- Advanced Poker Strategy Texas Holdem
- Basic Strategy Poker Texas Holdem Real Money
- Texas Holdem Poker Tips
- Learning Texas Holdem Poker Strategy
It's essential that you master Texas Hold'em rules and strategy if you want to integrate yourself into today's hold'em dominated world of poker. Consider Texas Hold'em your ground zero, your alma mater, your big cheese. Above all, consider it your safest bet when it comes to picking the most ecumenical poker variation. These are the basic Texas Hold'em strategy articles from ThePokerBank's strategy section. If you're just starting out as a Texas Hold'em player, these are some of the most important concepts that will need to familiarise yourself with. Texas Hold'em No Limit (NL) Strategy. Although there are different formats of Texas Hold'em, Texas Hold'em No Limit is by far the most popular. This is because you can bet any amount at any time. As a result, you are always at risking of losing every single chip you have – or doubling up. This is why so many players play Texas Hold'em. A lot of Texas Hold 'Em strategy is based on the cards in your hand. You must be willing to suffer through a series of poor hands (e.g. 5-8, 2-6, 4-9) without getting impatient. The good hands will come, eventually, and you'll be in a better position to take advantage of them if you don't waste your chips trying to get something out of nothing.
Cardgames and betting often go hand in hand, and casino or online play poker havetaken the world by storm. Televised events regularly offer prize pools worthhundreds of thousands, and poker professionals occasionally scoopmultimillion wins as if it were casual. The popularity has led to thedevelopment of many variations, aside from the traditional types of poker likeTexas Hold ‘em and Omaha. As a result, online sites, especially, are in a raceto make the most innovative game.
Oneformat to come out of the online boom is a fast-fold poker known on the 888platform as SNAP poker. This variation centres on the same rules of Texas Hold‘em but with one big twist: when you fold, you are instantly seated at the nextavailable table and dealt another hand. It's poker, but much faster!
What is SNAP poker?
Asmentioned, SNAP poker is a fast-fold formatavailable at 888poker. You can play it both as a cash game and as a tournament,and it is available at many different buy-in levels. When a player folds, theyare randomly seated at a different table and dealt a new hand. The SNAP fold button even allows players tofold before their turn and move straight on with the next hand. Other playerswill not see the fold until it is your turn.
Incash games, there is also the option to foldand watch. That means you can move onto your new table and get a new handbut also, watch the action of the hand you recently folded. The folded handwill pop up on a new screen for you to observe.
Thebasic idea of SNAP poker is that you play a lot more hands. You don't have tosit around waiting for a decent hand for a long time. You can fold and move on.You can probably play around 3–4x more hands per hour in a SNAP poker game,too, compared to a regular cash game or tournament with a similar structure.It's also easy to join the games from your lobby.
SNAP is appealing for recreational players who want to be involved in action but also want to bet with a big hand. It allows you to jump right in and play fast, which is also good news for anyone on a time limit. But what about serious players? Is there any strategy that can help you to win these games?
Key Differences Between Texas Hold‘em and SNAP Poker
It'scritical to get to grips with the key differences (and similarities) between astandard Texas Hold ‘em poker game and SNAP poker to understand what strategyto use first.
SNAPpoker uses the same rules with a big blind and small blind, dealer button, handrankings and betting sequences. It's almost the same game. The two keydifferences are:
- Youmove a table after every single hand.
- You,and other players, can fast fold.
Thesedifferences create changes in the dynamics at the poker tables. The maindifferences to remember are the fast-fold and table changes, which mean thatthere is less information to use.
Pokeris already a gameof incomplete information. You don't know what your opponentholds, so you aim to fill in those gaps by observing how they play, makingnotes and perhaps using your poker HUD to record statistics.
InSNAP poker, you will not get the luxury of watching your opponents overmultiple hands, as they will move a table. By the same token, they do not seeas much information about how you play. There is little in the way of historyand even less in table dynamics and hand reading.
