Poker Betting Strategy (cont.)

Filling Time Between Hands

Over the course of one session pick a single player and watch them play. You are looking for patterns and habits in the way they play--for example do they often bet out on their draws? How do they play their very strong hands and their very weak hands? Do they try to bluff a lot or do they almost always show down the best hand? It's important that you concentrate on one person for a while and not try to evaluate everyone's play at the same time.

Count the pot. You can't utilize pot odds if you don't know how much money is in the pot each time you act. A method you may want to try which can help you get a good estimate:

Count the pot by the number of small bets. Ignore the small blind--it isn't going to affect the pot odds much, and if those couple of chips would have made the difference on a particular draw then it's probably not worth making the draw in the first place.

Count the number of people in the pot at the end of the betting round and multiply it by the number of small bets per person (on the turn there were 6 callers and the bet was $12 or 4 small bets, so the result for the turn is 24 small bets in the pot)

Pot odds are most useful for figuring out if you should continue with a draw in low limit hold 'em. You may want to count up the river bets as well for a rough idea of what the final pot was, but for our purposes what you really want is to get a very close idea of how many small bets are in the pot when it is your turn to act on the flop and on the turn.

Be friendly to the players at the table. Offer them gum or breath mints if you are having one, and in general be a nice to them. There is a whole topic here, but in general people who like you and are having fun are going to be more likely to play worse against you.

Read one of the poker magazines that they keep in stock at all the major card rooms. The articles are usually very good and contain useful advice (that you might be able to apply on the next hand that you actually do play)

Get up and walk around.

Pre-Flop Betting is Based On the Type of Your Cards.

The simple quick version is: if you are playing cards which often turn into drawing hands (suited cards, connectors, and suited connectors) you want to see the flop as cheaply as possible. The money you "lose" pre-flop is more than made up for by after the flop betting if you make your hand, and the money you save by not raising (or in some cases by getting out entirely if there are too many raises before you) is even more important.

Before the flop the strategy is very clear. You want to make people pay extra for your hands which can stand without improvement (that means raise AA, KK, QQ, JJ pre flop, raise Ace-Big pre-flop if you can get people out of the pot). Your drawing hands (Suited Connectors, Connectors) you want to be able to see the flop as cheaply as possible. The exception to this is AKs which can always be raised.

Your pre-flop hands that are likely to turn into draws (or immediate folds) on the flop are the ones you want to get in for as cheaply as possible. If you can get in for $3 instead of $6, $9 or $12 that translates into a lot more flops you can see, and therefore a much better chance that you will make your hand (which means at least flopping a four flush or open ended straight).

Resist the urge to raise the pot with suited connectors (except for AKs) except for use as deception. Always raise with any pair over TT, except AA, which you should just call with before the flop sometimes and then check-raise on the flop.

AA and KK withstand multiway action fairly well, but QQ and JJ do not, so be prepared to dump these hands if things get unfavorable on the flop.

See For Yourself

You will be tempted to wait around for another Q or J to fall. You are drawing to a hand with 2 outs. Don't do that. It might happen and when it does after you fold you will hate it, but remember: on the flop you have seen 5 out of 52 cards. That leaves 47 unseen cards. Do you really want to wait around when the odds are worse than 20:1 against you? Yes you want to, but DON'T.

What you can do instead is every time an overcard to your pocket pair flops (and there is action on the flop (where action equals either more than two people calling or one or more raises)) dump the pocket pair. Then at the end of the hand count the number of times you would have won vs. the number of times you lost.

Make a third column in your little notebook for the times when at least one of the bettors had at least the overcard (or a better hand like a set or two pair). Keep that notebook for about forty hours of play time and take a look. In that short time frame would you have won or lost money? Remember to estimate your actual investment in all the pots you would have lost (you called those raises and bets on the flop turn and river remember?

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