Online Texas Holdem Strategy Guide

The ways a lot of people justify the hands they choose to play can be summed up in two words – hilariously awesome. We’ve heard people mention that they play hands because they’re their favorite hands, because the hands have some really cool and fun names, or that they saw someone else do this, so it had to be smart. These are not just bad justifications; they’re some of the worst. The only thing that is worse (that we do see) is people that have absolutely no justification for why they play the hands they play.

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Luckily, we’re going to enter the judgment-free zone and walk you through everything you need to know about starting hand requirements and how to adjust them accordingly to changing conditions.

Why Are Starting Hands Important?

The first decision you’ll make in any poker hand is whether you’re going to play a hand or fold it. Choosing your starting hands is your first opportunity to make a correct decision or make a big mistake. If you choose wisely, you’ll be setting yourself up much better for success through the rest of the hand. More importantly, though, if you make a mistake, you could be setting yourself up for potential disaster.

Don’t Call All the Time. Most new players struggle with calling too much when they are just getting. Intermediate Level Texas Hold em Poker Advice. Once the foundation for Texas Hold em strategy has been laid, players can begin exploring more difficult concepts in poker that are designed to transform a poker player into a winning one. Here, players will learn of specific tactics that will help them turn a profit at the poker tables. Pot Control – Establishing and maintaining control of the pot is one of the best.

Beginners Guide to No-Limit Texas Hold'em. Strategy Guide for No-Limit Texas Hold'em (Cash Game) IntroductionKey Advice and Common MistakesPre-Flop PlayFlop PlaySpecific Holdings at Flop PlayOn the 28 minutes to read. The strategy is your overall game plan. There are basically 5 strategic areas that you should focus your attention on while you’re playing Texas Hold'em cash games. Tournament strategy for Texas Hold’em differs considerably from cash game strategy, and there are a host of other tips that determine how to play in tourneys.

Texas Holdem Betting Strategy

There are a lot of situations where, if you pick to play the wrong hands pre-flop, you’re going to set yourself up to have the second-best hand, which means it will be hard to fold and won’t ever win you the pot. Too often, people disregard this stage of the hand, as the pots usually aren’t huge until later streets. This is a big, big mistake, and we commend you for taking the time to start at the beginning. Your wallet and your poker career will be very thankful.

Building Ranges

If you were coming here hoping to find a chart that told you exactly what to play from what position, you’re going to be disappointed. While we would love to give you something like that, we feel that it sets you on the wrong course for your game. If you use fixed sets of cards (known as ranges) from each position and disregard table and game conditions, you’re going to be way too rigid to be profitable.

What we’d like to do is walk you through some general thoughts and spend more time talking about the adjustments you should make based on changing conditions. If you Google starting-hand charts, you’re going to find hundreds of examples that are going to be relatively the same. These are a nice starting point, but you need to be well aware that these ranges need to be fluid and ever-changing.

The general idea of these charts will be the following (for a 9 or 10 handed table): In early position, you’re going to want to only play premium hands. This would be hands like 88+ (this means 88 and anything similar that’s stronger, so 88, 99, 1010, JJ, QQ, KK, and AA), AJs+ (this means the same thing, except the small ‘s’ refers to only suited cards, so AJ suited, AQ suited, and AK suited), and AQo+ (this means the same, except the small ‘o’ means offsuit, so AQ off-suit and AK off-suit). We will be using this way of describing hand ranges for the rest of this guide.

In middle position, the charts will tell you to loosen your range up and play more hands. That range is usually something like 22+, A9s+, and A10o+.

In late position, the charts will tell you to open up your range a lot wider to include any pair, any ace, any two broadway cards, suited connectors, and suited kings.

The hands that you defend or play with out of the blinds will vary quite a bit based on the charts that you look at. This is because it’s so dependent on whether or not you are facing a raise, where the raise is coming from, what type of player it’s coming from, and how big the raise is.

This should give you a general idea of what is technically correct poker. You can go much further in depth by using programs and software and fully mapping out what you want your starting ranges to be. Once you have that dialed in, the next thing that you’re going to need to be aware of is how to adjust these ranges based on changing conditions at the table. We’re now going to walk you through as much of this as possible.

