Poker Cash Game Strategy

• Deep Stack Poker Cash Game Strategy
• 20bb Poker Cash Game Strategy
• Poker Cash Game Vs Tournament Strategy
• Poker Cash Game Strategy

The GamblingSites.org poker strategy section offers in-depth strategy articles that focus on a number of different areas in the game. From live play to online play, it’s covered here. You’ll be able to learn everything from basic bankroll management to game play concepts that you can work into your existing strategy. We have prepared these articles with the goal of teaching and educating players of all experience levels, and we hope that they will improve your game and overall income from playing poker.

Strategy Sections Covered:

Live poker is the most traditional form of the game. Whether you visit Atlantic City, Las Vegas, or somewhere in between, you’ll find that poker is one of the main attractions in every casino. Live poker offers a variety of dynamics that vary greatly from what you’ll find in typical online play. You’ll need to learn how to identity and understand live tells, what playing in a casino entails, and how to find the best game for you with the least amount of time and effort. The game may be the same in terms of rules, but it actually plays quite differently when you shift from online to live play.

Most recreational players in online poker cash games are passive, so after identifying weaker ones, you have to adjust your strategy to exploit them. Obviously, you will be facing different players all the time, so you should observe how they play and use poker statsto identify the best strategy against each of them. Cash games, which were previously known as ring games, constitute any poker game where real-money is on the line and players can re-buy or leave the game at any time they choose. Tournaments only give players a finite amount of chips and when those chips are gone the player is eliminated.

Online poker is largely what enabled Texas Hold’em and other forms of poker to explode after 2003. If it wasn’t for Chris Moneymaker winning a satellite tournament on PokerStars to earn his entry into the World Series of Poker Main Event, who knows if the game would have ever become really popular. As the years progressed, online poker really began to change. At one point in time, even the weakest of players were able to generate huge amounts of profit. As players gained more experience, however, the skill levels continued to rise. Online poker isn’t what it once was in terms of playing styles, and the ability to adapt is one of the most vital skills that a player can possess.

Poker isn’t just about playing your cards; there is a lot more involved than you may realize at the surface. Some of your biggest assets as a player will come from skills that you practice when you aren’t on the felt. This could mean mathematical decisions, emotional control, financial decisions, and so on and so forth. Having a sound framework for your play is one of the easiest ways to ensure that you are creating a profitable future in the game. These articles focus on the broader areas of the game and lend themselves to a much more general approach to the game.

Games and opponents are one of many ever changing variables in poker. You won’t usually be in the same sort of game dynamics as you move from table to table and room to room. Making the necessary adjustments in your play in order to capitalize on specific circumstances is absolutely crucial if you want to be a long term winner in the game. These articles were designed with the objective of elaborating on defined situations, game types, and opponents. Use the parameters in the titles to understand how strategy varies from one situation to the next.

Tournament poker is one of the two primary forms of the game. Odds are that you were introduced to poker via tournaments in one way or another. You might have watched poker tournaments on TV, you may have played in home tournaments with friends, or you may have heard about them from others. No matter what got you involved in tourney play, you know that there’s a lot of complex strategy involved. Tournaments come in many different shapes and sizes, and being able to alter your strategy for different events is a necessity.

Sit n go poker is the abbreviated version of tournament play. You won’t be playing for hours or days on end, but you are playing with the goal of knocking out your opponents until there’s only one player left standing. As is the case with tournaments and cash games, there are many different types of sit n go’s in existence. You could play faster paced games, deep stacked games, etc. As the third most popular form of poker, sit n go’s create plenty of opportunity for profitability.

Deep Stack Poker Cash Game Strategy

Table Of Contents

Winning poker players are constantly evolving. That’s a good thing, but lots of people get lost along the way. With ‘winning strategy advice’ coming from all directions, and highlight reels of high stakes pros pulling mega bluffs and folding the second nuts on YouTube, you can be forgiven for falling into the trap of fancy play syndrome, but it’s time to get back to basics.

In this article, we take a look at how simple a tight-aggressive style is to play and how it works.

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Why Tight-Aggressive

A tight-aggressive style works because it gives you an almost immediate advantage over your opponents – you will generally be playing stronger hands than they do. That means you’ll make stronger hands post-flop too. You’ll be value betting more and bluffing less.

