No-Limit Texas Hold'em Tournament Strategy- Improving Your Game
No-Limit Texas Hold'em is a game unlike any other game you have played in your life. The skill required to be average is relatively simple. Taking your game to the next level requires to you unlearn all of the established strategy at the previous level.
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Starting hand requirements and pot odds literally go out the window when you are at the higher level. Most books will never detail higher level poker because most people simply won't understand it. In order to become a great player, you have to take a lot more chances than the average tight-aggressisve tournament player.
It is possible to win tournaments by playing tight conservative poker, but this is not the optimal strategy. The players who have the most success are picking up many uncontested pots. The best players play loose aggressive and could have any two cards at any time. They will call out of position with cards the books tell you is trash. They will raise with any two cards and win many pots. The higher level of poker requires that you forget about your own cards. Rather than knowing how to play each hand, you are trying to figure out how to play each opponent.
When you can play your opponent, your hand doesn't really matter. You are trying to find weaknesses within your opponent's strategy that you can exploit. Against a calling station, you simply play tight aggressive poker. Against a good player, you can find spots where it is tough for him to make a call. Many players are unable to make tough calls for the remainder of their chips. Your willingness to push your opponent off marginal hands is an extra edge that you can exploit.
Focusing on your opponent's tendencies may take some time to get used to. It is very mentally draining at first and requires a lot of trust in your reads. At first, you will be losing a lot of pots but stick with it. Eventually your reads will be automatic and it will be like playing your opponents with their hands face up.
Checking in Poker
I think checking is one of the most important actions in a poker game. Almost everyone dismisses another player’s check. Keeping this mind can be very helpful when playing. There are three reasons that someone checks.
They don’t have anything
They want to find out what others have
They want to trap someoneWay too often it is only number 1, you simply check every time you have a bad or marginal hand. Checking is of course most powerful when used in combination with a preceding or a subsequent bet. Someone who an overwhelming majority of the time that check/folds, is losing out on using a check to their advantage. About 70 to 80 percent of all your hands during a game are hands you will fold, both pre or post flop (Unless you’re an aggressive player, all you Gus Hansen’s of the world). If you check and fold all these hands, any good player will know to simply leave you alone when you do something other then fold after a check. You have to mix up this majority with check/raises, and check/calls. Mixing up your checks in this manner requires bluffing. Bluffing is an article all by itself but combining it with checking is extremely useful. We all want to slow play our monsters, checking the turn to trap the player and raise them after they bet. The problem with this, aside from getting that monster hand at the right time, is all players know about the check/raise. So use the check/raise in a bluff. Bluffing is hard enough to do, if you simply bet big in first position you might get your bluff called, almost every hand someone bets, so bluffing like that is simply about timing, hoping that particular hand you bluff that no one else has anything. But if you combine the bluff with a check/raise, this will have a greater effect on other players because it is less common.Gathering info; the other purpose of the check is to try to find out what others have. This is very common after the flop. For example 3 or 4 people are still in the hand and the flop comes, and everyone checks. This is extremely common in online games, it is difficult “reading” players when playing online but a check can be very informative. It stands to reason (in a large majority of the cases) that they are checking because their hand is a bust. You check in first position and everyone checks, the turn comes, come out firing, unless the turn card drastically changes the community cards such as the fourth card of the same suit or an easy straight possibility, even if a player calls you or you get caught with another player check raising you, you’ve lost your bet, but you’ve gained two great advantages. You’ve shown the other players you don’t just check bad hands, and if you slow play a hand, other players won’t know.
They don’t have anything
They want to find out what others have
They want to trap someoneWay too often it is only number 1, you simply check every time you have a bad or marginal hand. Checking is of course most powerful when used in combination with a preceding or a subsequent bet. Someone who an overwhelming majority of the time that check/folds, is losing out on using a check to their advantage. About 70 to 80 percent of all your hands during a game are hands you will fold, both pre or post flop (Unless you’re an aggressive player, all you Gus Hansen’s of the world). If you check and fold all these hands, any good player will know to simply leave you alone when you do something other then fold after a check. You have to mix up this majority with check/raises, and check/calls. Mixing up your checks in this manner requires bluffing. Bluffing is an article all by itself but combining it with checking is extremely useful. We all want to slow play our monsters, checking the turn to trap the player and raise them after they bet. The problem with this, aside from getting that monster hand at the right time, is all players know about the check/raise. So use the check/raise in a bluff. Bluffing is hard enough to do, if you simply bet big in first position you might get your bluff called, almost every hand someone bets, so bluffing like that is simply about timing, hoping that particular hand you bluff that no one else has anything. But if you combine the bluff with a check/raise, this will have a greater effect on other players because it is less common.Gathering info; the other purpose of the check is to try to find out what others have. This is very common after the flop. For example 3 or 4 people are still in the hand and the flop comes, and everyone checks. This is extremely common in online games, it is difficult “reading” players when playing online but a check can be very informative. It stands to reason (in a large majority of the cases) that they are checking because their hand is a bust. You check in first position and everyone checks, the turn comes, come out firing, unless the turn card drastically changes the community cards such as the fourth card of the same suit or an easy straight possibility, even if a player calls you or you get caught with another player check raising you, you’ve lost your bet, but you’ve gained two great advantages. You’ve shown the other players you don’t just check bad hands, and if you slow play a hand, other players won’t know.
