How to win at Poker

The title may be a bit misleading, because this post is aimed more at players who are not yet winning players and so I am NOT telling you to start playing more tables to make money.

I am going to try to explain how you can use the fact that other players are multi-tabling to make a profit.

A profitable player can expect to make about 1 to 3 times the big blind of the level that they play at per hour. So if you are playing $0.50 – $1.00 then you can reasonably expect to make about $2.00 per hour. Not so great, eh?

That would be a pretty low paid job.

Normally, when a player can regularly beat the stakes that they are playing at, they will move up a level in order to make more profit. Sometimes that will work out just fine, and the player can eventually reach a level that they are comfortable playing at and are profitable at.

Often times, that player will keep going up in stakes until they reach a level that they cannot beat, and will start to lose money here. The correct play of course is to drop back to a level that you can beat, or get better.

Rising too fast through the stakes can leave you horribly unprepared for what must eventually happen – the loss of your entire bankroll.

Anyway, back to the point. Not all profitable players continue to rise through the stake levels. Some go up too high and have the good sense to go back to where they were making money. Some are physically limited by a lack of players at the higher stakes. Most players, obviously, are at the lower stakes, and there is a kind of a pyramid structure at play here with few players at the top mega stakes.

So, a profitable player who can’t or won’t go any higher in stakes will start to play two or more tables at once – multi-tabling. More common in tournaments where players don’t want to spend a whole afternoon or evenings play on one tournament only to miss the money by a spot or two. So they will enter and play many tournaments at the same time to increase the chances of being in at the end.

Those players that play multiple tables of cash games are more likely profitable semi professional players. That is, players that can make a profit, expect to make a profit, and are probably doing this for at least part of their income.

The rule at play here is that when you are making a profit, you can expect ot make a smaller profit from each table when you start to multi table. But because you are playing more tables your overall profit increases, as does your hourly win rate, but you per table profit goes down somewhat.

This is because playing many tables at once does not allow you to spot bluffs that others who are concentrating solely on one table can easily spot.

The multi tabling player must make quick decisions, to avoid getting timed out on some other open table, and in general they will play the cards as dealt. So you can expect that their opening range may be a bit smaller than other players, and they are less likely to bluff, and also, crucially, they are less likely to defend their blinds against a strong push.

So what good is that to you? Simple, you can check what players at your table are playing more than one game by doing a search on that players name. The result should show all the tables that that player is sitting in at.

And that, my friend, is an edge. You can exploit the fact that you know they are or could be preoccupied elsewhere, that they have to stick within a more rigid playing style and can be pushed a bit more than other players. Obviously, they are still playing to make a profit, so you won’t push them off of pocket aces pre flop, but the marginal hands, the hands they checked when you think they should have bet, those hands can be yours with a little effort.

Posted in: multi tabling, pocket aces, profitable players, reading players

For beginners in online poker, the prospect of losing their entire deposit may seem very off putting. It shouldn’t be – you should welcome the prospect.

If you went to college, or signed up for a night class, or any other learning process, you would expect to pay for the education. In fact, you may not even value what you are getting if you did not have to pay to get it.

Look at your online poker education in the same light. Why should you expect to be able to sit in to an online poker game and make a profit? You are up against many players that do know what they are doing, that have taken the time to learn the game and how to win at it.

If it really was that easy to simply sit in and come away a winner, the who would you be winning from?

You should expect to lose. And to lose for quite a while. The game is not easy to master, and that is how you want it to be, though you don’t know it. For when you have mastered it, and are making a steady profit from playing, you don’t want it to be easy for new players to come in and take some of that profit from you.

Posted in: Losing players, losing poker players, mastering the game, poker education, profit from playing

Another misconception that is common among newer poker players is that in order to win more you need to play more. In fact, the exact opposite is true. In order to win more you need to play less.

This one fact can make the difference between a winning poker player and a losing poker player.

It is of great benefit to established, winning poker players that most newbies do not get this simple thing. Winning players make their money from other players mistakes.

The range of starting hands and the possibilities of the flop are not endless – they are finite. They do seem unlimited when you first start, but they are not.

And the percentages for winning, if you play for long enough, are fairly fixed. You may have good runs and bad runs, incredible suck outs and incredible bad beats, but in the end the numbers are true and will come out.

What makes a crucial difference then is that the numbers will only be true if you play each hand optimally. The profit for other players is in the mistakes that you make. And I’m not saying that you should not make mistakes. I mean, you shouldn’t, but you will. Every one does. But you should make less mistakes than the next guy.

If you can’t do that, then you should make your mistakes cost less. Learning to recognize early when you have gone wrong, how ever that may be, will be the single biggest profit making play that you will ever have.

Conversely, learning to recognize when your opponent has made a mistake and hasn’t pulled out will also make you a lot of money.

