Win Poker Strategy

Playing more than one table at a time is something that a lot of beginning players may find intimidating, but it is something that you are going to have to do if you want to be a successful online poker player. If you keep popping from table to table, you are hurting your chances more than helping them. A lot of this also comes down to bankroll management and actually playing at tables that your bankroll can handle.

To get started, let’s assume that you are starting out with $100 in your account. If I asked a group of beginning players what level they would all play with this amount of money, most of them would probably say the $.50/$1.00 No Limit or the $1/$2 Limit tables. This is where the problem lies. Realistically, you should never be buying into a table with more than 5% of your total bankroll and to be playing at those levels, you are committing at least 50% of your bankroll to one table.

It may be a little painful to hear, but you really should be playing at the $.05/$.10 level with this kind of a bankroll. At this level, you are not only protecting your bankroll from being lost in one bad session, you are also able to multi-table and give yourself a realistic shot of making a profit in online poker.

With so many tables going and so many different players, the chances of you being able to pick one table out of all the ones that are available and win at it are slim to none. However, if you are playing on at least 4 tables at the same time, you can counter the variance and actually make a profit. If you don’t believe it, give it a try at the very lowest levels until you can get used to playing on multiple tables at the same time. Start with two tables, then keep adding one until you can do anywhere from 4-6 tables at the same time.

In addition to offsetting the variance, you are also more likely to play steady poker instead of trying to get cute. You learn to play the numbers and stop trying to make the moves that you see on television that just never seem to work for you. You may not make a huge profit at each session, but you will at least be making a profit instead of flushing your roll down the drain by playing at a limit you should not be at and putting it all on the line on one table.

Give it a try and see if it works. You are going to be pleasantly surprised at the results and can gradually work your way up in limits as both your bankroll and ability to play multiple tables improves. Remember, ABC poker goes a long way when you have 6 tables rocking at the same time.

Getting to any final table is a great accomplishment in poker. When you get down to the final three or four, the play can get difficult and the swing from first to third is still pretty dramatic. Regardless of the chip lead that you have, there are times that you have to start thinking about doing a chop and taking the safe way out to ensure that you don’t lose too much money with one mistake.

One situation where you may want to start to discuss a chop with the table is when you know you are overmatched. Let’s face it, some people just don’t have what it takes when it gets down to this amount of  poker players to make the moves that are necessary to take down the tournament. When you look around the table, even if you have the chip lead, and see that each of these players have been outplaying you all night long it is time to start talking.

As the chip leader, you are actually in the strongest position to discuss a chop. For those that are short stacked, the added income will usually be welcome and you are locking up a second place finish for the most part. In most cases, you will want to recommend a weighted chop that will allow you to get more money from the prize pool since you have the most chips. Make it reasonable and you will often find that the rest of the table will be receptive regardless of how good they are.

Another situation to consider chopping is when the blinds have started to dominate the stacks. You never want to be in a position where you are forced to be all in or close to it when the blinds start coming around. If the stacks are even, everyone else is probably thinking the same thing. Take the prize pool and divide it up evenly by the remaining player and let everyone walk with second place money. The swing is too great from first to third to take the chance that you will look down at 72 when the blinds hit your stack.

Some people will consider the thought of even thinking about chopping to be a sign of weakness. However, they have probably never walked away from a tournament after having a chip lead with a bad beat that sent them out in third place. If you have that happen once, your opinion of a chop changes.

Something else to consider if the table seems a little reluctant, but the chip counts are fairly even is to divide up the chips and leave a little extra for the winner. For instance, there are four people left and the prize pool has $11,000 in it. Everyone is even, but people still want that big payday. You can suggest to chop the pot to a four way split of $2,500 with an additional $1,000 going to the overall winner. Everyone agrees, play will loosen up because that fear of getting knocked out with the bottom pay is now gone. The winner still walks away with more money than everyone else and everyone is a winner. Sometimes chopping is not such a bad idea.

Bluffing is something that far too many players try far too often. The main reason is that amateur players see these moves on television and don’t realize that it may have taken the player hours to set up that one move on one specific player. The program edits out the hundreds of hands that led up to that point and the ones that were between them and all of a sudden, everyone thinks that bluffing is the way to play.

In order to pull off a legitimate bluff, you should be playing against the same group of people or at the same table for a long enough period of time that you can be all but assured of how they are going to react to your play. For instance, you have a player that is not afraid to play, but has shown over time that unless he has the absolute nuts, he is not willing to play against an aggressive raise that comes over the top of his bet.

What players need to focus on early is getting into pots when they have large hands and when they are in a showdown, time and time again you are showing the best two cards. Once you get into this groove, you are able to bluff early and start stealing some blinds, especially in hands that have a bunch of limpers coming into the pot. You will most likely find that an aggressive continuation bet will lead to a lot of your opponents folding because you have been beating the table.

Now there of course comes the time when you want to show the bluff that you have pulled it off and you are going to want to save this for a big hand. By showing this bluff, you are going to set people on tilt as they now start to wonder how many hands that you have managed to get away with this and how much money they have lost to you with the winning hand.

How you play from that point is going to be a read on the table. Normally, after a huge bluff, the player will tighten back up and start playing ABC poker again as he knows that everyone on the table will probably call him down to make sure he isn’t bluffing again. However, if you can manage to catch a big hand that goes to showdown soon after your big bluff, you are in a dream situation as you are going to have the entire table on tilt trying to figure out what you are doing.

