Poker strategy: Texas Hold Em

Don't take this the wrong way but you may want to get to grips with the basics in micro stakes Sit n Go's if you're asking that question. It's like asking a football player where the best place to score is on the pitch! Premium hands are AA, KK, AK, QQ, JJ, and AQ, TT. Most players will raise pre-flop with these hands (3 or more big blinds is typical) and/or call/re-raise a 3/4/5 bet, moreso if it's the higher end (QQ and up) or, if bluffing, will be representing one of these hands. The "best" cards depend on endless factors: your stack size, their stack size, the blind level, how snug their play is, your position, their mood, your image, etc. Marginal hands can become premium hands in the correct conditions.



More advanced players will be harder to read and may purposely act in a certain way to trick you ("hollywood-ing"). Against bad players, look out for them re-checking their cards with a wet flop (same suits, connectors, high cards) - they'll be checking back to see if they have a flush or straight draw, or even to double check they already hit it. The most obvious thing I've noticed with inexperienced players is where they are looking: if they have a strong hand they are more likely to look anywhere and divert their gaze; if they have a weak hand they'll be watching your hands/chips hoping for the fold.



The secret to success in poker is commitment and dedication and hard-work. Unless you want to quit your job and play at least 10 hours per day everyday, read strategy books, play live as much as possible, watch commentary, critique your hand history, make notes on bad plays/bad beats/good plays, then you'll go nowhere. Poker is a game of immense skill and complex strategy. People who just play casually for fun will only ever lose in the long-run, myself included. You will have to grind online for endless hours to build up a decent bankroll and it requires huge levels of resilience after losing many tournaments in a row until you finally place decently. Even winning 1 multi-table tournament out of 50 is extremely difficult, hence why casual players tend to stick to Sit n Go's. The best piece of advice I can give you is to watch as much poker as possible and really understand what is going through each player's head - listen to the commentary, especially if it's Esfandiari who gives the best hand analysis you'll ever hear.

A general and popular strategy for your tournament is to play very tight in the low levels - raise your premium hands, call your semi-premiums (try and see cheap flops with pocket pairs; you'll make the set 1 in 8 times), fold most others. Then loosen up as the blinds go up and adapt according to the factors I listed above. Avoid coin flips and shoves wherever possible, particularly in the early stages, and don't get over-excited with AK - against pocket pairs, even 22, it's a coin flip in a showdown. Try and see more flops against snug players and less against aggressive players because your post-flop play will be weaker.

Most importantly, remember the power of position (where you are relative to the button, i.e. who acts first at each street) and always think about the range of hands your opponent(s) may have - that is the real "secret" to poker. Once you know their range of hands, you can act accordingly. Think about what they did at each street and keep narrowing their range by using those factors I listed above, e.g. a loose player 3-betting pre-flop will have a much wider range than a tight player so adjust your play accordingly, i.e. fold more to the nit unless you have an upper premium hand, and with these hands either 4-bet or slow-play the loose-aggro. Of course, they could be capitalising on their table image - the nit could be bluffing and the loose-aggro could hold the bullets - but that's where long-term profitability and reading players comes into play.

Good luck.

you play a lot? good strat talk there, im always trying to improve gto play so pm if you have any more interesting tips

GTO as in game theory optimal?

correct sir

In what situations are you even trying to play GTO?

im not currently, im trying to learn it to adapt to live poker better. if you mean what gto means, then i cant really explain that

Never lose your head when it turns out you would have won if you hadn't folded before.

I know what GTO means, I just don't think the concepts you will be learning are really relevant to live low stakes poker. To win cash games or deep tournaments you will be unbalanced in like 100% of situations.

ok, i didnt say i disagree... low stakes yes youre correct, point is?

I'm not making a point, I'm just confused about why you brought it up. That's why I asked.

whatever, i cba to explaion things atm. play often?

Explain whenever you feel like it

Kind of, I had about 18 months off and started back this week, I played most days after work and have something like 3k hands on 10nl Zoom. Will be happy with over 10k this month, then will probably need to kind of regroup and figure out some spots where I don't really know what I'm doing. Hopefully won't play 10nl for too long either but who knows. You?