All In: The ultimate no limit poker play

Choose your opponents and moments wisely when risking your entire stack. It’s true, you do get an awesome rush when flirting with the all-in, over the top raise. Especially when its a stone cold bluff intended only to get your opponent to fold.

Moving all in is not just about winning a huge pot, though. It is a strategic weapon in your poker game. That is, you have to also think of how going all in can be affected by your poker odds. Let’s consider an example:

The blinds are 25/50 and You have 1000 in chips left. You look down to see 78s in middle position. There is one limper in front of you and you elect to call. There is a raise up to 200 from the button. The blinds fold, early position calls and you call as you are being offered just over 3/1.

The board comes down 6s9dAs – a nice flop for you. The early position checks and you throw out a bet of 150 leaving you with 650. The button goes all in and you are now faced with a decision for all of your chips.

Your position is no longer a consideration. It will not matter if you are on the button or under the gun if you are going to be all in anyway. Therefore we can now look at this as a very simple probability problem.

You have 15 outs and so therefore have a 60% chance of improving to either a flush or a straight by the river. You only have 650 left and are being offered odds of just over 2/1 and so you should push all in!

Another great poker strategy for your all in move is when you move all in to prevent implied odds of you opponent. Let’s use the same example as above except flip it round so that you are now the button player.

It’s the same flop so the middle position puts in a bet of 150. It’s on you and you are holding unsuited big slick. You feel that you have the best of it at the moment and want to prevent the middle position from drawing something. Let’s say that instead of the middle position having 1000 at the beginning of the hand, he now has 3000 and so do you. In order to protect your hand, you could raise all in. The the middle position will only be getting odds of 1.32/1 which would not justify a call.

Of course, we know that the middle position will not always fold despite his odds. Such is poker.

Improving Your Online Poker Game – Part 1

With the online poker boom taking the world by storm there are millions of people playing online every sing day. Since the ratio of good poker players to poor one is very low you can all but guarantee that there are thousands of novice players out there whose money is there for the taking. These quick simple tips will help assure your success at the table as well as minimize your bad beats. They are broken down into 3 categories: strategy, recognizing tells, and finding experienced players to help mentor you.

Strategies

1) Play Tight- This is the best piece of advice I can give. Loose players will win big hands here and there but they also loose more money, to other players as well as to the online site in the form of a rake. By playing tight and committing only to tops hands you protect your money and give yourself more leverage to take bigger pots when you hit your big hand.

2) Understand Your Betting Position – Playing tight is effective but it doesn’t hurt to limp into a hand with A 8 or suited connecters. But, you need to be strategic about the hands you decide to jump into. If you’re the 4th person to act at a table of 10 and you call the big blind there is a good chance the pot might be raised before the action goes all the way around the table. That puts you in a position where you will either fold your hand and lose money or pay to see the flop with a weaker hand. You’re better off playing those hands when you are in the small blind or are 8th to act.

3) Switch Strategies – Since you are going to be playing tight 95-99% of the time, switching strategies for a few hands will completely throw your competition for a loop. If you decide to bluff a hand to steal a large pot, other players might think you have them beat and fold to your large raise. You can usually get away with this for a hand or two to pick up chips, but don’t get careless. Pick your spots and keep the loose play and bluffing to a minimum to reduce your odds of getting burned by a better hand.

4) Play Regularly – Reading the tips I’ve provided is pointless unless you plan on implementing them on a regular basis. Practice makes perfect, or practice makes money. There are a TON of poker websites that offer play money games, real money games, as well as free roll tournaments. Putting $50 into an account can last months if you are playing 5/10 cent blinds, and hopefully you will make money so that $50 will be you first and last deposit! If you’re not comfortable parting with your money I recommend playing in free roll tournaments. They cost nothing to enter and pay out money to the top 5-10% of the players. If you go the free roll route I recommend signing up for 3-4 different sites since they all have different free roll schedules. You can learn more about freeroll schedules and sites at PunchBook.

