Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts with the label strategies

Position Strategies in Poker

Your position at the poker table during a hand should have a big influence on the way you play any hand. Your position can determine how much money you win, or even whether or not you actually win the hand. Position in poker is something that is all too often overlooked by newcomers to the game, and sometimes even by some of the more experienced players. To become a solid player, you have to exercise good poker strategy and use position to your advantage. If you are not always trying to keep aware of your position at the table, then you are leaving a big hole in your game. Your position in each hand is determined by the placement of the ‘button’. The ‘button’ is the dealer’s seat and all actions must take place one after another in an anticlockwise motion from player to player, starting with the player to the immediate left of the dealer. The group of players that will be the first few to act on each betting round are known as players in ‘early position’, and therefore the players t

Bluffing at Poker

Bluffing is an integral part of poker and is a skill that few players master. A bluff is when you make a bet to make your opponents think that you have a better hand than them, causing them to fold despite the fact you have a worse hand than them. This is a very extravagant and exciting play, which is one of the reasons why poker has become such a popular game over the years. Bluffing has been popularised even further in the advent of TV coverage of some of the major tournaments, where you can see some of the top professional players pulling off elaborate bluffs against one another. However, these coverage shows are usually edited down, and you do not see the build up to these plays and you get the impression that the bluffs were formed on the spot, when in real fact the bluff was probably set up from hours of play in numerous hands. Therefore you can find many online players trying to pull off bluffs at inappropriate times trying to imitate what they have seen on TV, and thus losing

Bet Sizing in Poker

Knowing when to bet is an important skill in poker, but an equally or even more important skill is to know how much to bet in each situation. A good knowledge of bet sizing can help save you from making very unprofitable plays, as well as allowing you to maximize the amount of money you can make in each session. All winning poker players have the ability to make the correct size bet when necessary, and so its pretty important piece of no limit holdem strategy that you should learn. As a general rule to start off with, you should always try and be aggressive and strong with your bets. More often than not, a small and weak-looking bet will not give you any leverage in the hand or give you any information on the strength of your opponent(s) hands. If you regularly like to make minimum bets and raises, you will find that you are almost always giving your opponent the right odds to call you if they have a draw or even a small piece of the board. So you should try and get into the habit o

Table Image in Poker

Whenever you play poker, whether it is online or live, you should always be aware of the way your opponents are playing. It is important to try and gather as much information as possible on the other players at the table to help you influence your decisions in later hands. Are your opponents tight or loose? Are they weak or are they aggressive? It is this sort of information that is key to making profitable decisions throughout each of your poker sessions. But apart from thinking about how you see your opponents, what are your opponents thinking about you? This is also a key question that you should also consider whilst you play, yet it is something that is often overlooked. Knowing how your opponents view you as a player is just as important as having an idea of how they are playing themselves. This is especially true in the game of no limit Texas Holdem where psychology plays an important role. But why exactly is this important? And what effect should this have on your game? Dep

Playing Big Pairs in Holdem Texas Poker

It is always great to see a big pocket pair like AA, KK or QQ when you look down at your holecards in Texas Holdem . These top 3 pocket pairs are the best possible hands you can be dealt before the flop, and so you should expect to make a hefty amount of money from them throughout your poker-playing career. However, if you are not careful with these big pairs and if you do not exercise good strategy with them, these types of cards can easily lose you money when not play them correctly. One of the biggest mistakes novice players make when playing big pairs is that they tend to slowplay them at every opportunity. Whilst it may be a good idea to play very strong hands on the odd occasion in poker, it is far too early to start slowplaying a hand before the flop, and by doing so you will just be allowing your opponents to improve on the flop and on future streets. Therefore whenever you are dealt a big pocket pair you should almost always raise before the flop to thin out the number of op

Trouble Hands in Texas Holdem Poker

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 wh