Toput this into perspective, let's say the player pool is 500 players in a SNAPtourney or ring game. The tables have nine people on them. On average, it willtake you 55 hands to see the same player again (500/9). So, if it takes you 20hands to get any meaningful read on a player, you could be waiting for 1,000hands for this to happen in a SNAP game.
Adapting to SNAP Poker
Howdo you adapt to this information gap? The answer is to play a more basic gamebased on mathematics and make the right plays against what are unknown players.You can also exploit the fact that the other players can't make a read on you.Finally, you can also take advantage of the fact that more people will be fast-folding pre-flop as well aspost-flop if they run into any trouble.
Remember,poker is not like roulette, which hasfixed odds.With the right knowledge, you can become a better player. Given theseadjustments, you can think about the following strategic tips for SNAP poker:
- Makeoptimal plays based on mathematics and rely less on your ability to read otherplayers.
- Youdon't have to worry about making complex plays (apart from in late-stagetournaments), levelling opponents, mixing up your play, balancing your range orgetting creative with your betting. All these will be unnecessary andineffective without any history between players. Play ABC poker for the most part.
- Don'tonly fold waiting for premiums. That's what everyone else does. Exploit thefact that everyone else folds by making small, selectively aggressive plays,such as stealing blinds, C-betting the flop and three-betting pre-flop.
- Playfewer tables of SNAP poker to make up for the speed. Even multi-tabling a fewof these games can be too fast for most players. Expect a lower win rate thanthe equivalent standard format game if grinding, but remember, you can put inmore volume per hour — even with a lower win rate, they can be more profitable.
- Withoutthe information of hand reading and observing opponents over long periods, youmust rely on the other factors that are still left. They are: your startinghand, position, number of players in the pot, opponent's position and theirbetting pattern over the single hand.
Advanced Poker Strategy Texas Holdem
Ihope that these tips are useful when playing fast-fold format poker games likeSNAP poker. The basic idea is to use your best ABC maths-based poker strategyand consider the information gap. Use it to your advantage by making simpleaggressive plays. Your opponent will have no idea that you have raised thebutton 20 times in a row! Have fun, and happy learning.
Texas Hold'em Poker has quickly become the most popular card game in the world. The idea of Texas Hold'em originally gained popularity after the movie 'Rounders' was released in 1998.
Basic Strategy Poker Texas Holdem Real Money
Then in 2003, ESPN held the now popular World Series of Poker which was won by Chris Moneymaker, projecting the popularity of Texas Hold'em to new heights.
The 2003 World Series of Poker had 839 entrants, and triple that number in 2004. This trend continued all the way until the 2006 World Series of Poker, which had 8,773 entrants and a massive first place prize of $12,000,000 which went to a chatty Jamie Gold.
Around this time came the boom of online poker, which soon turned into a widespread frenzy for poker fans. Hands were dealt faster, with constant running cash games, sit n' go's, and multi-table tournaments. You could even win a seat into the World Series of Poker through online poker.
Today, most of the popular poker players that you see competing in the World Series can also be found at different online poker sites.
How To Play Texas Holdem Poker
Hold'em is a game with 2 cards dealt to each player pre-flop, and 5 community cards dealt face-up, spread across 3 rounds of betting. There is a big blind and small blind that rotate clock-wise around the table, with the small blind always being half of the big blind.
How to win at craps every time. The first round of betting occurs after each player is dealt their two cards and players decide whether or not they want to play their hands. After each player has decided to bet, call, raise, or fold, the dealer then turns over 3 cards which is called ‘the flop'. Players then go through another round of betting in a clockwise fashion.
Then comes ‘the turn' which is when just one card from the flop is turned over, leaving four cards face up on the board, followed by another round of betting. The last card turned over is called ‘the river', and is finished off with the last round of betting with players showing their cards after the bets are finished, and the winning player taking the pot.
