• Winning Tips: Before the Flop. Position, patience, and power are the key to winning in Texas Hold’em. The most important decision you will make is choosing to play a starting hand. The biggest mistake a player makes is playing too many hands.
• Learning how to win at Texas holdem poker is a lifelong endeavor for most gamblers. Most of the players who catch the bug, though, think it’s also a worthwhile endeavor. A blog post, even one as detailed and lengthy as this one, can only hope to provide an introduction to the subject.
• In order to discover how to win in poker, you must first learn the Poker basics. Most people sit in a real money game and expect to win at Texas Hold’em poker without even understanding the rules and basics of the game. Hold’em is a game that rewards the best play.

Poker is a simple game. Or so it seems at first. But you soon realise it is full of nuance. To be successful you need a beginners poker strategy to play better Texas Holdem poker.

A lot of Texas Hold 'Em strategy is based on the cards in your hand. You must be willing to suffer through a series of poor hands (e.g. 5-8, 2-6, 4-9) without getting impatient. You must be willing to suffer through a series of poor hands (e.g. 5-8, 2-6, 4-9) without getting impatient. Know each and every one of the Texas Hold 'Em card combinations and their hierarchy. Hand ranks low to high - High Card (no pair), One Pair, Two Pair, Three of a Kind, Straight, Flush, Full House, Four of a Kind, Straight Flush. There are websites which allow you to play for free, without any risk (but without any winnings too).

This guide will help you to work out how to get better at poker, what hands to play when, and is essential for beginners and useful for intermediate players.

Poker strategy for beginners; Position

One of the most important things to understand is position on the table and how to play it. The best position to be is the dealer, as pre-flop there are only two players to act after them and post flop they are the last person to act, which means they get to see what their opponents do. This yields a massive advantage, and means that pre flop you can afford to play weaker, or any, hands, and get away with a big bet post flop which allows you to take the hand down, depending on the action before. If you want to know how to get better at poker then understanding positional play is the first step.

Table position cuts down a lot of hands you might want to play. That’s because if you are in an early position on the table, even with good starting hands, you might have to throw them away, and your chips. The reason being if you don’t hit the board on the flop and there are big bets in later positions you will have to fold. That is why it’s good to get to know optimal starting hand play by position. Check out the table below and along with the winning hand rankings we have been through, memorise it.

Hands in the first four positions. (Small blind, big blind, UTG and UTG+1);

Hands in the middle positions;

Late position opening hands. Dealer, the cut-off, the cut-off +1;

Poker strategy for beginners; Folding

You shouldn’t be playing too many hands. Generally about 15% is recommended when you start playing poker, which means you are throwing about 85% of your hands away. This is very frustrating when you want to play and have fun. As you get better and learn a bit more about the play you can open up slowly and play a broader range, increasing the percentage of starting hands. But poker is about mathematical probabilities, and while playing the four and six of clubs in early position might end up getting you a big hand, most of the time it won’t, and you will lose way more by constantly playing hands like this than you will win over time. If you want to make that sort of play, you have to act as if you are starting with a pair of aces, then follow it through post flop, turn and river, but you only have to get one person not believing you – and some players are very good at reading your likely cards – and you will be in all sorts of trouble.

How To Win A Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament

So be prepared to fold. Beginners call bets way too often, why not after all its fun, but most will get crushed and give their chips or cash away. This is basic Texas Holdem strategy.

Poker strategy for beginners; Aggression

If you want to know how to win at Texas Holdem poker, aggression should be your friend. When you have the right cards, this is a basic poker strategy for beginners. We have established that you should only be playing a small percentage of the hands you get, but when you do get them, you need to be aggressive. You need to be betting and raising, not just calling other peoples bets. A poker axiom is ‘never a caller be’. If you start with pocket pairs (a pair in your hand, i.e. AA, KK, QQ, etc), raise pre-flop. There are many reasons for this and one is that you want to eliminate marginal hands that players might limp in with in the hope of hitting two pair or better. If you limp in the pot with a big hand hoping to make a disguised big hand, you might, but not very often. Take control and raise pre-flop.

Poker strategy for beginners; C-Betting

If you raise with high cards and the flop is below them, hit the board hard with more chips. This is called a continuation, or C-bet. You raised, representing strength, and you follow it up with a C-bet to hammer home the point. If your pair is mid range and higher cards come on the flop, think carefully about what to do. Could the other person have hit? It might be worth putting out a good sized seed bet to see if the other players fold, and if you are prepared to call a twenty dollar bet you should be making the bet. You need to make the other person have to think about their action. You don’t want them making you think about yours. If you get re-raised you let your hand go, and if you get called and it goes to the river, you take it very easy and carefully consider your next action. You don’t want to keep leaking chips.

If you are in late position with your premium hand, and you don’t hit, but the table checks around to you, this is a good position to C-bet, because you probably do have the best hand, and even if you don’t, the other players can’t call your bet if they also hit nothing. But in early position, you can’t do that action because you don’t know what the players behind you will do.

And then…

On the turn keep on betting if you have a good hand and you don’t feel your opponent has a good hand. If your opponent is aggressively playing their cards, be prepared to fold. The worst thing you can do if you haven’t made a hand yet, is to check – call, you are throwing chips away. And if you have made a really good hand, the best thing you can do is check –raise, which gets your opponent thinking and wins you pots.

How To Win At Texas Hold'em Poker

Keep your game simple and clean. If you think you have the best hand or have a really good draw to a straight or flush, bet. Build the pot so when you win its full. Otherwise be prepared to throw your cards away to an opponent’s bet. It’s a lot to learn but you have to understand it if you want to understand how to master poker.

