The Free Card
Often you’re in a situation against players who make large bets with the lead, making it difficult to draw to bigger hands. Getting a free card is a way around this issue. The free card is a way of showing strength early in the hand because you want to get a free card on the next betting round. The free card works so well because opponents expect an aggressive better to continue to be aggressive. Most free card tactics will be employed from the late positions because they don’t work as well in the early ones. If you’re playing at a loose table, the free card can be difficult to achieve on a regular basis.
Betting the flop with drawing hands can serve two purposes. First, your opponents may choose to raise you if they have a better, yet vulnerable, hand than yours. This allows you to decide if there are enough other players in the hand for you to remain or muck. Secondly, if your plan works and you get called and checked to the next round, you get a free chance to draw to your low percentage outs, while spending half the bets to get there.
You would look to employ this tactic in situations where you have second pair with an over card or even two over cards. Straight or flush draws are another situation where you could use a free card to help your hand. It‘s important to keep all this in mind when you find yourself on the other side of the coin. Do your best not to give free cards to your opponents, unless you have a complete monster.
Late Position Poker Theory
Any military general will tell you that the most important weapon an army can have is information. When you are in the late positions you have the advantage of receiving all the available information for that betting round before you have to act. This information allows you to control the pace of the hand, and in turn, the size of the pot. Here are a couple of common situations where you can use your position to your advantage.
The first situation is when everyone folds to you, leaving you and the blinds. In this situation you should look to raise if you’re holding anything better than a queen. The odds that the blinds are holding good cards are low, so a raise forces them to make a call in a pot that has weak pot odds. This, plus the fact that they have poor position against you, makes a call difficult. The pots are small, but they will add up over a session.
The next one is when one or more players in the early positions enter the pot. If you get early callers you can be pretty sure you’re up against at least one premium hand. If you’ve been raising in late position, players will tend to slow play big cards against you. So when you get some early callers, look to limp in and hope to hit the flop in a big way.
Another common one is when you are on the button and the player to your right keeps raising you. If you have a skilled player to your right, they will test to see if they can steal the button from you. If you fold too often, this player will look to exploit this every time, and you will miss out on hands that should be profitable for you. Stand your ground, and periodically re-raise back.
The Free Card
Often you’re in a situation against players who make large bets with the lead, making it difficult to draw to bigger hands. Getting a free card is a way around this issue. The free card is a way of showing strength early in the hand because you want to get a free card on the next betting round. The free card works so well because opponents expect an aggressive better to continue to be aggressive. Most free card tactics will be employed from the late positions because they don’t work as well in the early ones. If you’re playing at a loose table, the free card can be difficult to achieve on a regular basis.
Betting the flop with drawing hands can serve two purposes. First, your opponents may choose to raise you if they have a better, yet vulnerable, hand than yours. This allows you to decide if there are enough other players in the hand for you to remain or muck. Secondly, if your plan works and you get called and checked to the next round, you get a free chance to draw to your low percentage outs, while spending half the bets to get there.
You would look to employ this tactic in situations where you have second pair with an over card or even two over cards. Straight or flush draws are another situation where you could use a free card to help your hand. It‘s important to keep all this in mind when you find yourself on the other side of the coin. Do your best not to give free cards to your opponents, unless you have a complete monster.
Aggression is good in Hold’em
Once you get the cards you’re looking for, play them aggressively! If you have the best hand, bet it and force the weak players out. To many new players make the mistake of slow-playing those aces, allowing someone to stay in cheap, and that someone ends up drawing out to a better hand. Make them pay to play.
The only exception to this might be when you have the “nut” hand, (the best possible hand), and you are attempting to build the pot by letting others limp along, getting a few good cards that will entice them to stay and call you on the last couple of expensive “streets.” But do not overestimate the strength of your hand and allow people to limp in and beat you on the river.
Look at your “call”, “raise” and “fold” percentage. “Fold” should rank #1, followed by “raise” and finally “call”. If you’re pretty sure you have the best hand currently, raise it. If you think you’re beat, fold it. The only time you should be calling or checking is when you’re drawing to a flush or straight, or you’re calling what you think might be a bluff.
Calculating pot odds
The ability to calculate pot odds is a necessary part of any poker player’s game. It’s pretty simple but maybe you haven’t thought long and hard about doing it.
The most straightforward explanation of how to calculate pot odds is to compare the total number of unknown cards to how many outs you have, and then do some simple division.
For example, if you are four to a nut flush on the turn of a Texas Hold ‘em game, there are 46 unknown cards, (52 minus your 2 pocket cards and 4 on the board). Of those 46 cards, 9 are the same suit as your flush draw. So 37 cards will not help you, while 9 will give you the nut flush hand.
Your odds are 37/9, or 4.1 to 1 odds against making your draw.
Playing Junk Cards
Playing garbage cards periodically will become part of your game eventually, if it isn’t already. A skilled player will make money with these hands in the blinds and practically any position if the setting of the table is right. These sorts of hands are very valuable to the seasoned player, because when they do pay off it’s usually a big pot because your opponents rarely put you on the junk hole cards.
Usually junk cards are played in the blinds positions or on the button. Playing junk in any position can be practiced when you’re sitting with a big stack in a tournament, but I don’t recommend playing junk when you’re short stacked or on a losing streak. Junk cards would include hands like 5,6 or even 8,6; cards that have at least some potential.
Junk hands are an example of a player changing gears. If you play the periodic junk hand and hit it, your opponents have no way of knowing they’re being trapped. The key is to play the hand as if you’re holding the high cards. If you hit the flop big and an opponent shows aggression, just check and call his bets, and wait until the river to go over him (the exception being if the flop is vulnerable to big card draws or a flush draw.)
