Texas Hold’em Poker strategy – learn how to win

An Introduction to Texas Holdem Poker

So you’re new to Texas Holdem poker? Not a problem. Texas Holdem poker is by far the best game for a beginner to learn. Other poker games like Omaha or 7 card stud need a higher understanding of calculating odds and card counting. Texas Holdem can be learned in a few minutes and you can be playing fairly well with a few hours of practice. However, in order to learn the game you must play and you must play fairly often.

Online poker rooms offer a wide variety of play money tables where beginners may practice for free until they are ready to move up to the fun at real money tables. We recommend playing online to start because online poker rooms handle many tedious details, like dealing, shuffling, and determining who has the best hand.

A Texas Hold’em poker game goes as follows:

1. Depending on the limit and betting structure, players will place out blinds and antes so there is an initial amount to get things started. This is called posting.
2. The dealer shuffles up a standard deck of 52 playing cards.
3. Each player is dealt two private cards face down. These are called your hole cards or pocket cards.
4. Then there is a round of betting starting with the player to the left of the blinds. This is the preflop betting round. Like most games of poker, players can call, raise, or fold.
5. After the betting round ends, the dealer discards the top card of the deck. This is called a burn card. This is done to prevent cheating.
6. The dealer then flips the next three cards face up on the table. This is called the flop. These are communal cards that anyone can use in combination with their two pocket cards to form a poker hand.
7. The player to the left of the dealer starts another betting round.
8. After the betting concludes, the dealer burns again then flips another communal card onto the table. This is called the turn.
9. The player to the left of the dealer begins another round of betting. In many types of games, this is where the bet size doubles.
10. Again, the dealer burns a card and places a final card face up on the table. This is called the river. Players can now use any of the five cards on the table or the two cards in their pocket to form a five card poker hand.
11. There is one final round of betting starting with the player to the left of the dealer.
12. After that, we have the showdown. All of the players who haven’t folded reveal their hands. This begins with the player to the left of the last player to call. Players use a combination of their pocket cards and the community cards to form a five card poker hand.
13. The player who shows the best hand wins! Although sometimes players with the same hand split the pot.

Once you understand the game’s basic structure, you can play Texas hold ‘em and even some of its variants. Texas Holdem is an easy game to learn, just difficult to master. The “mastering” part is the costly part, requiring study and practice. This website offers lots of articles and tools to get you started on the studying. You can practice all you want for free in online poker rooms.

Check out PartyPoker to get a feel for the action. They have free money tables, and you can start playing for real money as soon as you feel ready. They have both low limits for newer players as well as high stakes tables.

Poker Hand Ranking:

Texas Holdem Starting Hands – a Deeper Look

Before reading this little article, review the starting hand table here. It is obvious that AA is a better starting hand then A2 but why are some hands strong in certain situations and why are some hands not? Extremes are always easy but most the game is spent in the muggy middle. Let’s try to clear it up some.

For example, would you be surprised if your pocket aces lost when 9 other people were against you? Would you prefer another hand, like a suited connector, in that situation? Why is it that K7s is not a very good hand but something like 87s is?

If you have already played holdem for sometime then these answers may pop right out; it isn’t obvious though to a beginner and it is funny that many people who have been playing for decades still can’t seem to get it straight. Certain hands perform better in certain situations then they would in others.

Why do hands like K7s, J4s, J7s, Q7s, T6s suck?

The reason a hand like K7s sucks is because it has very little chance to win (obviously! you are probably thinking, but the question is why). The ways it can win are either very unlikely to happen, or you won’t be able to play with much strength when they do. What exactly are you trying to catch when you play a hand like K7s? If you catch your King, then most likely your 7 kicker will be beaten. If you catch your 7 as top pair, you will most likely lose to overcards hitting on the turn or river. Remember the odds of catching a flush draw on the flop aren’t high either (check the probabilities table here). This hand also can’t make a straight unless it is only one card. To catch two pair with it or to make trips in a weird way is also very unlikely. So the bottom line is, these hands don’t make money unless you get lucky and luck doesn’t pan out often (or it wouldn’t be called luck). So with these kinds of crappy cards you really want to watch out. Either avoid them completely or only play them out of your blinds when it is very cheap.

Why do I not play anything below AT offsuit? Why do I prefer playing A5s and below or ATs and above over something in the middle like A8s?

