A follow on to this strategy is if players call raises with pocket pairs. Once again these players are attempting to win a big pot on the cheap. There is nothing essentially wrong with this however it does have several problems attached to it. Firstly if this is the only way that you can play pocket pairs then you are going to have something of a problem when you come up against better players. With tiny pocket pairs then you are simply not going to flop a set often enough and your pairs will play badly post flop and you will find that you are going to have an awful lot of pots taken away from you.

In full ring games then there is absolutely nothing wrong with folding small pocket pairs in early position. We will see why right here but let us first imagine that you open raise with such hands. Your position is terrible and so many players can call or even three bet you and all of which places you into a bad situation. If you limp then in tight and more aggressive games then you are going to find that your limps are being attacked far more which is going to present you with another problem. If you fold then you have wasted money for nothing and if you call then we are back to the same problem where your opponent has position and you are being forced to basically hit the flop.

So this is where you need to have a Plan B when you play these types of hands. If you are playing six max games then why not raise with them? At least here then you can represent hands post flop when you miss the flop. Raising gives you the initiative and not your opponent. So unless I know that I am playing in very passive games with very bad players then I will tend to have a raise or fold strategy with pocket pairs and especially small pocket pairs.

In full ring games then I will also look to slip into my six max mode and I will fold the small pocket pairs during the early positions and open raise if I am in later position. Remember that when the first four players have folded in full-ring then you are essentially playing six max.

When you raise pre-flop you are indicating to your opponent that you hold a strong hand that you are happy to build a pot with. Your reaction to the flop gives out further information about whether you are happy with the texture of the flop in relation to your hand. A good player can further narrow down the potential hands that you hold. An important point here is that the decision on whether you or an opponent is bluffing is a separate decision, but certain bets that are “unexpected” given the action can go towards opponents deciding whether or not you are bluffing.

Let’s look at an example. You hold 88 and make a pre-flop raise of three times the big blind. You receive one caller from the blinds and the flop comes down a rainbow A Q 9. Your opponent checks to you and you check, slightly worried about the overcards. The turn is a 2. Your opponent checks again and you bet half the pot. What does this look like to your opponent? You raised pre-flop but checked the flop when checked to. Your opponent now knows you declined the continuation bet, so they can discount an Ace and pocket kings. It is unlikely you hold QQ or 22 so they may be ahead with their hand of 9 10 suited. Your range is now probably TT and lower pairs and they hold one of the tens and nines. They call. The river is a 7. You have shown no sign of betting and it is unlikely you would have checked twice with top pair or two pair. Your opponent makes a bet of half the pot on the river. What do you do? They have also not shown any real desire to take the pot and could be betting a busted draw, but could easily be sat on bottom pair which still beats you. Your opponent should give you credit for good starting hands but it is obvious the community cards did not improve your hand. A good opponent may put these down but there is a reasonable chance they would call given the action.

You must also think about what your opponent is thinking that you hold. There are many players who do not do this, but it can be really useful. For example, if you have won two hands so far in a tournament with AA then KK and you play another hand after one hour, you can expect that your opponent is thinking ‘this person only played two hands and they were really strong, therefore he/she is really tight so I must have a good hand to get involved with him’. Most players are not throwing chips away so if he continues to bet into us or raise us he must have something. Use your own image to help you work out your opponent’s range of hands.

Physical tells can be useful but most players understand that they should not be giving these away and are reasonably good at hiding them. Even if you do spot a physical tell it may be a deliberate physical bluff designed to mislead you. Online Texas poker relies heavily on betting tells and this is a skill much under utilised by inexperienced live players. This is perhaps a reason why skilled online players do so well live in the high stakes tournaments where players make less moves. Practise reading and interpreting the betting action so you are betting, raising and calling with more information.

By Malcolm Clarke

Kenny Rogers Wasn’t Lying – Great Hold’em Poker Starting Hands

It has been said a million times about hold’em, and it’s worth repeating. You gotta…know when to hold’em, know when to fold ‘em. When those pocket cards come your direction, they’ll either serve as a hole you want to fight from, or a hole you want to get out of. Most beginners find the allure of a pair in the pocket to be too tempting to let go. While a pair is often an excellent place to start, it shouldn’t arbitrarily become the horse you want to bet on – every online poker player should take their starting hand into great consideration.

A quick example: You hit a pair of 5′s on the deal. Unless you’ve got something against a pair of 5′s, you will probably want to see the flop, if you can get to it inexpensively. The flop comes A,7,10, no strong suit, and then the game immediately becomes about playing the players instead of your hand. Now, you won’t be drawing the nuts, but there is a slight chance another 5 could hit the board, or even another pair. However, someone playing with aces or faces will own a distinct advantage over your hand.

Pay particular attention to the way the table bets around you pre and post-flop. Are people in early positions betting, checking, check-raising? Are players in late positions staying in the action? If variables lean in the favor of a competitor, don’t fall in love with seeing the turn based on a “hopeful” starting hand, regardless of whether or not it is “made.”