This is when you can really start to make money. Take down one or two hands and then it is time to throw another bluff out there and show it again. More than likely, you are going to have to tighten up at that point, but when you have a hand, you are going to get paid off huge. You can let the table settle a little bit and then start the whole cycle all over again. This mixes up your play and allows you to run the table. Everyone is scrambling to figure out your play. Just stay one step ahead of them and continue to get paid off. Remember to show that bluff after a long string of dominant hands and you will continue to have them shaking their heads and donating money to your stack.

The new school of poker teaches that aggression will always pay off. What a lot of the current younger players don’t understand is that there is a phrase that is missing from that teaching and that is ‘well timed’. When you constantly play the same way, all you do is allow yourself to get set up and eventually get all of your money in during a horrible situation.

We have all been at the table where we have an aggressive opponent who raises on every hand and tries to steal the blinds each and every time they come around his way. He continues to pick up pots because everyone knows that the moment they get into the hand with him, they are going to have their entire stack at risk. This is not a bad thing if you know how to handle him. Turn his aggressive nature against him and force him to make a stand when you know you have the best hand.

If you are suffering from him stealing your blinds every time around the ring, you are contributing to his image. He cannot possibly be getting a winnable hand every time around. As the BB, you know what is coming and you are going to have to take a stand on occasion to get him to back off and prevent you from seeing hands when you are on the blinds. To do this, wait on a decent hand, and then push back. Make sure it is a hand that you can come right back over top of him on a big re-raise because you can be assured that the first couple of times he is going to come right back at your to test your salt. When you catch him bluffing a couple of times, he will learn to back off of your blinds.

The next situation is when you are already in the pot and he is coming back around with a continuation raise. If you have constantly folded to his raises, you are showing yourself as a weak player. This is the image you want as you try to pull off one move that is going to move his entire stack over to your side of the table. When you get the flop that gives you the monster, he is ready to go down.

Assume that you have flopped a set, straight or flush against this super-aggressive player. You are out of position and can let it go to him because you know he throws out a continuation bet each and every time that he has raised. If you have constantly folded to him, he knows that you are more than likely going to fold as soon as he fires again. Let him make his bet and then instead of pushing in your stack and giving up your hand, you will merely put in a minimal raise.

This move is the equivalent of the playground push. He pushed you and you have finally had enough and pushed back. The problem for him is that he thinks he is the bigger bully here and will generally give you one more push. This is exactly what we want to happen as when he comes right back over the top of your weak raise, you put every chip you have in the middle of the table. Whether he calls or not, you are making a monster profit on the hand. The other thing that gets accomplished here, especially if he is a younger player who thinks that he knows it all, is that you have shaken his confidence.

You have a player that has not been outplaying people, he has just been running them over. In his eyes, he has been as good as Doyle Brunson and now someone has gotten the best of him. With any luck, the move will upset him and have him out for revenge. This is when you can start to print money as he will be going in with anything in an effort to get his money back. Tilt is a beautiful thing when you are on the other end of it. Set him up and then take him down. You may look weak all night, but that doesn’t matter if you are the one walking away with the chips at the end of the session.

Re-buy tournaments can be a lot of fun, but they can also kill your bankroll of you are not careful. Many poker players get excited about the guarantees and then figure that it is only $x and it’s no big deal as long as they don’t re-buy and add on. The problem is, unless you get very lucky very early you are dooming yourself to failure by playing at a limit that you cannot afford to re-buy at.

The first hour of a re-buy tournament is far from a normal tournament. While you may think you can play conservatively and get away with not re-buying, you are going to be put to a decision time and time again by more aggressive players with huge bankrolls. When you have a $200 bankroll, you cannot play in a $10 re-buy and expect to do well.

You see, the problem is that the people with the large bankrolls have a tendency to treat this as a 5 or 6 buy in event. So in order to be effective, you need to buy into tournaments that you can do the same thing with. Playing $1 and $2 buys ins would be more to your liking.

In most cases, the first hour of play is all about getting your chips in with the best hand and hoping they hold up. Whether you like it or not, you are more than likely going to have someone at your table that is willing to throw their money into the pot every time they play a hand. This is far from a recommendation that you should play that way, you just need to realize that every time you put chips into the middle of the table, you just may have someone come over the top and put you on a decision.

The question is how do you play against this? First and foremost, don’t ever buy into a re-buy tournament unless you can take advantage of the first re-buy right off the bat. You start the tournament with double the chips and if you do manage to double up, you are well on your way to a monster stack.

You also need to plan on purchasing a double add on at the break. Anyone who plans on winning this will be doing an add on and you will fall 4,000 chips behind everyone else in the tourney if you don’t use it. Plan on it! Finally, expect to have to re-buy at least once before the break. That is a total of 6 re-buys that you should plan on paying for.

Now you can start to see how only having enough money for the buy in is a problem. A $10 re-buy should be treated more like a $60 buy in. No while you can play in a $6 tournament with a $200 bankroll, you have no right getting into a $60 tournament. You are going to be playing scared the whole time and we all know that scared money never wins.

In regards to your actual play, keep it the same way you would play normally, just expect to have some extra chips in the pot and definitely expect people to be all in on draws. Since they can re-buy, they are going to have no fear about tossing those chips in there. If you are willing to take a little risk, you can take advantage of this and use it to build a stack. If you get a little unlucky, you can either drop out or buy back in and take another shot.

Remember, when you are playing in a re-buy, expect to pay at least 4 times the buy in overall and preferably 6. Expect to be put on a decision for all of your chips at any time and when you see a draw, if you plan on buying back in if you lose your stack, exploit the situation to get the other player on the draw to put all of their chips in the middle. When your cards hold, you will find that you go into the break with a huge stack. When everyone comes back and play gets back to normal, you will be at a huge advantage and ready to make your run for the final table!