Posts Tagged ‘poker strategy’

Stealing in Poker Tournaments

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

One of the most difficult things for beginning poker tournament players to deal with in terms of poker strategy involves rising blinds. As experienced players know, the further you get into a tourney, the more blinds force you to play aggressively in order to stay alive. Unfortunately, many recreational tournament players either don’t get this concept, or tighten up in order to keep the chips they have. So for the sake of both parties, let’s take a quick look at some strategy for stealing in poker tournaments.

Stealing Frequently

Stealing pots doesn’t play a real big part early in poker tournaments due to the low blinds-to-stack-size ratio. After all, why bet a fourth of your starting stack with marginal cards when your 1,500 chips amount to 50 big blinds? But when you get to the point where blinds are 200/400 and your stack is worth 2,400 chips, you don’t have a whole lot of orbits left before desperation mode hits.

Before that point happens, you need to look for stealing opportunities frequently. The three spots where you should be looking to steal are from the cut-off, the button and the small blind because fewer players are left to act. It always helps matters if there’s non-aggressive players to your left, but even if there aren’t, you’ll probably need to steal at some point anyways.

Besides position, the other really important concept here involves your cards. Now if you’re trying to steal a hand, obviously you aren’t doing it with pocket aces. But just because you’re trying to steal a pot doesn’t mean you should be doing it with 8-4(o). Good cards to steal with include any two overcards, suited connectors from 8-9 and up,  as well as A-x and K-x (possibly Q-x if your stack is low enough).

The closer your stack gets to blinding out, the more you have to open up your stealing range. Also, keep in mind that if your stack is below 10 big blinds, you should be shoving on every steal attempt.

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Micro Stakes Differences

Friday, January 20th, 2012

The term “micro stakes” collectively lumps together limits ranging from $0.01/$0.02 to $0.25/$0.50, which often makes the poker strategy run together as well. However, it’s important to understand that there are several noticeable differences as you move from the lower end of the micro stakes cash games to the $0.25/$0.50 end – especially when it comes to No Limit Hold’em.

First off, in $0.01/$0.02 (2NL) games, players don’t value the money nearly as much because the buy-in is normally $2.00 at the most. So if you bust your entire stack twice in an hour, you’ve only lost a total of $4.00. This being the case, people are loose with both their money and play because there’s little consequence to losing. So you need to watch out for both players that are willing to call big raises (relative to big blinds ratio), and those who are frequently willing to go all-in with top or middle pair.

To address the first issue, where players call lots of raises just to see the flop, you can’t follow the standard preflop raising rules for high stakes players to protect premium hands. Instead, you often need to bet 8x the big blind or more to isolate one player after the flop with AA through JJ to keep the advantage.

Now this will also depend on the table and how everybody’s playing, but just be aware that raising 3xbb in a $0.01/$0.02 game isn’t going to ward off too many callers. Furthermore, if three or four people call your preflop raise while you’re holding aces, you may need to hit a set just to win the hand.

Moving to the second aforementioned point, which involves players going all-in with top pairs and second pairs, this is another edge that you can exploit. To find the players who are willing to go all-in with pairs on dangerous boards where you could be holding the nuts, you need to identify each player’s range.

For instance, some players may be willing to shove a full cash game buy-in from early position with Q-J(o) on a board of A-Q-9. Here the player could easily be beaten by an ace, yet they’re willing to go all-in with little information on anybody else’s hand. If you see players who’ve made plays like this before, you can be a lot more confident calling with a top pair or two pair in these scenarios.

As you move up towards the end of the micro stakes realm where 50NL games lie, be aware that players are less likely to call huge preflop raises just to see the flop with something like Q-T(o). Also, you aren’t going to see as many people shove when they’re holding top pair on dangerous boards, or middle pair on any board. Simply put, you’re going to need to play better poker, know more poker strategy, and do a lot of extra thinking in these games.

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Knowing when you’ve beaten an Online Poker Limit

Sunday, December 18th, 2011


Those who want to make more and more profits in online poker obviously have to move up the stakes. Of course, the smart thing to do is to wait until you’ve officially conquered a certain limit before moving on towards the next. That being said, many online poker players wonder when they’ve officially beaten a cash game limit.

