Advanced Poker Strategy Articles

Popular Advanced Articles

Building Bluffing Ranges Like the Pros: A Guide to Smarter 3-Bets

By Leo Song-Carrillo

Today, solid preflop strategies are part of the tournament poker zeitgeist. (Don’t worry—set-mining doesn’t make you a fish.) That said,…

How to Play Flush Turns After Check-Raising (Advanced Strategy)

By Dan B.

As you probably know, having a well-balanced check-raising range makes you a really tough opponent to play against. The reason…

5 Advanced Poker Strategies & Tips To Supercharge Your Poker Wins

By Dan B.

Ready for some advanced nuggets of poker wisdom that will help your game? For today’s article, I dug through Upswing’s…

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ICM vs Chip Leader: How Dylan Weisman Navigates a Tough PLO Final Table Spot

By Duncan Smith

In this preview from his upcoming Crushing PLO Tournaments course on Upswing, Dylan Weisman walks through a hand from a…

Play More Hands, Win More Pots: 5 Tips for PLO MTT Success

By Duncan Smith

Pot-Limit Omaha (PLO) tournaments are a completely different animal from No-Limit Hold’em. If you try to carry over your standard…

How Double Board Bomb Pots Actually Work (And Why Most Players Get Them Wrong)

By Duncan Smith

Bomb pots have become a staple in modern poker. Whether you’re playing in private games, apps, or live settings, you’re…

Inside a $30K CGWC Pot: TaxHere vs Jasamgale Hand Analysis

By Dan B.

The 2025 Cash Game World Championship (CGWC) has provided us with many jaw-dropping hands, with players taking lines with hands…

5 Things You Should Be Doing BvB (But Probably Aren’t)

By Dan B.

In poker, particularly online, where blind-versus-blind (BVB) situations arise frequently, developing a strong BVB strategy is essential to maintaining a…

When Betting Bigger Is the Solver-Approved Play In Tournaments

By Leo Song-Carrillo

Big hand. Big bet. Usually. In the pre-solver era, continuation betting for half pot was fairly common, if not the…

Inside a Championship Hero Call: A Street-by-Street Analysis from the 2025 CGWC

By Dan B.

In this article, I am going to break down a big hero call that went down in the 2025 Cash…

The River Block Bet: Why Small Bets Can Be Your Biggest Edge

By Dan B.

The river block bet is a solver-derived discovery that revolutionized poker strategy. I will break down why that is and…

5 Situations Where C-Betting Is a Big Mistake in Poker Tournaments

By Leo Song-Carrillo

C-betting is super effective in MTTs, so it’s no surprise that it happens so frequently. On average, after you open-raise,…

The Next Step After Range Checking: Turn Strategy (Part 2)

By Dan B.

In the previous article in this series, you learned that low, connected boards are best played by checking your entire…

How to Play the Turn After Range Checking the Flop (Part 1)

By Dan B.

Some time ago, I wrote about a few spots where checking your entire range on the flop is the right…

3 Concepts That Should Shape Your Postflop Strategy

By Dan B.

Are you familiar with positional, range, and nut advantages in poker? These concepts will help you shape your postflop strategy…

From Satellite to Chip Leader: A Day 1 Among the Poker Elite in a $26,000 Event

By Leo Song-Carrillo

I am a mid-stakes MTT player. Frankly, I have no business going toe to toe with the poker elite. But…

3 Reasons Solvers Check Top Pair Out of Position in Tournaments

By Leo Song-Carrillo

You flopped a pair. In fact, the strongest kind. Even the highest ranking. Now it’s time to work out exactly…

Mastering Preflop 3-Bets: Value, Bluffs, and Exploits

By Dan B.

3-betting preflop is a fundamental strategy for winning at poker. Getting it right is also easier than ever, thanks to…

Slowplaying in MTTs: Three Spots Where It Prints Chips

By Leo Song-Carrillo

Slowplaying a big hand isn’t optimal… usually. When you have a big hand, you want to make the pot big.…

MTT Survival Guide: The Right Way to Defend Against Turn Probes

By Leo Song-Carrillo

Well, you checked back the flop like an intelligent, disciplined, strong poker player. But now they’re reaching for chips… They’re…

PR0DIGY vs Riggedeck: A $35,000 Hand Breakdown from the Cash Game World Championship

By Dan B.

