Online poker is a game that takes time to get used to, but it is hardly impossible to get comfortable. There are some finer dynamics that you will learn in time, usually strategy oriented, while the basics of online poker are easy to adapt to.

In this article we will point out some of the best live and online poker tournament strategy tips you can use to improve your game as quickly as possible. Tip 1: Play The Right Starting Hands Whether it be lack of patience, or an unfamiliarity with opening ranges, many tournament poker players still open too wide. 8 Live Poker Tips That Will Put More Cash in Your Pocket Despite sharing the same rules, live poker games are quite a bit different than their online counterparts. Whether it is the excessive limping or constant table talk, live poker presents unique variables which may be unfamiliar to online regulars.

Basic fundamentals like finding the top poker bonus can increase your bankroll and improve your overall poker experience, and the best part is that it takes little to no effort whatsoever. New online players might neglect some of the “pre-game” steps for online poker, but there is no doubt that they are critical to your success.

General Tips

Cash Poker Strategy Tips Cheat

1. Have a Bankroll

Having a bankroll is a necessary step to take whether you are playing live poker or online poker. If you do not maintain and control your bankroll, you can not realistically consider yourself a serious player. Playing without a bankroll is like driving a car without insurance or a license, and on the opposite side of the road. You might be able to get away with it for a little while, but eventually you will end up crashing and burning.

The proper bankroll that you need will vary from game to game. Micro stakes players need 20+ buy-ins, while small stakes heads up players often times carry closer to 100 buy-ins. Your exact bankroll is going to ultimately be decided by you. There are guidelines that you can, and should, follow, but there is nothing that is set in stone.

2. Get the Maximum Bonus

Earning the maximum deposit bonus is one of the easiest ways to ensure that you are making the most “free money” as possible. There is nothing involved with earning a top deposit bonus other than shopping around. Depending on where you live (US vs. non-US), you will have different options available to you. As a general rule of thumb, however, the poker sites that accept US players tend to offer the biggest bonuses. Read the bonus terms carefully before you sign up and deposit, though, because some bonuses are more difficult to clear than others.

3. Choose a Good Site

There is no shortage of shady poker sites out there. If you don’t shop around for a reputable site there is a shot that you will wind up losing your money in the end, which can be a problem with some poker sites. No, there isn’t a major risk that you will be swindled out of your deposits, but it always remains a possibility. Some networks have a better overall reputation than others, and this will make it safer to play at these select sites. In the end, the best plan of action is to simply join a site that you have already heard of. You can’t really go wrong if you join a site that has tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of players. The smaller and newer the poker room, the bigger the inherent risk is of getting cheated.

4. Buy Poker Software

Poker software is a foreign concept to even some of the most experienced online players. I guess if you want to say the “main” software people know is Poker Tracker because it has the most stats on other players. What poker software does is allow you to track your progress on the tables. These programs will tell you everything from how frequently you get involved in pots, to how often you raise, to your tendency to re-raise and fold pre-flop. In short, there isn’t a whole lot that these programs can’t do. The benefit to poker software is not only that you can analyze your own play, but you can also gauge how your opponents play. Using other players’ statistics, a HUD (heads up display) will tell you exactly how a certain player tends to approach the game. These HUDs are shown as boxes over a players name at the table, and it will give you a quick snapshot of how they play. The quick stats will tell you how aggressive the player is, how many hands they like to play, and how many hands of data you have on them. You also have the ability to expand the data and find out even more information. For an investment of less than $100, this software will make a world of difference.

5. Join Poker Forums

Joining poker forums is one of the best ways to get familiar with the online poker scene. Not only will forums allow you to quickly adapt to the online world, but it is also a great way to improve your strategy at the tables. Many of today’s top poker players learned a lot at popular poker forums like TwoPlusTwo.com. It costs nothing to join almost any of the major poker forums, and they will teach you infinite valuable tips, tricks, and strategy. Getting serious about online poker means that you should start participating at the forums, whether it means reading, posting, or a combination of the two.

Strategy Tips

6. Never Open Limp

Never open limp is quite the basic piece of strategical advice. The basis for this guideline is that weak play is almost always bad play. If a hand was worth limping with, it was probably also worth raising with. Instead of tipping the advantage in your opponents’ favor, make a raise pre-flop and take the initiative. It will win you a number of pots pre-flop, and it will allow you to push the action post-flop. Limp folding and even limp calling pre-flop is a fantastic way to burn through your money.

7. Be Aggressive

Aggressive play builds upon the sixth tip of never open limping. Generally aggressive play has been adapted by almost all of the best players in the world. In fact, all of the top players know how to effectively navigate an aggressive style of play. One of the few big name cash game players who doesn’t play aggressively is Phil Hellmuth, and everyone knows how much he struggles. Scared money seldom makes money, and this is absolutely true in poker.

8. Make Folds

A tendency of online players is to see way too many showdowns. Sometimes it is best to just let go of your hand. There is a natural inclination to call off bets to see if maybe, just maybe you happen to have the best hand, but it is just not worth it in the long run. Players who call down with super weak hands are usually holding what are known as bluff catchers. A bluff catcher is the type of hand that will only be able to beat a complete bluff. There will be occasional spots where a bluff makes a lot of sense, but your opponent is going to have it more often than not. It feels great to pick off a big bluff but it feels a lot worse to make a bad call.