Number of Players at the Table

One of the biggest things that people forget to adjust for is how many players are at the table. They’ll usually adjust for this if they are playing a dedicated 6-max (6 people) table, but they will rarely pay attention to this if they are playing a full table that loses some players. Our general ranges we listed above are ones that are designed for a 9- or 10-person table. But what happens if there are 8 people at the table? Or 7? Or 6? Or even less?

The answer is that you need to make adjustments. Let’s first talk about more specifically what we mean when we talk about early position, middle position, and late position. Early position at a full table (9-handed) usually refers to the first three people to act. These are usually known as Seat 1, Seat 2, and Seat 3. Middle position refers to the next two people to act, who are Seat 4 and Seat 5. Late position refers to Seat 6 and Seat 7, who are the cut-off and the button. The remaining two players at the table, in Seat 8 and Seat 9, are the small and big blind.

What happens when there are only six people at the table? Does the person two over from the button become the new early position? Technically, they are the new early position; however, in relation to starting hand ranges, they are not. The best and easiest strategy in these situations is to assume that the early seats are missing. So, you’d imagine that Seat 1, Seat 2, and Seat 3 are gone. This means that, even though you are the first to act, you will play your ranges as if you are Seat 4.

People LOVE to over-adjust for six-handed tables. They assume that they have to start playing insane and play every hand under the sun. In reality, everything works the same as if you were in middle position. You have the exact same number of people behind you left to act. You should treat it as if the first three players from a full table had already folded.

If you’re at a five-handed table and you’re first to act pre-flop, treat it as if the first four players already folded and you are in Seat 5 (even though you will be referred to by others as Seat 1). This strategy ensures that you don’t have to learn a ton of different ranges for each number of people at the table.

Basically, if you’re the button, it does not matter how many players are at the table. Your opening range should be the same as it would be at a nine-handed table. If you’re the cut-off, your ranges should be the same, and so on and so forth. Yes, you will have to adjust if the table is playing differently and they are adjusting incorrectly, but in a complete vacuum, it is the same.

The Activeness and Difficulty of the Table

One of the biggest things that will affect your starting hand ranges is the activity of the table, and the difficulty of your opponents left to act behind you. Let’s dive right into it. If the table is playing very tight and passive, you can look to open up your opening ranges. This means that you can justify opening more hands than you normally would, because you’re not receiving the normal resistance that you should. On the flip side of the coin, if the table is playing very loosely and aggressively, then you may want to look to tighten up your opening ranges.

The idea here is to do the opposite of what the rest of the table is doing. If they’re crazy loose, then there’s no reason to mix it up with marginal hands. They’re going to call and pay you off when you have premium hands, so why not just wait them out?

Regarding adjusting to the difficulty of opponents, this is something that will be up to your personal preference. In general, if the opponents behind you are tougher, you’re going to want to tighten up your opening ranges. This is because they’re probably going to be looking to play back at you quite a bit, and you will be building pots out of position against good players.

On the flip side, if the players behind you are weak and not likely to play back at you, you can look to get involved in some more pots. You should feel more comfortable playing weaker opponents out of position.

Now, as we said, this part is up to your personal preference. Some players love to go to war with better players. They have no problem getting into a big leveling war, and they live for that. In fact, some are good enough that they do well in those situations. For us, we prefer to get our chips from the easier sources, and don’t feel the need to flex our ego. If you’re all about showing off against the good players, then by all means, don’t let us stop you. Just keep in mind that it is not something that we advise you do.

Texas Holdem Tips

The Conditions of the Situation

In cash game poker, this is not going to be as big of an issue as it is with tournament poker. We will talk about both, though. It’s important that you are always aware of the conditions of the current poker situation you are in. This can have a big effect on how other people choose to play. As we’ve mentioned, you need to be adjusting your ranges based on how other people at the table are playing.

Let’s look at a cash game example first. Let’s say it’s the end of the night and a game is about to break. Several players at the table are stuck and looking to get even. How do you think this is going to affect their pre-flop ranges? Well, we can tell you that they’re going to be calling and raising extremely lightly. They’re going to be trying to force a chance for them to double up or get some of their losses back.