It’s about playing outside of the box that your opponents are assuming they know about you and your play. Flopping two pair against an over pair is a tough situation for an opponent to get away from. Playing good poker goes far beyond playing top hole cards. As long as it’s cheap to get into the hand, junk cards can win you big pots.
Unsuited Connectors
Unsuited connectors are a very sneaky hand to hold for the simple reason that no one ever puts you on that sort of hand. It’s commonly assumed that these types of hands are rarely played, and usually only by weaker players who don’t know any better. The truth is that skilled players play all sorts of starting hands.
That doesn’t mean that you should always play them, but it does mean that seeing the odd flop can prove profitable if the cards go your way. When you find yourself in one of the better positions, these types of hands can be valuable. The ideal situation would be one with no pre-flop raises and multiple players flat calling the blind. The more players in the hand, the higher your pre-flop odds will be to win the pot.
The mindset here is to see these flops with the intent of mucking to any bet if you don’t have two pair, a flopped straight, or an open-ended straight draw. If you do have one of these hands, the hand may prove very profitable if you play it right.
Two pair is a hand that you would usually play slow, unless the flop has two suited cards. If the flop has an ace plus the two cards you hold, aggression may be the best move because the big ace will look to raise against your sneaky hand. Slow playing against the ace opens up the chance that the opponent will pair the other card or the board and your two pair gets out drawn or “counterfeited”.
Open-ended straight draws are up to you. There’s the traditional method of calling bets that give you proper odds, or there’s the option of semi bluffing out the flop in hope of controlling the amount bet, and letting the leader in the hand foolishly slow play against you.
Unsuited connectors have a low pre-flop winning percentage. That doesn’t mean that the hands have no value. Try and limit playing these hands to favourable positions and only occasionally as part of a gear-changing tactic.
Protecting Your Hand
Having the lead in a hand is often a vulnerable position. Skilled players know when to attack a flop and when to slow-play their lead. We all know that good poker is about getting your money in when you have the lead. Protecting a lead in holdem requires close study of the board cards before you decide how much you want to force the action in a particular hand.
Your aggression level should be determined by the flop and the size of your hand. If you flop a set it usually means that you have big lead and can slow play the hand. Say you have pocket tens and the flop is 9c, 10c, 4h. You know by looking at the flop that it’s very possible that an opponent could have Q, J or two clubs. You know you’re in the lead but there are a lot of outs that can bust your set. Potentially any ace, king, queen, jack, 8, 7, 6, or club (other than the 4) could make a hand that would beat your set. This type of flop requires a healthy bet. If you get a call, the turn will determine your fate.
When you have a hand like 10, 8 when the flop is 10c, 8h, Ks it is a bit different. Once again it’s likely that you have the lead. You also have outs for a bigger hand but not as many as the last example. Getting action on this hand is more likely than the last because of the king on the board. There are not as many outs against you this time, but the possibility of the straight and the board pairing (or your opponent with the king pairing their other card) still make this hand a vulnerable one. Because this hand is likely to get action, it requires the biggest bet the game will allow.
Take the time to realize how vulnerable your lead is and bet accordingly. Take charge and make it expensive for your opponents to sit at a poker table with you.
Getting Outdrawn
The beauty of Texas Holdem is that careful study of the board cards and the betting patterns will provide you with valuable information about your opponent’s hands. Knowing if you’ve been outdrawn in holdem is a skill any player can learn once you know what to look for. This information will save you bets when you’re outdrawn, and it will tell you if your opponent is likely bluffing.
Say you have top pair (good kicker) or an over pair. You raised pre-flop, you’ve bet the flop and the turn, and you have at least two callers. Once the river comes, and one of your opponents shows aggression, how can you tell if you’re beat?
Let’s say you have pocket kings and the board cards are Jc, 6c, 2s. A third club hits on the turn or the river and an opponent bets out. Where do you stand? In this situation you can be sure you’re beat. The fact that you raised pre-flop and got called down against this board means your opponents have a big hand. If your opponent wasn’t on the flush draw, which they most likely were, they probably have you beat anyway. The most likely hand would be trips because they called your pre-flop raise with something, and they waited until the bigger bets to raise you. It’s unlikely they would raise you with A-J, K-J, or Q-J.
What if you have the same kings but a flop like 9d, 3d, 10c? With a flop like this the possibility of the straight draw exists. If the third suited card comes, you may not be outdrawn. Your opponents may have been on the straight draw instead. If you’re on the big pair and the draw card hits the river, you should look to finish the hand without it costing any more chips.
Limit Holdem Betting Patterns
We know that good poker requires three skills; starting hand selection, reading other players’ hands, and reading other players’ minds. The last two of those skills are honed through understanding the language of betting patterns. Betting patterns are the unspoken words of the poker table. It’s a language all its own, and when you possess an ability to understand this language it will turn into immediate profit.
This subject of poker is so vast that I can only scratch the surface of what there is to know about betting patterns. This is the aspect of the game that takes a lifetime to master. Here are a couple of common ones.
Humans are creatures of habit, and players will repeat betting patterns over and over again. Each player will play certain hands a certain way. Watch and remember what each opponent holds when they execute a certain betting pattern.
Pre-flop raise, check then call the flop, check-raise the turn. This is how most players play a monster. The pre-flop raise followed by a check on the flop means they hit big or missed completely. The check raise on the turn tells you they hit big. They slow played you until the big bet. If you see a player using this pattern for other hands, other than monsters, you know you have a skilled player at your table.
Call pre-flop, bet, bet, check. This is the betting pattern of a player who is unsure of their hand. They got at least two calls and then looked to back off of the hand. In this situation you must look and see what the board has brought on the turn and river. If the turn and river provide multiple ways for an early lead to be beaten, (i.e. three to a suit or a possible straight) a tight player can be bluffed out of this hand if your table image is right for the move.