There should be a reason behind everything that you do at the power table. To take that a step further then you should have a logical reason and not just any old reason. For example if it is raised to 3.5bb by the UTG player and you call with the 4c-4d then you need a reason to make the call. A strong online poker player would in all likelihood have a multitude of reasons. They may make the call because of the fact that their opponent had a deep stack and they too had a deep stack.

They may also make the call because their opponent has the tendency to make huge post flop mistakes. But then again they could make the call because their hand strength is decent and they have the potential to make a big hand post flop. Another reason to make the call may be to give the illusion of action and to not be seen as a rock. Whatever the reason is then you need to have reasons behind why you are doing something at the poker table. If you don’t have any reason then you are simply taking actions blindly.

A reason to bluff

Let us take another look at a hand where the player that bluffs has several reasons to do so. Here is a player who calls on the button with 9c-8c against a very aggressive cut-off player. Both the blinds fold and the flop comes 10c-4c-2s and the aggressive player makes a c-bet of around two thirds of the pot. Our hero raises and takes the pot after their opponent folds. In this hand then when asked for what his reasons were to raise on the flop then our hero gave the following.

Firstly his opponent was aggressive and so rarely had the hands that his betting and raising was representing. Secondly there was a broken board with only the flush draw present and so his opponent was unlikely to have connected with the board. Thirdly there was only one opponent to worry about and so that made bluffing much easier. Lastly there was the equity of the flush draw meaning that even if our hero was called then he could still have hit one of the nine outs to make his flush and thus give him an almost certain winning hand.

Are your reasons valid?

Every action that you take in an online poker game will have some sort of meaning attached to it but whatever your reasons are then they have to be strategically valid reasons. For example if you raise before the flop and your opponent calls you and you make a triple barrel bluff that results in your shoving the river then you absolutely need a cast iron reason for why you thought your opponent would fold on the river. This usually means having observed some sort of pattern from your opponent in the past where you have seen them call raises and follow up bets only to then fold on a later street to bigger bets.

If you took a player from say $10 games and put them into a $600 game in online poker then the $10 player may get lucky and they win some money but in no way would the player go into that game with a positive expectation. Whether they realised it or not then they would be –EV and when you are in that situation then you are theoretically losing money anyway whatever you do.
Learning new skills
There is an evolutionary process at work when you first play online poker. Most players take the game slightly seriously and look to gather extra knowledge and data about the game. This leads to a greater understanding and increased confidence which then leads to players either wanting to play for real money or to move up in stakes. The next progression on the ladder is for the player to have moderate success at these low levels.
As soon as a player starts to make money in online poker consistently then this really fuels his desire to play more poker but to also play higher levels. They may join forums and some even pay for coaching in the belief that doing this is sort of like an investment. Well the undeniable fact is that not all investments make money and the investment that you are making may be more long term than what you think. Let us say that you were a successful NL50 player and you made money through rakeback, weak players making mistakes and good tight play playing online poker.
Now if you take these skills into say an online poker NL600 game then they do you little good. Firstly the rakeback that you receive is no longer in sync with the levels that you are playing and being –EV will not be compensated for by rakeback because you will be losing money at a faster rate than you are accumulating rakeback. Secondly your opponents will simply not be making the same errors that your previous opponents were making and tight play is no longer working all by itself. So it then becomes clear that you need to learn new skills in order to succeed at these levels.
More money equals more problems
A NL50 player in online poker who plays good tight solid poker may lose no more than ten buy ins which is $500. But yet really aggressive players at NL600 may drag his variance far away from that and a 30 buy in downswing is likely. Even if this player has the required bankroll then he still doesn’t have the experience of going through a 30 buy in downswing. We simply do not know in advance what those kinds of losses will do to his psyche.
So there is a learning process involved with playing higher levels and it isn’t just about playing for more money. Your opponents will be watching and studying you far more acutely and will adjust to anything that they see you do. Opponents at lower levels simply will not play like this and so it can be quite frustrating when you move up to find that not only are you no longer making money but that you cannot see the reason for it. In most cases it is simply because your old game is no longer working and you need much more sophisticated thought patterns to succeed.