In these situations, you need to know how to react accordingly. You can either tighten down your range, as you know things are going to get crazy, or you can choose to loosen your range a little bit, knowing that you’re much more likely to have them dominated. You can only do this if you’re on your toes and aware of the current situation.

In tournaments, this becomes a lot more prevalent around the bubble of a tournament. Players will either tighten up a ton to try and squeak into the money, or will try to loosen up to take advantage of the tighter players. You need to pay attention and be aware of this and choose how you plan to adjust your pre-flop ranges.

The reason we say this is more important in tournament poker is because the conditions are always going to be changing. As you get into the money, people will begin to play differently as you approach bigger money jumps and the bubble. Being aware of this can present some great opportunities for you to gather some valuable chips and give yourself a better shot at winning the tournament.

Remember, These Are Opening Ranges

This is something we probably should have pointed out sooner, but better late than never. These ranges all have to do with you being the first person to enter the pot. They are assuming that no one else has limped in or has opened the pot for a raise.

If someone else has come in for a raise, you need to assess what you think they are holding. If you feel that they’ve got a better hand, then you need to get rid of your cards, unless you have a speculative hand that you think you can crack them with. Discussing pre-flop calling/3-bet/4-bet/limping ranges is something that we will get into in more depth in later sections of our strategy section.

For now, as a general rule of thumb, make sure that you are calling with better hands than you are opening with. It is much better to open with a looser hand than it is to be calling a raise with it. Again, we will go much more into this as we get deeper into the strategy section, but we want you to have a general idea of how to get started. Take the ranges we’ve given you, tighten them up quite a bit, and use those as your calling ranges pre-flop. This is drastically oversimplified, but will definitely get you started until we move into the more advanced concepts.

Things That AREN’T Standard

Just because something is the right thing to do does not mean that everyone else is going to be doing “the right thing.” It also does not mean that it’s always the right thing for you to do. There are times where you’re going to have to mix up your pre-flop starting ranges to make sure that you don’t become too predictable. This is known as balancing your range.

If someone knows that you only play x, y, and z from early position, it’s going to be hard for you to get action. What you’ll have to do is occasionally mix in some hands that are not in the standard guidelines so that your opponents know that you’re capable of getting frisky with more than just premium hands. Once they know you aren’t always by-the-book, you become much tougher to play against.

For example, in the early days of poker, if someone raised from under the gun (Seat 1), you knew that 99% of the time they had a super-premium hand. People started noticing this and started trying to exploit it. They began opening with hands like suited connectors from under the gun. People were giving them credit for monster hands and allowing them to run over the table. They also never gave them credit for having suited connectors, which allowed them to win some big pots with a disguised hand.

Obviously, this does not fall anywhere on the range considerations we mentioned. It’s not standard. But it allowed players to win some big pots, steal some more pots, and also get paid when they had premium hands from under the gun. Balancing your range is not that important in tournaments, as you aren’t playing the same people as often, but it becomes extremely important in cash games where you’re playing against the same opponents over and over again.

Putting It All Together

This should be a good primer for you on pre-flop opening ranges and how to adjust according to the current conditions. This may take a while for you to get the hang of, but once you do, it’s going to be a huge piece for the success of your game. Just remember to not turn into a robot. Remember that pre-flop ranges (or all ranges, for that matter) should be somewhat fluid. If you’re ever unsure on a hand, opt for the fold for now. Folding is a much smaller and less costly mistake than getting involved in a hand with cards you shouldn’t be.

Take your time with this, and practice will help a lot. Remember, just because you know what is right does not mean that everyone else does. If you see people winning pots with weird hands that you know are wrong, don’t let that affect the way you play. Take note that it is how they play, but don’t let it ruin your game.

Welcome to our fully dedicated Texas Hold’em strategy section! This expansive collection of guides was put together by several highly-successful, past and present, professional poker players. Not only have these players been crushing the games for years, but they have extensive experience teaching and instructing students of all levels professionally. Their wealth of knowledge coupled with their experience in teaching makes for a real treat for you.