After all, there is no set number of poker hands that will tell you when you’re a truly successful player at certain stakes. Some people say 5k hands or more, some people say you won’t know until you’ve played 100k hands or more. The reason why it’s so difficult to pinpoint an amount is because there’s so much variance involved with playing internet poker.

The reality is that you can never be absolutely sure about your win rate until you’ve played at least several hundred thousand poker hands at one limit. But you can take a look at your win rate vs. the amount of hands played to come up with a reasonable idea.

For example, let’s say that you’re playing at the $0.01/$0.02 stakes, and you are winning 2bb/per hour after 20,000 hands. Now this isn’t too bad for a recreational grinder who learns a little poker strategy on the side. However, if you truly want to be a winning player who makes money from the game, a win rate of 2bb ($0.04 total) at the smallest online poker stakes possible isn’t the greatest. Furthermore, it doesn’t exactly inspire confidence that you’ll crush the $0.02/$0.04 stakes and up.

So it’s also important to take into account the level of competition you’re facing along with win rate and hands played. For instance, if you were winning 2bb at the $1/$2 stakes after 20k hands, this might be cause for moving up since win rates are smaller as you advance.

In answer to the original question of how you truly tell when you’ve beaten certain stakes, it’s important to look at the hands played first, then win rate and competition secondly. Provided your win rate is good enough, 15k-20k hands should be enough to determine your success rate for a given limit.

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Poker Strategy for Homes Games

Friday, November 25th, 2011

A lot of the strategy you see featured on the internet revolves around online poker. And what’s been lost in all of this is poker strategy for home games. Yes, people still gather with friends around home poker tables to play the game casually. Of course, nobody’s taking the money involved casually, so it’s definitely worth examining how you can beat your friends.

The first thing to understand with typical home poker game strategy is that you’ll see a lot of absolutes. For instance, some people will play overly-tight and totally disregard the blinds while waiting for premium hands. On the other hand, you’ll also see a lot of home game players make huge raises pre-flop with garbage hands in hopes of pulling off a bluff; many of these players will have a wide range of hands that makes it profitable to call or raise.

Whatever the case may be, home poker games usually present a lot of favorable situations because the players aren’t as experienced. So as long as you’re steadily learning poker strategy and observing your opponents, you have a solid chance to make money long-term. But you also have to consider the variance involved with poker, so don’t expect to win every time – no matter how bad your friends are.

One thing to consider is that a lot of players want to see the flop in home games. So if you have a great pre-flop hand (AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AK), protect it by trying to isolate one player so you can take advantage of them post-flop. If your pre-flop raises are too small, you’ll encourage 2 or 3 callers, which negates any advantage you have post-flop; if your raises are too big, nobody will call, and you’ve merely stolen a small pre-flop pot with the great hand. So try to size your pre-flop raise to where only one person will call your good hands.

Another thing to be aware of in home poker games are limpers, or those who call the big blind in hopes of seeing the flop. If you are in late position against limpers, you can steal their bets with a big raise no matter what cards you hold. Keep in mind that these players are saying ‘my hand is good enough to see the flop with, but not good enough to raise.’ When you raise though, make sure not to put your stack at serious risk by over-betting in order to steal a hand. After all, skilled home players might attempt a limp bluff.

Overall, just study your opponents’ playing styles, and try to counteract them with skilled play of your own.

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Online Poker Tells

Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

One very important aspect of poker strategy involves figuring out online poker tells, or actions by an opponent that tip you off to their hand strength. Unfortunately, online poker is not like live poker where people give off physical tells that help you out – i.e. somebody picking their nose when they have a great hand. Instead, online poker tells are much more subtle and hard to read.

Now most people will advise you to look for how long it takes an opponent to make a call or raise. For example, if a player makes a quick call, they might have a great hand, and didn’t need to think twice about doing so. On the other hand, a marginal hand would require more thought on their part.