Take some time to think about that. Think back over your last session and find the errors. Think those through and see what the result would have been had you played it differently. More profit? Less of a loss?

Think about that for a while, and we will get on to common errors in the next lesson.

Posted in: biggest profit, limiting losses, losing poker player, playing less, poker errors, Poker Mistakes, reading players, winning poker players

In our bid to re-educate you about the real value of certain iconic starting hands, we are going to take a look at the mighty Ace King Suited.

Many, many players will bet the farm with this famous hand. And those same players become disillusioned with poker when they inevitably lose. Because sooner or later you will lose with this hand – especially if you think it is unbeatable.

AK Suited most certainly is not unbeatable.

Even up against only one opponent, on average AK suited loses one time in three. Let a lot of players in and the odds of winning go down drastically, right down to winning with this hand only one time in four up against a full table.

The problem here is that this hand can quickly become worthless if the flop doesn’t hit you.

So the proper pre flop play is to bet out like you are holding something good. And many players will continue to bet out even after the flop has come and missed you completely. This hand needs to be played like a pair, but doesn’t have the backup of being worth anything on it’s own.

If you are holding a pair of twos and the flop misses you completely well you still have a pair of twos, and a fifty-fifty chance of winning a heads up game. Missing the flop with AK, even suited, leaves you with a high Ace.

Anyone still in at the river against your mighty betting blasts will surely have something. If nothing else, they will have a good read on you. A good player here will have put you on this hand and will fire back at your river bet. What will you do then? You can’t call, most of the time, as you must have them on something, so your only chance to win here is to raise. Can you do that with a busted hand?

The proper play for AK suited is to bet like you have something, like they were pocket aces (assuming that you have the position to do that) and to drop them immediately that they become worthless. Betting big before the flop with this hand should mean that when you hit you will have a nice size pot to take, and dropping them when you miss means that you won’t waste any more chips than you have to with these cards.

Posted in: Ace King Suited, AK suited, iconic starting hands, pre flop betting, reading players, river betting

While you probably know, or should know, that any poker hand can be a winning hand, we are going to look briefly at the best poker starting hands which should equal winning hands, if played correctly.

The strength of your starting hand is proportional to the number of players at the table. Winning with that particular starting hand will depend in part on your position at the table too.

For example, the best poker starting hand that everybody knows and loves to see is pocket aces. Many players truly believe that they cannot or at least should not lose when holding pocket rockets.

Well, let’s look at the facts. Holding AA against one other player has a winning percentage chance of 85%. Not 100% you will notice.

So, even heads up, a pocket pair of aces can be beat. All else being equal, roughly 3 times in twenty they will run into something stronger.

With a full table that winning percentage goes down dramatically, to about 30%. So seven times out of ten a pair of aces in the hole will be beaten at a full table.

Those facts seem counter-intuitive to players that simply cannot believe that their aces got beat. But it happens – a lot!

A big factor in winning with this premium hand is how you play it to begin. With good position and proper betting you should remove most of the opposition as early as you can. As the number of players at the table goes down your odds of winning with these cards goes way up – from 30% with a full table to up to 85% with only one opponent.

So even getting dealt aces every time will not make you a winning player if you don’t play them properly.

With a standard table of 5 or 6 players, aces will only win less than half the time. Of course, if you play them that way and let five or six other players stay in the pot, then you will win nice big pots when you do win, but you must be prepared to lost more than half the time.

Going hand in hand with this is the important fact that if you bet out big when you do have aces, and you want to clear the field to improve your chances of winning, players will soon recognize your play and you will start to win more pots but they will have less money in them.

So to make aces pay you need to be able to bet out with a less than premium hand too.

Next time you get dealt pocket deuces, with a winning chance in a full table of just over 10%, which goes up to about 50% when you are heads up, try betting out like you were looking at pocket aces. Proper pre flop play with a pair of twos should clear the opposition unless you run into some one elses premium pair.

Posted in: pair of deuces, pocket aces, pocket rockets, winning percentage, Winning Poker Hands

It is a fact that playing with the best poker hands – and only those hands – will mean that you will win more pots.

But there are a lot of problems with that approach.

Firstly, only about one hand in ten will be a good hand. Most of the time you will be dealt second rate starting hands. If you wait for the premium hands, like pocket aces or kings, then you won’t be playing many hands per hour.

You can possibly survive for quite a while playing that way in some tournies – and it is even a suggested winning poker strategy for certain types of games (we’ll get to that later on) – but playing like that in a cash game is suicide for your bankroll.

Not only will you be paying the blinds for every round of the table, but the other players will quickly catch on that you are a tight player and you will find less opposition – and little money in the pot – when you do eventually play with your premium hand.

In theory it is a great idea to only play with great starting hands, but in reality you will need some more plays than just that if you want to win at poker.

Posted in: pocket aces, pocket pairs, poker strategy, premium hands, starting hands, tight player