Normally, you’d have to pay for this kind of specific and valuable information. We’re offering it to you completely free of charge. The information is broken up into different sections based on skill level and specifically what you might be looking for. If you’re completely brand new to the game and don’t even know how to play, that’s ok! Take a minute and check out our complete Texas Hold’em guide. You can always come back and join us here when you’re ready to rock and roll.

Texas Holdem Hands Chart

For those of you that are ready, let’s dive into the strategy. If you are a newer player or not sure where the leaks in your game are, we recommend starting at the top of the guide and working your way through the entire thing. Just because something is labeled beginner or fundamental does not mean that it does not have some advanced strategy content sprinkled in. Texas Hold’em is a game that requires strong fundamentals if you have any dreams of ever being the best.

If you’re looking for specific information, we’ve added some convenient links here to the specific sections below. Click on the section you are looking for, and you will be taken to the information dedicated to that topic.

Let’s get the cards in the air and start learning how to crush Texas Hold’em.

Things You Must Know First

Regardless of your skill level, there are a few things that you must know before you get started building or retooling your Texas Hold’em poker game. In fact, the more skilled you are, the more important some of these tips are going to be to get the most out of your experience learning with us. Remember, we are not here to make you feel silly or look down on you. We are here to help you improve your game as much as possible.

Check Your Ego, Cash Your Checks

If you think you are the best and refuse to acknowledge that you can learn more and improve, you are doomed never to become a better player. Even the best players in the world admit that they need to be learning and growing their game constantly. They won’t refuse to listen to advice or suggestions because they think someone is a worse player than them. They will use their judgment on whether or not advice is important, but they are always open to improving.

You need to be the same way. Put your ego down at the door and open yourself up to changing your game. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you were doing something wrong or that there is a better way to do it. It does not make you any less of a poker player. What will make you seem like less of a poker player is if you start to struggle to beat the game because of your stubbornness.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel Overnight

This is the most important tip from this entire strategy guide. Whenever you go to change your game, you don’t want to try and do it all overnight. If you start adjusting a million things at once, your game is going to fall apart completely. Take one area of your game and work on improving it first. Once it gets better, move on to another area.

Imagine if you were working on a car and you adjusted every single part of the engine all at once. The chances that everything would work correctly would be so minimal. In fact, you’d probably break parts that were working just fine because you were trying to change too much. This is the same with your poker game. Start small and slowly rework everything. You’ll see better results, and you’ll know what is working and what is not. If you change everything and start losing, you’ll never know which things worked and which did not.

Take your time. Poker is not going anywhere. It’s as simple as that.

Fundamental Strategy

We’re about to put the “fun” in fundamentals. Sorry for the cheesy intro. In all seriousness, we are about to have some fun building or solidifying the foundation of your Texas Hold’em game. If you’ve been playing for a while and are ready to skip this section, please wait. From our extensive experience instructing, we’ve found that almost every player except for the elite has some sort of leak in their fundamentals.

This is by no means an insult to your game, but is just us being realistic. We highly recommend that everyone at least read through this section once. If you are brand new and know that you have some fundamental leaks, then we recommend spending some time in this section before you look to move on to the more advanced stuff. The information will always be here, and the games aren’t going anywhere anytime soon so take your time and do this right! It will pay off in the long run.

Beginner’s Tips

This is the number one starting point where anyone on their poker journey should begin. We’ve collected a massive number of tips to help new (and rusty) poker players get into the action. Have a tournament or a game coming up soon and need to get up to speed quickly? Not sure where else to start? You’re in the right place.

The best part of these beginner tips is that they aren’t as obnoxiously generalized as some beginner’s tips lists are. While we do talk some general theory and strategy, we also give you some actionable steps that you can take immediately to improve your game.

Factors Affecting Starting Hand Requirements

Texas Hold’em hands start with pre-flop action. This is your first and arguably biggest decision that you’ll make in the hand. If you have a firm grasp on which hands you should play from what positions, you’re going to set yourself up for success. If you don’t, though, you may be starting yourself down a dark road where you’re destined to lose a lot of chips or money.