Holdem Strategy – The Best Starting Hands to Play

Some great hands to ride are the wonderful occurrences of royal pairs, aces or digits that set up nicely for a straight – connectors. Playing suited connectors is also an excellent and strong move, depending on what the board shows post-flop. You experience potential for both a flush, straight or straight-flush with such a starting hand.

No one should forget that they begin every hand with the same playing odds as everyone else at the table and it goes for all online poker sites. Great starting hands will eventually come the way of each competitor. Staying patient to make strategical, strong plays with great starting hands will lead to far more showdown success than failure. If a starting hand isn’t there, however, there’s no reason to get in that deep. It’s not about winning every battle – it’s about winning the war.

Having put your money in the pot, it can be very very difficult to throw your cards in, even when you know you probably should.

The ability to lay down cards that have lost their value will be one of the biggest earning traits of a good poker player. More so than most other advice, the advice to stop chasing will save you more cash than any of the other poker tips you will ever get.

Like I said in an earlier post about paying attention, when you have a premium hand like pocket aces, and you bet it out properly and are up against one or two remaining players, and the flop comes all wrong, with they suited cards or the bones of a high end straight, or trip kings, or any of a number of horrible set ups, the lay down here will save you – and saving is earning – the most money. And of course if you can not lay your hand down, simply because “I’m in now so I have to stay in”, then it will cost you the most money.

You do have to be careful of being bluffed off of a good hand because of a horrible flop, but if you have bet your hand correctly and read the table properly from the beginning then you should know when you are beat, and act accordingly.

Sure it looks good, on TV or in the movies, when you bluff the bad guy off of a massive pot and then you turn over your rags and everyone admires you as a hero and an all round good guy. And you get the girl (or boy).

But bluffing in real poker is not like that at all. In fact, though this is just my personal opinion, bluffing is not about the cards at all, it is about you at the table.

When you sit at a table you are making one big bluff. You are representing yourself as a player. Play for long enough and play solidly and you will be seen as a player. Represent yourself all the time. Whatever image you have chosen – that is your bluff.

Playing solid poker and getting a reputation for that will win you more money with poor cards than any showy big-pot bluff will ever do.

If yo can’t buy that advice, then just take it that it is a mis-conception that poker is all about the bluff. Poker is all about the money. Whatever puts the money into your stack is what is important.

Even the best players will have a run of bad luck, the deck will be cold and nothing they do can change that.

But what they, and you, can change when luck turns against you, is how much damage this does to your bankroll, and your poker playing future.

By playing within your limits and practicing good bankroll management, you can plan to out-run or out-play your unlucky streak, and still have enough funds in your bank to be able to stage a comeback once the bad times are over.

Another very good reason for playing at limits that you are comfortable with is that there won’t be any extra pressure on you. When you play with money that you can not afford to lose you will find it very difficult to be comfortable at the table. The stress of knowing that you will be screwed if you lose will make winning all the harder.

Of course, you may want to play at limits that make you sweat. That may be your thing; if so, you most likely have a problem somewhere in your life.

Play within your limits. Move up only when you have doubled your bankroll. Move down when the cards turn against you. Doing this will put you on a path to being a winning player.

Wake up and pay attention.

Many many players think that the cards they have in their hand are the most important element of a game of poker, and those many many players are very very wrong.

The cards that you are dealt are one of the least important aspects of your poker game. What is far more important is the cards that the other players have been dealt.

You may say that it is impossible to know what cards have been dealt to the other players, and you would of course be wrong.

By paying attention to what is happening at the table, what the other players are doing, and, just as important, what the other players are not doing, you can get a good idea of who has what.

Just because you are not in a hand does not mean that you can drift off, check out a forum, read a blog post, check your email, anyone of the millions of things that you do online. When you are not involved in a hand is a perfect time to watch the other players and see exactly how they behave on whatever hand it is that they are holding.

Look around you. Watch what is happening all the time. It will not only make you more money, but you will enjoy the game a lot more, and more importantly, you will learn an awful lot.

I want to stress the importance of looking beyond what cards are in your hand. You will often see that a player who has been dealt a premium hand, such as pocket aces, will ignore a threatening flop and go to the river with cards that became unplayable – and un-winnable, long before the river card was dealt.

Pocket aces are no good when a flush or straight draw has developed on the board and someone is betting hard. Watch everything, all the time.

That means don’t play angry, but also when sad, depressed, annoyed, confused, or any other emotional state where your emotions are in charge of you, instead of you being in charge of your emotions.

So if you have had a bad day at work, got called out by the boss, or have just had a row with your significant other, playing some online poker to blow off steam is probably not the wisest decision that you could make.

Assuming that you can have enough self control to recognize when you are not in a fit emotional state to play poker and you can make the adult decision to not play right now, that still leaves the situation where you are in a balanced state of mind when you start playing, but something happens at the tables that causes you to lose your self control.

