Texas Hold ‘Em Strategy

We all know that the best hand wins in ANY poker game, right?

The trick with any type of poker is to get enough practice and build your knowledge and experience so that you can win without losing your shirt.

What you will learn about online Texas Hold ‘Em is that you can get a lot of practice for FREE and thereby build your skills toward the goal of WINNING in a real setting.

For a newcomer to Texas Hold ‘Em, the basic strategy should be not to try to be too clever or deceptive and cute.   Bet when you think you have a good hand and stick to the fundamentals until you get the hang of things and build your experience.

There are a few situations where you can take a change and build your skills by being a bit more aggressive. 

The first situation involves the opening bluff.   If you are the first player to the left of the two blinds, you can raise in an aggressive fashion so that all other players are forced to call the blind AND the raise.  The reason you would do this would be to get the table down to a smaller number of players.

It is likely a number of players will fold if you use this strategy. 

The players who DO NOT fold probably have a good hand or they are seasoned players who will not be intimidated.

Another strategy you might capitalizes on the players who, by virtue of their position at the table, must bid the ‘blinds’.  The players in the ‘blind’ positions must bet whether they feel they can win or not.   Once they are in the game, most blinds will try to stay, if they can, since they are already financially exposed. 

If you are the dealer and everyone else has folded, except you and the two blinds, you can raise to ‘steal the blind’ in hopes that the blinds will both fold.  If you just ‘call’ on your bid, the blinds may ‘check’, and you might make some money this way, as well.

If you want to get out of your hand, this strategy may also cause the blinds to fold, so you can all move on to the next game.

The other strategy you can use IF you are in the ‘on the button” (the player who is last in the betting sequence), is a strategy you will want to use sparingly.  If you use it all the time, the other players will catch on.  But if you use it occasionally, you can strike with some element of surprise. 

It is easier to take the pot if you have a good drawing hand, because you can steal the raise from your cat bird position.

If you want to try your hand at the ‘check raising’ strategy, you should first be sure that the table at which you are playing will allow this move.  The point of this strategy is to raise the value of the pot. 

Let’s say you look at your hand and you feel you have a winner!  You may not want to bet a lot right away because you will drive away the players and the value of the pot will not go up as much as you might like. 

If you check, a second player may assume that your hand is not great and she might raise.  NOW you can raise their bet.  You will take the chance that they will stay in the game at that point because they have already raised and are more committed to the win than they were before. 

Again, this is a strategy that depends on human behavior and allows you take advantage of another player’s natural tendencies.