Poker games fall into one of two categories – cash games or tournaments. In a cash game players are free to sit down and leave the game at any point as the poker chips represent real money. Tournaments where players pay a fixed fee to enter and the game is played until one player has all the chips. Winnings are paid out depending on where a player finishes.
There are also two types of tournament – Sit n Go and Mult Table Tournaments (MTT's). A Sit n Go tournament will have a set number of entrants, such as 10, 20, or 30. As soon as this number of players sign up, the game starts. Sit n Go's are most commonly found online.
Multi-Table Tournaments are scheduled to start at a specific time. Anyone who is registered before the tournament starts (or sometimes even after) can play and the numbers often vary dramatically from day to day. Multi-Table Tournaments can have large payouts, even into the millions for a large tournament such as the WSOP final event. Redtooth poker league results.
Texas Hold'em Rules
There are a few rules of the game to be sure that you understand when sitting down at a live Texas Hold'em game (typically online Hold'em games will enforce these rules so that you cannot break them):
- Only bet/call/raise/fold when the action is on you.
- Never touch other player's chips.
- You must raise at least twice the minimum bet: example- if the blinds are 10/20, you must raise to at least 40.
- When there are more than 2 players in a hand, only one bet and three raises can be made during one round of betting.
- In a cash game, you may not add chips during a hand but may buy chips in between hands.
Those are the basic rules of live poker games, which of course will vary depending on the people you're playing with. If you're playing in a house game with some friends, they may have rules that differ slightly.
Basic Texas Holdem Strategy
The most important thing to remember is that you shouldn't play every hand. Position is very important in poker; the closer that you are to the ‘button' or the dealer (the last person to act before the big and small blinds), the more hands you should play. In other words, if you're one of the first players to act (you're near the big blind) you should be playing very tight and throwing away most hands.
One thing you must be well versed in is which hands are the strongest and vice verser. Here's a list of winning hands in order of best to worst:
- Royal Flush- example: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10 (same suit)
- Straight Flush- example: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 (same suit).
- Four of a Kind- example: Four 9's and any other card.
- Full House- example: Three 5's and two 6's (any suit).
- Flush- example: 10, 4, 8, J, Ace- (same suit)
- Straight- example: 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (any suit)
- Three of a kind- example: Thre 10's and any other two cards (any suit).
- Two Pair- example: Two 5's, two 6's and any other card (any suit).
- One Pair- example: Two Kings and any other three cards (any suit).
- High Card- example: 10, 5, 2, 8, 7 (any suit). Highest card wins.
Of course you always need to base your hand off the board, even if you have three of a kind, keep an eye out for straight or flush possibilities. It's always important to base decisions on the board as well as how your opponent has played their hand throughout.
Examples of Hands to Play and Not to Play
Example 1:
You're sitting directly next to the big blind and are the first player to act at a 9 player table early in a multi-table tournament. You're dealt King of diamonds and 8 of hearts.
Recommended play: Fold. This hand is just not strong enough to play in this spot with 8 players still to act after you, especially this early in a tournament.
Texas Holdem Poker Tips
Example 2:
Learning Texas Holdem Poker Strategy
You're sitting 3 seats to the right of the dealer at a 9 player table and are dealt Ace of diamonds and Queen of hearts in a cash game. One player raised before you to 3x the big blind.
Recommended play: Call. Ace/Queen is a very strong hand, especially in a cash game. You also have a pretty strong position at the table.
Example 3:
You're playing in a Sit-n-Go and are on the button, it folds all the way to you and you are dealt 8 of diamonds and 7 of clubs. It's early in the 27 player Sit-N-Go, with 23 players still remaining.
Recommended play: I'd raise to 2.5 the big blind in an attempt to steal the blinds. 8/7 off suit is not an awful hand either, and if someone is to call you could always get a nice flop.
So now that you know the basics get out there on the tables and have some fun, but remember, start at the small stakes and build your way up to the higher buy-ins as you gain experience.