In other words, you start tilting. For whatever reason, a bad draw, an unlucky river card, some donkey sucks out on a runner runner straight, your pocket aces get cracked for the third time, whatever.

It doesn’t matter what caused you to tilt, now you have to be the grown up and take control of this situation. Playing on tilt can be seriously damaging to your bankroll. And only you can stop it.

Not only is it dangerous to your stack, but the other, more savvy players at the table will recognize that you are on tilt, and some of them will start to push your buttons a bit more in order to get you to donk off your chips to them.

When this happens you have got to walk away. Take a break for a few minutes. Even better, take a break for the nigh. There will always be another day to play – if you can keep your bankroll intact til that day comes, of course.

So this is the best advice you will ever get for managing your tilting; whatever caused you to lose your cool, it happens to everyone. At some time, those bad beats that you just experienced, they happened to other players. And they will happen again, and in all likelihood they will happen again to YOU at some time in the future.

This stuff happens in online poker. The difference between winners and losers is that winners realize that this stuff happens and they are ready to deal with it. Losers play through the tilt. Which do you want to be?

#2. Don’t Play when drunk.

Drunk includes any form of inebriation, but it also includes any other thing that can affect your mental or emotional state.

Trying to play good poker after having had an enormous row with your wife or girlfriend, boyfriend or all of them, can be detrimental to your bankroll just as much as if you have had too much to drink.

Having said that, a lot of poker players like to have a drink while they play, especially online.

If that is your thing, then by all means have a drink or two while playing.  There is a big difference between having a couple of drinks to relax and being drunk. Generally, the best advice here is to be sure that your current mental state is suited to playing your best game of poker.

One of the most important reasons for being in control of your mental state when playing relates to our poker tip #1 Playing less and winning more.  Even though you may be playing less hands they still have to be reasonably good hands, or you need to be a reasonably good card player, in order for this advice to help you to win more at online poker.

As an online poker player you must always be aware that you need to protect your online bankroll.  Doing anything that might put that needlessly in jeopardy is to be avoided, and that certainly includes not playing while drunk, but also includes anything that can have a bad affect on your ability to judge what is happening at the table, and how it relates to you and your cards.

If you are already drunk, and must absolutely play poker or you don´t know what will happen, you could always consider playing at the play money tables that most, if not all, online card rooms have available.

I realize that advice probably won’t suit most cash game players though, so my next best suggestion for protecting your bankroll while playing when drunk is to limit your games to only multi-table tournaments, and keep the buy ins reasonably low.  Low enough so that losing a few of them won’t cripple your online poker life, but not so low as you won’t take the game seriously.

If you don’t think that either of those tips will be of any help to you, then my last suggestion is that if you know that you will be drunk, and will be unable to resist the temptation to start playing at some point, then before all this happens I suggest that you log in to your poker account and withdraw most of your bankroll, only leaving whatever amount you would be comfortable with losing.

#1. Don’t Play Every Hand.

This piece of advice is old news to experienced online players, but it is the most common mistake that most beginner players make.

It seems counter-intuitive to most players that playing less poker can make you more money, but the truth is that most players play way too many hands.  Part of the problem is that a lot of online players play below their ideal limit, so they do not really take the money seriously because they are not staking at a serious level.

When playing online you can get a game at stakes as low as one cent.  When playing low stakes it may seem foolish to fold middling cards in the face of a raise of only a couple of cents, but the truth is that the raise is relative to the stakes.  Would you still play that seven five suited if the raise was a couple of hundred dollars?

Hopefully your answer to that question was ‘no’.  If it was ‘yes’, you probably should not be reading this article.

Poker, whether online or in the real world, is not about winning so much as it is about getting the right odds to play.  We will discuss poker odds in future articles, but for now you should try to understand that not every two cards are worth playing, no matter what the stakes are.

The only exception to that rule would be when you have already paid the big blind and there were no raisers.  Although it might seem foolish to fold your two bad cards in the face of a ‘check’.

Even so, sometimes you might be better off to fold right there, as all too frequently, getting into a hand with two low cards can leave you in a bad position later on, if one or both of those cards get paired on the flop.  That can see you staying in a hand against better cards simply because you cannot fold a pair (or two) no matter how low they might be.

Picking your starting hands carefully and sticking to the top quality hands will see you playing a lot less hands than you might hope for.  One buig problem with this that a lot of players have is that they get bored with having so little action.  When they are playing poker they really want to play.  And Now!

If that is a problem for you, perhaps you should consider playing more than one table at a time.  Playing with proper starting hands on two or three tables will be more worthwhile than playing any two cards on one table.

Bear in mind though that playing multiple tables can take a bit of practice. Start with one table (prepare to be bored), then when you are comfortable with the software you could try playing two tables for a while.

The initial rush of wanting to play as much poker as fast as possible usually wears off when you have lost more or all of your bankroll.  It is a far better feeling to have gotten your fill of poker hands and still have your bankroll intact.

Simple rule: play less, win more.