The Great Expert Blog

We all know poker is a game of cards. And that there is an element of gambling involved, we make wagers and bet that our online poker cards are better than our opponents. But there is something unique about poker that is not necessarily present in most other gambling games. In Hold ‘Em, there are certain hands that have inherent value even before the rest of the cards are dealt. So in order to succeed in poker online you need to know the most valuable starting hands. First any pocket pair from AA, KK, and QQ are solid starting hands regadless of where you are on the table. Some people would go as far as to include AK suited, as this can make the top two pair or the highest flush or straight. In later positions you can open up your starting range. AK offsuit, JJ and 10-10 and other suited connectors such as KQ suited. Finally in late position, you can raise your range even more. Hands from 99-22 become playable depending on the action before you. JT suited or not, and a lot of suited connectors can be played here without risking very much. This spot is also a great spot to reraise in if you have one of the premium hands such as AA-QQ or AK suited. Remember these hand ranges when you play, and you can drastically improve your chances despite the gambling of succeeding in poker.

Ace queen, despite being a quite popular poker hand, is often one of the more tricky set ups to get dealt. As its hard to just let go, being the second strongest unpaired ace in the deck, the hand nevertheless often can get you into troubled, particularly in situations where it is all-in preflop. Many hands that will call an AQ’s all in, such as AK, KK, QQ, AA, will have the poker online hand pretty much dead in the water. Playing AQ more carefully, then, rather than as a made casino hand, or even as you’d play AK, is very important. When seeing flops, it is actually better to hit your Q than the ace, as then you have top pair top kicker, with very few overpairs possible on board. You also therein dominate commonly played hands like KQ and QJ, etc., which can end up bringing in a decent sized pot. AQ’s troubling status has been a problem for many famous players. Phil Ivey has busted from the World Poker Tour final table at least four times holding this very hand, and either losing races or being dominated when the pot went down. Better to take it slow, and make sure you’ve got your opponent crushed, before you end up the one in the grinder.

One of the things I most look forward to in a session of poker online is the way it can feel like I am nowhere in the world. Most days, the noise and action of moving around and working and thinking among other humans quickly becomes a pile up of stress and disorder. Even in more restful moments, in front of the TV or going out to dinner, there is so much energy in the world that it can be hard to truly feel detached and quiet. At the poker table, though, when I am in my best game, I feel truly centered and silent in the world. Poker for me has become a source of great relaxation (barring bad beats and other jarring circumstances)it is a way to unwind and forget about everything but the matter at hand. The rhythm of the cards dealt, the way the board and cards seem to come in and out of collaboration with each other, the silence of a decision, etc. All of it adds up to a kind of vortex or nowhere in which a true blank or silence can be manifested. Not only that, but you can make money! Two of my favorite things in one basket? poker really is the best.

As competitive as it can be at times, there’s no time that relaxes me as much as when I am seated at the poker online table. Online or in a casino, there is something about the rhythm and the zoning out that comes with a session that lets the whole rest of my brain turn off and ride the wave. Thoughts of work or life or stress all float to the back of my head, and my mind becomes a field of names and numbers, of motions and of moves. There’s nothing quite like the end of a long day coming to sit down and play some online poker hands and hopefully win some money in the process. In this way, poker for me works as a sort of meditation. If I go too long without a game I’ll get the itch in me just to sit around the table and let those slow periods turn on. Even among the occasional bad beats, and the stress decisions, the whole sum of the experience can be a great therapy for someone who really needs to let loose. Furthermore, by using the game in this way instead of focusing too hard on the monetary aspects, you can take your game to a new level by ascending money for pure craft.

How do you present yourself? This is a serious question. Many keen POKER ONLINE players have a grasp of how they’re perceived by the players they play with. Others don’t have a clue or even know it’s important. Ask yourself how you come across at the online poker table. Are you Mr. know it all who knows the game inside out and is overly confident in his play? Or are you, well, just you? This is an important distinction because it’s the players who act most like themselves that are the ones are hardest to pick apart at the casino online. They play their game as naturally as they would walk their dog or get a drink of water. So how is this applied to the game? Well, it’s harder to tell when they’re bluffing for one. They bluff just as if they were bluffing. Does that make sense? It’s as if they want you to overthink their bluff and fold since it’s so obvious. Compare this to the tough guy we mentioned earlier. He’s the guy that ends up being most easily picked apart. His whole game is an act. He’s not himself playing and he’s not a very good actor (most of us aren’t). So the next time you sit at the table, ask yourself, would you rather test your acting skills or your poker skills? My bet is your poker skills, so don’t go to the table as something your not, just come and play your game and watch the chips come to you. And if you’re game isn’t strong enough, learn. But don’t be something you’re not at the table. If you’re not a pro, why would you act like one? You’re just asking for disaster.

In online poker, even the best players get beat sometimes. It is part of the game. You have to accept the reality that sometimes your hand is going to lose, no matter how strong it was starting out.

There are always going to be players that make bad decisions, then get good results. For instance, a player with an inside straight draw keeps calling to the river hoping to beat the 11-1 odds of the gut short card materializing. And sometimes it does on the river to beat your trips or two pair. This is always painful, and experienced players have to immunize themselves against the frustration it can cause.

Bad players put bad beats on good players. That is the reality of poker online. Just remember that when those bad players get a good result from poor play, it encourages them to continue playing badly and give you opportunities to win their chips.