However, the truth is that you can’t really tell much from the time it takes a player to perform an action because there are too many variables. For instance, somebody could be multi-tabling, and their decisions are lengthy.

So instead of relying on the amount of time a person is taking or what their avatar looks like, a better online poker tell is to watch their poker betting patterns. For example, if a player frequently calls from late position with marginal hands, but makes huge raises when they have a big pocket pair, you can use this as a tell. Likewise, if a player makes a two-thirds pot-sized bet when they’re bluffing, you can also store this information away.

Of course, you’ll need to spend some time observing opponents in order to figure this information out, so don’t come onto a poker table and start making snap judgements. Instead, watch how each person is playing, and try to figure out online poker tells based on their betting actions. The more time you spend doing this, the more successful you’re going to be with the game.

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Starting a Poker Bankroll

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

It’s always fun to play free online poker games against other players since you’re not risking any real money, and it’s an entertaining way to pass the time. But even with this being said, many players get the itch to play real money poker games eventually, which means they’ll need a bankroll to get started.

The most obvious way to start a poker bankroll is by depositing money into a site. However, you can also go the freerolls route as well, which gives you an opportunity to win money for free! There are pros and cons to each method for starting a poker bankroll, and we’ll cover them below.

Making a Deposit

By depositing money into a poker site right away, you can jump into the real money action without messing with freerolls. Furthermore, you can put your focus on learning poker strategy and attempting to get better at the game. But you also have to consider the fact that you’re putting your own money on the line, and this money could easily be lost within a few days.

Assuming you aren’t willing to dedicate enough time to learning poker strategy and bankroll management, it’s generally recommended that you focus on freerolls in the beginning. However, if you are a disciplined player and you know some poker strategy, then making a deposit will allow you to get right into the real money games.

Playing Freerolls

The alternative to making a deposit is playing in freeroll poker tournaments. Freerolls don’t charge players any money to play, so all winnings are considered profit. However, you should also consider that, because freerolls don’t charge a buy-in, lots of people like to play them. And this leads to the dilemma of overcrowded tournaments with small prize pools.

To put all of this into perspective, you’ll be wasting a lot of time playing freeroll poker tournaments since the fields are so crowded. And no matter how good you are, online poker does involve variance so more players means less of a chance of cashing.

In the end, it’s up to you to decide if you want to put the time into freerolls when building a bankroll, or if you’ve got enough money to skip right to a deposit.

 

 

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Poker Strategy Stepping Stones

Wednesday, July 27th, 2011

One thing that many beginning online poker players don’t realize is that poker strategy contains a lot of different levels and layers. For example, learning how to calculate pot odds is a lot more basic than polarizing an opponent’s 3-bet range. Assuming you don’t have a clue about what the latter means, it’s okay because this is a more advanced concept that most players learn later.

Basically, the key thing to realize with poker strategy is that you should look at each concept as a stepping stone. For example, the first stepping stones you should conquer include basics like pot odds, starting hand requirements and adopting a style of play. As you master the basics, you can move on to some intermediate concepts like bet sizing, implied odds, bankroll management, and figuring out the range of hands your opponents play.

After you’ve logged enough time on the tables and know plenty of strategy, you can move on to the finer points of online poker, such as defining players’ 3-bet and 4-bet ranges, realizing what cards opponents think you have, and searching poker forums to discover any other concepts that can improve your game.

To sum things up, you should be tackling two or three poker tips at a time before moving on to the next thing. Along with this thought, you need to make sure that the things you’re learning aren’t too advanced for the level of play you’re currently at. For example, if you play 0.02/0.04 NL Hold’em, racking your brain about what opponents think you have is somewhat irrelevant because players at this level aren’t very advanced. Furthermore, you might not know enough poker to put everything together when you’re jumping into advanced strategy too early.

 

 

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Surviving SNG Losing Streaks

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

While sit and go poker tournaments offer some of the easiest competition in the game (comparative to stakes), there is one thing that can hurt you in these poker games: losing streaks. For example, let’s say that you have a $180 bankroll, and you fail to cash in six straight $5.50 buy-in tournaments, place third in one, then fail to cash in another four straight SNG’s. At this point, your bankroll is hovering around $134, and you might seriously be considering dropping down in stakes.

