If you want to consistently win at Texas Hold’em, try these five strategies. Keep in mind, only continue to play premium hands like AA, KK, and QQ since they win 77-85% pre-flop.
Second, always raise, never limp. Raising knocks out weak opponents and increases your odds of winning by at least 30%.
Third, when you are out of position with a weak hand and facing large bets from tight players, it’s good to fold to protect your chip stack.
Fourth, bluffing improves your win rate by up to 20-30%, although this can vary based on your experience.
Lastly, be smart with your bankroll so you can survive variance and make unemotional decisions.
Choosing a Starting Hand That Always Wins
To win at Texas Hold’em, be sure to pick a starting hand that has the potential to make you money more often than not. There is no doubt that AA (two aces), amongst all the possible starting hands you can be dealt, are your very best friend. Seeing a pair of Aces is regarded as the poker gods smiling down on you! Why? Simple math. This means that if you’re holding AA, another player’s odds of having a better hand are less than 15%. Since AA has an 85% chance to win, that is the kind of hand you want to begin with.
That said, you may not see AA in every game. The chance of being dealt the best hand preflop is about 0.45% from a deck of cards with 52 unique ones! Absolutely, you have only a small chance of having Aces and drawing in the lottery. Nevertheless, never fear; You can be in the catbird seat among other powerful hands too even pre-flop.
More hands you can count on are, for example, KK (two Kings) and QQ (two Queens). While tons of people go broke on AA, KK has an over-80% win rate—it’s just a tiny bit less than that you get with your bullets. QQ sits around a 77% win rate. While not as dominant a hand versus AA, there is still enough equivalent strength in them to give you good reason to be reassured.
Now how about A-K suited (like Ace of Hearts and King of Hearts)? This hand plays a little more challenging than AA and KK, however it has so much potential to crack straight draw and flush combos. Although slightly lower, it is still solid with about a 65% win rate. A-K suited is pretty because it can make a straight and/or flush, which gives you multiple ways to win. A-K suited (0.30%): This is higher than AA so although still very rare, you may see this before seeing Aces dealt again.
Adjusting Bets Based on What Happens at the Table
Texas Hold’em is a very different game from one where you see the flop. Remember…your betting strategy isn’t just about your hole cards but how those relate to what’s going on at the table around you. As always, different situations call for a different approach to placing wagers. You encounter few situations and have data to back up how you should bet in those situations based on probabilities.
Every one folds to you and there is only 1 player other than yourself (some simply stealing the blinds). If we go by statistics, then players will attempt to steal the blinds with purely a heads-up range of 20%-30%. When You Hold a Good Hand — Re-Raise: Even non-monster hands like AA or KK you may opt to re-raise. The success rate of a continuation bet is approximately 65-75% (specifically in heads-up play).
Additionally, flopping a three-suited board on the flop tells us to be cautious. If a player started with two suited cards, there is 6.4% chance they hit the flush draw on the flop. If you have one or even two cards of that suit, maybe bluff betting/raising is the way to play it. On the other hand, you better be careful if this suit isn’t your actual holding since there is a 19.6% chance that at least one of them could already have made a flush!
A single suited board for a tournament (especially if there were two or more players in the hand) and then along comes another of that suit on fourth street? Someone probably has made his flush. Now, over half the time someone will have a flush. Eventually you want to be the one all-in with a flush, however, if it’s not your flush then now might be time for some defense or even a fold if those guys are consistently bluffing.
Possible straight: If the community cards reveal 8,9 and 10 (a potential low-end straight), someone could have connected. If you have 2 connected cards the chances of a straight by the river are about 9%. If you don’t have the straight but your opponents bet really high, be very careful. However, you can bet for value if you are holding cards that have the ability to complete a straight on the turn.
Limping is Bad for You. Avoid Limping!
Limping is the strategy to use if you want to lose at Texas Hold’em, particularly when it comes in the early stages. While limping might be an easy way to see the flop without making a big investment, it often leaves you in more danger on later streets. This article breaks down why limping is a losing play and gives examples from the real world to contextualize risks of this nature.
