Online Hold'em Strategy (Part I)

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The following tips and suggestions can apply to the game of poker at large, but are particularly useful for new online players at low-stakes Hold'em tables, whether in cash games or tournaments. Remember that these tips and observations are generally true. Particular game circumstances can change everything in a heartbeat.

Be selective with starting hands.
The awful truth is that, as a rule, you should be throwing away most of your starting hands in Texas Hold'em. What is meant by "most?" It's impossible to say anything exact here, but a ballpark figure of 75-85 percent is not unreasonable. That means that you'd be mucking three hands out of four - at a minimum. Conservative players tend to wait for a premium hand before even getting involved in a pot. What constitutes a premium hand varies, but AA, KK, and AK are some usual suspects.

By folding junk hands early and often, you are minimizing potential losses. A couple of other points are critical here:

  • The strength of your starting hand depends on the number of other players at the table. In a 10-player game, you should tighten up your criteria for a playable starting hand. In a two-player heads-up match, you obviously would loosen up quite a bit.
  • Keep your position (relative to the dealer) in mind. Starting hands that would be marginal in early position may be playable in late position. Remember that the benefit of late position is the ability to act last, to see and take into account the actions of all the other players in a round of betting.

Be aggressive with playable hands.
Playing your hand with strength by wagering intelligently and aggressively can help you to both maximize gains and minimize losses. The idea is that you generally want to make your opponents pay up to stay in the hand with you. Very broadly stated, you want to raise rather than call when feasible.

Let's say, for simplicity's sake, you're in a hand with just one other opponent. If you have the best hand and your opponent has the second-best hand, your raise will a) bring additional money into the pot if he calls, or b) scare him out, in which case you win the pot right there. Scaring him out also prevents him from drawing a subsequent card that could put his hand on top. By the same token, if you have the worse hand and your opponent has only a marginally better hand, then your raise may again drive him out of the pot, and you win with the lesser hand.

The crick, of course, is that you can never be sure who has the better hand - that's poker for you. But generally speaking, playing strong hands aggressively is good strategy in low-stakes Texas Hold'em.

Be wary of the bluff.
Contrary to what a lot of casual observers conclude, bluffing is not that effective or even that common in most poker games. In higher-level big-bet games and professional tournaments, bluffing is an important weapon in every player's arsenal, but in low-stakes Hold'em, its utility is rather dubious. Here's a rule of thumb that can be safely applied: Use the bluff very sparingly and never use it against more than one opponent.

This is one of the few strategy tips that has a taste of the hard-and-fast about it, and it's specific to online Hold'em played at relatively low stakes. Straight, conservative play tends to be rewarded in the smaller online games. In limit games - and especially in the play-money rooms - bluffing is all but useless. Limit games make calling bluffs less expensive and therefore more likely. In the play-money rooms, half the other players are bluffing half the time, it seems. Which leads nicely into our next item.