Brian Townsend, also known as ‘sbrugby‘ in the online poker world, admitted this week on his Cardrunners blog that he is guilty of using multiple accounts!

This is an excerpt from his blog explaining himself:

For the past 6 months I have been playing under the 2^nd aliases Stellarnebula on FTP and makersmark66 on PokerStars.  I have not used the aba20 account on Stars since I began playing on the Makersmark66 account.  I have since gone back to using the aba20 account and will play only that account.  During this time I played the 25/50 and 100/200 PLO games.  I played under the Stellarnebula account from February until the end of June at which time Lee Jones and I had a discussion and we came to an agreement that I needed to close it.  During this time I was playing under the Brian Townsend account, never at the same table with the Stellarnebula.  Under the Stellarnebula account I played 25/50, 50/100, and 100/200 PLO.  During this time I played a very small amount of 50/100 PLO and primarily 200/400 PLO under the Brian Townsend account. 

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Just as there are many hands in Texas Holdem that will win you a lot of money, there are a number of deceptive hands that may lead you into believing that they are profitable when in real fact they will often lose you decent sums of money from your bankroll. The sooner that you learn about the hands that are costing you dearly, the sooner you can start saving yourself from losing money. This article will address the most common hands that novices play with and highlight the reasons as to why they can be dangerous hands to play.

The ‘any two suited cards’ is a very popular hand that all varieties of beginners like to play. A flush is a pretty strong hand in the game of Holdem, and so if you manage to make one there is good chance that you will win a nice bit of money with it. Therefore many new players to the game will be prepared to enter pots with any two cards as long as they are suited just in an attempt to catch a flush at some point during the hand. There are two reasons as to why playing any two suited cards is dangerous.

Firstly, it is not that much more likely that you will make a flush just because your cards are suited. The probability of making a flush in Holdem is pretty low, and so it does not justify calling bet and raises in an attempt to catch one on the flop. On top of this, amateur players will often continue to call bets and raises with bad pot odds to make a flush on future streets, which just adds to the problem of playing such hands. The second reason is that you can catch half a hand like second pair on the flop, and end up losing money to another player that has formed a better pair than you. So by playing random suited cards you are setting yourself up for two great opportunities to leak money, so don’t do it.

Another type of hand that always manages to cause the beginner poker players a problem is the low connecting cards. These are almost identical to the problems caused by any two suited cards and can help players to lose money over the long run. It is not too likely that you will form a straight every time you enter a pot with connecting cards like 5c 6h, so don’t enter the pot under the false pretences that you will. You will simply be losing more money in the long run, as well as losing money in pots where you catch half a hand and your opponent catches a stronger one. So save yourself some money and fold before the flop.

One final hand that amateur players get overly attached to is a rag ace. Rag aces are simply aces that are accompanied by a low ranking holecard below a Ten. The problem that these hands cause is that players find it difficult to let the hand go after they pair their ace, and so they will often end up losing a lot of (if not all) of their stack to a player that also makes a pair of aces but with a better kicker. The best way to play these types of hands is to exercise a little self-discipline and fold them before the flop. It is unlikely that you will win a big pot with them, but it is likely that you will lose a big one. Save yourself a bit of money by folding and catch out the other amateur players the next time when you hold a stronger ace than them.