Category Archives: Beginners

Factors You Should Consider Before Making a Decision about Your Hand

There are a range of factors that you should consider before automatically making a play with a starting hand in Texas Hold ’em. These can differ between whether you are playing cash games, multi table tournaments or short handed sit n go’s. Try to commit these to memory and before long these considerations will become second nature to you.

Cash Game Starting Hand Factors to Consider

There are 5 main considerations when deciding what to do with your hand when you are playing in a cash game.

Table position

This is arguably as important as the cards you have been dealt in many instances. Considering your position in relation to the other players is critical because if you are in late position it can give you the opportunity to view what the other players do before you make any commitment to the pot. Position is important both pre and post flop and you will need to alter your hand ranges depending on what position you are dealt on the table. For example, if you are in early position you will want to play hands with a higher range than you would if you were in late position when you have information on what the other players plan to do on the hand pre-flop.

Cards dealt

This is probably the first consideration that will pop into your head. The cards you play will depend on the factors listed here and the hand ranges you are prepared to play.

Number of players

The number of players on the table is a factor that should be considered in conjunction with your table position and consequently what cards you are prepared to play. A very simple fact to remember is that the more people playing around a table, the more chance there is of a player having stronger cards than you so bear this in mind when playing on full tables.

Playing style

This can both relate to yourself and your opponents. It is important that you do become predictable to the other players so it is your interests to mix up your play a little so that your opponents have to second guess you. This could be a conscious decision you make in terms of playing in a certain style when you are in late position or you are playing against a particular opponent. If you study the playing style of your opponents it is sometimes possible to pick up a “tell”. Clearly this is more difficult playing online than in a real cash poker table in a casino but if you are able to spot a weakness in an opponent it will increase the chances of you being able to bluff the player out of chips or lay a trap that will maximise your chances of being paid off in a hand.

Pot odds

Finally when all other factors have been taken into account you should consider the pot odds in playing a given hand. You need to work out whether the number of “outs” you have in terms of making your desired hand is favourable when compared with the size of the pot and the amount of chips you will need to add to see a showdown, etc.

Multi Table Tournament Starting Hand Factors to Consider

Certainly take into account the cash game starting hand principles mentioned above when you are playing in an MTT (multi table tournament) but also consider the following 3 factors.

Prize money offered

When playing in an MTT the prize money will be split down the field to a varying degree based on what type of MTT you are playing. A rule of thumb can be that the top 10% to 20% of the field will receive a payout. You need to consider the prize structure continuously because players’ styles will invariably alter depending on what stage they are at in the tournament. If you simply want to get in the money first and take it from there, you will likely want to play a quite tight game and loosen up once the “bubble” has passed and you are guaranteed a paid place in the tournament. However, take into account that more experienced players will take advantage of tight players in these circumstances and will attempt to steal blinds where they can.

Monitor the blinds

The blinds (and antes) will increase over set periods of time during an MTT so you need to consider the size of your stack of chip relative to the size of the blinds. You don’t want to become short stacked because this will lessen your options when in a pot and will reduce any fold equity.

Your chip stack size

Your decision making process will be informed by number of chips you hold in relation to others around the table, their positions and to some extent the average number of chips held by all the other players in the whole tournament. For example, if you are entering a pot against multiple players who all have chip stacks larger than yours you should be aware that any one of them could potentially knock you out of the tournament if you are playing no limit hold ’em and one of them decides to go all in against you. Try to only enter pots with players with equivalent or small stacks compared to yours unless you hold premium hands. On the other hand if you hold a chip lead over others on your table you will be able to bully them by making large raises and stealing blinds against tight players. If the number of chips you hold is ten times the size of the big blind (or less) you will be short stacked in most tournament schedules. Try not to allow your chips to become reduced to this level if at all possible.

Short Handed Poker Strategy – Improve Your Game

If you are a beginner or a poker player that struggles to make any profit over time then this post could help you towards becoming a winning online poker player. The following advice is very simple but should be understood and appreciated in detail to help you to improve your poker game and make you a winning player.

Learn how calling ranges are determined by the scenario at the table.

An easy bite size sentence which when evaluated will in all likelihood become one of the most important poker lessons you will ever encounter.

What Do I Do Next?

As a casual player with a small ever dwindling bankroll you can find yourselves in a rut during games where you genuinely don’t know what to do with a given hand. If you believe you’ve suffered numerous bad beats over time, your judgement can become impaired and your play can suffer significantly. If you find yourself in this situation you need to go back to basics. Perhaps even step away from poker for a while to allow yourself to clarify your mindset. When you are ready to play, you need to refresh yourself with hand calling ranges and how this determines your play at the table. A bad player will play the cards. A good player will play the cards and their opponents.

Playing Short Handed Poker

It is acknowledged that short handed play is reserved for advanced players. This needn’t be the case when you have a grasp of calling ranges and how the calling ranges are affected by the number of opponents you have at your table. I personally prefer playing heads up poker or sit and go’s with as few players as possible becasue my knowledge of calling ranges associated to the number of players around a table is so strong. Once you get a feel for these calling ranges, you game should improve exponentially when playing short handed.

