Poker Strategy

Playing styles

One of the great things about poker is that there is no set way to play. Whether you are playing in a tournament or in cash game, you pay your money and you are entitled to play however you like, as long as it is within the rules. Highlighted below are a number of styles that you should be able to identify after you download poker software and start to play your favourite game.

A popular choice of style is tight-aggressive. As the name suggests, the style is based around being selective with your starting hands and being aggressive when you do enter a pot. Tight-aggressive players, or TAGs, are usually at an advantage when they enter a pot as they play mainly premium and strong hands and they will bet, raise and check-raise in order to win the pot. They are usually positionally aware and will play tight in early position and loosen their requirements when they are seated closer to the button.

Players who try to play a TAG style often finish up being tight-passive instead. Tight-passive players usually play too tightly and when they do have a hand. They rarely bet or raise it in fear of someone having a better hand. Often dubbed “calling stations” a tight-passive player is very profitable to play against as they will call your bets on every street and only raise if they have the absolute nuts, allowing you to fold.

A popular and dangerous style to play and face is the loose-aggressive or LAG. A true LAG is a formidable opponent as they play a wide array of hands, from any position and put constant pressure on their opponents. The best LAG in the business is probably Phil Ivey, a player who observes everyone at the table and acts accordingly. His cards do not actually matter to him. To beat a good LAG you need to set a trap and let them bet into you or be prepared to call them down lightly.

Similarly to players wanting to play a TAG style, wannabe LAGs often end up playing a loose-passive style. This is the worst and least profitable style of poker you can play. As the name suggests this type of player generally plays a lot of hands but prefers to call rather than show any aggression. They key to beating these players is to value bet hands even as weak as top pair and expect to be called all the way. Again, these players are very profitable to play against but the variance can be higher as they will showdown all sorts of crazy holdings.

Tags:
Calling Station, Cash Game, Download Poker Software, LAG, TAG, Tournament

Position is key

Ask any successful poker player what the most valuable thing is at the table and I guaranteed each and every one of them will give the same answer – “position”.

Position is your place at the table in relation to the dealer button, which in turn dictates when you have to act during a hand. At a ten-handed table the three players to the left of the blinds would be counted as being in early position, the three next to those would be middle position and the last two would be in late position.

So why is position so important? Ten-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner, Doyle Brunson once famously said he could beat the majority of his opponents heads-up, even if they were dealt a pair of aces every hand as long as he had position on them.

Poker is a game played with incomplete information, meaning players have to make their decisions based what they know at any one time. The more information they have, the easier it is to make the correct decision and one of the ways information is gathered is to observe whether a player calls or raises.

Being seated in one of the latter positions at the table allows you to win pots you probably would not have if you were seated anywhere else. If you are sat on the button and everyone folds their hand around to you, you stand a large chance of stealing the blinds by raising with a wide range of poker hands. You can also make a bet or raise when the community cards have been dealt if your opponents have shown weakness. You can even represent a hand stronger than the one you actually hold as you get to act after everyone else has.

Conversely, you can also save yourself chips by folding out hands you would otherwise have played. Imagine for example you are seated immediately to the left of the blinds, known as being under-the-gun and are dealt a pair of fours. You decide to limp but by the time the action gets back to you there has been a call, a raise and a re-raise. You now fold you small pair, without seeing a flop and after investing money into the pot.

Now imagine the same scenario but this time you find yourself in late position. Again, there is a call under-the-gun, another call, a raise and a re-raise. Now you can safely fold your lowly pair of fours, knowing you are almost certainly a massive underdog. This time you have not put any money into the pot. Saving the odd bet here and there can be the difference between a winning session and a losing one.

Tags:
Doyle Brunson, Poker Hands, Position, World Series of Poker

Some Poker Strategies

It’s difficult to address the subject of poker strategy in a short space because entire books have been written on the subject. In addition, professionals conduct classes that might last several days, all with the intention of providing tips, tricks and strategy to make poker players more successful.

In the last couple of decades, a lot of players have turned to professionals and strategists like David Sklansky. He has given us what is widely known as the fundamental theorem for the game. This is general knowledge, available in all of Sklansky’s books.

Basically, this theorem states that you gain if you play your hand as if you could see the opponent’s cards and you also gain if the opponent plays the cards differently than he would if he could see your hand. The bottom line here is that a player should not only play his hand based on all the information available on the table, such as up cards, but should also make an effort to determine what the opponent has, based on how he plays his hand.
A few basics of strategy are possible here, though we have to tie some of them to particular games to make them clear. Every player should understand the concept of card odds, no matter what the game. For instance, in Texas Holdem Poker – if you have two hearts in the hole and the flop (first three cards on the board) contain two more hearts you need only one more to make a flush.

Your playing strategy should be based on the chances of you getting another heart. The odds in this case are about 2 to 1. How do we determine that?

There are 13 cards of each suit. You can see four hearts, which means there are 9 more somewhere in the deck. In our simple example, you subtract the five cards you can see from the 52 cards in the deck. This leaves you 47 cards unseen. Nine of these will help you and 38 won’t. The card odds are 38 to 9 or about 4 to 1. You have two chances to get another heart so you divide 4 by two and get 2 to 1 card odds we originally mentioned.