Many players prefer to get extra rest and enter the tournament later down the day. Their 10,000 stack has only dwindled by around T500 which is no more than 5% but the extra two hours rest can be worth more than 5% of their stack. The last thing that you want to do is to go into a tournament feeling tired and jaded at the start because that will only compound and get worse.

An alternate tournament view

However this view flies totally contrary to many other players who think that the early levels are where you can really build a big stack. If you miss the first two hours of a tournament to get more sleep then in effect you have also denied yourself two full hours of play against any fish that may be on your table. Also with the WSOP main event then there are a significant number of fish based on the dynamic of the competition and the fact that a large number of them are online qualifiers. So the alternate view taken by many professionals is that you really need to maximise your time against these players to hopefully build a big stack.

It is hard to say which way is superior but one thing is clear and this is that if you have struggled to sleep the previous night and that extra couple of hours in bed is what you really need then you should probably exercise that option rather than play during the first level in a very poor physical condition. My own opinions are clear on this if you are a novice tournament player. You will need a period of adjustment in a tournament like the main event and this is where the early levels do their job.

Play your way into the poker tournament

It is very difficult to play such an event for the first time and not be affected by everything that is going on around you. There will be a period of acclimatisation for all players that are new to this environment. So if you are going to make a mistake because of this then you are better off making those mistakes when the blinds are very small. You may find that your best course of action is to slowly play your way into the event and fold many of your marginal hands and only play solid hands.

If you get the chance to maybe limp in and see a cheap flop then you should probably take the opportunity but at least you are staying well clear of the mayhem and the loud noise until your head clears. If you want to get the better of fish then it is important that you play hands that trap them in a big hand versus big hand situation. So play suited aces and connectors that make nut straights and hands of that nature.

Let us start this article off with an example. You are playing in an online poker game at no limit Texas hold’em with the stakes at $1-$2. You make it 3.5bb to go with Kd-Kc and everyone folds but the big blind who calls you making the pot 7.5bb. The flop comes Ks-7d-2c and the big blind checks and now you have to decide what to do.

Clearly then if your opponent has merely called your pre-flop raise and checked the flop then they will have nothing a large percentage of the time! You will almost certainly win this pot but the key question is now how much money can you extract from your opponent? There are two key questions that need to be answered in no limit Texas hold’em and the first one is “am I going to win this pot” and “how much am I going to win in this pot”?

How much value can you extract?

With us having top set here on a board with no draws then any c-bet will likely elicit a fold from your opponent. So here you have to decide how to get as much money into the pot as possible. Let me put an obvious question to you. Would you rather win a pot that gave you a $20 profit, a $30 profit or a $40 profit? Clearly you would choose the pot with the $40 profit but the problem comes in how to get the most money into the pot.

In this example then your first problem is in whether to check the flop back after your opponent has checked or to bet. This is not a straight forward problem as you need to know the tendencies of your opponent as well as their likely holding. The likelihood in this example is that if you try to bet on all three streets that your opponent will fold at some stage.

Letting your opponents see the turn

In this hand then letting your opponent see the turn works for you in two ways. Firstly it means that your opponent knows that they will not have to place money into the pot on three successive streets. But it also gives them a chance to catch a piece of the board with them still being a massive dog.

Like for example if they hold say J-10 and the turn comes an eight. This gives them an inside straight draw which they may incorrectly call a bet with on the turn. In fact some aggressive players may look to make a play on you with the equity of the inside straight draw and actually raise you. Likewise if they hold say A-J and an ace comes on the turn. You will extract at least one street of value here and possibly two streets if you make the bets cheap enough. If the flop came something like K-J-8 with two opponents then I would be more inclined to bet the flop than check but this is clearly a far different situation. So it needs pointing out that simply flopping the nuts can often be a complex situation because your goal of making as much money as is feasibly possible is not an easy one.