How to Improve Short Handed Play

There are two key elements that you need when playing short handed –

  • A strong understanding of calling ranges
  • Bravery

In order to understand the calling ranges for a given sized table you can study charts or play theoretical ands through a program such as PokerStove which will give you odds on winning a hand based on starting hands, number of players, etc. However, this will not teach you the real game bravery that you need when deciding to raise big or push all in. In my opinion the way to learn calling ranges for short handed play and to instil the bravery required to be able to push all in or bet big is to play a number of turbo or hyper turbo sit n go’s. This isn’t standard advice that you will see written on other poker tips sites, but the rationale is very sound.

Super Turbo Sit N Go’s?

A fairly standard super or hyper turbo sit n go will consist of 4 – 6 players max and the blinds will often increase every minute. In other words the blinds can increase after every hand or couple of hands. In order to play turbo sit n go’s successfully you need to understand that unless you act decisively and statistically correctly you will likely fail. You could simply sit tight and either let the blinds knock you out or allow yourself to get so shortstacked that effectively you have no raise equity so realistically the whole table could call or raise you with no problems holding the worst starting hands imaginable, or you could play decisively according to your table position and calling range. Therefore, in these sorts of poker games you need to learn a sort of push or fold game. In other words push all your chips into the middle or fold your hand. In doing so you will need to grasp the fundamentals behind what is a good starting hand on a table of say 2,3,4 or 5 opponents and when you determine that you have a strong starting hand based on the number of opponents you need to have the bravery to push all in. This is easy said than done when it is your tournament/game at stake.

Winning Short Handed Play Summary

By playing hyper turbo sit n go’s you will only win hands and progress successfully if you have a grasp on your table situation and the value of your starting hand. Of course there will be variance based on other players that are poor or just reckless but as a training exercise, using turbo sit n go’s should help to sharpen your poker brain as to when to push or fold and give you the bravery to do so. You will then be able to take these skills to standard sit n go tables and clean up.

How to Increase a Small Poker Bankroll for Beginners

If you are starting out with a small bankroll you will want to try to maximise your chances of increasing your bankroll with the least risk possible. The difficulty comes in finding the most efficient way to build your bankroll. Different folks advocate different methods and of course your particular playing style with dictate which works best for you. I’ll let you into a little tip if you are starting out, have a reasonably solid game and you play at PokerStars. Go look for the Sunday Quarter Million $2.20 cash satellites (avoid the 6 seat tourneys and go for the set time tourney). You can find them by logging into your PokerStars account and clicking the following tabs – Tourney –> Satellite –> Cash

A Little Background into What You Will Be Playing

When you sign up to one of these $2.20 satellites you’ll be playing for entry into the popular Sunday Quarter Million tournament which has a standard $11 entry. Now you can play one of these satellites and actually play in the Sunday Quarter Million along with the other 40,000 hopefuls or you can do the smart thing and win entry to the tournament via the satellite and cash the price of the $11 ticket back to your PokerStars balance for a rainy day. Rinse and repeat. I advocate that you opt for the Sunday Quarter Million $2.20 satellite that has a fixed start time as opposed to the fixed 36 entrants. If you go for the fixed start time you will be playing against anywhere from 70-130 players and you will have an average a 1 in 5.5 ratio of getting in the money. These tournaments are no-rebuy and no-addon tourneys that have an extended 10 minute registration time. Do yourself a favour and sign up towards the end of the late registration period (just before the entry closes), that way you will have already lost between 5-10 players and the average stack will only be 50-100 more than what you will start with. In fact when you start, your position will inevitably be halfway through the (already reduced) field.

Sunday Quarter Million $2.20 Satellite Strategy

If you’ve taken the late entry route you’ll probably be playing against 90 or so players depending on the time of day you have decided to play and your ratio of getting to the money will be around 1 in 4. These are very good odds considering the weakness of the field and the small initial $2.20 outlay. The good news is that these particular satellites are extremely easy to dominate. Alternate between a TAG (tight aggressive) and a LAG (loose aggressive) style and you shouldn’t have any problems making the paid places in this satellite. After about 1.5 hours when the blinds start to get steep and the antes kick in, the other players will inevitably start the risky plays so if you have a healthy stack you can sit back and watch the carnage. If you’re mid placed you will still need to play aggressively where appropriate as the blinds will swallow you up. If you’re shortstacked deep into the tourney, you know that other shortstacked players are going to be making misjudged steals at some point so stay alert and hold your nerve. Go after players that appear to be stealing in late position by making big raises to shake them off the pot. Typically these satellites last around 2 hours, so you will be getting an $11 return from your $2.20 entry. Clearly this method for increasing bankroll isn’t for everybody as we are taking very small change here, but if you are starting out and have a small bankroll to begin with you could very easily play 4 or 5 of these daily and win through at least 4 times making you $44 to add to your bankroll. Do this for the whole month and you’ll make over $1,300.

