Quick Online Poker Tips
If I were teaching a new player to play no-limit hold’em, and my goal were to get this player up to a professional level of play, how would I do it? What would my lessons look like?
Let’s say I had only three months to do it. With most people, I will admit, it would be a tall order. The learning curve is steep these days, and I don’t think everyone could make it from zero to pro in that short a time.
Follow these quick tips for a beginner just starting out playing poker online, however, and your first few experiences will not be as bad as you expect. Fold at least 75% of your hands — The majority of the hands you will be dealt will be hands you cannot win by playing. Our poker strategy articles cover a diverse range of topics and poker-related issues, including advice for new players, tips for tournament and cash play, introductions to online gambling wallets. Quick Poker Tips That Will Help You Win the Game. December 2, 2020. Poker, despite its image as a mere game for gamblers, is actually a game of skill.
I’d have to make compromises. I couldn’t try to cover every possible situation. I’d have to find the important bits and skip the rest.
Online Poker Tournament Tips
I’d also have to tailor the lessons a bit to a specific type of game. The most important skills in some game types are not as important in others. With this in mind, here are what I think my top five lessons would be for a new player trying to beat the $2-$5 no-limit hold’em games in Las Vegas.
Lesson No. 1. Don’t limp into pots ever. And don’t call preflop three-bets unless you are trapping with an ultra-premium hand.
Limping into pots, calling the preflop raise, and then check/folding the flop when you miss is an enormous leak. It’s also one that nearly every player who hasn’t been specifically coached out of it exhibits.
In my opinion, most players would see an immediate improvement in their winrates if they simply refused to limp in with any hand, especially if they chose to instead fold most of these hands.
For most players, refusing ever to limp means playing much tighter, particularly from out of position. Until you’re already an established pro player, tighter is better.
Lesson No. 2. Don’t pay off big turn and river bets.
This lesson might be different in some types of games, but in the Las Vegas $2-$5 games, it’s easily a candidate for the single most important piece of advice. Do not pay anyone off. When someone makes a big turn or river bet or raise, your one pair hand (or whatever other hand you’re thinking about calling with) is a bluff-catcher. That means, in the great majority of cases, your opponent won’t be trying to make a value bet with a worse hand. Either you’re beat or your opponent is bluffing. And players in these $2-$5 games do not bluff often enough to make calling worthwhile.
So you don’t pay off. I know it can be frustrating to feel like you’re getting muscled out of a huge pot, but the fact is, most players in these games do very little muscling. They try to make hands, and then they bet the hands they make. A big bet usually means a big hand. You don’t need to call to find out for certain.
Lesson No. 3. Your opponents will limp into pots, call raises, and check/fold flops. Take advantage of this weakness by raising lots of hands with position, betting the flop, and often also betting the turn.
It’s a simple play, but it’s one that generates a very consistent profit in these games. Players play too loosely preflop, are too willing to call preflop raises after limping in, and are too willing to check/fold the flop or turn if they miss. With many players, you can ignore your cards and raise the limps, bet nearly all flops, and bet most turn cards as well.
Say two typical players limp in a $2-$5 game. You raise to $25 on the button. Both limpers call.
The flop comes 10 8 2. They check, and you bet $50. One player calls.
The turn is the 5. Your opponent checks, you bet $120, and he folds.
In this scenario, and in many like it, it doesn’t matter what you have. Your opponents are beating themselves by playing call/call/fold so often. All you have to do is put the bets out there and let your opponents run repeatedly into the brick wall.
Yes, there is some nuance to this, and some boards are better bets than others. But against many opponents at the $2-$5 level, most flops, turns, and even rivers are good bets. Keep betting until your opponents prove to you that they won’t beat themselves by folding too much.
Lesson No. 4. With value hands, don’t try to blow opponents out of pots. Instead, play most value hands with the goal of keeping a player in through the river.
Value hands — hands like top pair, two pair, or any other hand you think is a favorite to be best — lose their value when all your opponents fold. If you win without a showdown, you might as well have been holding 7-2. (See Lesson No. 3.) With your value hands, you generally want opponents to get to the river.
Quick Online Poker Tips For Beginners
Most players like to see showdowns if they feel like they can see them without losing too much money. No one likes to fold and think, “What if I was good?” If your opponents get to the river, often it’s an easy sell to get them to call a final value bet (as long as you don’t make it too big).
Calling these value bets is one of the biggest mistakes that $2-$5 players make. (See Lesson No. 2.) Allow your opponents to make this mistake.
