u/OfficialQuintAce

A bomb pot is a poker variant where every player at the table antes a predetermined amount, there is no preflop action, and the flop is dealt straight away. Action then proceeds as normal from the left of the dealer. In a full ring $2/5 NLHE game for example, everyone might ante $20, creating a $180 pot before the flop. The appeal is simple: an inflated pot where every player gets to see the flop.

Variations

PLO Bomb Pots The same format as a standard bomb pot but played as Pot Limit Omaha. Every player antes, there is no preflop action, and the flop is dealt. The larger hole card count makes for even bigger and more complex postflop situations.

Double Board Bomb Pots A split pot format where two flops are dealt simultaneously, followed by flop action, then two turns, turn action, two rivers, and finally river action. Half the pot is awarded to the winner of the top board and half to the winner of the bottom board. Double board bomb pots can be played as either NLHE or PLO. Importantly, you can use different hole cards on each board. In PLO for example, if your hole cards are AAJT you could play AA on the top board and JT on the bottom board, giving you the potential to contest both boards with strong holdings simultaneously.

Pot/Fold A simplified variation with a single binary decision on the flop: match the pot or fold. For example in a 7 handed 6 card PLO pot/fold game with a $10 ante, there is $70 in the pot and the first player to act must either put in $70 or fold. There is no checking and no raising. Once a player matches the $70, the next player must either match the $70 or fold as well, they cannot raise. If action folds around to the button they win the pot uncontested.

Key Strategic Considerations

Position is everything. With every player seeing the flop, being first to act means up to eight players behind you. Position is more powerful in bomb pots than in almost any other format.

SPR is lower than usual. Every player has already anted, so the pot to stack ratio is compressed from the start. This changes how you value made hands and draws significantly.

Every player starts with 100% of hands. There has been no preflop betting to narrow anyone's range. On the flop, anyone can have anything.

Double board bomb pots means split pots. You are not just contesting a single pot: 50% of the pot is awarded to the winner of each board. This creates new dynamics similar to hi-lo games, e.g. PLO8. A catastrophic beginner mistake is overplaying a medium strength hand on both boards that wins neither top nor bottom board. There is no prize for having the 2nd best hand on each board.

Want to go deeper on bomb pots and other poker formats? You can learn about how QuintAce teaches bomb pots, Squid Hunt, Pineapple and more on the QuintAce blog: https://quintace.ai/blog/quintace/one-platform-every-game-every-format

You have probably seen a phenomenon in online poker forums: a user posts a hand where they make a loose call preflop, find themselves facing a tough decision postflop and ask for advice. The top comments are simply "fold pre." What is going on and why do you need to fold pre?

1) Good preflop decisions make postflop straightforward.

Most postflop mistakes are set up before the flop. If you are playing the right hands then you will be in a solid position postflop. If you play the wrong hands (especially if you are calling with too many weak hands) you will be in a world of difficulty postflop with your marginal holdings.

When you are still getting to grips with postflop play, hands like top pair with a good kicker, an overpair, or a set are very forgiving. You know roughly where you stand and will often have a strong value hand you can confidently bet. When you completely miss, e.g. AKss on T97hhh, it is easy to check fold. You will still make mistakes, but can nevertheless be a winning player because you have a massive advantage by playing stronger hands than your opponents.

What you really want to avoid is situations where you have a marginal hand like weak top pair or a weak draw facing aggression. This is where players bleed money.

2) The rake at low stakes discourages wide play.

Rake matters a lot more at low stakes than most beginners realise. At higher stakes the rake is a rounding error. At 1/2 it is a constant tax on every pot you play and it falls hardest on small pots, which are exactly the pots that wide passive players create by limping in with speculative hands.

If you are playing 40% of hands and regularly seeing multiway limped flops, a significant portion of your poker activity is happening in the worst possible rake conditions. You are not just playing marginally profitable hands, you are playing them in an environment specifically designed to make marginal plays unprofitable.

The tighter you play and the more you build pots with your strongest hands, the less the rake hurts you. You are paying it in fewer pots and winning a bigger share of the ones you do play.

