Bluffing in a Texas holdem poker room should be done differently based on the kind of betting structure. The same kind of bluffing may not work in every kind of poker room.If one is playing in a limit Texas Holdem Poker Roomlet us say a person has got a bad hand there is not going to be any point in bluffing through the pre-flop, flop, turn and river by betting the maximum stakes. This is because such betting with a bad hand has a possibility of having to loose when it comes to showdown and if good players are going to stay heads up. Most players in a limit game are aware of the upper limits of losing and will be prepared to loose a bit.If one is playing in a no-limit Texas Holdem Poker Room let us say a person has got a medium hand there is going to be some result with bluffing through the pre-flop, flop, turn, and river by betting the maximum stakes. This is because such aggressive betting with a bad hand has a possibility of having the opponents fear that you have a good hand. This is possible in no-limit games. But if you have an established reputation being a loose player people might suspect your motives and they may figure out bluffing. There is a 50:50 chance with this kind of betting structure. If the rest of the players are not going to fold and if there is going to be heads up with good hand the bluffer might still loose.Bluffing in a Texas Holdem Poker Room is not uncommon. But bluffing all the time does not help. Bluffing in a Texas Hold em Poker Room will work to either make your pot grow if you have a strong hand, and if you are smart with having all players fold despite you having a bad or medium hand that helps. But if people better than you are not going to fold, then all your bluffing will go a waste to loss of stakes.
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Ray Gershwin is offering free advice, tips, and Texas Holdem Poker strategy for aspiring professional Texas Holdem players.
Texas Holdem tournaments definitely stand among world’s hottest events. While Texas Holdem has been continually played for over a century, the circuit of Texas Holdem tournaments is a relatively new thing, which gradually develops from $80,000 prize (with a $10,000 worth buy-in) in 1972 and up to $7.5 million prize at the 2005’s World Series of Poker main event. The reason for such a terrific increase of prize sizes is an overwhelming number of players that started playing tournaments. For example, 839 players entered the World Series of Poker, while there were just 8 players in 1972.However, regardless of that television has made Texas Holdem tournaments look extremely attractive and tries to show it as a competition of skill, you must understand that these are rather competitions, where luck significantly prevails over skill. Hence, even the best ring game Texas Holdem players can possibly lose to luckier average players and even beginners. This, however, makes Texas Holdem tournaments very attractive for those, who didn’t reach the top skill level yet. Think about whole thing this way: if you play a ring game with $1,000 stack and catch a bad run, then you just refill your account and continue playing, but in tournaments, where your stack is fixed and loss means that you leave the game, luck is much more valuable than skill.Generally, in my opinion, ring games have several advantages over Texas Holdem tournaments:1. You can constantly win in ring games, whilst in tournaments you can lose only one time before you leave the game.2. Luck significantly prevails over skill in Texas Holdem tournaments (although this aspect is very attractive for beginners).3. Good tournament player is a lucky player, so he is unable to precisely estimate his actual skills, which means that he has limited possibilities in improvement of his play.However, even if you find the above lacks of Texas Holdem tournaments disappointing, you should also realize that tournaments are fun and after all, you can get lucky and win! And although I just said that luck prevails over skill, winning in Texas Holdem tournaments still requires at least well-mastered basic skills and decent knowledge of basic Texas Holdem strategy. However, tournament strategy emphasizes several aspects more so than ring games:1. Poker chips have different relative value. In a ring Texas Holdem game you treat each buck as having same value. However, in Texas Holdem tournaments the situation is quite different. In the beginning of a tournament, your initial thousand in chips is worth much more than all your further winnings. Since a player is unable to buy back in, he’s always in need of chips. When you start off, you don’t want to go all-in, because even if you win, you aren’t in much better of a position. Nevertheless, during later stages of the tournament you have to gamble, or else you can simply lose by being just blinded away.2. Domination is way more important in tournaments than in ring games. During later stages of the tournament, the blinds will cost so much that most people in contested hands will go all-in preflop. That’s why you need hands that can dominate the others. For example high pocket pairs are nice, because they dominate low pocket pairs and an A with a strong kicker is nice too, since it dominates a lot of other hands. Many beginners make a pitiful mistake of betting aggressively when holding a low pocket pair such as 44. Such hands are only useful for stealing blinds, since if one of your opponents calls you, you are at best a 50/50, while at the same time you’re 4.5:1 losing, if he holds a better pocket pair.
