ABSOLUTE POKER

Poker Mistakes

Playing Weak Hands In Early Position

While some beginners might not even notice their position at all, your position will greatly affect how you play your hand.  Playing marginal hands in early position will certainly do a number on your bankroll.

Not knowing how the other players are going to act always puts you at a major disadvantage.  Imagine that you bet on your mediocre hand from an early position, only to discover that the next four players all raise.  If you had anticipated these four raises, you definitely wouldn’t have bet on your weak 10-9 hand. Always play tight in early position.

When you are in late position, you’ll be able to see how other players act before you make your move.  With more information, you’ll be able to play looser.  Position is always a major factor and you’ll need to devise your strategy accordingly if you want to win big.

The Pitfalls of Revenge

If you ever find yourself seated at a table with some reckless young punk who finds it fit to trash talk you from the comfort of a chat box, don’t get sucked in.  Even if you suffer a bad beat that gets rubbed right in your face, don’t fall for it.

Spite has a time and place, but the last thing you want to do is go overboard trying to enact your revenge.  Trying to transform mediocrity into gold out of spite is your ticket to losing your cash.

Who knows? That cocky player might actually be a skilled player who is riding high on a wealthy winning streak.  It’s okay to be upset, but you’ll probably be better off walking away or hitting a different table.  If you start steaming, you are stacking the odds against yourself.

Raising With Flush Draws

If you have a flush draw, you obviously want your opponents to stick around as long as possible.  That way they can keep funneling cash into the pot.  It is easy to see the allure of raising, but you don’t want to push players out of the pot too soon, especially if you end up making your draw.  The trick is to keep player in the game, make your draw, and then walk off with the pot.

Check Raising

Check raising is a bad strategy.  If you have a good hand, then the correct move is to bet right away.  If you have the nuts and don’t want to scare players out of the hand, then check raising can be justified.

You’ll not only annoy your opponents if you check raise too frequently, but you’ll also be giving them free cards and allowing them to remain in the hand long after they ought to have folded.  Those seemingly free cards will quickly become expensive to you when your opponents catch a nice hand and seize the pot.

Calling With Second Pair After The Flop

If you hold J 10 and the flop is K J 4, then checking and calling is never the right move. You should check and fold, bet, raise or fold. If you happen to be second on the flop, you’ll likely be second at the end of the hand. The odds of improving your hand are the same for the guy who holds a King, and he doesn’t need to improve his hand to beat you.

Great players aren’t afraid to fold good hands when they expect to get beaten.  Don’t throw away your cash with a check call in these situations.  This is a transparent move and any opponent with a good hand will make you pay dearly.

Mistakes playing poker

Slow Play

It’s no surprise that beginners play slowly, but did you know that it’s a sign of weakness?  You don’t want to call when you should raise or check when you ought to bet.  Of course, some people use slow play as a strategy, trying to trick their opponents into believing they have a weak hand and compelling them to stay in the game.

This strategy would be great if it weren’t so common these days.  By now slow play is more annoying than effective.

If you are playing Holdem and hold AA and the flop yields A 4 5, you clearly have a great hand.  Now imagine that instead of raising with confidence you decide to check and everyone at the table also checks.  Imagine the turn is a King and someone makes a minimum bet causing everyone else to fold except you.  When the river is a 2, your opponent bets again and you decide to call.  At the showdown your opponent reveals a K3, taking the hand.

While the winner only had KK on the turn, he bet and lucked out by catching the 2 on the river that gave him a straight.  If you had bet on the flop, you probably would have forced everyone out and grabbed the pot.

When you play slowly, you not only give your opponents a chance to play slowly too, but you could end up giving them free or cheap cards.  In the example above, the opponent decided to play his second pair hand simply because it was cheap enough.

One of the benefits of Holdem is that you can sometimes tell if you have an unbeatable hand by looking at the board cards. You can rule out a full house or four of a kind if there aren’t any pairs on the board.

If you have a great hand and decide to play slowly, it is totally possible that your opponent will also think his hand is great and he might slow play you too.  This leads to weak pots.

Decent players won’t be deceived when you play slowly, play your strong hands weakly, or play all your weak hands strongly.  You should rarely use a slow play strategy, if at all.

Playing Suited Hands

It’s always good to know your odds.  Don’t let your perspective get clouded by some amazing odds-defying win you had a few years ago.  The allure of a flush is easy to see, especially since it quickly topples a pair of Aces or a straight, but don’t fall into the trap.  The odds of flopping two same suited cards are approximately 8:1. Even if you already have 2 same suited cards to begin with, you’ll still need to land that 5th same suited card.  In the meantime, your opponents might land a better flush or a full house.  This is especially important when playing Omaha, since the additional hole cards increase your chances of being beaten.  Playing same suited hands is a losing long-term strategy.

Protecting Your Blinds

Ignore the books and so-called expert players who encourage you to protect your blinds.  You should treat blinds like the small entry fees that they are.