9. Pick Bluffs Selectively

Just as making a lot of folds is pertinent, so to is attempting well placed bluffs. Calling off light and making tons of bluffs is the perfect recipe for failure. Picking good spots for a bluff is dependent on a handful of variables. For example, bluffing a super tight player on the river after they called two streets is probably not a good idea. By contrast, bluffing a calling station is even worse. If you are going to run a bluff, you should have a feel for how your opponent plays and what types of hands they are likely to be holding. If you can’t figure these two things out, passing up on bluffing is generally your best plan.

10. Play Pots in Position

Playing pots in position is one of the easiest ways to win the most with your big hands and lose the least with your weak hands. If you think about it, this is the general premise behind all of poker. Position allows you to play hands comfortably, no matter what you have pre-flop or post-flop. Out of position pots can certainly be profitable as well, but you should be calling with weaker hands in position, and stronger hands out of position. For every bit of position that you have, your overall hand strength is equally improved.

Many people struggle to break through in a big way in small stakes cash games. Perhaps they squeak by with break-even results or they even become minor winners. But most people want to win big. Indeed, for many that is the primary reason for playing the game.

The key to accomplishing that goal is to learn how to exploit the small edges most other people do not know about or do not apply often enough. In this article I am going to discuss five simple strategy tips that will help increase your profit margins in low stakes cash games.

1. Steal the Blinds

Most people think they do a good job of stealing the blinds, but many still pass up a lot of golden opportunities to do so. It is simply a fact that the button and the cutoff will be by far the most profitable seats for you at the poker table. Why on earth, then, would you not exploit the heck out of this when it is folded to you in these positions?

In my opinion, you can easily get away with stealing the blinds with 30% or even 40% of your hands in your typically passive low stakes cash games, live or online. Most opponents will simply let you take it down, only three-betting you if they happen to have a strong hand. Or even better, they will flat your steal attempt from out of position and then you can take down an even bigger pot with a simple continuation bet on the flop and/or turn.

The bottom line is that stealing the blinds is a highly effective way to increase your profit in small stakes cash games. Make sure that you are raising with anything that is even remotely playable.

Cash Poker Strategy Tips Tricks

2. Double-Barrel

Another effective strategy in passive low stakes cash games is to continuation bet the flop and then follow it up again on the turn. This is also referred to as a “double-barrel.”

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The reason why this strategy is so effective is because many people at these stakes play no-limit cash games as if they were fixed-limit games. That is, they will call you on the flop but if you can follow it up on the turn with another bet, then they will assume that you are serious and let you have the pot.

This is a very effective strategy to use in particular against weak-tight opponents who won’t call you down with weak pairs or draws. Some players will even fold a small overpair if you continue to apply the pressure like this! Target these players more often by making another continuation bet on the turn.

3. Three-Bet Light

One of my favorite strategies against these same weak-tight opponents is to three-bet them light before the flop. By three-bet light I mean rereaise their open raise with a bunch of hands that aren’t quite premium — e.g., suited connectors, suited aces, and small pairs. I never do it with total junk. I always want to have some equity.

I will also do it more often when I am in position. This allows me to control the pace of the hand should they decide to call. This also allows me to get more value bets in if I manage to hit the board or to bluff if I feel like they aren’t confident about their hand.

4. Bluff the River

Once again the target here are the weak-tight opponents you see everywhere these days in small stakes cash games, especially online. Many of the players in this category do not like to go to showdown without a strong hand.

If you’re online and using a HUD, the WTSD% or “Went to Showdown” stat is crucial here. If an opponent is in the low 20s or less, then that is exactly the kind of player I want to be bluffing against more on the river.

It is important not to do it every time, though, and it is also important to make sure that your line makes some sense before firing that river bluff. By this I mean that given your previous actions in the hand, you want to find spots in which you could easily show up with several good made hands as well.

The river is often a spot where there is some big value to be made. Don’t just give up on the pot if you are against one of these nitty types who you think might fold. If you know that you cannot win at showdown, then sometimes you have very little to lose and everything to gain by making a bet.

5. Raise With Your Draws

One final way to open up your game and exploit the tendencies of weak opponents in particular is to play your draws fast. I mean significant draws such open-ended straight draws (8 outs), flush draws (9 outs), and everything better.

You already have plenty of equity with these hands, so it is a great strategy to play them like they are the nuts a little more often. One of my favorite ways to do this is simply to raise the flop and then bet any turn. This line puts a tremendous amount of pressure on opponents and really forces them to have a real hand in order to continue.

Once again, I will be targeting the weak-tight players with this play, a consideration that goes for pretty much every other strategy discussed in this article as well. There are still plenty of calling stations at the lower stakes and it is not a good idea to start bluffing up a storm against them.

Final Thoughts

The difference between the biggest winners and everybody else at any limit often boils down to how effectively the winning players exploit the smaller edges. And really what this means is taking down the smaller pots over which nobody else truly wants to fight.

Most players know how to play pocket aces before the flop or how to proceed after flopping a set. And everybody gets dealt these big hands in equal frequencies in the long run.

What the biggest winners do better than everybody else is win more than their fair share of the pots with their mediocre or even total junk hands. They do this by applying pressure in some of the key spots listed in this article.

Nathan “BlackRain79” Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books, Crushing the Microstakes and Modern Small Stakes. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.

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