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Texas Holdem Poker Tips – Expert Strategies
If you’re similar to most poker players, then you likely enjoy spending a lot of time playing poker rather than dedicating yourself to studying your strategy. But you know that you need to study poker whether you’re competing against the best of your opponents or crushing the weak ones.
The key to improving at poker is to learn efficiently, and doing that is surprisingly difficult. One reason is that it’s easy to get stuck in a pile of training materials full of theories and concepts. Another reason is that many training resources are incomplete because they lack the important elements that turn theoretical knowledge outside the table into real results at the table.
These strategies we’ll discuss today emphasize concepts that will directly improve your win rate.
1. Don’t play all flush draws the same way
Technically speaking, all flush draws are nothing more than a hearing hand, but that doesn’t mean they should all be played the same way. Let’s consider these types of flush hearings.
- Nut flush hearings
- 6-high flush hearings
- A single-flush flush hear with a single suit public face (e.g. A♥ 8♥ 3♥ K♥ Q♦ on the flop)
- Flush with a pair
While some flush draws may not seem to have a significant difference in strength, all of these flush draws have different strengths and require different strategies to be used in practice. This concept will be introduced in Lab’s “How to play flush draws” module.
Let’s look at two examples that demonstrate this concept.
Suppose the button player raises first, and we call in the big blind with A♥ 2♥. The flop is K♥ 7♥ 3♠. What should we do?
Given that our hole card has some showdown value, a check-call with the nut flush draw is the advisable course of action.
Now suppose we hold 6♥ 5♥. Since our 6 high card doesn’t have any showdown value, we can make a check-raise semi-bluff since we have a good win rate against our opponent’s range.
Also, by bluffing with our weaker flush hear and calling with our stronger hear, we fight for a fold win with a weak hear (the type of hand that benefits the most from winning the pot straight from the flop round).
2. Overbetting on the river when the public structure is in your favor
Overbetting on the river is a complex but efficient strategy that allows you to maximize the value of the nuts while generating as much value as possible when you are holding a bluff.
Overbetting is particularly effective when the public hand structure is particularly favorable to your range rather than your opponent’s range. A common example of this is when a favorable position player bets consecutively and the river completes an unlikely straight draw listen for the unfavorable position player.
For example, suppose you lead a raise in button position with A♦ 9♣ and the big blind player (120BB chips) calls. The flop is Q♥ J ♠ 6♥, and both you and your opponent check. the turn is 10♠, the big blind player bets, and you call with a two-sided straight draw. The final river card is 5♦ and the big blind player bets again.
The river round is a perfect occasion to make an over-raise, because you might get the nut straight (you should almost always play AK this way) and your opponent is unlikely to get the nut straight (if he got AK, he would have made a 3bet preflop). When you do play this way with AK and get called, you will win a huge under pot. Also, you can make over raises with many bluffs and put your opponent in a very tough spot.
Doug breaks down dozens of examples of proven overbetting strategies in a module dedicated to this concept so you can confidently overbet in a variety of situations.
3. Reducing your sustained bets in multi-bet situations
In Texas Hold’em, multi-bet situations are some of the most error-prone. To address this issue, Ryan and Doug have created a module dedicated to multiplayer pot play.
One of the most common problems that many players (even professional players) make – making too big a continuation bet on the flop ring against two or more players. There are two obvious benefits to using a smaller continuation betting scale.
- You force your opponent to give up the pot with a cheap price.
- You can squeeze value out of marginal suited hands (hands that you would feel uncomfortable betting larger amounts on).
For example, let’s say you raise in CO position with A♠ A♥ and get two calls: the button player and the big blind player. The flop is 10♣ 9♣ 8♣, both opponents check, and it’s your turn to act.
Making a normal-sized bet with a pair on this flop is extremely risky, considering that many of your opponents’ ranges have countered your AA. But checking isn’t an attractive option either, as the turn is full of turn cards that will scare you.
Therefore, making a small bet is the perfect option: you chase away some cards with some winnings, like K♠ Q♠ and 6♣ 6♦, and it’s also easier to squeeze multi-street value out of a hand like K♠ 10♠ (assuming the subsequent public cards are completely harmless).