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This Texas Holdem Tournaments article is provided by RoomReview.net - online guide for Texas Holdem poker players.Submitted by: Articles Publisher
Patience is the key skill for all Texas Holdem tournaments and ring games. If you have enough patience – tend to play regular sit-and-go No-Limit Texas Holdem tournaments rather than speed STTs.Winning Texas Holdem tournament players have better edge at regular games, because there is more post-flop play. In regular single-table No-Limit Texas Holdem tournaments the blinds increase slowly, so you have a lot of time before the tournament actually develops into its final phase, when all players either go all-in, or fold preflop. Your variance will be much lower in regular single-table tournaments rather than in the speed STTs. Such reduced variance helps to quickly evaluate your skills and figure out which buy-in value is better matching your style of play.During the early and middle stages of the tournament you should tend not to play poor hands in order to see the flop, which means that you should play just good starting hands, because while it is definitely nice to see flops hoping to hit some strong hand, the blinds are pretty high relative to your stack in STTs than in ring Texas Holdem games. Remember that unlike No-Limit Texas Holdem ring games, drawing hands don’t play that well on early and middle stages of STTs.Don’t get scared, when the blinds get expensive.Approaching the end stages of a single-table No-Limit Texas Holdem tournament you have to be aggressive in order to win. Most average players simply freeze up and fold too much, waiting for premium starting hands to go all-in, while they should have paid much more attention to stealing the blinds, because since the blinds are valuable at this point, winning them without reaching the showdown may appear to be very helpful.Keep your stack huge.While the previous tip illustrates the importance of stealing blind bets from your opponents, it is unreal to steal the blinds in case if your stack is only worth two big blinds, or something, since it is likely that one or both blinds will call you all-in. Players love knocking their opponents out of the tournament and what is more important, the blinds will often have positive pot odds to call you. That’s why in order to be able to steal the blinds, you need a 3 or better 4 times the big blind worth stack in front of you. Hence, in case if your stack is about to dwindle below the 4 or 3 big blinds mark, then you should consider a last attempt to steal the blind bets, even if you hold an average hand.Pot odds are extremely important in the end of a tournament.You simply can’t expect having huge edges against another player, when you both go all-in. If you have even a little positive expected value – you should call. For instance, say you are in the big blind position holding suited 10 and 7 of spades, the blinds cost 200-400 and some of your opponents in the middle position raises all-in for 950, and it is folded to you. What should you do? Definitely call! You only contribute 550 chips into a 2,100 chip pot, which means that you only need a 26.1 percent or more chance of winning to make this a good call. Even if you’re pretty sure that your opponent holds suited A and K of spades, your odds are still great to call.It can be really helpful if you know what odds certain types of hands have against each other all-in preflop. For instance, 2 high cards like A of hearts and K of clubs basically have a 66 percent chance of winning against 2 low cards like 6 of spades and 5 of diamonds. Any low pocket pair has around 55 percent chance of overpowering 2 high cards.Turning a profit at single-table tournaments at higher levels is almost impossible.This warning is not applicable for most players, since just few people play single-table No-Limit Texas Holdem tournaments higher than $100+$9 buy-ins. Nevertheless, in most of the expensive buy-in single-table tournaments such as $200+$15 or even $500+$30, making profit can appear to be quite difficult, which is especially true for the speed single-table tournaments. First of all, the competition is too tight, because the majority of players are skilled professionals or at least semi-professionals. Thus having any edge at all, let alone an edge that can possibly beat the rake is extremely difficult.Besides of this, unlike ring Texas Holdem games, there isn’t any cap on the entry fees. People in $5/$10 ring games pay nearly the same amount of rake as $50/$100 table players, since most online poker rooms cap the rake at $3 per hand (rarely increased to $5). Hence, people playing at tremendous stakes in ring games enjoy significant rake reduction (percentage-wise).However, the rake for single-table Texas Holdem tournaments gradually increases by a large amount. People in a $200 sit-and-go pay up $15 in rake for each tournament and people in a $500 sit-and-go pay $30 to a poker room. Although the entry fee is still smaller percentage-wise than in cheaper buy-in sit-and-go tournaments, the percentage discount that expensive sit-and-go tournament players get is way smaller than the percentage discount received by ring game players. And since a player’s edge is yet greatly diminished by the increased tightness of competition at high levels, the actual amount of rake poses a major impediment to profitability in expensive sit-and-go tournaments for most players.
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This Single Table No-Limit Texas Holdem Tournament Tips is provided by RoomReview.net - Texas Holdem guide for online poker players.Submitted by: Submission Maniac
