Online poker strategy is a topic which is sometimes difficult for new players to understand. Many new people who play poker online believe that knowing the basic poker rules are enough to be successful and win a lot of money of one of the many online poker sites available. They take their money, play in a few online poker tournaments, loose it all, and never play online poker again. This is exactly what you should avoid doing.
Even following a basic online poker strategy will yield infinitely better results than just knowing the rules and playing by the seat of your pants. And the truth is, a solid poker strategy is not that hard to learn. By the end of this article, you should have a pretty good understanding of what it takes to be successful playing online poker at many of the various online poker sites available to you!
To get started, we must divide the game up into two parts…Pre Flop play and Post Flop play.
Pre Flop Play
Pre flop play is one of the easiest parts of an online poker strategy to learn. There are some concrete poker rules of sorts, which will help you make good pre flop decisions. If you make a bad pre flop decision, your hand starts off bad, and when hands start off bad, they usually get worse not better.
It is super important to play only the strongest hands pre flop, especially when the table is full. This means anything above a pair of 10’s and any two combined face cards. Right from the beginning, you should throw away any starting hands that are lower than that, especially if you are a beginning poker player.
It is also important to put in a pre flop raise with any of those hands. This is important for two reasons.
- It builds the pot. The more money you put in, the more money everyone else has to put in. This means, when you win the hand, you win more money.
- It keeps out chasers. There are always one or two players at the table who will play any cards that are dealt to them. These players are dangerous because they are hard to read and always seem to draw out on you. Putting in a solid raise from the start keeps them out of the hand, which gives you a better chance to win.
That’s really all there is to basic pre flop poker strategy. Play only strong starting hands, and when you do, play them aggressively.
Post Flop Play
Post flop play for online poker is infinitely harder to discuss than pre flop play because there are no real concrete rules and there are so many different situations that it would be impossible to discuss them all.
The best advice that you should take from this section on post flop play is to play a lot, get a lot of experience, and try new things. That may not sound helpful, but there is really nothing else of value that can be said.
The only real way you will get better at post flop play is to gain experience and understand how the players at your table are playing. There will be no two situations that will be exactly the same, so you will always have to be adapting to the other players and the moves they make.
The best advice I can give is if you are still a beginner, keep it simple. Even if you see a pro making a special move on TV, chances are, it will probably not work in your situation. Those players have been playing for years and fully understand what they are doing. Some people will never acquire the level of understanding for the game they have. Do yourself a favor…keep your play simple.
If you apply some of the ideas that were discussed above into your online poker game, you will see exponential increases in no time. The best way to get better at online poker is to keep on playing. Don’t give up after a bad beat. Keep on going, and eventually you will get better!