Some no limit hold’em strategy tips (Day one of making the most at the low limit tables)

“No Mistakes”
As it says on the tin, the major principle behind this strategy is to do just that – make no mistakes. In a game everyone else is going to be making mistakes left, right and centre. Some mistakes will cost other players money, some mistakes will make them money, but this will only work for them in the short term. Over a large number of hands all mistakes cost money. Your strategy is to capitalise on the biggest of other peoples’ mistakes while making as few of your own as possible. To explain this it is important to distinguish two concepts:

A mistake is when you put money in the pot when you are behind, and you do not have favourable drawing odds.

A Bad Beat is when you put money in a pot while you are ahead but get beaten by an opponent(s) who did not have favourable drawing odds.

Bad Beats are OK. Well obviously they hurt like hell, but they are going to happen to everyone. Even 2-outers hit more than one in 25 times so you don’t have to play that long before one is going to hit you. And most times when you think you are ahead, your opponents have far more than 2 outs! The bottom line is that you want to be in the situation to experience a Bad Beat as often as you can, because you are going to win more often than you lose and this is where you make your money. Another way of looking at this, is that this is where your opponent(s) are making their mistakes.

Mistakes for you are most definitely not OK. You sit and watch other people get their premium hands beaten by rags and wheel straights, and it is sort of amusing (in a mean way), but you have to learn from it. Just because you have a pair of aces, that doesn’t mean the three fish to your left have suddenly found some astute poker knowledge. If there is a hand that can beat you, you have to seriously consider that it is in play, however terrible that play would be. This is especially true of people hitting straights and flushes without favourable odds. Lots of players don’t care about odds. Don’t let your knowledge blind you and don’t get angry about it!

Paranoia about being bluffed is a fertile breeding ground for mistakes. If someone bluffs you off a $4 pot with a huge raise, it isn’t great but its not a disaster either. Take a note and when you feel you have a good read, try to catch them out next time. If someone traps you into calling his $50 bet when he has the nuts, or any hand better than yours, that is a disaster. With the turnover of players on cash tables and single table sit & gos, you will rarely have a good enough read to be confident calling a bluff, so let them win a few small ones and get it all back when they try one too many times. As a side effect, people may consider you to be a soft touch which will actually increase the size and regularity of bets against you – this is something you want because this brings your ability to slow play to the fore, be nice in your chat too, compliment other players, be the nice guy and make the most of it.

Some mistakes are inevitable, especially in the earlier betting rounds where there is less information available on your opponents. You can’t throw a pair of kings away to every large pre-flop raise, because even though you might be up against pocket aces, more often than not you won’t be. But in many other pre-flop situations, things are more marginal. What you need to do is to control these mistakes so that they are cheap, until you have more information.

As an example. If someone raises your pair of queens $2, you can call and play from there. If someone raises the same hand $25, do you want to gamble this much money with imperfect information? Probably not – a better opportunity will come around if you are patient. Also, of the range of cards that someone will bet this hard for the blinds, or a small pot, how many of those hands are you a clear favourite against? Just because other people want to gamble blind, doesn’t mean you have to do the same. Patience is the name of the game here.

During every playing session, take a look at your worst mistakes and see what effect eliminating them would have had. It will surprise you. I also suspect that you will have lost more money on your top two or three mistakes, than you lost by laying down hands that were winning at the time you folded. If that is not the case, then you have progressed beyond this strategy and probably beyond the table limits this applies to. Asses yourself, and your bank roll, it may be time to move up a gear!