When your raise keeps getting called by these dumb donkeys who do hit the miracle card, then just remember that your play was correct and over time will win more often than lose. Move onto to the next hand and don’t let bad beats put you on tilt or muddle your thinking. Keep this in mind when you play poker online.

The /de”pokeronline” tournament and the ring game at the casino online are two totally different beasts in terms of how to win them. See, in a cash game, if you take the table’s money, you’ve taken it, it’s yours and you don’t have to split it with the losers. In a tournament, well, you may win all the chips, but you don’t get all the prize money in the prize pool. So this means, that you have to do a little strategy adjustment. Here’s an example: you’re playing in a small sit-n-go where 8 players get paid, and 12 are left in. You’re 2nd big stack and you get dealt KK. The big stack goes all in and 7 of the other players left are really short stacked. What do you do? You fold of course. Sounds absurd, right? But think about it this way. If 1st bigstack goes all in, and you end up busting out with your kings, you just lost your chance of getting any payout. But if he take out say 3 of the small stacks or even 2, you’re that much closer to getting paid. You don’t have much +EV by busting out to a hand like Ax suited and an ace hits. Besides, you’re most likely going to finish in the money anyway. Why not ensure it by letting the other guy do the work for you. These same principles apply in big online poker tournaments where you make the final table. When there are stepped prizes and the amount increases significantly with each place. Why coinflip a big hand when someone who has you covered goes all-in? Again, it’s letting the other guy make you money. He takes out two players who are already in the money, you just got bumped up two tiers just for folding. It’s kind of counterintuitive, but it’s an interesting concept to adapt when you’re looking to maximize your tournament EV.

Playing free bar online poker for house cash at local restaurants can be a great way to spend an evening when there’s nothing else going onbut at the same time it can be enough to drive a sane, poker playing purist to an early poker grave. Because of the free buy in, the availability of booze, and the general ‘everybody’s welcome’ spirit of most any local bar poker game, what you often find yourself up against in these situations is a horde of some of the most inexperienced, and ‘in it for the fun’ opponents you could ever imagine being up against. In this kind of situation, all traditional poker online knowledge goes out the window. You’re not going to be able to finesse Grandma Jenkins into laying down her pocket pair of eights no matter what cards come on the boardnot only is she not really interested in what you have, she likely has no idea that your bet represents the fact that she should be beat in the hand, whether she is or not. She’ll have to see it. And yet so often, you see poker players obviously experienced in the game trying to make the same plays they make against their regular poker buddies. Against all your Daniel Negreanu aspirations, the best way to take these people down is to just show up with a real hand and charge them the max. Don’t slowplay, don’t bluff: wait for the cards and make a hand, be aggressive. It might not be as much skill based as a regular game, but with patience, it can be just as easy to get ahead in.

About once a week my friends gather to play small stakes poker tournaments online. We set up private NL Holdem tournaments and usually get 2 tables going. This week, one of the tournaments that was set up had been entered as Fixed Limit instead of No Limit. No one realized this until the game started. Aggressive NL poker players were losing their minds. They couldn’t get anyone to fold. Top pair was being ruined on the river all the time. It was pretty hilarious.

But then, it made me remember some of the staples of Limit Holdem. When the blinds are small, there’s not much to win, and your bets have no force behind them. So, the idea of protecting your made hands is out of the question. In Limit, don’t play too many hands. You’re going to waste a lot of money seeing flops that you would never think about limping into if you were playing NL Holdem. From playing NL, you get conditioned that if you limp, someone else will probably raise, and things can get expensive quickly. In Limit, you’re not afraid of getting raised off a hand, and that often translates to playing a lot more hands.

The problem is, you DO get raised pretty often, and what you think is going to cost you 20 chips, might cost you 60 or 80 if it’s capped. Then what happens if you catch middle pair? Are you betting? Are you calling a bet or a raise? Limping in Limit Holdem can be devastating to your chip stack. So, in the beginning, I always play really tight. It’s boring, and sometimes you still lose with premium cards, but it’s far likelier that if you wait to play AK and hit an Ace, the player calling your bets has probably been playing a weaker hand like A,10 or even a ragged Ace and will pay you off.

Once the blinds get big, your bets now have pressure. You can start bluffing. If you get aggressive preflop, you can actually win blinds now, and not only are you winning the blinds, but winning them actually has value now. Once the blinds are big, open up your range of poker hands, play hard against the blinds, and don’t get too committed to draws and weak pairs.

In Limit Hold’em, there is essentially no way to protect your poker hand from opponents drawing against you. In a cash game, the betting limits often allow a majority of the players at the table to see the flop for a very small price. Once you see the flop, you have to determine how strong your hand is, how much potential it has to improve, and also what kinds of drawing hands your opponents could be holding. If you catch top pair on a scary board that shows straight and flush possibilities, you may know that you hold the best hand, but your pair will likely have to hold up in multi-way pot through the turn and river cards. Anyone with a big draw is always “getting a price” (see calculating pot odds) to see the next card in Limit Texas Holdem, and multiple callers to a bet often entice poor hands like bottom pair to stick around and perhaps catch a lucky 2-pair by the river. Depending on what position you are in, an early raise could eliminate a lot of post-flop opponents. Holding top pair on the flop, if someone bets you should make a raise if you are in early position and there are a lot of players left to act behind you. This forces the rest of the table to call 2 bets instead of one to see the next card, often getting the poor hands and weak draws out. The fact of the matter is, it is very hard to shake a flush draw off a hand in limit poker. If they make their flush, so be it. But if you have narrowed the number of opponents drawing against you, you have increased the odds of your pair being the best hand at the end.