Now you’re going to need to think about a few factors before dropping down. First off, it’s important to realize that a really good return on investment (ROI) at the $5 buy-in limit is 10%; if you’re a decent player, expect around a 5% ROI. In any case, you’re going to be looking at small edges, and losing streaks are bound to happen, so you can’t drop down in every instance.

Going further, by looking at our aforementioned bankroll example of $180, this is enough to cover 36 buy-ins. Now 36 buy-ins is better than 20, which is what most people try to start with; however, it’s a better idea to start with 50 buy-ins so you can survive the downswings that often happen in SNG’s.

The one obvious thing we haven’t discussed in all of this is that your skill level needs to be somewhat advanced – even for the $5 buy-in level. A good rule of thumb is to spend 80% of your time on the table, and the other 20% studying poker strategy. Sure it’s more fun to put all of your focus into making money on the tables, but you won’t improve much by avoiding the strategy altogether. In summary, try to have at least 50 buy-ins in your bankroll, and study strategy whenever you can.

 

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Set Mining Strategy

Saturday, May 21st, 2011

One of the most important concepts for trying to take an opponent’s stack in Texas Hold’em is set mining. Basically, all set mining involves is playing a dominated pair in hopes of turning it into a set. And most of the time, you will have the best hand after hitting a set, which gives you a great chance to extract extra more money from an opponent(s).

But the main problem with the whole concept of set mining is that you only have around 8:1 odds of flopping a set. This being the case, your pot odds of hitting a set are always going to be bad, so you need to rely on implied odds. In addition to this, you should be in a deep-stacked situation because there needs to be enough money involved to make playing for a set is profitable.

Going back to the implied odds, you really need to know the opponent who you’re set mining against. If the player is likely to fold, even with top pair, as soon as you make a pot-sized raise against them, there’s little point in set mining. However, if you are up against somebody who has shown a willingness to put their stack in with kings or aces, set mining becomes a lot more profitable.

To illustrate how set mining works, let’s say that you have pocket 8′s and the flop comes up 2s-5h-8d; also, your opponent has pocket kings. In this situation, some players will play their pocket kings to the fullest seeing as how A) they don’t want the opponent to hit a flush draw without paying, and B) they likely don’t expect you to call their preflop raise with a low pair. And if they believe you are the type of person who would play a flopped top pair in this instance, it further increase your chances of making money.

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Bet Sizing Tips

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

One intermediate concept that you learn about later in poker is bet sizing. As the name implies, bet sizing simply refers to the size of bet that you make in a given situation. For example, if you have pocket aces preflop and you shove your whole stack in, the bet size was your whole stack in this instance. Okay, that was a horrible example, and it’s exactly what you want to avoid with the bet sizing concept.

Instead, your goal should be to make appropriate bet sizes based on a given situation. Taking the aforementioned pocket aces preflop example, most people suggest raising just enough so that you isolate one opponent, yet not so much that you make everybody fold. This helps maximize your advantage with pocket aces, while keeping drawing hands out of the equation.

Depending on the stakes and dynamics of the table you’re at, this amount will differ in every instance. But for the purpose of this article, we’ll say that you are in a $0.25/$0.50 game, and a 4 times the big blind raise should isolate one player without encouraging others to call.

For another example, let’s say that you’re holding As-Qh on a flop of Ad-7h-Jd against one opponent; in this instance, you have top pair and a good kicker, but you are vulnerable to a flush draw (assuming you don’t already think your opponent has a set or two pair). This being the case, you don’t want the opponent to see cards for cheap if they’re on a flush draw, so you should size your bet to offer bad calling odds.

To do this, consider that the opponent has around 4:1 odds of hitting their assumed flush draw, so you need to raise enough to make this a profitable play for you in the long run. If $20 is in the pot, you need to make at least a $6 raise to give them worse pot odds (3.3:1 pot odds).

As you can see, sizing bets properly goes a long way to helping you reach a desired result on the poker table.

 

 

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