3) In multiway pots, marginal hands are a mirage.

When six people see the flop (not unknown in live 1/2 games) the hand strength needed to put chips in rises enormously compared to heads up pots.

Weak offsuit aces, unsuited connectors and suited gappers like A6o, 98o and 95s play extremely poorly in multiway spots because they will often flop marginal pairs or dominated draws. You will face tough decisions with weak pairs, and sometimes make a straight or flush that is dead to a higher straight or flush.

Hands like pocket pairs and suited aces play well multiway because they can make nutted hands like sets and nut flushes that will rarely be dominated and can win big pots.

But everyone else is loose and bad at poker. Can I not just play loose as well?

Everyone else is losing so if you imitate their playing style you will see similar results. The optimal strategy in poker is generally not copying people who are making mistakes. Your opponents who play 66% of hands in a full ring game are not winning players. The correct response to wide passive opponents is to tighten up, wait for strong hands and value bet aggressively.

As you improve and develop your postflop skills you can start to open up your range, particularly in position against recreational players who are going to pay you off when you hit and give up easily when they miss. But that is a later conversation. Get the fundamentals right first.

If you want a clearer picture of which hands are actually profitable to play from each position, and why certain spots go wrong postflop, QuintAce.ai breaks this down in detail. Introduction to the platform here: https://quintace.ai/blog/quintace/what-is-quintace-a-complete-guide-to-the-platform

Five reasons your live results don't translate and what to do about it

You can crush your home game and beat your local $1/2, but your online results are consistently poor. Is online poker rigged? Are you terminally unlucky? Or is there a secret to winning online you are yet to unlock?

There are a few different dynamics in play that might explain the difference in results:

1. Live players suck To quote Mike McDonald: "Live players suck." Live poker, especially at low stakes, is full of recreational players: beginners, drunken sports fans, retirees, miscellaneous degenerates. Most are not particularly studied, so you do not need to be an elite player to beat your local $1/2 or $1/3 game.

2. Online players are good, really good Online regs at $200NL are studying seriously, talking hands with friends, and reviewing their sessions with solvers. Almost nobody at $1/2 live is doing this consistently. At lower stakes online, there are students and grinders in low cost of living countries who are taking even $25NL very seriously. Making $7 an hour playing microstakes might not feel worth it if you live in San Francisco, but in Belarus or Nepal that money goes much further.

As young Mike McDonald tells us: 'Live Players Suck'

3. Multi-tabling makes online games much tougher Two things happen when strong players multi-table. First, they are effectively replicated across the player pool: recreational players tend to play one or two tables, so you run into a disproportionately high number of strong players at any given table. Second, players accumulate experience much faster, with pros seeing hundreds of hands per hour online instead of the roughly 30 hands per hour at a live game. The 24 year old online pro may have played more hands in their career than a live reg who has been playing for 30 years. When you are starting out online you are facing much more experienced opponents who have seen every situation before.

4. Microstakes rake is higher than most live games Online microstakes carry some of the highest rake in poker in terms of BB/100. You might be a decently winning player in a rake free environment, but the rake is eating all of your profit. A 15bb/100 rake turns a 10bb/100 winner into a 5bb/100 loser. As you move up in stakes the competition will be tougher but the rake will be much less impactful.

5. Online poker players have sophisticated tools to plug leaks Online players write detailed notes on their opponents during play, and on many platforms also use a heads up display (HUD) to track opponent tendencies. Post session there are extremely sophisticated tools to review hands, find leaks, and improve rapidly. The difference between a studied online player and an untooled one compounds over time: the incremental improvements build on each other until after 100 sessions the studied player is crushingly ahead.

Studying with QuintAce Upload your hand histories to QuintAce and the leak detection engine will automatically identify holes in your game, explain what's going wrong and drill you on problem areas. The next time you upload hands, QuintAce will compare the new results to track your improvement. Most players repeat the same mistakes for years without realising it. Closing the feedback loop means your leaks get smaller with every session instead of compounding against you.