Recognizing Tells

5) Playing with Pokey McGee – Many online players are involved in multiple games and are only playing top 5 hands. If you are heads up with one of these players it’s a good idea to raise small. These plays will usually fold. To go along with that, if that person raises (especially pre flop or at the turn) it’s a good idea to get out of the hand and watch.

6) Pounce on Emotion – We’ve all gotten burned by big hands and been ecstatic about winning a monster had too, but good players keep their cool in both situations. The nice thing about online poker is that people tend to voice their frustrations via the chat function more than usual. If a person takes a bad beat and is swearing or attacking other person chances are they will over bet to try and regain some of their losses. If you have a halfway decent hand do hesitate to call those big raises, these are the players that fund your account!

7) Masking Bluffs – Picking up on tells online isn’t especially new and some players will take 10-15 seconds longer to give the impression that they have a strong hand. Realistically, when you land on pocket aces you’re either going to raise or if you’re the slow playing type you’re going to fly under the radar and not do anything to get noticed. The guy who is taking time to think, especially at low stakes tables, is trying to mask his bluff.

Online Poker Communities and Forums

Finding a Poker Mentor – People who love poker and strive to get better hang out at poker chat rooms and post on poker blogs and forums. Just like people who are into running marathons or fly fishing they are looking for ways to get better. You can learn from these people as they are always sharing ideas and tricks. If you are sharing information and building rapport with strong players they will help you get better. There are millions of people online; they do not view you as competition but as a means to get better for themselves.

Like I mentioned earlier, this is all useless if you’re not practicing these tips and trips regularly. To master the game of Texas Hold Em takes a willingness to seek out information and apply your learning’s. You’ve already taken the first step by reading this article! Choosing a poker room that is right for you can be a challenge since there are so many. I’ve sorted through all of the rooms and have reviews for 5 rooms I think are great (and one popular room that is a liability) on my website: www.punchbook.com. Please stop by sometime and let me know what you think of it!

Good Luck!

Some Poker Tips on How to Make Money

Essentially throw your ego to the bin before you start to play poker, especially if you are focused to make money with poker. The game is more like a survivor series where the pro picks control over the weak. It is not true for the strong starting hand to win always. Most of the time a well-played decent hand splits the pot! Reading through poker tips can give chips of ideas that can be combined together to solve the poker puzzle that you are facing with.

Lot of poker tips necessitate the need for multiple strategies to be planned for the same hand. This is quite necessary to avoid stupid results due to pre-conditioning of the mind.

It so goes that when I get a K-9, I have formulated approach 1, approach 2, approach 3. I have 3 choices and I have firmly pre-conditioned my mind to play with the available 3 methods. Pre-conditioning of the mind is of course needed, but sometimes even 10 varied ideas may not work out and unless you arrive at the 11th new strategy at the table you might not win! So, preconditioning of the mind helps, but there are times when that may not work. You got to be flexible!

Luck has made craps win! Though luck does not make happen always, it has happened many times that the person who had been applying poker tips and tricks losing letting the other person win with a lucky hand! Such winnings can also be called as beginner surprises, where the player had been calling and calling every bet around without knowing what is in his hand and what is in the board. People around keep thinking he has got a great hand and eventually he wins with his craps! But all the time he never knew he was heading to win with a weak hand! He was playing just because he invested in the pot, luckily the idiot wins! It never happens always and such can show up as a bad beat to a better player at the table.

The touch down of all poker tips is to eventually guide one to hit the pot, but sadly only one or two players at the table can make the pot, the rest are going to be losers. Knowing poker tips and tricks does not make any winning, but applying the rules in the right place can let you win. We can take a horse to water, but we cannot make it drink! The horse has to drink!

Poker Strategy Tip: How To Advertise

You can use many methods to keep others from telling your moves. Let just think of trying for free cards bluffing, check then raising, semi-bluffing, and slow –play are some of them. Still this is not all because there is a more different and sophisticated way. This type of play is called an advertising play. It basically means that you will play badly, crazy and do all the wrong moves when you are sure everyone can see that. By doing this you will lose hands for nothing and mess with the other players heads, misleading them, but after a while you can play good poker and win big from those exact players. Advertising plays must be done only with persons you are sure you will play again so you can benefit from them. There is no point in advertising a play on a table where you won’t stay and with players that won’t see you again.

