Posts Tagged ‘premium hands’

Losing your Preflop Edge with Premium Hands

Sunday, February 26th, 2012

One of the biggest poker tips that’s preached by strategists is to isolate one player when you have a premium hand (AA, KK, QQ, AK). The reason why is because you have a much better chance to win the hand and take an opponent’s stack when there’s only one player to deal with.

To illustrate how this works, let’s say that you have pocket aces against pocket jacks. Assuming it’s just you and this opponent, you have an 80% advantage over the player with jacks. However, if you add another opponent into the mix who has pocket queens, your preflop advantage drops to 66% over the two opponents. Obviously this still gives you an excellent opportunity to win the hand, but it makes things a little tougher on you.

Now let’s add yet another player into the equation who has pocket kings. You still have a 54% chance to win the hand, but you have almost an equal chance of losing the hand now. Case in point, it really pays to isolate an opponent before the flop when you have an excellent hand. However, you can see that you’ve still got a sizable advantage with pocket aces when three or four people are involved in the hand.

But what about the other three premium poker hands we mentioned? If you had pocket kings with three other players in the hand, you’d still have around a 65% preflop advantage in the hand, which is not far off of having pocket aces in the same situation. This is also true of pocket queens in the same scenario.

Things change a little when you’ve got AK because this isn’t a made hand. For instance, if you had AK vs. pocket queens, you’d actually only have a 43% chance of winning. Throw another player in the mix with pocket jacks, and AK only has a 36% chance of winning. AK is actually a much better hand to win big multiway hands in postflop situations. In any case, just be careful when including AK in your range of premium hands.

 

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Online Poker, Poker Tips | Comments Off on Losing your Preflop Edge with Premium Hands

Dealing with Calling Stations on your Left

Monday, January 2nd, 2012

For the most part, playing against calling stations in online poker is a blessing because they’re willing to call lots of raises and bets with marginal holdings. However, things can get a little trickier when this calling station is immediately to your left.

By having this kind of player to the left, your chances of successfully bluffing are diminished because there’s a good chance they will call any raise. Going further, you can’t really hope to check-raise them too often either because calling stations will also check to see free cards. Long story short, having a calling station sitting to your left can be annoying and bothersome.

Fortunately, it’s not too difficult to outplay these fish if you alter your game a little. The first thing you need to be aware of is that bluffs should be taken out of your arsenal. Now this sucks when you have late position because the ability to steal is essentially gone, but you can make up for this in other areas, which we’ll get to next.

The big bonus to having a calling station to your left is that you can open up your range of playable hands. Of course, doing so requires that you’ve played with this opponent long enough to see what their range is. But once you’ve accomplished this, you’ll be able to play a wider range of hands from late position, and value bet more effectively.

The whole key to beating a calling station is knowing just how far they’ll go to call a raise, and punishing them for this. Assuming you ever get stuck on a table full of calling stations, you can sit back and wait for premium hands because A) you know they won’t be re-raising you a lot, and B) once you do get a premium hand, you can get a lot more value because there’s a good chance at least one player will call your big raises.

Tags: , , , , , , ,
Posted in Online Poker, Poker Tips | Comments Off on Dealing with Calling Stations on your Left

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.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Poker Tips | Comments Off on Poker Strategy for Homes Games