If you’re looking for easy to remember and quick poker tips that will help you win at Hold’em, you’re in luck!
Today we’ve compiled 10 tactics and strategies that will make you a more confident and profitable poker player.
Now, this list won’t teach you how to win every time – not even the nổ hũ kubet greatest poker players do that – but it will help you improve, whether you play cash games, tournaments, in live poker rooms, or online.
Tip #1: Play Fewer Hands And Play Them Aggressively
There is a limit on how many starting hands you can play before the flop in No Limit Texas Hold’em, even for the world’s best players. If you try to play too many hands, you’ll bleed away your chip stack (unless lady luck is on your side).
Developing a solid preflop poker strategy is by far the easiest and fastest way to improve your bottom line. However, while developing solid preflop ranges is relatively easy to do (like by downloading our free preflop charts) having the discipline to stick to them is difficult. Don’t allow yourself to get impatient and play a hand not worth playing.
The best approach is to play a tight range of strong and/or playable hands, and you need to play those hands aggressively. Playing all of your hands aggressively, including the more speculative ones like 7♠ 6♠ or 5♥ 5♣, allows you to disguise the strength of your actual hand.
When you raise, your opponents won’t know whether you have A-A, A-K, or 7-6, which makes you super tough to play against. Tight and aggressive wins the game!
Note: If you want to win at poker, you need a solid preflop strategy. This free Preflop Guide includes 8 easy-to-read charts and crucial tips that will help you play like a pro before the flop. Get it now!
Tip #2: Don’t Be The First Player To Limp
Limping (just calling the big blind preflop) is an absolute no-no as the first player to enter a pot. There are two main reasons why this play should be avoided:
- You can’t win the pot before the flop like you could if you raised.
- You give the players behind very enticing pot odds, making it more likely you face multiple players and thus less likely you win the pot.
The only acceptable situation in which to limp is when at least one other player has already limped. This is called over-limping, and it can be a good play because you are getting great pot odds to join the action so you can hit something good on the flop, hopefully.
Tip #3: Semi-Bluff Aggressively with Your Draws
If you want to truly crush poker, you need to bluff effectively. But bluffing ineffectively is one of the fastest ways to lose your money at the table. So, how do you keep your bluffing frequency under control?
The most effective way to bluff is to let the cards you have dictate if you are going to bluff or not. This means bluffing with hands that have outs to improve to the best hand on a later street, such as straight draws, flush draws, or even just an overcard or two to the board.
Think of these draws as your backup plan in case your bluff gets called.
Poker players call these hands “semi-bluffs” because of their potential beyond the bluff itself. You can learn more about semi-bluffing here.
When you’re just starting out, bluffing with total nothing hands prior to the river is not advisable (except in one situation that I’ll tell you about shortly).
Tip #4: Fast-Play Your Strong Hands to Build the Pot and Make More Money
It’s a sad sight when a player checks their flopped nut flush three times, and then has to awkwardly table their monster of a poker hand when their opponent checks back the river. Slow-playing too often is a mistake common among players who are afraid of chasing their opponents out of the pot when they have a strong poker hand.
In most cases, it’s best to bet your strong hands to build the pot and protect your equity. That’s not to say you should always bet/raise your strong hands post-flop. You can check your strong hands if:
- It’s unlikely that you will be outdrawn.
- There aren’t many scare cards to prevent you from getting paid on later streets.
- Your opponent’s range is heavily weighted toward hands with no showdown value.
However, when you feel uncertain, just bet (or check-raise if you weren’t the preflop aggressor). Yes, it’s disappointing when your opponent folds, but that’s not nearly as disappointing as getting outdrawn or missing out on potential value.
Check out this infographic to learn more about the basic poker concept of fast-playing vs slow-playing.
Tip #5: Defend Your Big Blind (with the Right Hands)
The big blind is a special position because you already have 1 big blind invested in the pot. For this reason, whenever you are faced with a raise while sitting in the big blind, you will have better pot odds to call than the other positions – think of it as a discount.
Because of your discount and the fact that you are the last person to act preflop, you can profitably call with many more hands than if you were sitting in another position. That’s not to say you should call raises with trash hands like 9♠ 5♦, but the more borderline hands like K♣ 9♦ and Q♥ 6♥ become playable in most situations.
Exactly how wide you should defend depends on a multitude of factors – here are the four primary ones:
- Position of the raiser (play tighter against the early positions and looser against the late positions).
- Number of players in the hand (when 1 or more players has already called the raise, play tighter and only call with hands that do well in multiway pots).
- The size of the raise (the larger the bet sizing, the tighter you should play and vice versa).
- Stack sizes (when short stacked, play fewer speculative hands and prioritize high card strength).
There are other important factors too, like how often your opponent will continuation bet post-flop, but the three above are the main ones you should consider.
Tip #6: Fold When You’re Unsure
Want to know the biggest difference between a bad player and a professional player? It’s the good player’s ability to lay down a good hand like top pair when they think they are beaten.
This sounds very simple, but it is very hard to do in practice partly because of the way our brains are built. We are naturally curious and we naturally want to win. When we fold, we surrender our chance to win the pot and we don’t get to satisfy our curiosity by finding out what our opponent has.
Calling too often and in the wrong situations is the second fastest way to lose at poker (after ineffective bluffs). Whenever you’re unsure whether to call or fold versus a bet or raise, do yourself a service and fold.
Pro Tip: When you fold in one of these situations, make sure you note down the details of the hand so you can try to figure out if you made the right fold after your session. Studying and/or discussing these sorts of hands is a great way to consistently improve your skills and fill in the gaps of your poker knowledge.
