Online Poker Strategy

Poker strategy is about more than knowing the rules and playing based on tips that you've read. It's about developing a method that plays to your strengths at our online poker tables. The best players develop more than one strategy; poker depends on being flexible. This page can provide you with the basics you need to develop your own poker strategies and make you a stronger poker player out of the gate.

Poker Strategy: Play Money Games

Most players develop their first online poker strategy by playing in free games. Whether you play within our software, or take advantage of our no-download poker that is played in your browser, there are always plenty of free games to choose from and we recommend that novices to the game first play there to get a feel for how the game works.

There is a caveat, however: free poker games help players get used to the game but it's not feasible for a player to expect poker strategies from them to carry over into real-money games. Free poker players tend to be much more aggressive, bluffing frequently and going all-in with weak hands because they have nothing to lose. A poker strategy developed against kamikaze players won't work very well against a conservative person who bluffs very rarely.

Basic Poker Strategy: Starting Hands

Essential to your online poker strategy is knowing which hands need to be tossed aside. It's extremely rare that a 3/5 off-suit hand stands a chance, while a pair of kings is well worth playing. Knowing your way around what cards are needed to make the best poker hands is important and knowing why you should throw back a normally-tempting pair will make you a stronger player that's harder to read. In general, the following guide can help you create a basic poker strategy around your starting hand.

• Before the flop, it's considered safe to RAISE if you are holding AA, KK, QQ, AK, JJ, AQ, or 1010.
• You can CALL before the flop if you are holding AJ, KQ, QJ, J10, 109 in the same suit. 99 88 77 and A with another card in the same suit. You should be conservative, though, and only call once or twice.

Basic Poker Strategy: Pot Odds

Pot odds are a component of poker strategy that many players find difficult to understand, and it's easy to see why. It involves the core risk vs reward ratio that makes poker so exciting and so challenging. Simply put, pot odds are the ratio of the current size of a pot during a game to the cost of a call. Let's say that the pot contains $100, and you must call $10 to stay into the hand and continue playing. The pot odds are then 10:1. Knowing when to walk away and knowing when to stay in the game is a core component of poker strategy, as crucial to a player's success as understanding the poker hands and the rules themselves. Pot Odds are particularly important as part of poker tournament strategy; the longer games and attrition rate mean that you're going to want to understand these thoroughly.

Poker Strategy: Bluffing

Most people understand the core of bluffing in a poker game and how it's important to every player's poker strategies, but there are nuances to bluffing that are often overlooked. A stone-cold bluff is when a player bets or raises with a hand that stands no chance of improving. A player making a pure bluff aims to win by making his opponents fold, and is most effective when combined with a healthy chip stack and pot odds that are heavily in the player's favor. Performing one of these well requires intimate knowledge of your opponents; rarely does it work when you are playing with fresh faces, particularly online.

Poker games with more than one betting round give players the chance to perform a semi-bluff, or bluff with the belief that a hand may get stronger as more cards are played. A player making a semi-bluff can win the pot in two ways: by causing others to fold in the initial round, or by catching cards that can improve their hand. For instance, a player with 57 offsuit may find themselves moving from bluffing to playing when a 6 and an 8 hit the board in the flop.

Poker Strategy: Develop Your Own!

These are just a few of the many elements that go into creating a poker strategy that works best for you. Big-name players and small-time sharks alike have their own poker strategies and methods of getting their share of the pots and what works great for you may make others wonder why you'd play that way. Perfect your own way of winning and then carry it as part of your poker tournament strategy in the future. There's a reason the big winners are consistent, and 99% of that success is having a proper poker strategy for tournaments and cash games alike.