I've been a bit busy caught up in the fun of the Indy festival here on the Gold Coast to be following all the goings on in the poker world this week, but having a quick look around the forums there are a couple of huge stories going on which are very interesting.
The first one is the Absolute Poker hole card scandal. There has been talk that someone has been using a supposed Super Account on AP to see everyone's hole-cards while playing. Accusations of this and other similar conspiracies are so frequent that not much credit is given to these claims. Absolute Poker denied the whole incident and carried on business as normal. Since then information has leaked out that there could well be a lot of truth to the Super user account and cheating claims. For a detailed recap of the incident and facts this is the best link that I have read naterem.com . Even after all this evidence coming to light Absolute Poker is still in complete denial mode, and the damage being done to both themselves and the online poker industry as a whole is multiplying on a daily basis. Absolute Poker at this stage really needs to come clean, be completely honest about the situation, and fix any problems or loopholes found.
The second story is that the winner of the World Championship of Online Poker's main event entered multiple accounts into the tournament. After reviewing the case Pokerstars agreed and stripped "THE VOID" of his WCOOP win and his $1.2 million prize money. For anyone who hasn't been following the story read more details at pocketfives.com.
What with these stories and everything else that has gone on with Online Poker over the last year or so, it really is bad news for online poker players. While regular online players are able to look at the above stories and realize that they do not compromise the integrity of online poker as a whole, new players and prospective players have yet another reason (as if they needed any more) to avoid online poker. New players are the lifeblood of online poker and fuel the whole online poker economy. Let's hope that the online poker sites can start getting together and generate some positive publicity in the near future.
Today's 
Topic: The Comitment Threshold:
One of the concepts that has helped my results the most of late is from the excellent book "Professional No-Limit Hold'em". I would recommend this book to any intermediate players wanting to take their game to next level.
The concept is that once you have or are going to but a certain amount of your stack into the middle, then you are committed to not folding at this stage. This strategy makes it a lot easier to know when to fold or go all-in with any given hand. The book states that if you have committed more than 10% of your stack (or your opponents stack if it is lower than yours) then the next bet or call that you are going to make in the hand is likely to take you over the commitment threshold. The commitment threshold is: Between you and each opponent, avoid putting in more than one-third of the smaller stack and then folding.
In practice, if for example you are playing in a NL100 game and both you and your opponent started the hand with $100. Before the flop you raise to $4 with AQ and get called by two people (4% of stack, $13 in pot). On a flop of A,J,7 you bet $10 and get called by one person (14% of stack, $33 in pot) you now have more than 10% of your stack in the pot so the next bet or call that you make will take you past the commitment threshold. Next card out is a 10. If you make another bet of $20 you will then have 34% of your stack in the middle and be committed to the hand. So your options would be to bet and be prepared to call an all in (Not ideal on the above board), check and hope your opponent doesn't bet, or bet only $15 into the pot keeping you below the commitment threshold (29%).
Using the commitment threshold concept really highlights the importance of playing in position and being able to act last. When you act last you can control the size of the pot and make decisions a lot easier. The secret to making this strategy work is to make your commitment plan before putting in one third of your money. Don't just call a large bet on the flop, look at your stack and decide that you now have a third of your money in the pot so you are going to call an all-in, even though you suspect you are beaten. Use the concept to not get into these positions.
There are a few exceptions to the one-third commitment rule which you can learn by buying the book, but in general if you make it your rule to not commit more than one third of your stack and then fold, then like me I suspect that you're No Limit Hold-em results will improve.
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