There are certain types of hands you should consider advertising first, they have priority because they are easy to advertise and most importantly they will get you a believable play overall. When you engage yourself into an advertising play you must not do it with whatever hand you might have. Choose carefully the hands that you will advertise so that it looks real and you still stand a decent chance on winning the pot. Advertising plays like 3-9 in the first position are just bad moves and won’t help you create that image you are going for. They will just make you lose and show you don’t know how to play poker, and that is not your purpose here. The best way to advertise your play is to play little connectors like 7-8 suited, 5-6 suited and Ace with another card suited or small pairs. Play these hands very aggressively when you get them and want to advertise your play but make sure it gets noticed otherwise it will all be in vain.

For example let’s say you have a hand of 7-8 suited. You are in first position, so normally you would just drop this hand. When you intend to advertise, you will have to bet with this hand, raise and re-raise until you work your way up to the river. Or if you are last, you will re-raise the bets that have been made so far and continue with the aggressive streak of moves from there on. Occasionally you might get caught with your reckless bluffs on the river. You have to be absolutely positive that everyone at the table sees your hand so they can all realize with wonder how badly you played such a hand.

Still, on rare occasions you might get lucky and win the pot. In this case don’t show the hand, it is better this way. The bright side is that you won money you wouldn’t have normally played for and you can begin the advertising “campaign” right after that with the new unexpected funds sitted right beside you.

So, a little advertising and then back to normal so you can play them. Once they saw your way of playing they will make bets and calls on you because they still think you are playing crazy. This is the advantage you now hold on your opponents and this way you will get them bet lots of money on mediocre hands, thinking they are doing the right thing and you are again holding a bad hand.

A Quick and Easy Texas Holdem Poker Lesson for Beginners

The great thing about Texas Holdem Poker is that it is easy to learn. Even a beginner can quickly develop into a winning player. By following a sound strategy and playing the best starting hands a Texas Holdem Poker newbie can dramatically shorten the learning curve. So what are the best hands that a beginner should play?

The best hands for a beginner to play are Ace-Ace, King-King, Queen-Queen, Jack-Jack, Ace-King suited (example – Ace of clubs & King of clubs).

I strongly recommend that you only play these starting hands as a beginner. In other words, if you are dealt a hand other than one of the above then fold!

Folding is one of the most difficult decisions for a Texas Holdem Poker beginner to do. The mindset of most Texas Holdem Poker beginners is to hang around and see the flop in the hopes of hitting it just right and improving a hand.

While a beginner will hit the flop and improve their hand occasionally, more often than not they will miss it. The Texas Holdem Poker beginner player that plays poor starting hands will end up throwing more money away than they will win.

When you are dealt one of the best starting hands I recommend raising the pot which will serve two purposes. First, it will force players with weak hands to fold instead of allowing them to stay in the game and see the flop for free.

Secondly, by seeing who raises and calls you get to see who feels that they have a good hand and who may be trying to hang in for the flop.

When the flop is dealt you should look carefully to see if you have improved your hand. Even if you have not improved your hand, because you started out with one of the better hands you may still have the best hand. This is especially true if your starting hand was a pair of aces or kings.

If your opponents raise back this can be a strong signal that they may have a powerful hand. Ask yourself, “What could my opponent have?” “Could they have improved their hand?”

Ask yourself these questions after each round of cards are dealt and try to “read” your opponents hand.

If you have a high pair a raise after the flop can help you assess whether your opponents feel if they have a strong hand or not.

If you think you are beaten there is no shame in folding at this point.

When the turn card has been revealed, if you think that you may still have the best hand I would raise the pot so that I could obtain information about my opponents’ hands.

I would follow this same strategy on the river card.

To summarize this basic Texas Holdem Poker beginner strategy:
- stick to playing the best starting hands
- fold the bad hands
- use the power of the raise to knock out weak players and to assess the strength of your opponents hands

By following this Texas Holdem Poker beginner strategy you will start out winning more hands than you lose. You will start out winning more money than you will lose.

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