Any Ace unsuited hand below AT is in my book a trouble hand. Some people might even consider AT and AJ trouble hands too but for the games you are going to be playing in they are adequate starting hands. The reason A8, A7, A5 all suck is because you really can’t hit much to win. Take A8 for example. Your kicker isn’t that great, the 8, and you have no chance of hitting any straights or flushes. The only way you can win really is to hope that they have a weaker Ace then you do and you catch one. Like I mentioned in another article on here, playing poker well is like investing. You want to put your money in good opportunities that have a chance for a nice return and A8 off isn’t that. Now to answer the question of ATs and above and A5s and below versus A9s A8s A7s A6s, I like the first ones because you can also make a straight with them. I would take A5s over A8s because the A and the 5 can work together to make a straight, unlike the A8s. When you play weak Aces though like A5s, you have to be extra cautious if you catch an Ace on the flop. You won’t be sure if your kicker is good or not so you’ll have to use some more thinking. Playing these only in later positions can help you make better decisions because people will check most likely if they don’t have the A or that hand beat.

Why do hands like AA, KK, QQ, AK, AQ like fewer opponents?

Remember the scenario above when you were in the big blind, everyone is in the hand so far, and you look down and see two beautiful black Aces looking up at you? My heart usually starts going a mile a minute and then I look up to see that everyone has already called and my chances to win are slim. Big hands like this rarely win when there are that many people calling preflop. The reason is that it is very hard for AA to improve to anything more then just one pair. And in those big multi-way pots usually two pair or greater drags the chips. In that situation I may actually try to check raise on the flop instead of betting right now. The idea would be to try to cut off some people in the middle and make them fold. Limiting the field increases my chances to win with that hand.

Why do hands like JTs, 89s, QJs, KTs, 79s, 46s prefer lots of opponents?

I love little suited connectors in low limit holdem. The reason is that I rarely get into trouble with them. When I hit something, it is usually really strong and when I miss it is an easy fold. This untrue for hands like AA and KK. With those you are pretty much married to the pot unless someone really makes it apparent that you are the loser. A hand like JTs and 89s are ideal for playing against big multi-action.

The best situation would be if you are on the button or even in the big blind and every person calls before you. I would even raise there a lot of the time to just get more money in the pot. The reason these play well and favor large pots is because they are drawing to flushes and straights. They need lots of people in the hand to justify the cost of playing them. And they do well in that situation because when they make their hand they are hard to beat.

Calculating Pot Odds in Poker

Usually, the bet will be more than $1 to you. Simply reduce the ratio by dividing the size of the pot by the size of the bet to you. For example if there is a $10 bet to you and you have a chance to win a $50 pot, divide 50 by 10 to reach 5-to-1 pot odds. If the pot is $97 and the bet is $25 to you, you are getting about 4-to-1; these calculations do not need to be exact (it’s 3.88-to-1 exactly, but this precision is not worth the distraction during an in-game situation).

Using Pot Odds in Poker Games

Once you know how to calculate pot odds, you’ll know whether you should call a bet by knowing your odds of winning the hand, also known as poker odds. This can be established by calculating the ratio of cards remaining to cards that will give you the win.

Poker odds most often come into play when you are on a drawing hand. You’ll want to know if the odds the pot is offering you are better than your actual odds of hitting your hand. To calculate your odds of making your hand, simply count the number of cards that you can consider to be “outs,” cards that will complete your hand, and compare them to the number of cards that remain. For example, let’s say you hold AK on a board of 3 9 5 8 and you are convinced your opponent has top pair. This means that any ace or king should give you the pot. This gives you six outs, for the three remaining aces and three remaining kings. Since you know your two cards and the four on the board, there are 46 cards you have not seen, 52 minus six. Out of those 46, six give you the win and 40 do not. This is an odds ratio of 40-to-6, which reduces to about 6.5-to-1. This means you need better than 6.5-to-1 pot odds to continue.

Although these are rough calculations, they still may be difficult to make in a game. For this reason, you should have certain poker odds committed to memory. The most important ones are as follows:

Your odds of flopping a set from a pocket pair are about 8-to-1.

Your odds of making a flush on the next card if you flop a four flush are about 4-to-1, if you get to see both cards it is closer to 2-to-1.

Your odds of making a straight on the next card if you are open-ended are around 5-to-1.

If you have four outs with one card to come you are roughly 11-to-1, two outs and you are around 22-to-1, one out and you are 45-to-1. (That one is easy. There are 46 cards in the deck and only one of them helps you, the other 45 do not.)

In a no limit game, you’ll also know how much to bet so that opponents aren’t getting the right odds to call to try to hit a draw (a pot-sized bet or greater will usually do the trick if you’re not sure).