You can find the full breakdown on how QuintAce turns leaks into wins here: https://quintace.ai/blog/quintace/the-closed-loop-how-quintace-turns-leaks-into-wins

So is online poker actually beatable? In short, yes, but it requires a different approach than live. The games are tougher, the rake is less forgiving and your opponents are more experienced and better equipped. The players who make it work online are not necessarily more talented than strong live players but they are more systematic. They study, they track, and they treat every session as data. QuintAce is built for exactly that.

Here's a spot you see multiple times every session. The button opens, the small blind calls, and you're sitting in the big blind with a decent hand. What do you do?

If you're like most players, you call with anything playable and only raise with your big pairs. It feels safe. It feels sensible. It is costing you money.

T9s will be profitable as a call, but even more profitable as a squeeze

What's actually going on in this spot

When the small blind just calls instead of raising, they're telling you they probably don't have a monster. So you're looking at two opponents with medium-strength ranges and dead money already in the pot.

That's a great time to put in a raise, called a squeeze. You're forcing both players to make a tough decision, and a lot of the time they both just fold and you pick up the pot before a flop is dealt.

The hands most players get wrong

Tens and nines are raises, not set-mine calls. Suited connectors like T9s and KJs squeeze far more than most players realise. They have enough postflop value to justify the aggression. AQo is a raise, not a flat. KQo is worth mixing in a raise with against loose opponents.

That's it. Those four adjustments alone get you most of the way there.

How the open size changes things

Bigger open means squeeze tighter. Against a 2x open, you can raise the suited connectors and broadways fairly liberally. Against a 3x, stick to pairs (tens or better), AQ+, and the strongest suited hands.

A simple rule

Nines or better, strong suited hand, or AQ+? Raise it. You'll be surprised how often both players fold and how quickly those small pots add up.

To read the full breakdown with deeper explanations and useful exploits, check out Harold Knight's 'Leak Of The Week' on the QuintAce blog: https://quintace.ai/blog/quintace/leak-of-the-week-you-are-not-squeezing-enough

If you've ever stared at solver output thinking "ok but WHY?", you're not alone.

Traditional GTO tools show you frequencies and EV numbers but leave you to figure out the reasoning yourself. Most players end up drawing the wrong conclusions and reinforcing bad habits without even realising it.

The current options all have a flaw:

• General AI (ChatGPT etc.) sounds confident, but isn't grounded in real solver data and is simply guessing at the correct answers ( with some horrendous results ).
• Solvers are mathematically rigorous, but completely silent on the why.
• Coaches offer the best of both worlds, but are expensive and not available at 2am when you're reviewing hands.

QuintAI bridges all three. It runs the actual solver first, then translates the output into plain language and you can keep asking follow-up questions until the spot genuinely makes sense.

Here's what a real conversation looks like:

You hold A♠K♠. Board runs out A♦5♦2♦ J♠ 9♥, a monotone diamond flop. You have TPTK but no flush draw. Villain bets the river. Solver says call. You start asking questions.

You: I have top pair top kicker. Why is the solver not raising?

QuintAI: Against a balanced range, you have 76.8% equity, but raising turns your hand into a bluff. You already beat all of villain's bluffs by calling. If you raise, only flushes, sets, and two pair call and they all beat you.

You: OK, but I'm beating a lot of hands. Why not raise for value?

QuintAI: You unblock villain's missed single-diamond hands (K♦J♣, Q♦T♣) that picked up a flush draw on the flop and now have to bluff or give up. Calling catches those bluffs. Raising folds them out and only gets action from hands that crush you.

You: What if I know something about this villain?

QuintAI: That changes everything. A tight, passive villain who fires into a three-diamond board on the river usually has it so top pair top kicker becomes a fold. A loose, aggressive villain is the opposite: they're bluffing with all their missed diamonds, so calling becomes even more profitable. GTO says call. The exploitative answer depends entirely on who is sitting across from you.

Every response stays anchored to the same solver computation. No hallucinated reasoning, no generic advice. Just the hand, built up one question at a time.

TL;DR: It's a solver that talks back.