If someone at the table folds while you’re in the blinds and the player on the button raises your blind, there’s no sense trying to chase chump change if you have horrible hole cards. Just remember that everyone takes their turn being the big blind and small blind.  There’s no point funneling money into the pot just because you already have a negligible stake.

Playing A Good Starting Hand When You Miss The Flop

After suffering through an hour of weak starting hands like a pair of fours or 10 3 offsuit, it’s easy to get excited when you land a suited AK.  After betting, imagine a flop of J 9 2 and a huge raise by one of your competitors.  This is the place where you should resist the temptation to stay in the game.  Even though there are another two cards in the pipeline, you actually have nothing.

If you decide to stay in the game, you might land a King or Ace, but you are forgetting that your opponent might have a pair of Jacks or A9.  Why chase a hand when your opponent might already have one?  When the odds are stacked against you, it’s pure gambling.  You might as well hit the slots.

Bluffing A Weak Player

Only another weak player would try to bluff other weak players.  It’s a known fact that weak players don’t like laying down their hands.  They usually don’t even realize when the odds are stacked against them and they barely consider the position of their opponents. If you bluff a weak player, you’ll transform them into a calling station!.

Beginners usually call too often anyway.  If you decide to get all crafty by bluffing, the beginner won’t even notice.  He’ll just continue calling while holding a low pair.

Skilled poker players know how to play their opponents.  As the song goes, they know when to hold’em and when to fold’em.  A beginner with a poor hand will think luck is on his side.  He’ll fantasize about all the cards that can transform his hand into riches, as if landing them were feasible.  Beginners don’t think about the subtleties of the game or your seemingly smooth plays.  They probably don’t even know what the odds are. Be careful when you bluff.

Bluff With Caution

Beginners usually bluff too often.  While bluffing is an essential tool in high stakes games, when playing low stakes or free games, it is often affordable for other players to call, just to keep you honest. Generally, the lower the limits and the smaller the bet, the less likely it is to pull off a bluff.

A lot of rookies will begin their hand cautiously and then try to buy the pot on the river.  Most opponents will quickly see through this scheme and quickly call.

Good players can get away with bluffing because they practically make an art out of it.  Start with some solid strategy.  If you raise before the flop, on the flop, and on the turn, you’ll give players the impression that you have faith in your hand.  If the turn yields a 3rd heart, then your opponents will suspect that you have two hearts and you can successfully make a flush.  When you start raising again, players will think you have a flush since your bets are consistent with your previous moves and the cards on the board.  The key is to make your story believable, rather than just a sudden random stab at the pot.

Bluff for a reason.  You might want to try getting caught intentionally a few times so that your opponents think you’re a loose player.  Always make sure your moves add up.  You want to create the illusion of having a good hand.  No one is going to let you steal the pot out of nowhere.

In no limit games the stakes can get massive.  With a huge bluff, you can force your opponent to part with all their chips.  Of course, you can expect to get called if your moves don’t add up.

Like other poker tools, bluffing has a time and place. Put our bluffing strategies to the test and see what works for you.

Calling

Beginners usually call way too often.  Unfortunately, this can be a hard habit to break.  Calling too often will prevent you from elevating your game.  Watch a live game and you might be surprised to see so many weak hands at the showdown.

An Ace with a low kicker is one of poker’s most overplayed hands.  Beginners are inordinately optimistic about the cards that will come their way and feel compelled to call.  That positive attitude should fade when a low pair continuously beats them.  Of course, it won’t.

Beginners like staying in the game pre-flop just in case the flop goes their way.  When it doesn’t, they continue to call bets on the turn and river, somehow expecting their cards to come along.

You’ll need a game plan when you play Holdem.  To succeed you’ll often want to drop out before the flop so you don’t have to call the blinds.  If your hand is good enough to bring to the flop, you’ll know what to do.  Let’s say you have 10 4 and the flop brings K 9 4.  With the lowest pair, anyone with a King or Nine will easily beat you.  You’ll definitely want to fold in the face of aggressive betting.

There’s no sense trying to catch another 10 or 4, since there are at most only three remaining 10s in the deck and only two remaining 4s. That means the odds of this hand improving are 5 in 47 (47 is the number of unseen cards in the deck).  With approximately 1 in 5 odds of getting a good hand, it’s time to retreat.  Let’s not forget that your opponents might already have you beaten with a pocket pair or a better pair using one of the other board cards.

If you have an A 2 and are faced with a rainbow K Q 7 flop, you would need at least one more A to have a reasonable chance of winning.  While there is an outside chance of landing a straight, you need to consider that one of your opponents might have an A.  Even though these moves are poor, beginners usually get excited when they land an A.  The fact is that you can’t succeed without evaluating your hand before deciding whether to play.  Don’t rely on a miraculous turn and river to save the day.  It takes balls to fold your monster hand when you know you’ll be beaten, but your bank roll will thank you.

When playing Holdem, you’ll either want a hand that starts off strong or one that has a good chance of improving, like 4 cards to a flush or an open ended straight.  If you like long shots, try betting on horses instead.