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Keys to Online Poker Skills
Key skills for No Limit Texas Hold’em Players for Online Poker Sites
Have patience and discipline and select starting hands carefully
Selection of the right tables
Discipline and the ability to wait for good hands and fold second-best hands
Ability to read other players even on Online Poker Sites
Courage to bet/raise and play aggressively with draws or perceived best hands
Ability to avoid going on tilt
No-limit Texas Hold’em Top Advice
1. Be very selective of the starting hands you play: in a standard $2-$4 NL game you should have a 20-30% view of the flop percentage. This means folding AJ in first position, KT in middle position and QT in late position.
2. Table selection: only play in games where you have an edge. You want at least a couple of weak players at the table when you sit down. This is so key when playing at online poker sites
3. “Playing the players”: make sure to quickly assess the opposition: who plays inferior hands, who folds at aggression, who bets with draws, who calls big bets with weak hands and draws, who can be bluffed, who bluffs, etc.
4. “Pump it or dump it”: fold or bet/raise (if the odds are with you). You should avoid calling unless you have a good reason (like trapping an opponent).
5. Respect most big bets and raises: this is particularly true on the turn and river as most players do not bluff.
No-Limit Texas Hold’em Common Mistakes
1. Not releasing a decent hand when beat, thus losing the whole stack on one hand.
2. Calling with weak holdings when facing a bet.
3. Playing too many starting hands when playing at Online Poker Sites
4. Not raising pre-flop with premium hands (putting pressure on limpers holding drawing hands) and then going too far with them after the flop.
5. Over/under betting the pot (risking a lot to win small/not protecting hand).
Pre-Flop Play
Hand ranking for No-Limit Texas Hold’em The best starting hands for a No Limit beginner are:
1. Pairs AA-22.
2. Big suited connectors AKs & AQs.
3. Big connectors AK & AQ.
With these tips you are ready to play at some online poker sites, head over to www.playersonly.com the fastest growing card room for USA players.
Poker Tips for Beginners (Part 2): Blind Stealing
If it folds to you in late position and you decide to open for a raise, then a large portion of your profits will usually come from the times the blinds fold. Being able to accurately assess the conditions for stealing blinds will allow you to add a lot of money to your win-rate without much effort. The idea behind poker tips for beginners should be to make the most money with the least amount of complicated poker theory, and a basic understanding of stealing blinds achieves just that.
On the most basic level, everyone left to act will fold some percentage of the time on average. If everyone folds often enough, then you can be raising with any two cards. For example, if you open raise to three times the big blind, and everyone folds a total of 70%, then that means 70% of the time you win 1.5 big blinds, and 30% of the time you lose 3 big blinds. If we plug that into an EV equation, we get the following:
EV = 0.70(1.5) + 0.30(-3)
EV = 1.05 – 0.90
EV = 0.15
So on average, your blind steal by itself is worth 0.15 big blinds. That might not seem like much, but remember that if the blinds were $1/2, that’s $0.30 made from one action. If you had this chance every hand, you’d be making $30 per 100 hands just from blind stealing.
There are a few general factors we can think about that contribute to the EV of a blind steal. First is how the people left to act tend to play. In general, people who fold a lot are gold to our left, and people who 3-bet a lot aren’t much fun to have on our left. People who call a lot can be good or bad depending on how they play after the flop, and whether or not we have position.
Another important factor for consideration is the size of our raise. If we raise to four times the big blind, we need our opponents to fold a lot more than if we raise to three times the big blind. Against the right opponents, it can even be correct to minraise pre-flop, as long as we’re in position. Open minraising from the small blind is pretty terrible since the big blind is getting 3:1 to see a flop, meaning he will call a huge percentage of the time, and he will have position for the rest of the hand, which puts us at a huge disadvantage post-flop.