For a deeper breakdown of the QuintAI solver and how you can talk to it, check out Harold Knight’s write-up on the QuintAce blog here: https://quintace.ai/blog/quintai-a-real-conversation-with-a-solver

Rake, AKA 'vig' or 'comission' is the fee taken by a poker operator as their payment for running the game. It is named for the minature 'rake' that was traditionally used by dealers to scoop in losing bets at table games like roulette or craps. This pays for security, staff, physical (or virtual) tables and of course profit for the casino. Rake can be taken in a number of ways:

1. Cash games: Percentage rake. The operator takes a percentage out of each pot, usually only if the hand reaches the flop ("no flop, no drop"). There is typically a cap depending on the stakes. For example, a $2/5 game might have 5% rake up to a maximum of $10. A $100 pot is raked for $5, and a pot of $200 or more is raked for $10.

2. Cash games: Fixed drop. A fixed charge is taken depending on the street. For example, $5 is taken on the flop regardless of pot size. There may be additional charges on the turn or river, such as a further $1 on turn and a further $1 on river. This structure is seen in low stakes live games.

3. Cash games: Promotional drops. A charge for a specific promotion at the casino, such as a bad beat jackpot, high hand promotion, or giveaway. This is often in addition to a fixed drop or percentage rake. For example, a game might have 5% rake up to $10, plus a further $1 taken for the bad beat jackpot once the pot reaches $20. The promotional money is returned to players, though the casino may retain an admin fee (e.g. 10% of the bad beat jackpot). This is common in both live and online cash games, especially for bad beat jackpots.

4. Cash games: Time charge. Players pay a fixed fee per hour to be in the game. For example, $10 every 30 minutes per player, regardless of pot size or who won. It tends to speed up the game because players are incentivised to act faster, plus the dealer is not taking rake and making change in every pot. This is the norm in high stakes public games (eg. Bobby's Room at The Bellagio) and social poker clubs in Texas (eg. The Lodge).

5. Tournament Rake: Rake in tournaments is organised differently, with a fixed fee to enter the tournament. For example, a tournament entry might cost $500+$75. $500 goes into the prizepool to be distributed to players, while $75 is taken as the house as a fee. If you get knocked out and the tournament allows re-entries, it will cost $500+$75 to play again. Nothing is taken out of individual pots within a tournament. In some events, there is a further 'prizepool deduction' taken out of the prizepool to tip the dealers or pay for a promotion.

What is the rake in your games?

1. Play satellites. Large field satellites (especially for the WSOPME) tend to be very good value with soft fields of excited recreational players. There are plenty of inexperienced players who have a really poor understanding of satellite strategy, making absolutely horrendous mistakes as you approach the bubble. Some big stacks guaranteed to cash by sitting out will punt off their stack, trying to pointlessly accumulate. Some small stacks will attempt to fold into the money prematurely and simply be blinded out. This is a really good way to qualify for the larger BI events if you are on a budget.
2. Turn up on time. Max late registering will often mean busting in a few orbits after losing a flip. If you are a recreational player looking to have a meaningful experience then it is worth pre-registering and arriving for hand 1 in level 1. You will be in the tournament for longer and (hopefully) have hours to play meaningful deepstacked poker while soaking in the atmosphere. The tournament is also at its softest at hand 1: as the tournament progresses the field will (on average) get tougher as weaker players lose their stacks to stronger players. You can’t win any chips off the guy who punts his stack off in the first hour if you aren’t there for the first hour.
3. Research your opponents: If you make day two of an event you can generally look up your table in advance and see who your opponents will be. Search for them on www.hendonmob.com and you can see their history in terms of what events they have cashed in. If someone has millions in cashes and regularly plays >$5K BI tournaments around the world then they are likely to be extremely competent. If their only result is min-cashing a $100 rebuy in Oklahoma then they are certainly inexperienced in live MTTs and very unlikely to be a strong tournament player. Remember, other players can also search for you!

Try and play more pots with the opponents who aren't in the Poker Hall of Fame...

4. Watch the dealers. There are 100s of fairly new dealers at the WSOP working long hours for months straight. Be kind to them and watch out for any errors they might make out of tiredness / inexperience. If there is an issue just be polite and call the floor, don’t be the guy that yells at the dealer (they are generally trying their best).