Is Online Poker Legit?

Beginners that have never played online Texas Hold ‘me will often question whether online poker is legit or not. This is understandable in many way as both gambling and the online world often don’t have the best of reputations, so when combined there can be possible room for concern. In terms of the legality of online poker in the UK (where this blog is written from), online poker is perfectly legal with the UK government seemingly wanting to make the UK a hub for online gambling (which they can then regulate and tax to the hilt no doubt). Although in the largest market for online poker, the US, it has recently been made illegal to play poker online for real money. Whether this restriction stays in place is debatable, but if you are an online poker player in the United States at the moment and you want to play for money, you’re going to have a tough time finding a game.

There are occasional cries from players of collusion or that the games are fixed. Strangely this tends to be after a series of bad beats! Due to the sheer size and popularity of online poker at the moment you are going to get a range of players online all with varying degrees of skill and strategy. This will include the “kamikaze” type players where “all in” is their personal mantra. You will lose to these players. Even if you have a solid game and statistically you are a massive favourite, you will still lose hands against these clowns. This scenario is one which it would be easy to cry foul, or claim that the game is rigged. Simply put, if it was proved that a poker room was fixing a game it would potentially be the end of poker online. Period.

Online poker is extremely highly regulated through numerous different gaming regimes and in all honesty you will have a much higher chance of playing in a fair poker game online than you would in a real world casino. Don’t underestimate the sophistication of the monitoring systems in place at the various online poker rooms. You are downloading their own custom software to play poker so they can integrate as many monitoring systems into the software as they can possibly manage. Due to them having access to all poker hands player on all the tables, as well as user details, IP addresses, bank details, etc, any player attempting to collude with a friend or gang of players to scam the poker rooms should expect to be caught extremely quickly.

Play Money Texas Hold ’em

If you’re new to Texas Hold ’em you might not have come across the term “play money” before. Simply put, if you are in a “play money” poker game you are playing with fictional money – you may as well be playing with Monopoly money because it won’t earn you a penny.

Many online poker rooms use the .net version of their domain name to promote the “play money” games and the .com version to promote real money games. For example if you go to http://www.partypoker.net you will be able to download their poker software and play freeroll tournaments and play money poker games both Sit N Go and cash game varieties – none of which will cost you any money to play and won’t cost you any money if you lose. Whereas, if you go to http://www.partypoker.com you are going to the real money site. To play here you will need to deposit money into your bankroll and play with the big boys.

My advice regarding play money games is to join them so that you can familiarise yourself with the poker software that the poker room uses. Each poker room such as PokerStars, FullTilt, PartyPoker, etc all use slightly different forms of poker software. The design, and features will roughly be the same, but there will be minor differences that you should familiarise yourself with. It is best to get used to the features when it is not going to cost you money.

Familiarising yourself with the poker software is the only time I would advise joining a play money Texas Hold ’em poker game. If you’ve been involved in a play money game yourself you’ll be aware that the standard of play is laughable. In fact, by practicing in play money poker games you will actually learn so many bad habits that you will likely emerge a worse player than when you entered. If you are ever tempted to practice your game I can’t emphasise enough not to join a play money cash game.

Some of the freeroll tourney’s can be quite good practice once the wheat has been cut from the chaff, but play money cash games are inhabited by some very “special” people. People that I wouldn’t choose to have dealings with even online! It’s possible to play $0.01/$0.02 cash games online so you could play very comfortably with a bankroll of only $4 or $5 therefore negating the need to go with play money games.

Choosing an Online Poker Name

When you start playing poker online it is a pre-requisite that you give yourself a name that the other poker players can refer to.It may seem like a trivial matter to choose yourself an online poker name, but in actual fact if you choose this detail carefully it can potentially give you a psychological advantage against the other players on your table.

Poker is a game of skill, luck and bluff so if you can gain any type of psychological advantage over other players you should go for it. Now conventional wisdom would suggest that you pick an online poker name that could portray you in a certain way to the other players. For example, a player that decides to call himself “All-In-Bob” would want the other players to think that he was a loose, aggressive player that favours the all-in move. Whereas the reality will likely be that this name has been chosen to give the impression of a loose player, but in fact the players’ natural game is the complete opposite and the name was chosen to try to bamboozle his opponents. Generally speaking, this is the trap that most beginners will fall into.

Remember that players will often play in many poker rooms online and will usually use the same user name in each one. If you are serious about building up a persona as an online poker player you do not want to give your opponents any type of read on you. It is pointless trying to give yourself a macho or dainty poker user name if you are in it for the long haul. Try to go with something as neutral (including gender neutral) as possible so there is no chance of anyone getting any type of read on you as a player at all. After all do you want to be referred to as “MsPokerFairy” for the rest of your online poker playing career?