Poker strategy

Poker strategy is relevant to the type of game you play, the one we are going to look at first and the most popular is- No Limit Poker. For the purpose of the poker strategy section, we are considering only online poker, which is different in many key ways as will become apparant compared to offline poker play.

Most people favour this game because of its fast playing pace and high stakes right from the start. Only gutsy players can ever win in this game but you also need to be able to know when to show constraint "know when to hold em', know when to fold em" as the song goes.

The players recieve 2 cards only and the dealer deals 5 community cards face up on the table, players must then make their best 5 card poker hand using any 5 of the 7 cards in play to them. This game is all about being able to bluff and read because it's quite possible for several players to have near identical hands meaning only the bravest will survive.

Its very important to watch carefully how your opponents play especially early on in the game, when the blinds are small, even if you lose to others try to play to see their hands and this should give you an insight to their style of play, even if your not in a hand, pay attention to the others and take notes to remind yourself whoose bluffing and who's a rock. Most online poker sites let you add notes, and if you regulary play the same poker site you will be able to identify the threats early on.

Your goal at the early stage should be to take a few players out if possible and build your stack above the average chip size, remember though that as soon as you take a player out the poker system will usually shift in a new player to fill the space. Online poker sites usually have features that display lots of information for you such as top stack size, small stack size, number of entrants, number out, positions the payouts start from, average stack size, your percentage of flops seen, winning percentage etc so you can easily build up a lot more information to consider when making your moves.

If you can get an early reputation of strong play, it will keep others afriad of you, loose play at the start can also be an advanced tactic to let players think the wrong way about you, then switching to stronger play later encourages them to take risks against you more when the stakes go up, however this is risky and you could find youself out of the game early on.

Keep an eye on the blinds especially if playing speed poker as they beome very important. Low stacks will start to go all in to try and win the blinds more often and high stacks can should try to bully the pot. Don't be concerned about winning small amounts, be more concerned about winning. All to often I see players trying to slow play to get a bit more then lose to a bad beat.

When the tornament gets down to the payoff level in online poker it tends to follow more closely with the offline poker style of play because players are now more focused on maximising their returns and surviving as long as possible. My advice here is to maintain your own game