Most players try to end hands early when they feel like they have the best hand. “Don’t want to get drawn out on,” they think. But this is backward thinking. End hands early with strong bets when you have nothing but a weak draw. Allow hands to reach showdown when you actually have something to show down! (Makes sense when I put it that way, doesn’t it?)
If I have top pair, I’d much rather get called for $30, $50, and $80 on flop, turn, and river than get called for $30 and then blow my opponent out of the hand with a $100 bet on the turn. The chance to win $160 with the hand instead of $30 outweighs the risk that I’ll get outdrawn.
Lesson No. 5. Think every hand about what strategies your opponents are using and how they’re thinking, and (almost) ignore the two cards in your hand.
I’ll put it bluntly. Most $2-$5 players beat themselves. They tend to play strategies that are extremely transparent, overly simplistic, and inflexible. You can beat some of these players simply by betting every time it’s your action (See Lesson No. 3.) You can beat other of these players simply by waiting for hands that beat top pair/no kicker and then making value bets. (See Lesson No. 4.)
Your job as a poker player is to identify the strategy each opponent is using and deploy a counter strategy. In many cases, the two cards in your hand become irrelevant. My experience is that the players that are always thinking about their hands never figure it out. It’s the players who are thinking on the next level that do. ♠
Ed’s newest book, Playing The Player: Moving Beyond ABC Poker To Dominate Your Opponents, is on sale at notedpokerauthority.com. Find Ed on Facebook at facebook.com/edmillerauthor and on Twitter @EdMillerPoker.
Fast-fold poker
Waiting around for a hand in poker can leave us feeling irritable, bored, and can waste our time. A solution to this is fast-fold poker, a quick-paced variant rising to the forefront of online poker rooms.
Known as Rush, Blaze, Snap, Instant, Zoom, and many more synonyms for fast, you can now speed up game-play by jumping tables after folding. We take a look at this fast-paced game and where you can find it online.
What is fast-fold poker?
Fast-fold poker is an online variant available in top poker rooms. Players are dealt their first hand at their first table. From here, you can either continue the game or fold. As soon as you do and the second bet is made you are moved to the next table and dealt another hand instantly. So while other variants see you waiting at a table for your turn to fold – and even fold three more times before the action comes your way – in fast-fold poker, you’ve already played a number of hands.
This speeds up the pace, and eliminates those players who let the clock run down before making their move. You can even learn more strategies and tips playing poker this way.
You can find fast-fold poker in both Cash Game and Tournament formats in the downloadable poker client.
Play Rush Poker at Full Tilt
Rush Poker is Full Tilt’s version of fast-fold poker and offers the Quick Fold button to fold before the action even gets to you. Standard rules apply, and you are moved to a new table with a new hand when you’ve folded on your previous hand. It is important to note Rush poker doesn’t start until the table is full.You can also play multi-table Rush Poker – but this isn’t for the faint hearted. Find out what else Full Tilt offers by reading our review here.
Play Zoom Poker at PokerStars
Zoom, similarly to the aforementioned titles, sees players moved to a new hand and table immediately after they fold. Anytime you are facing a bet you can choose to fold, or ‘Fast Fold’ which allows you to do so even before it’s your turn.You can find it applied in Hold’em, Omaha and more – and you can even try it out in free play mode.
Fast-fold poker strategy
Due to the frantic pace of fast-fold poker, a new strategy is required when playing. We have a few tips to keep in mind when getting amongst the fast-paced action.
Use Quick Fold to learn about your opponents
The best part about fast-fold poker is if you raise your hand early you can tell how good your opponent’s hand is if they take time to call or re-raise. This is because they would’ve used the Quick Fold option if it wasn’t worth it – especially in such a fast-paced game. You can generally tell if they have a good hand.
Increase your blinds steals
Since opponents are changing so regularly it can be hard to pick up a pattern in gameplay – but you can use this to your benefit when in a late position.
Stealing blinds is a good idea as no one will be able to tell, as they would in standard games. Additionally, opponents won’t be as keen to uphold weak blinds due to a new hand coming up quickly. It becomes easy to rob the blinds since everyone’s strategy is just to wait for a quality hand due to the fast nature of the game.
Don’t bother with tricky plays
There’s no time to waste when playing fast-fold poker, so there’s no point wasting time on advanced plays. No one has time to figure out tricky plays so there’s not much point in doing it. Play a straightforward, fast game for the best outcome.
If you want to try out fast-fold poker for yourself, we recommend heading to the PokerStars online poker room and downloading the client for PC or Macs. For online poker and other casino games in the one secure space, we recommend checking out Mucho Vegas which is our top-rated casino site for players from Germany, which has a great range of RNG poker variants and other casino games to choose from.