As we steam ahead with the 2025 Cash Game World Championship (CGWC), I am going to break down a hand…

LLinusLLove vs Kevin Paqué in a CGWC High-Stakes Showdown

By Dan B.

We got a blast from the past in this article. Well, it’s not quite so far back in the past,…

Check-Raised the Flop? Here’s What to Do When the Turn Pairs

By Dan B.

In the previous part of this series, we looked at how to approach unpaired brick turns. Now it’s time to…

We’re Cutting Prices for Cyber Monday (25% Off Everything)

By Mike Brady

The 2025 Black Friday / Cyber Monday Sale is over. We’ll see you 2026 with more sales and more killer…

5 Situations Where C-Betting Will Burn You

By Dan B.

C-betting is a fundamental part of playing good, solid, winning poker. There are many situations where c-betting frequently is the…

Unleash Your Potential with Lucid Poker

By Duncan Smith

This will change your poker game for the better. Lucid Poker Version 3.0 launches on November 10, offering a faster,…

5 Solver Strategies That Crush in Theory (and Crash in Real Life)

By Duncan Smith

If you’ve spent any time studying with solvers, you know how powerful they are. Tools like Upswing’s Lucid Poker can…

Outplaying the Reckless Player: Mastering Turn Probes After Missed C-Bets

By Dan B.

In the first part of the series, I covered the most common opponent type – the risk-averse player profile. In…

The Hidden Mechanics of C-Betting: Lessons from Phemo

By Leo Song-Carrillo

What Is a C-Bet? A continuation bet, or c-bet, is a follow-up bet made by the player who took the…

What to Do After You Check-Raise the Flop and the Turn Bricks Out

By Dan B.

In this part of the series, we’re going to cover how to play on blank turns. We’ll start with the…

MTT Preflop Strategy: Turning Flat-Calls from Leak to Weapon

By Leo Song-Carrillo

Most losing players aren’t bleeding money because of massive, obvious mistakes. It’s the small, repeated errors that make or break…

Your Opponent Checked Back—Here’s How to Capitalize (Part I)

By Dan B.

Over the years, I’ve mostly focused on how to play as the aggressor, particularly on the flop. That stage is…

Check or Bet? How to Build Strong Flop Check-Back Strategies in Tournaments

By Leo Song-Carrillo

Let’s face it. Checking back stinks, doesn’t it? It can feel even worse than folding — the most cowardly act…

Complete Guide to Tournament C-Betting Strategy

By Miikka Anttonen | January 23, 2018

Continuation betting (c-betting) is now so trivial that even the most inexperienced tournament players do it without thinking twice. Today…

Short-Stacked 3-Betting in Tournaments Revealed

By Miikka Anttonen | January 16, 2018

The Ultimate Guide to Tournament 3-Betting Suppose you’re facing a late position raise with a good-but-not-great hand on the button.…

My Tried-and-True Method for Conquering Tilt

By Ryan Fee | December 1, 2017

Featured image credit: Live at the Bike One thing can instantly transform a world-class poker pro into a mega-whale: Tilt.…

How to Check-Raise with Short Stacks Like an MTT Boss

By Miikka Anttonen | October 24, 2017

Check-raising is an indispensable play in tournaments. Since average stack sizes are shallow, a check-raise will typically represent a large portion of your remaining chips. This allows you to put a lot of pressure on your opponent(s), because in order […]

5 Not-So-Easy River Spots Explained By A Game Theory Expert

By George Mathias | August 25, 2017

Discussing hands with friends is a great way to get better at poker. Now, imagine if one of your friends…

Why The Very Best Poker Players Make Decisions At Random (Mixed Strategy)

By George Mathias | August 11, 2017

The many randomized elements of poker are a big part of what makes the game so strategically complex. We can…

The Ultimate Guide to Preflop Multiway Pots (And Squeezing)

By Upswing Poker | July 28, 2017

Multiway pots are extremely complex. As more players enter the pot, the size of the game-tree increases. This makes finding…

Does Your Poker Journey Feel Stuck? So Did Doug Polk’s

By George Mathias | June 9, 2017

Does your poker career feel stuck? Have you been playing in the same low- and mid-stakes games for what seems…

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Enjoying the free strategy articles, but want to take your game to the next level? Upswing has a poker training path for you in the new Lab 2.0, the Mastery Path has advanced curriculum from some of the world's best coaches including Uri Peleg and Qing Yang. Lab 2.0 gives you a clear path to sharper and more profitable play.