It is very easy to see poker in a warped and misguided way. There are many reasons as to why this is. Someone for example maybe could not interpret data correctly and this is a common problem when data is read and not heard. For instance if you read a book from someone who had a highly aggressive style of play and you then tried to emulate that in the wrong situations against the wrong players then you are going to get yourself into trouble. Just because a top player at say $25-$50 launches multi-barrel bluffs and stacks off regularly doesn’t mean that you can do the same in your game.

The dynamics of a NL5000 game at six max are worlds away from a full ring game at NL50 and tactics that work in one against one type of player or configuration of players are not going to work in another. This is why taking advice from very good players is sometimes double edged. Tactics and strategies that work at high stakes levels will not necessarily work lower down and vice versa. It is all too easy to slip into a loose-aggressive mode when you read and hear videos from players of this type.

However this is a difficult style to execute and mainly because your swings will be far greater with a LAG style which does not suit the risk profile of many people. But for me one of the biggest failings of certain people is in how their own personality affects their poker game. What you need to remember is that poker is more than a game when looked at in a certain way. It is in fact a microcosm of life itself in so many ways. Imagine someone in everyday life who had a very aggressive personality and who was always telling lies and not believing what people told him.

Usually when people speak they tell the truth. If you were to analyse everything that a person said then even if this person were a constant liar, the fact would remain that a very high percentage of what they said would be the truth and possibly as high as 99% if we want to put a figure on it. But someone who rarely lied may show a figure of 99.99% while someone who never lied (if that person exists) would show 100%. But even the constant liar would still show a very high percentage when his words were examined in detail and lies compared to truths.

This applies to poker perfectly because if you constantly refuse to believe bets and raises then you have something of a problem in believing the truth and strong hands are going to be smacking you in the face constantly when you call bets with weak hands and raise strong hands and get called or raised. Likewise with very aggressive players who are aggressive in everyday life. The chances are that your personality is impacting on your poker game and many people go through their poker lives never realising that. A combination of this and your view of poker being warped is a serious obstacle to overcome.

I will strive to explain what I mean here in this article but let me say this right here and now……better poker players are not always more profitable poker players! There….I have said it…..it could be controversial but it also happens to be a fact of life so you had better live with it. When I refer to “automated play” then I am referring to system based play here and a style of play that is not geared around extracting the most information possible from your opponents.

So in terms of ptbb/100 then you are falling short or are going to be falling short of the best players at your level. However at the lower levels of play then this can be more than offset by one metric and one metric only…..volume! It is clear that automated play will not succeed at higher levels or even at the middle limits. You absolutely must design systems based on careful examination of your opponent’s game and that takes time and work. But at levels where weak players abound then an automatic style will make money even though the ptbb/100 figure is substantially less.

So where is the incentive to “automate” your play? Well the advantage to doing this is that your ptbb/100 figure is unlikely to be reduced by adding tables or to be reduced by much. Sure there will be the odd mis-click and the odd occasion where you time out in what would have been a +EV situation but these are marginal in nature. I have said it before and I will say it again, $100/hr is possible for players who look to play this way and a fifty hour working week equates to a $250k income.

Even if you never come close to this figure then the potential to do so is obvious. It is amazing to think that such a high income and one that would place you in the very elite category of online poker earners could be derived from playing levels as low as say $2-$4 limit and NL50 and NL100. So in no way am I referring to bots here but a style of play that is system based that is almost bot like in nature. The good news is that anyone with the relative experience of playing any form of poker above a certain level has the option to drop down in levels and then look to “automate” their play.

Being able to multi-table

Firstly the fact that you can play more than one table in online poker has a deep and profound impact and not just how you play but also your opponents as well. If you see an opponent who is also active on seven other tables then the chances are that they are playing quite tight ranges from early position and tighter than usual ranges from the later seats. This means that you have to respect their opening raises more and the average online poker player will often be playing tighter than their live game counterpart simply because they are playing more tables on average and boredom becomes less of a factor.