Have a chart that you follow? If you follow the same starting hand requirements for every position every time, then you definitely want to read this guide. There are A LOT of different factors that go into what hands you should and should not be playing. We cover all of this and more in the guide below.

Trouble Hands Strategy

Trouble hands are probably the number one profit killer for poker players. These are hands that look great, they feel great, and they make you think they’re great. However, they’re hands that are easily dominated and can get you in a lot of trouble. They have a fantastic knack for giving you the second-best hand which is about the worst position you can be in with poker. We break these hands down and how to protect yourself from falling victim to their beautiful trap.

Bluffing Strategy

Bluffing…everyone’s favorite thing to do that they typically do the worst. Bluffing is an important part of no-limit Texas Hold’em and is integral to your success as a player. Does this mean you should be bluffing a ton? It does not. The biggest problems that people have with bluffing are that they do it too often and they do it at times that don’t make sense. Bluffing is all about telling a story that makes sense in a situation where it is profitable. We’ll walk you through every aspect of bluffing and turn you into a “professional bluffer” if there even is such a thing.

Pre-Flop Raise Sizing

One of the quickest ways to identify a bad player is by looking at their pre-flop raising sizes. Believe it or not, mistakes here can give away an enormous amount of information about your hand. As we already mentioned, mistakes pre-flop can set you up for failure on the rest of the hand no matter how well you play. This does not exclude pre-flop raise sizing. Learn the dos and the don’ts to help set yourself up for success.

Tournament Specific Strategy

If you’re playing Texas Hold’em tournaments the same way that you’re playing cash games, you’re going to have a bad time. While the game that you’re playing is exactly the same, the nuances in the formatting and the end goal of each make the strategic implications lightyears different. In the guides below, we walk you through the important strategies needed to crush tournaments and the specific strategies needed for each tournament type.

Differences from Cash Games

As we mentioned briefly above, tournaments are WAY different than cash games. Your goal is to outlast the rest of the field, not just win some chips. The blinds don’t stay the same, and the conditions of the game are always changing. Because of this, you have to be prepared to adapt appropriately or else you will get swallowed up by your opponents.

Understanding Blind Structures

A lot of players don’t realize that the structure of the blinds and antes plays a huge role in how you approach a tournament. As all structures aren’t created equally, all tournament strategy plans should not be created equally. We will walk you through how to interpret a blind structure, how to understand it properly, and most importantly how to alter your strategy accordingly. You’d be amazed at how many players struggle with this.

Deep Stack/ Early Stages Tournament Play

The early stages of a Texas Hold’em tournament play way different than any other part of the tournament. You have more chips, lower blinds, and a lot more reckless players and fish still left in the field. The value of certain cards and hands increase while the value of others decreases during this stage. It’s important to understand what you need to change to succeed through the early stages. If you never make it out of the early stages of a tournament, you’re never going to make any money.

Medium Stack/Middle Stages Tournament Play

As you now know how to work through the deeper stack stages of a tournament, you need to shift your focus to eh medium stack/middle stages of the tournament. As stack sizes shrink, your strategy is going to need to change. Things that you could do during the deep stack phases are no longer viable. Hands that were more valuable during the deep stack stage start to become less valuable. Hands that were less valuable start to grow in value.

While each stage of the tournament is important, this could arguably be one of the most important to get good at. Mistakes in this stage can be costlier and ruin your chances of making the money. Never fear, though, we will teach you everything that you need to know.

Short Stack Tournament Play

Being on the short stack is not somewhere we ever want to find ourselves in a Texas Hold’em poker tournament, but it inevitably will happen more often than you’d like. While you don’t have a lot of wiggle room to make moves, there are a lot of strategies that you can employ to steal chips, get that double up, and get yourself back into contention for the win. Playing the short stack is much more complicated than most players are aware of.

