize that poker is not a “social” game. Information is harvested by observing cards, chips, and people. When people start to talk at a table this is just another way of picking up that valuable information. Do you ever remember your parents saying, “you couldn’t hear me because you were too busy talking?” Those are some true words.

Remember when you should always have your radar up and running listing to any kind of relevant information that might lead us to getting our opponents chips. This is why it’s extremely important to always be aware of what others are saying, what you’re saying and who you are saying it to.

Now that online poker players are being tracked and ranked, three of the top internet players have signed book deals with Dimat Enterprises. The books will be aimed at no-limit holdem, and are a step forward for the prominence of online players. The three players are Eric Lynch, Jon Turner and Jon Van Fleet. The three have combined for over $6M in tournament winnings over the last few years.

Eric Lynch goes by “Rizen” online and has had success in live events as well. He cashed seven times at the WSOP in the last two years. His biggest cash was his 26th-place finish in last year’s WSOP main event for $494,000.

Jon “Apestyles” Van Fleet has close to $2M in online cashes, which came from 70 wins and 350 final tables. Jon Turner is known online as “PearlJammer” and has been one of the top online money earners for years.