Minimum stacks are common

In an online cash game then players buying in and then playing with a minimum stack is far more common than it is in a live game. So this also has a huge effect on strategy and it is more difficult for deep stacked cash game players to make money when several minimum stack players are active on their table at the same time. However this fact should be offset by the much larger number of online cash games that are available compared to in a live casino.

Outside financial input

Players also get direct access to financial incentives more readily online than they do in a live casino. Like sign up bonuses and rewards for example, this too impacts on how people play poker and many players try and make the attainment of these outside financial incentives their main goal with regards to their online poker strategy. However once again this means that players often stray into tighter play than usual and this can open up opportunities for savvy players who can exploit tight playing rocks by loosening up their ranges in selected situations.

Tilt is easier online

It may sound strange to actually say this but losing your cool is easier to do playing online than it is live. Quite often I have profited from players who received bad beats in an online poker game who then went on tilt and lost several buy ins within a very short space of time. So this is another key difference between live games and online cash games and you need to keep a tight control on your emotions at all times. This is more difficult in online poker for two reasons. Firstly you are seeing hands much faster and so bad beats and outdraws can come very close in succession. When that happens then you simply do not have the same amount of recovery time that you have in live games.

Also you need to consider that playing online poker is done within the seclusion of being on your own with no one around you most of the time. So any indiscipline that you exhibit within that kind of environment is easier to do because you do not have to suffer the personal embarrassment of other people seeing you. So you can see then that online poker and live poker are almost two completely different animals.

Making money in business is a simple process of having more money coming in than what actually goes out. How you arrive at that situation is the complex part. In 888 Poker then your strategy needs to be geared to having more money coming in than what goes out and the difference in these two totals is your profit. When you play games like no limit Texas hold’em then one of the biggest problems that you can face is having hands that face domination.

What is a dominated hand?

Firstly we need to ask and then answer the question of what a dominated hand actually is? Well put quite simply then a “dominated hand” is a hand where your outs are severely restricted because of what your opponent is holding. Like for instance if you held Q-Q and your opponent had K-K. You are now only drawing to two outs and your chances of hitting a queen on the flop are around one in eight on average. If you could change your opponents hand to say A-K then you are almost even money in that situation.

Likewise if you had say A-Q and your opponent had A-K. Now you are only drawing to three outs because if you hit the ace then your opponent makes an even bigger hand. Your hand is dominated even more if you have say A-K and your opponent has A-A. You cannot overtake their hand by hitting your king and the ace may help you but it also gives your opponent the top set.

Avoid the trap before it springs on you

Let us look at an example taken from a NL100 full ring game and you are in middle position with the Kc-Jd. The player that is in the UTG+1 seat makes it $3.50 to go with a 100bb stack. Now it is folded to you and you have to decide what to do. In this situation many players would call the raise but I think that is a big mistake. You can never be confident of your hand whatever you hit on the flop unless you happen to hit a huge flop like with J-J-2 or K-J-J but those sorts of boards are rare.

If you flop a king like with K-9-5 then you are fearing your opponent also having a king but with a larger kicker. You are also losing to A-A as well and if you flop a jack like with J-9-5 then you are still losing to hands like A-Js and A-A,K-K and Q-Q with J-J also being a possibility. Your hand is suffering from reverse implied odds because if your opponent makes a continuation bet on the flop then you will have to call in a heads up situation. Calling the raise and hitting top pair and then folding on the flop is not good poker and this is why calling the pre-flop raise was dubious in the first place. The best online no limit Texas hold’em cash game players identify tricky situations like these and avoid them like the plague. The reason why these people make more money than novices is that they have the ability to not hand back the money that they have earlier won.

Here in this article we will address one of the key issues that strong no limit Texas hold’em cash game players have to master when they switch from either playing tournament poker to cash games or from playing a minimum stack to a maximum buy in.

Hand values normalise

In deep stack no limit Texas hold’em cash games then hand values are not the same as they are in other situations. Let us explore why that is before we move on. If you had a stack of say 10bb and you went all in before the flop with say A-A and your opponent called with a hand like 8c-7c then you would be a huge favourite. In fact you would have a whopping 77% equity according to PokerStove.