Poker strategy for beginners; Bluffing

You might be thinking that if you want to play better Texas Holdem poker you should bluff a lot. It might seem like a strategy to win in poker, but it isn’t and you shouldn’t. What we are talking about here is big bluffs for big pots, not the C-bets when you are in position and haven’t hit. Most professionals don’t bluff much, and neither should you. If you do at all, it should only be once or twice in a game. There is a saying in poker you need to pay attention to; ‘you can’t bluff a fish’. This means that if there is a poor or inexperienced player in the hand you shouldn’t try to bluff them because they will either fail to recognise the possibility that you have a great hand, or they will say to themselves ‘Lets have some fun and see if I can improve my tiny hand’, and they call anyway with their low hand. And you lose all your chips.

Poker strategy for beginners; Summary of the best poker strategy

• Be prepared to fold. A fold made is chips saved. You don’t get many great hands in Texas Holdem poker. You should be throwing a lot of hands away. Patience is a valuable asset when you start to play.
• Position is vital. Don’t play many hands in early position. Play a wider range in later position.
• Aggression wins games. When you have good starting hands, or a good hand on the board, be aggressive.

None of this guarantees you will win in poker, because you can do all the right things and you still lose. There is no single strategy to win in poker; you have to adapt. In this way you will learn how to master poker. As well as understanding the above poker strategy for beginners, the best answer to ‘how to get better at poker’ is to play, and learn the best poker strategy for you from experience.

Want to learn Omaha poker strategy? Look here.

Good to Know Before MIT 15.S50 Begins

Poker / Texas Hold’em Rules

Obviously, you should know the ranking of the poker hands, and how cards are dealt in texas hold’em. Know the terms straight flush, four-of-a-kind (or quads), full house (or boat), flush, straight, three-of-a-kind, two-pair, pair, high card; know preflop, postflop, flop, turn, river.

Betting Rules

How To Win Money In Texas Holdem Poker

• You should know how betting in poker works. Understand the terms bet, raise, call, check, fold, and all-in. Check-raising means checking and then later raising in the same betting round.
• Know what a blind is. There will be a small blind and a big blind each hand.
• Know that preflop, the big blind is last to act. On each postflop betting round, the small blind is first to act, and the dealer is last to act. Know when a betting round ends (eg. if all players check, then the betting round ends).
• Other good terms to know for positions are cutoff (right of the dealer), hijack (right of the cutoff), under-the-gun (the person left of the big blind; first to act preflop).

Mathematical Concepts

How To Play Texas Holdem Poker Winning Hands

In class we will run through an example to illustrate the terminology you should know.

• Suppose the pot has $500 in it, and your opponent bets another $250.
• You may call his $250, in which case cards are flipped over:
  • If your cards beat his, you win the whole pot of $500 + $250 (that he just put in) + $250 (that you just put in) = $1000. You profited $750 from this gamble.
  • If his cards beat yours, you get $0 back. You lost $250 from this gamble.
• Or, you can fold, resulting in a payoff of $0.
• In this example, we say that you are getting 3-to-1 odds to call. When you win, you profit 3 times what you risk losing.
• Suppose the probability that your cards beat his is 10%. Then your expectation for calling is 0.1(+750)+0.9(-250)=-150. By calling, you expect to lose $150 in the long run. Your expectation for folding is always $0. Therefore, you should fold, since your expectation for calling is negative.
• Suppose the probability that your cards beat his is 50%. Then your expectation for calling is 0.5(+750)+0.5(-250)=250. By calling, you expect to earn $250 in the long run. Therefore, you should call, since your expectation for calling is positive. If you were to play this game a large number of times, your average payoff per game would be $250, with 100% certainty. This is called the Law of Large Numbers.
• We say that a gamble has high variance if it takes a large number of trials to converge to the expected average payoff per game. A gamble has low variance if it converges quickly. In general, high variance means high risk, and high risk usually means higher reward, ie. higher expectation.

Book Recommendations

Miller, Ed, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Small Stakes Holdem: Winning Big With Expert Play. Two Plus Two, 2004. ISBN: 978-1880685327. Only for limit hold’em, but still one of the classic books in poker and written by mathematicians.

Slightly outdated, but very good:

• Harrington, Dan. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play. Two Plus Two, 2004. ISBN: 978-1880685334.
• Harrington, Dan. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 2: Endgame. Two Plus Two, 2005. ISBN: 978-1880685358.

Rodman, Blair, Lee Nelson, Steven Heston, and Phil Hllmuth, Jr. Kill Phil: The Fast Track to Success in No-Limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments. Huntington Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1935396314.

Nelson, Lee, Tyson Steib, Steven Heston, Joe Hachem, and Bertrand Grospellier. Kill Everyone: Advanced Strategies for No-Limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments and Sit-n-Go's. Huntington Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1935396307.

More entertaining than educational:
Hansen, Gus. Every Hand Revealed. Kensington Publishing Corp., 2008. ISBN: 978-0818407277. [Preview with Google Books]

Not that practical, but theoretically very interesting:
Chen, Bill and Jerrod Ankenman. The Mathematics of Poker. Conjelco, 2006. ISBN: 978-1886070257.

Nazarewicz, Pawel. Building a Bankroll. Pawel Nazarewicz, 2012. ISBN: 978-0615589886. Mostly for full ring cash games.

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How To Win In Zynga Texas Holdem Poker

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How To Win Texas Holdem Poker In Casino

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