There’s no mystery to a tight-aggressive style. You’re looking to be more selective over your starting hands and play them aggressively. That means you should be entering pots with a raise rather than calling, and betting rather than checking.

This gives you two ways to win a pot:

• Either at showdown with the best hand
• Or by getting your opponents to fold.

It also means you’ll be building a pot with (hopefully) the strongest hand. You should enter pots with a standard raise of 3x and add a big blind for every limper. So, if you’re playing $0.50/$1, your opening raise should be $3 and if someone’s already limped in you should make it $4. Everyone has an opinion on opening raises but if you stick to the standard raise you won’t force out weaker players and you won’t let players enter the pot cheaply.

Position

If you want to know how important position is, just listen to Doyle Brunson who said, ‘If I could play every hand on the button I’d beat any game blind.’ Poker is a game of incomplete information – the more you have the better the decisions you can make. That’s why the button is the best position in poker. With the exception of the blinds, you’ll act last pre-flop and you’ll act after everyone on every street post-flop.

‘If I could play every hand on the button I’d beat any game blind’ -Doyle Brunson

Playing out of position makes everything much harder – unless you hit a monster hand you’ll always be second-guessing your opponents. Take a hand like suited. If you get this on the button and there have been a few callers before you, you can call with great odds to hit a big hand. This same hand is almost impossible to play in early position when you don’t know if a player will raise behind you. Even if you do see a flop you’ll have to play every street out of position. Taking a nine-handed game, position breaks down as follows:

• Seats 1 & 2: Blinds
• Seats 3,4 & 5: Early position
• Seats 6 & 7: Mid position
• Seats 8 & 9: Late position

Playing In Early Position

The aim of playing an ABC style of poker is to minimise tricky decisions. So, in early position it’s simple – it’s all about strong hands. Throw away anything weaker than suited and any pairs worse than . If you’re tempted to enter with a weaker hand, say suited, ask yourself what you’ll do if you get three-bet. Keep things simple and you won’t get in trouble.

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Playing In Middle Position

In middle position you can start to open your range up and play more hands. You’ll have information from players acting before you and you’ve only got two or three seats behind you to worry about. If someone from early position has raised then you need to think about what hands he’s opening with. If he’s opening with the range above ( suited+ and +) you need a tighter range to avoid being a dog against him. If someone from early position has just called then you can limp along with hands that play well in multi-way pots, like pairs and suited connectors.

Playing In Late Position

When you’re in late position you can play a much wider range of hands as you’ll have a significant advantage over your opponents for the rest of the hand. You can open all pairs, suited, hands like suited and suited connectors.

You’ll notice that we’re still keeping a fairly tight range of hands that we’re playing – you’re looking to enter pots with the strongest hand. Stealing the blinds is still important – not as much as in tournaments obviously – but you shouldn’t be tempted to try to steal them with any two cards. If the blinds defend then you’re going to make things hard for yourself post-flop.

Playing From The Blinds

Playing from the blinds is tough. People get tempted to defend their blinds with a wide range of hands as they’ve already got money in the pot and don’t want to lose it. Defending too wide means that you’ll end up losing even more money though.

However, you should look at the cost of entering the pot and use your common sense – defend when it’s cheap and you’re getting the right price. You can defend with more hands in the big blind than the small blind.

When To Deviate From ABC Strategy

20bb Poker Cash Game Strategy

Back in the good old days an ABC strategy was all you needed to get by. The games might be tougher today but a solid ABC strategy is still good enough to win at lower stakes. Generally speaking, live games are weaker so an ABC strategy has even more chance of success.

An ABC strategy is also extremely useful to adopt if you’re sat with players you have no information on. It will enable you to build information up without taking risks.

The big problem is that it’s predictable and easy to exploit. If you’re sat with decent players, or you’re sat at the same table for a long time, it won’t take your opponents long to work out how you’re playing. If this happens you can balance your play by adding bluff raises with weaker hands and raising from early position with small pairs and suited connectors. This will get you into less trouble than raising with hands like suited, which could be horribly dominated. If you flop big with a suited connector you’re likely to have the best hand.

Also, you can add information you’ve got on other players to your game. If you know that the players to your left are playing too tight you can open up your range in middle position. If you know they’re hyper-aggressive then you should stop limping and trying to get into pots cheaply.

Poker Cash Game Vs Tournament Strategy

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Poker Cash Game Strategy

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