However the reason why you have so much equity is because 100% of your stack went in with the aces and you got to enjoy the full extent of your 77% equity with the entirety of your stack. Now let us change that to a deep stack situation where you have 100bb. Let us say that you raise to 3.5bb with your A-A hand and are called by the very same 8c-7c by a player that also has 100bb inside their stack. Now you still have the same 77% equity as before but you have only placed a total of 3.5% of your stack into the middle.

Your opponent has the option of whether or not to continue on when they see the flop. So the fact of the matter is that when the rest of the money goes in which in this case is the remaining 96.5% then your equity will no longer be 77%. If the flop comes Kc-7h-6s then your A-A hand falls immediately to around 25% equity leaving you in quite bad shape. So we can see then that in deep stack online no limit Texas hold’em that a hand like 8-7s is not that much of a dog when the serious money goes in over several streets of action.

The danger of increasing pot size

When you raised before the flop in this hand then you used up 3.5% of your stack size! You were called by a player that made the pot size 8.5bb. Now let us say that they check the flop to you and you bet 5.5bb which is 5.5% of the total that you had before the flop. If you opponent calls you then that makes the pot 19.5bb. Let us then assume that you do not improve on the turn and your opponent checks again and this time you make a bet of 15bb. This is 15% of the amount that you had before the flop and your opponent calls again making the pot 49.5bb.

With the river card to come then you have placed 24bb into the pot which is a total of 24% of your pre-flop stack! So you can see how the pot has escalated here and you had a great edge pre-flop but you only placed $3.50 into the pot with that edge. A further $20.50 has been placed into the middle with one entire betting round to go. If your opponent checks the river and you make a value bet for $25 then you have now placed around half of your stack into the middle with your hand still not having improved.

All winning no limit Texas hold’em poker players understand the importance of the blinds and how critical it is to play well either in the blinds or the three seats to the right of the blinds! We will firstly look at one of the biggest misconceptions in deep stack no limit hold’em and that is the concept of “defending the blinds”. Many strong poker players correctly say that the money that you have already placed in the blinds has gone and that you should forget about it and not worry about having to “defend it”.

This is both true and misleading at the same time. While your primary concern should not be to “defend” your blinds, you cannot allow your expenses to escalate either. It is common knowledge in online no limit Texas hold’em that no player ever shows a profit from the blinds. This is simply because you are forced to place money into the pot with random hands when out of position and this simply cannot be profitable.

Reducing your total expenses in the blinds

Let us say that you are playing in a full ring $1-$2 cash game at no limit Texas hold’em poker. The blinds cost you $3 per orbit and so your total cost of blinds per orbit is 1.5bb which equates to 0.15bb per hand in a ten player cash game. Let us assume that you are dealt roughly 80 hands per hour. This means that you will see roughly eight orbits per hour on your table. This then means that your total outlay of blinds per hour will be 12bb. In reality of course then it will be more than this as players will both sit out and leave the table in all no limit Texas hold’em cash games.

You could easily be paying between 15bb-18bb per hour in cash games and it then becomes evident that within the space of between 6-7 hours that you have dropped an entire buy in. To recoup those losses means having an edge over your opponents in the pots that you play or to make money from the blinds when it is you that has position. You must try and reduce the amount that you lose in the blinds and then try and maximise as much as possible the amounts that you win when you have position.

A two stage process

So in and around the blinds you have two strategic objectives in online poker in games like no limit Texas hold’em poker. When you are in the blinds then your primary goal is to lessen the amount of money that you lose from those two seats. You cannot possibly achieve that goal by folding all the time or only playing back with premium hands. Your other goal when to the right of the blinds is to maximise the amount of money that you make when you have the advantage of position on your side.

The best online poker players in games like no limit hold’em understand just how important the blinds are and how important it is to fight for them correctly. It is not an overreaction to say that in the modern world of online no limit hold’em that your overall results often stem from just how well you do when you are either in the blinds or sitting to their immediate right on the button, in the cut-off or to a lesser extent in the hijack seat.