Bubble Play

The bubble of a Texas Hold’em poker tournament is either an exciting time or a terrifying time depending on what kind of player you are. For some, it’s a time that they can beat up on scared players who are trying their hardest to squeak into the money. Those players that are terrified of not making the cash despise the bubble time. We’re going to teach you which of these players you need to be, how to prepare yourself mentally to do that, and then how to strategically pick up a lot of chips to win the tournament. A lot of professional poker players would argue that a tournament is often won on the bubble and not so much at the final table.

The Art of the Deal

Sometimes in tournaments, you are presented with the opportunity to make a deal to end the tournament early. Players will negotiate how much each player will earn and if they want to continue playing for any portion of the prize pool. This happens when a tournament is top heavy or there is a steep increase in prize money.

For example, if first place is $1,000,000 and 2^nd place is $500,000, the final two players might not want to play heads-up for half a million bucks. Instead, they might agree to each take $700,000 and play for the last $100,000 and the trophy. This is called making a deal. Making a deal requires some skills and finesse to make sure you get the best deal and don’t screw yourself out of some serious cash.

Selling Action

What you may or may not know is that a large percentage of the time poker players do not have 100% of their action during a tournament. What does that mean? It means that a lot of times they have not paid their full buy-in themselves. Someone else or several other people have invested money into that player with hopes of a return.

Selling action is a great way to get into bigger tournaments that you might not otherwise have been able to. It’s also a great way to cut down on risk. It does have its drawbacks as well that you need to be aware of.

Types of Tournaments

As there is a multitude of different types of no-limit Texas Hold’em tournaments, there is also a multitude of different ways that you will want to approach these events. You aren’t going to want to play a freezeout the same way that you are playing a satellite tournament. While some of the strategies will bleed over for each format, there are things that will be independent for each style.

In the guides below, we walk you through what each type of tournament is as well as what specific strategies you need to use to dominate that format.

Cash Game Specific Strategy

At this point, it should be very clear to you that cash games and tournaments are lightyears different in a lot of ways. Not only are they formatted differently, but the strategies used to beat each are different. In the guides below, we’ll walk you through the specific things you need to know to beat no limit Texas Hold’em cash games.

Game Selection

One of the most overlooked strategies for Texas Hold’em cash games comes before you even sit down at a table. Game selection is the process of choosing which game you’re going to play. While this has some to do with which stakes you’ll play, it has more to do with picking a table within those stakes. Finding games that are easier to beat can be the make or break to your poker session. We will walk you through all the nuts and bolts of selecting the most profitable game to play.

Tracking and Analyzing Sessions/Software

Cash games are all about finding small edges and hammering them home. As the conditions you play in stay relatively the same (blinds/table size/etc.), a small leak can turn into a big one when it happens over thousands and thousands of hands. If you’re playing multiple tables at once, these leaks will compound and could have an even bigger effect on your end of the session bottom line.

This makes it that much more important to track your sessions, track your play, and use the tools available to analyze this information to make improvements to your game. We’re going to show you the right (and wrong) ways to track your data, the best ways to analyze it, and the tools and software available to help you do all of this more efficiently.

Texas Holdem 101 Strategy

Advanced Strategy Concepts

If you’ve jumped straight to this section, we highly recommend that you go back and at least read through the earlier sections once. Properly understanding these sections depends on you having a firm grasp of the concepts we have already gone over. The worst that happens is you solidify your fundamentals and are that much more technically sound. Don’t worry, we will wait for you.

Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s jump into our more advanced concepts. The titles of some of these sections may seem less advanced to you, but that’s ok. Part of taking your game to the next level is knowing the advanced sides of the easy concepts. We hope you enjoy what we have put together for you here. This is the gold pot of this guide, and our Texas Hold’em guides.

Establishing Ranges

If you’ve never heard the term range before, we have a lot to go over which should be exciting to you. Poker is not ever about putting your opponent on an exact hand. If you have the ability to do this successfully, you’re probably already the best in the world. We can tell you, though, that’s probably not the case. Texas Hold’em poker is about putting your opponents on potential ranges of hands that they might have based on information you’ve taken from the hand and from history.

Online Texas Holdem Strategy Guidede

We’ll talk about how to build these ranges, how to apply those built ranges to your strategy and talk about how those ranges fit with your own ranges. It may seem confusing at first, but it will take your Texas Hold’em poker game to the next level. You want to know what the elite players are thinking about? This is what you’ve been looking for.