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Avoiding Bad Beats
Avoiding bad beats is one of the most important skills to learn in poker.
Poker players at any level just hate it when they get a bad beat, they are are the most annoying and frustrating hands in the game!
So what are they, and more importantly, how can you go about avoiding bad beats?
Well a bad beat is when you are overwhelming favorite to win a hand - but still lose. It really is a sickener as often you can lose all your chips and go out of the game on a bad beat, just because you were convinced you had the hand won.
There are two types of bad beat in the game of Texas Holdem poker - the type that you can't really do anything about and the type that can be avoided.
Here's a scenario for the first type:
You've got a pair of aces, the best possible starting hand while your only opponent left in the betting is holding a pair of fours. The flop comes A Q 4 and your opponent goes all-in. You call, you've got the best possible hand at that point. The turn is a 4 and you don't catch your ace on the river, you've just lost to four of a kind.
In this case you could not have done anything about it. There is no way you could fold your triple aces, you had the best possible hand. If you fold that you might as well take up knitting!
Here's how the second (avoidable) type of bad beat plays out:
You've got A Q and again only you and MrX are involved in the betting. This time he's low on chips and is going all in with J 9 out of desperation. You decide to call as you've got a good chance of boosting your chips and you feel he doesn't have a hand. Flop is 10 7 2 and he hits his 8 on the turn for a straight.
So how can you go about avoiding bad beats like these? Firstly you need to realize that in online poker tournaments the instances of bad beats are much higher than in real life poker in a casino or home poker game.
There are several reasons for this, but the botom line is that it comes down to the online poker player being a different breed. The average online player is far more likely to play a hand and is far more likely to be distracted by other games he's playing at the same time, or the TV, or the kids or whatever.
You need to counter this by playing a very tight poker game. Only play VERY big hands and don't get involved in any hand with more than three callers. Even pocket aces have only a slightly better than 50% chance of winning against three opponents.
So stay tight, and when you do hit a hand, bet big. You want to limit your opponents as much as possible so make a big raise and get them to fold. Avoiding bad beats is a skill that it definitely pays to learn.
Pocket Kings and Queens are great to be dealt preflop in hold’em. They’re made hands and you’ve got a big pair already, even if you don’t improve. Unfortunately, they’re also very vulnerable hands that can get you into a lot of trouble. For this reason, you should very rarely, if ever, slowplay these two pocket pairs. You’re just asking your opponents to take your money if you do.
Suppose you get dealt Q-Q in third position. Naturally, you’re going to play the hand, but how should you play it? In a no-limit cash game, suppose you just smooth call the minimum bet. Much to your disappointment, no one raises the pot behind you so you can reraise. Instead, 4 other players call the minimum bet and both blinds stay in. The flop comes down J-10-6 with two clubs. With an overpair to the board, you feel pretty confident right now. There are 7 players in the pot who’ve come in on the cheap. The small blind checks and the big blind makes a reasonable bet.
You raise him, and everyone folds to the button who goes all-in. The big blind calls the all-in bet and action is back to you. This is a terrible situation for you, because while you have an overpair to the board, what could these guys possibly have to make that large of a bet? You nervously call. The big blind turns over 10-6 offsuit for two pair, and the buttons turns over the 5-3, both clubs on a flush draw. The turn brings a K of hearts, and the river a 2 of clubs. The button rakes in the massive pot with his completed flush.
This type of hand is very common, especially in online poker. When you allow that many players to come in for the minimum bet, you’re going to see all sorts of garbage hands stay with the hand. You can’t even really fault the guy with the 5-3 – he’s getting great pot odds to see a flop. With 7 players seeing a flop of two more suited cards, you can be reasonably sure that at least one opponent has two more of them. Someone else could have a set or two pair. And sometimes you’ll run into opponents who have slowplayed pocket pairs even bigger than yours!
The lesson is: you’re not going to know where you stand with Q-Q or K-K unless you raise preflop! When you raise, you’re going to thin the field out and those trash hands are going to think twice about staying in the hand. Raise it enough, and only the complete idiots and premium hands will stay with you. Fire in a pot-sized raise from any position and see what happens. If you’re in early position and get reraised, slow it down a little. With Q-Q, you’ll probably just want to call the reraise and see a flop. He could have A-K, K-K, or A-A. When you have K-K, you can consider putting all your chips in at this point. K-K is a little safer because the only way you’re beat at this point is if your opponent is holding Aces.
Be very careful on the flop with these two pocket pairs. Invariably, you’re going to see an Ace come on the flop all too often when you have pocket Kings. What are you going to do? Since you raised preflop, your opponent is likely to have called with big cards, perhaps an Ace-high hand. If you’re first to act after the flop, bet a small amount with the intent of getting more information. If he raises you with any authority, you should probably fold.
You’re also going to run into times where you have Q-Q or K-K and end up all-in against A-A. It seems to happen a lot because these are hands that people are willing to go all-in with preflop. The few times that these hands are dealt together, both opponents are usually going to end up all-in. One quick note to consider about Q-Q: if you make a standard raise and get reraised all-in, do you think that your opponent is likely to have done that with a worse hand than Q-Q? If not, throw your hand away.
Play your Queens and Kings right: raise ‘em hard preflop, and be willing to let them go if you get too much action for your liking or the flop brings an overcard.
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