Two Top Pros Play Perfectly with $450,076 on the Line (Hand Analysis)

jonathan van fleet michael addamo high roller battle

Welcome to some of the toughest poker games on the planet: $25k High Roller Tournaments. These events attract the best of the best, all competing for millions of dollars and the prestige that comes with winning a high roller title. This article will analyze a crucial hand from a recent online $25k High Roller event.…

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14 Players Away from €300,000 — Should He Hero Call This Hand?

hero call with 15 left battle of malta

When your opponent either has the nuts or nothing, it can make sense to bluff-catch with a marginal hand. Today’s hand is an example of such a situation. In October 2018, The Battle of Malta boasted a then-record field of 3,816 players. British tournament specialist Andy Hills made it to the final table but, on…

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$2 Million Up for Grabs — Can Dan Smith Get Fedor Holz to Fold?

dan smith vs fedor holz

In 2016, the $111,111 WSOP One Drop brought out a who’s who of poker’s elite. A stacked final table boiled down to two of the greatest players in the game’s history. With $3 million banked, Dan Smith and Fedor Holz took their seats to play for an additional $2 million. Unsurprisingly, some fireworks ensued with…

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What is the Poker Game Tree & Why Does It Matter?

poker game tree

Learning poker is a gradual process. You start by learning about your hand strength and play poker without factoring in much else. Gradually, you start to consider more factors like board texture and ranges. But as you become a more advanced player, you start to look at the game differently. Sophisticated, high-level players take a…

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Going for Value in Two High Stakes Tournament Hands (Analysis)

high stakes MTT hands

To help you improve your strategy in tournaments, today we’re taking a look at two key tournament hands played by high stakes regular Moritz ‘MuckCallOk’ Dietrich. (We call him Mo.) These two hands are straight from Mo’s last video series in the Upswing Lab training course, which is a 5-part review of hands from some…

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4 Tournament Mindset Tips for Poker Success (ft. ALLinPAV)

allinpav mental game tips

Upswing Poker coach Hristivoje “ALLinPav” Pavlovic has proven that the poker dream is still alive. About five years ago he was grinding micro stakes with a small bankroll. Fast forward to today, and he’s a mid/high stakes tournament pro that is one of the most popular Twitch poker streamers. There’s no doubt about it: rising…

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How Would You Play Pocket Aces at This Final Table? (Analysis)

tom hall with aces and the text icm in the background

Tom ‘Jabracada’ Hall is one of the most fearsome online and live poker players that the UK has ever produced. He is also one of the most ICM-aware opponents you are ever likely to face. That expert knowledge often comes to the fore on final tables, when ICM considerations play a big part in ultimate…

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Heads-Up for €29,620 — Should David Lappin Call with Jack-High?

lappin vs sinclair

For my fifth strategy article, I thought I’d put myself on the chopping-block and breakdown a hand from the 2018 Irish Open. I made the final table of the ‘JP Masters’, eventually finding myself heads-up against breakout poker star and WSOP Main Event 8th place finisher Jack Sinclair. The hand is the poker version of…

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Top Pro Plays Pocket Queens Passively with $2.7 Million On the Line

nitsche qq limp and fold

Dominik Nitsche is considered by many to be one of the best tournament players in the world, and for good reason. In his career, the German native has amassed $18,649,880 in live tournament earnings, including 4 World Series of Poker bracelets. But being one of the greatest players in the world doesn’t mean others won’t…

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What is Four-of-a-Kind? And How Should You Play Four-of-a-Kind?

how to play flopped quads

Four-of-a-kind marks one of the rarest and strongest hands you can possibly make in a poker game. The third-strongest hand in the standard poker hand rankings, four-of-a-kind only loses to straight flushes and royal flushes. A 52-card poker deck features four aces, four kings, four queens, and so on. To make four-of-a-kind, you need to…

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The 100 Most Valuable Poker Strategy Articles for 2021

best poker strategy articles

Hopefully you’ve taken advantage of all the great strategy content that’s available here at Upswing. But in case you’ve missed something, or want to double back and reinforce what you’ve learned, we’ve compiled our top strategy articles.  Each of them falls under one of the following categories (click to jump to that section): General poker…

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Jungleman Hits $825,635 Straight Flush vs Phil Ivey’s Quads (Analysis)

jungleman vs ivey

Half-man, half-machine, Steve Austin was the original six-million dollar man. With superhuman strength and speed, he battled evil for the good of mankind. (I feel like I’m showing my age here!) In this hand, Daniel “Jungleman” Cates is a modern-day Steve Austin, his superhuman brain battling poker legend Phil Ivey for over six-million HK dollars…

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Can She Fold a Full House Getting 7 to 1? (Analysis)

bicknell full house

One of the many common cognitive biases is commitment bias. In short, commitment bias is our unwillingness to make decisions that contradict things that we have said or done in the past. In poker, that is commonly expressed as the feeling of being committed to a pot into which we have invested. Good poker players…

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€1,115,207 On The Line…Should She Fold A SET? (Analysis)

maria ho folds a set

The late Kenny Rogers famously sang: You’ve got to know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em. Know when to walk away, and know when to run. Today we are going to analyze a famous hand where the person in question (Mario Ho) didn’t know when to hold ’em. The hand sent shock…

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