Continuation Betting

In the early days of poker, the continuation bet was the secret sauce. All you had to do was raise pre-flop and then blindly bet 100% of flops, and you would win in the long run. Unfortunately, those days are behind us. We will talk about why that used to work, why it doesn’t, work anymore, and what you should change about your game to effectively use continuation bets to turn a profit. This is one of those sections that surprises people that it’s more in-depth than they thought it could be.

Floating

If you think this has something to do with laying on top of the water, you’ve got a lot to learn. Even if you do know what floating is in regard to Texas Hold’em, you probably still do have a lot to learn. Floating is an advanced concept that was developed to combat the continuation bet. We’ll break it down for you and let you know the best ways and places to employ it for maximum efficiency.

Pre-flop Raising vs. Limping

Texas Holdem Strategy Chart

This is one of those topics that might seem pretty self-explanatory, but we see players screwing this one up all the time. While there are no hard and fast rules on the topic, there are some things that you need to be aware of. How you choose to implement them into your strategy will be up to you. Whether you use a strategy or not, it is important that you know them in case it is something that your opponent is choosing to do.

3 & 4-Betting

3-betting is a concept that most players know they should be utilizing, but few do enough. Out of the ones that are utilizing it, a large number of them are using it incorrectly. On top of all of that, we see a lot of players reacting incorrectly to other player’s 3-bets. If there’s a top list of sections that we highly recommend you read in this strategy guide, this section would be on that list. Do yourself a solid and take a few minutes to go through the information we have put together for you.

Online Texas Holdem Strategy Guide Free

While 4-betting is slightly less important depending on the stakes you are playing at, we still wanted to cover it. 4-bets can be important to protect your opening ranges and also as a nice combat to a player who is 3-betting incorrectly. If you’re confused, that’s ok. We will take you through every aspect of 4-bets and how to use them properly. We’ll also touch on how to react to 4-bets.

As a bonus, we will also touch very briefly on 5-bets for those of you that are clinically insane and like to light money on fire. There’s nothing like a cold 5-bet to get the juices running in the morning.

Live Poker Specific Strategy

Live Texas Hold’em and online Texas Hold’em are essentially the same game, yet there are some strategic differences that you need to be aware of. In the guides below, we’ll walk you through a few of the things you need to be aware of to crush live poker in a brick and mortar setting. This includes home games as well as playing in any casino poker room in the world.

Reads and Tells

One of the big advantages for most players playing live is that they can see their opponent’s faces. This allows a trained eye to catch tells and reads about what a person might be holding. We did say that this was an advantage for most players, but we specifically did not say all. One of the more important aspects of reads and tells is making sure that you are not giving off your own. Your opponents may not be great players, but you don’t want to give them a leg up on you by wearing your cards across your forehead.

Online Poker Specific Strategy

Just as there are strategies specific to playing live, there are strategies specific to online Texas Hold’em. A lot of people think that online poker is just clicking buttons. While they are somewhat correct, there is a lot of strategy that is different than playing in a brick and mortar setting. We will break everything down for you to help you be the best internet poker wizard there ever was.

Reads and Tells

There are reads and tells on the internet? Believe it or not, there actually are. While these sometimes can’t be trusted with as high of reliability as the live poker ones, they’re still valuable to know. Let us show you the parts of online poker that only the most brilliant and OCD of minds can see.

Putting It All Together

If you’ve made it this far and have not gone crazy from information overload, congrats! We’ve just unloaded years and years of knowledge on you in a very short time. Hopefully, you’ve learned a lot and have already started implementing these changes into your game. If there are sections you are unclear on, take some more time and go through them again. We don’t expect you to have picked up everything the first time through.

Remember, Texas Hold’em poker is a game that is learned quickly but takes a lifetime to master. There’s no reason to rush things and get ahead of yourself. Take your time and make small changes, so you don’t throw your whole game out of whack. The sky is the limit for you, and with hard work implementing what we taught you here today, you’re going to be crushing the world soon.