You make it easy for your opponents to see the flop: When you limp, all players in position and on the blinds are able (and more likely) to call. In practice, limping allows your opponents a chance to see the flop for free with hands that SHOULD be weak (like 7-8 suited), but are actually quite likely (~22%) to land something strong like an open-ended straight or flush draw by the time they get there. If you do not in some way raise, then it is relatively easy for most opponents to outdraw your strong hand even if you had much the best of it on more than one occasion.
Limping leads to multi-way pots: Another major issue is that when you limp, more players are likely to stay in the hand. According to studies, if a game limps on average more than 50–60 percent of the time, the pot is multi-way about 70% of those times. This then means that your hand strength is diluted as it will be much easier for someone to make a winning hand. Even strong hands like pocket Jacks or Queens see their win rates plummet from about 77% in heads-up play to as low as 40-50% against multiple players.
Limping keeps your hand faceless: Whenever you are limping in a pot, you do not provide/allow the others around the table to define how strong or weak your holding is. This can get you hammered, particularly against superior opponents. Likewise, if you limp with Ace-Jack, your opponents might not think they are up against a decent hand and make overly aggressive bets when holding marginal hands. They would have to consider if they could call you with weaker hands (after a raise) rather than the action being played by them.
You lose the chance to isolate fish: When you limp, you’re essentially squandering plenty of value by not isolating weaker players. What do you if, for example, one player in a typical game is limping and playing extremely bad-passive every hand. If you are calling along with them, then you aren’t getting maximize fold equity and going heads-up versus the weaker player. The problem is that game dynamics research says the ideal amount to isolate needs to be about 30% more than limping.
Make the Right Folds and Increase Your Profits
The biggest myth surrounding poker is that it’s all about sick plays and ballsy calls. In truth, though, knowing when to pack it is just as important if not more so. The truth is, many profitable poker players will tell you that folding correctly plays a larger role in whether or not they make money than making tricky bluffs do. Folding in the correct spot not only saves you some chips, but can also help open doors for future victories. Today, we are going to talk about the reasons why folding correctly can increase your earnings so much and what situations show you if a fold is necessary or not.
Well, the first thing you need to know is that folding is not a sign of weakness — it’s rational. When you are holding a so-so hand like K-10 offsuit and the flop is A-Q-7, this could be an undetectable pitfall for your piece of garbage. So you may bump into a card that is larger than yours. Yes, 2 overcards a straight or any pair, to defeat an Ace. So in this case folding is not quitting, it’s just preventing you from probably bleeding chips. It has less than a 15% chance of hitting the mark to become a winning poker hand by the river. Folding then saves those chips to be used more effectively in the mugging of future hands.
Similarly, folding is the right play for obvious reasons if you unthinkable run into a big bet or raise by an otherwise tight opponent: But, for instance, let’s say that you get pocket 8s and the flop comes down as a lowly cleanliness of all club cards. You have an overpair and are loving it until the rock all the way across from you makes a check-raise.
Position Over Your Opposition
The seating position is a critical concept in Texas Hold’em and that it is the only one used by top players. Position is essentially where you are seated in terms of the dealer button, which controls what order players have to act. Having position over your opponent means that you act after him, and therefore can take his move into consideration when deciding yours. This edge can be what separates you from making sound plays and bleeding chips in the long run. To dive a little bit further and give examples, here’s why having position is so important in poker.
Being the last person to act thereafter gives you a chance to know more about what your opponents are going do before forming any of your decisions. Your perspective: Lets say you are sitting in a late position (on the button) and hold a speculative hand like 9-10 suited. If the players before you check or bet small, it can be a raising spot based on hand strength and perception of field weakness. The reverse situation applies, on the other hand – if you are in one of the early positions with this type of hand then a player acts before more players so that when it is plugged or enlarged and ultimately your play becomes incorrect.