Some Tips to Winning Strategically in Online Limit Texas Hold'em

Below is a guide to scraping a living and wining at online Texas Hold’em by playing slow, taking your time to watch the way other players bet, knowing your odds and playing great poker.

Key to poker is the observation of other players:

Since poker is a game in which you don’t know the cards that other players hold then it is crucial to observe the other players and learn what you can about them. You need to try and understand your competitors and classify both them and their styles of play, if you can do this then you improve your chances of winning immensely.

An obvious example is: one of the players on your table is playing tight i.e. folding often and letting a lot of activity go on and not getting involved. So when he or she finally bets you know that it’s likely they hold a strong hand. As such if you hold a mediocre hand then you should consider folding – if the player seems to be playing very lose then you would make a different decision.

Don’t make these judgement calls too soon, give yourself at least 20-25 hands of play before you allow yourself to decide that somebody is playing loose as making this decision too early is a mistake.

Understanding the betting patterns of your opposition is key to maximising those killer hands and minimising your losses on poorer ones. Remember that winning lots of hands is easy; the trick is getting as much money as possible out of your opponents by understanding how to pull them in.

By careful observation you should be able to understand if you bet whether you will get callers, or if you should check and wait till later in the game to raise the stakes. How will your opponents react? How do you need to play to get the most out of them.

Breaking poker players into categories:

For the sake of simplicity I like to break poker players into just 4 simple categories. Of course, you can make it more complicated but there is a lot to keep up with and at a certain point it becomes hard to keep all the factors in focus, so here they are:

1. Shitty poker players: unfortunately they are very rare, since they soon loose all their money and any urge to play. Shitty players are those who bet and raise all the time regardless of their actual hand. That said, if you go for the low limit tables when you have some spare time you might just clean up.

2. Below Average poker players: more common but not enough of them for my liking ;). They tend to call too often and overrate their hands, and do not think about what the other players may have. You can spot these players easily in freerolls and bust them out early by relying on their over betting on weak hands.

3. Average poker players: the overwhelming majority of internet poker players can be described as average. They know how to play and fold 4-10 off-suit pre-flop (unlike the below average players who think call as they will get bored if they don’t see the flop, and Shit players who only consideration is raise), generally know what hands are good and what hands to fold early on.

4. Winning players: these are players who should almost always win money over a given period of time. Patience is one of the key attributes and the ability to watch other players betting patterns and use it to their advantage. When playing higher stake games you may find more info on these players and their previous success at sites such as sharkscope and pokerDB.

Find those Shitty players:
What do these players do? They lose money. So to maximise your profits you must try to play with shitty players as much as you can. Moving to a table full of shitty players rather than waiting for a run of good luck when playing against equals is always going to bring you higher returns.

Similarly when you play in “freerolls” it has been my experience that I actually win more money playing in the lower stakes tournaments’ as they tend to attract fewer good players.

In cash games it’s not a simple task to find the shitty players but you can keep your own lists (some site have facilities to let you make notes) and search them out before you pick your table. Obviously experience is key here as well as a lot of time at the tables observing or playing but it’s a worthwhile exercise that can pay dividends in the longer term.

Be prepared to lose:

You have to accept that you will not always be lucky and that you will sometimes be dealt a lot of poor hands. The trick is waiting and not getting impatient and trying to steal too many hands. The odds dictate this is a strategy that cannot win out in the long term. Be realistic, know the odds and play to them, only time and patience will win out. There will be times when you have to throw the rule book out of the window but they are rare. Try not to get too upset when you play to strategy and end up folding what would have been a full house on the flop. Remember, you didn’t know it was coming.

Know when to leave the table:

There are two reasons you win playing poker:

1. Being dealt lucky cards against average to good players. You’ve got to know when to call it a day, it’s tempting to stay on and see if your luck will hold. But don’t make this mistake, in situations like this you will lose your money 3 out of every 4 times you continue to play. If you want to be a hero, then keep playing! If you want to make a profit, know when to call it a day.
2. If you are playing a table with a few shitty players and kicking ass, then it’s likely you haven’t had any real bad beats and are just playing better than your opponents. If this is the case you should keep playing and rinse them for as much as you can get. ☺

Tips and Tricks to watch for and hold in your arsenal:

Know your odds:

It sounds obvious but many average players only know the basics. They don’t know when they’re facing a bet on the turn and holding a flush draw, with 1 player still to act, whether or not to call given the pot size. For long-term profit making knowing all the odds is crucial. Make sure you learn the pod odds and play by them. See more by following this link - poker odds.

Betting speeds:

This can be quite difficult to judge and is definitely more obscure and less important than knowing the odds but can still provide a useful “tell”. Try to observe the players on your table’s speed when they are placing their bets.
As broadband has become almost ubiquitous in the UK especially amongst poker players the lags that used to occur due to slow connections should play little part.
Some players always bet quickly, so if you’re playing a guy who usually bets quite slow and then is betting fast it may indicate that he is holding a great hand so take a more cautious approach. Think about the psychology involved and make your own decisions, I’m not gonna give you all my secrets…

Time to play:

If you are playing in games consisting mostly of UK poker players then there are certain times when you can gain a competitive advantage. This is definitely not a hard and fast rule but it’s worth thinking about – Friday and Saturday nights after the pubs close (Ok so some of them don’t close anymore but you get my drift) can be gold dust in my experience. Lots of players come home feeling good after a night on the town and can’t resist a little flutter. These “drunky monkeys” quite often don’t have their wits about them and tend to lack the patience they might otherwise have. We also know that alcohol has a tendency to promote over confidence in many situations and playing poker is just another one of those. So if you get the right table it can be an easy chance to pick up some cash, or not…