5. Pay attention to the weakest players and the mistakes they make. WSOP events are softer than other live events for equivalent stakes, especially the WSOPME. The weaker players are making enormous mistakes, especially as they get tired / bored / tilted during long tournament days. Steal the blinds relentlessly from the guy trying to fold his way into the money and don’t be afraid to call down light vs the guy triple barrelling every shuffle.

6. Do not be afraid of ‘Superstar’ pros. Some players are starstruck by big name pros and are terrified to play pots with them without the nuts. The famous pros are only human: they get the same cards as everyone else and even Phil Ivey makes mistakes. Ideally you want to play more pots vs the weaker players, but do not be afraid to battle the stronger players. If they think you are intimidated by the stakes or their presence then you are actually in the ideal spot to bluff them because they will expect you to be very value heavy.

7. Do not be put off by speech play or other live ‘tricks’. Some live tournament players try all kinds of tactics to push an edge including staring people down, tanking, flirting, non-stop talking, saying bizarre things etc. You don’t need to engage. These players are often not particularly sound theoretically, but they might be very very good at inducing people to tilt. You can just turn up the volume on your headphones, ignore their speech play and play your normal game.

The ultimate weapon against Will Kassouf / Martin Kabrhel wannabes

8. Be careful with the chip denominations. Inexperienced players will often make mistakes and ‘misclicks’ after misreading the unfamiliar WSOP chip sets. This is particularly common in huge field events like the Colossus where a single event might use multiple chipsets (so there might be a green 1k chip and a purple 1k chip in the same tournament). If you aren’t sure what someone has bet just ask the dealer, avoid throwing in chips and hoping for the best.

1. Just stay at Paris / The Horseshoe where the WSOP actually takes place. The cheaper hotels / airbnbs are somewhat of a mirage, yes it is cheaper per night but you have to uber everywhere and waste time each day getting to / from the WSOP. It is so much more pleasant waking up and being able to walk down an air-conditioned corridor to the tournament hall. On break you can get back to your room, have a snack, use the bathroom etc. without queuing behind 100 people. If you are on a tight budget, consider bunking with friends.

2. Sleep, drink water and shower. You will see some absolute zombies at the table who are sleep deprived, hungover and unwashed. They look terrible, feel terrible, smell terrible and yes, their play will be terrible. This is a both unpleasant and entirely unnecessary. Almost every hotel in Vegas offers a gym, swimming pool, spa etc. for a mental / physical break from poker. You are paying plenty in resort fees for these facilities, you might as well use them.

3. Swipe your rewards cards (from Caesars and other brands) literally everywhere. At MTTs and cash game poker obviously but also, casino games, restaurants, shops, shows etc. There are all kinds of freebies, discounts, bonuses etc. that are available, but only if the casinos can track you. Before you leave, try and use everything up and get a free room, free bet or free dinner.

Stay in the centre of The Strip to avoid taking cabs everywhere / walking in the Summer heat.

4. Watch out for huge fees for wiring money, cash advances and using ATMs. Depending on how you move money to the casino you might be charged an eye-watering sum by your bank / casino (buy chips with a credit card and you could be hit with a 10% cash advance fee, uncapped).

ATMs often charge $10 per transaction, even if you only withdraw $50. Using the WSOP+ app and taking physical cash is a strong option.

5. Take some breaks from gambling, especially if you are losing. There are legions of players who bust a tournament and then tilt off another three buy-ins playing cash. This is tragic, especially in a tourist hotspot like Vegas. There is so much happening in Vegas outside of gambling: shows, fine dining, golf, the Vegas Eye, ATV rides in the desert, the Bellagio fountain show etc. It is worth getting out of the casino and seeing something else, if only to give your mind a break from poker.

6. Be sensible with your money and valuables. Use the room safe to hold cash / chips and don’t tell anyone you have $$$ in your room, safe, pocket or lunchbox. Picking up bricks of cash after a big tournament score looks baller but taking a cheque or wire transfer is much more prudent, especially when the whole room just watched you win heaps.