Why poker newbies must make the percentages work in their favour!
...Plus, the poker strategy of slow playing!
The best advice to anyone starting to play online poker for the first time is to concentrate on one type of game. We would always recommend Texas Hold 'Em over all the other variations of poker.
There are a few compelling reasons for this but the major one is mathematical. For the cost of just one round of betting you are able to observe seventy one percent of the cards with the potential to make up your hand of five cards. This is easy to figure out. At the outset you are dealt two hole cards and after the first round of betting (the flop) you get another three cards to choose from in the make up of your hand. In pure maths terms you've receive five of the seven cards you are going to see in total (seventy one percent of them) and you've only paid once.
These facts may be the single biggest reason why Texas Hold 'Em is so amazingly popular. The same facts also serve to magnify the critical importance of pre-flop betting. What you decide pre-flop determines your strategy for the hand. If you have Ace-King or a strong pair, then bet or even raise pre-flop. If you don't have strong hole cards proceed with caution unless your tactic is to try and pull off a convincing bluff. This may not be wise if you are absolute beginner. Better to let the quality of the cards dictate your betting at the outset until you get in the groove.
Seating position in relation to the dealer is extremely important when playing Hold 'Em for the first time. The closer you are to the dealer's right, the later you will be required to make a betting decision. This gives you an edge by allowing you more information from the players ahead of you, prior to your turn to act. It's the best of all worlds so try to engineer that situation when you select a table to join.
The other reason that Texas Hold 'Em is such absorbing fun are the many different elements that need to be taken into account. One of the main considerations when starting out is the decision to join a full table or a short-handed table.
A full table will normally have ten player seated playing online and a short-handed game refers to games with six or less players. Again, at the outset of your playing career, we would recommend joining short-handed games. The simple reason is that with fewer opponents it becomes easier to assess the relative strength of your hand against the opposition. This becomes more obvious as you get involved in your first few short-handed games.
SLOW PLAY
Some of you will have heard the term slow playing. Essentially it is a form of deception. It comes about when you have a premium Texas Hold 'Em hand and you deliberately play it through as a very average hand. The tactic is to lure your opponents with weak play during the inexpensive betting rounds onto the more costly betting rounds, hiding any obvious enthusiasm for your hand by not putting much in the pot. By keeping the opposition in the game through the expensive betting rounds, you're extracting the value of the true hand you possess. Justtake the minimum action early on that is required to stay in the pot. As long as no one else bets, you simply check. If someone decides to bet, you respond with a call. Your only objective is to keep a smany players in the pot as possible without standing out from the crowd. Caution is needed and your strong hand mustn't be obvious via the board to everyone else or the game's up.
Slow playing can result very easily in a free card coming to an opponent and strengthening their position against you cheaply from their point of view. The kind of strength you need in a hand to pursue slow playing successfully would be if you flopped four of a kind. You're holding two Kings and two Kings come up on the board. This is the kind of hand that warrants a cool head and a slow play tactic. The likelihood is most of the other players are going to figure the best hand at the table is two pair: the Kings on the board and maybe a pair of hole cards someone is holding. Not many will suspect four of a kind being on the loose. If you spring this well, it's usually too late for your opposition to wake up to the scam and the pot has already grown to reward you correctly.
Outside of the above circumstances you don't normally want to give your opponents the chance of a free card. Obviously, if everyone checks during a betting round, you'll receive a free card. What's not so hunky dory is your opposition collect free cards too, so it's a mixed blessing. Only engineer the situation when it suits your hand and your strategy for that hand.
POKER JOKER
A guy turns up at a poker game to see five other blokes and two chickens at the scruffy card table in a dilapdated apartment.
"What's with the chickens?" says the guy.
"We were having trouble making hens meet!" grunts the host.