Your decision to stay in the hand should compare these odds with the pot odds you have in front of you. Again, this is just a simple example but if it will cost you $10 to stay in and the pot will contain $20 that is 2 to 1 and you should stay. If you have 2 to 1 card odds there will be few times when you shouldn’t give it a try. Of course, if the pot has $40 in it, that’s 4 to 1 for your money. Stay in.
That is poker strategy, in its simplest form.

Other key elements of poker strategy include raising instead of calling if you are the first player to act in a round. If you have good cards, such as A-K or a pair, your strategy should probably be a raise. This can eliminate a player or two and give you a better chance to win. It also signals others that you are serious about staying in the hand.

Other elements of poker strategy include bluffing, which is the subject of books and classes. This strategy is intended to get opponents to fold a hand that might be better than yours. Good poker players also consider position at the table in their strategy. If you will act last in a hand, you have a lot of information about what other players are doing before you have to make a decision.

There is much, much more to poker strategy, some of it specific to certain types of poker. Learn as much as you can about the game you choose and develop a solid strategy. The best way to practice poker strategy is to play on Poker Sites.

Tags:
David Sklansky, Poker Strategy

Avoid the Fancy Moves in Limit Poker

This is something that you see new player try quite a bit when they are first starting out in limit.  There really is nothing but television to blame for this one as the only poker that is televised is no limit.  Limit tournaments are few and far between because producers tend to think it is much less interesting, and the result is that newcomers try and make the same moves in limit as they do in no limit.

Why this does not work is because of the odds that are present in limit poker that you can eliminate in no limit.  For instance, if you make a pre-flop raise in limit, there are few draws that will not have odds in a multi-way pot.  Once the flop hits and that flush, straight or over card draw is present, you can only make a single bet. If the same thing were to happen in no limit, you could bet 3 times the pot and virtually take away any odds that a player was looking for.

That being the case, you are going to get called.  While you will want to keep the hammer down if the draw does not hit, you have to take a second look at how you are going to play when the board blanks you or the draw pops. If you bet, you are going to get called.  If you are behind the player, you may very well get check raised.

The issue with all of this is if you get check raised on the river, you pretty much still have to call because of the money that is in the pot.  If you are playing in a $20/$40 limit game and bet $40 into a $500 pot and then get raised, it is costing you $40 to see a pot that is worth $620 at that point.  Regardless of what you have, you are forced to make the call because of the 15:1 odds.

The entire thought process in limit needs to be straight forward.  When you don’t hit, play very cautiously and try to keep the pot to a minimum.  If you are the raiser, stay aggressive if nothing hits the board and you think you are still ahead.  If you hit, continue to pound the pot and give no mercy to anyone.  If the board hits a draw, you are better to back off and give up the pot if that is the hand that you put your opponent on.  You do this before you get into the 2 bets and you are forced to call and waste money on the river.

Limit is not a place for fancy moves.  Plain and simple, it is about crunching numbers and playing the odds.  The ONLY time that you can get away with a move is when you have the absolute nuts.  In that case, you can try a check-raise that may set up one bluff down the road, but for the most part, you need to play ABC poker and take the odds when they are there.

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ABC Poker, Limit Poker, Online Poker, Poker, Poker Tips, Pre Flop

Making the Most out of the ‘Nuts’

There is nothing like flopping the absolute nuts in poker.  Your eyes pop out of your head and all you can think of is how to get the most money out of the hand.  This is not often very easy to do, but when you are in late position, you can make some more sophisticated plays that will allow you to get a little more money out of your opponent.

For the sake of argument, we will assume that you are on the button and have a middle position raiser in front of you.  The flop comes out and it is all you.  There is no other draw or card that can hurt you unless the board was to pair and give someone a boat.  As your opponent will probably throw out a continuation bet regardless of whether or not he hit, you know there is going to be more money in the pot.

This is where most poker players will make an error.  They get a little excited and decide to throw out a raise.  If your opponent does not have a hand, they are going to get out cheap at this point.  Just make the call and see what the turn brings before you make a move.  Now the turn hits and you are still in no danger or getting beat regardless of the river (except of course if the board were to pair and the danger of the boat is brought in).  If your opponent throws out a check, this is the one time that you may want to give him the free card and let him think that you are on a draw.

What this does is induce him to make a bet on the river regardless of what card hits. He will more than likely put you on some type of a draw and throw out a decent bet in order to take down the pot.  If you are lucky, the river card will improve his hand just a bit and then you can drop the hammer.

Reading your opponent is the key to the success here as it is going to dictate how much of a raise that you put in.  If you want to get called, the raise is going to have to be perfect.  Some players will come right back at you when you simply double the bet and others will wait for an overly aggressive raise, such as 6 or 7 times the last bet, that evokes a feeling of you trying to be a bully.  Pay attention to how they are playing and you may just end up getting all of your chips in with the nuts.

Flopping the nuts and making money on poker sites is not an easy thing to do.  You sometimes have to be very patient and let things develop before you can try and get some money from playing poker on poker sites.  Evaluating your opponents and patience will be the key to your success when you are building a pot with the nuts.

Tags:
Chips, Flop, Nuts, Online Poker, Poker Game, Poker Sites, Poker Tips