How To Win Poker Texas Holdem
Posted : admin On 3/23/2022Texas Hold'em is a 5 card poker game where players make wagers on the confidence in their hand's chances of winning. This type of poker uses 5 community cards that all players can use and 2 hole cards that are face down. Like any poker game the styles and strategies of play can get very complex and take years of dedicated play to learn. Learning how to win Texas holdem poker takes practice, experience and patience. The best Texas holdem poker players study the game constantly and practice and play all of the time. There are literally hundreds (if not thousands by now) of books about how to be a winning Texas holdem poker player. Texas Hold’em Poker Strategy: 5 Rules to Live. Poker strategy is everything.Anyone who says otherwise is kidding themselves. Yet, it’s unbelievable how many poker players ante up for a war of attrition against seasoned poker veterans without any strategy in mind.
Raising is what makes the game of Texas hold’em exciting. You should raise often, especially against weak opponents. You should also pay attention to how often your opponents raise.
Any time an opponent raises before you act, it’s time to reconsider whether your hand is good enough to play. I’m a fan of the raise or fold guideline.
If your hand isn’t strong enough to re-raise the raiser, go ahead and give him credit for having a great hand and fold—unless you’re already involved in the pot. In that case, it’s okay to call asingle raise and see what the flop offers.
Pay attention to position, too. Players who raise from early position usually have stronger hands than players who raise from late position.
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Winning poker is aggressive poker, too. Players who win a lot of money at Texas hold’em don’t do it by calling a lot of hands down to the river.
If you have a big pair preflop, you should almost always raise. Big pairs play better against fewer opponents. The more people in the pot with you, the more likely it is that someone will drawout on you.
If you have more speculative hands preflop, try to get into the hand cheap with plenty of opponents. Then if you hit your hand, you can get paid off.
You should also raise aggressively preflop from late position if you have any reasonable hand and little opposition. You want to give yourself a chance of winning the blinds.
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
- 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
In class we will run through an example to illustrate the terminology you should know.
How To Win Texas Holdem Poker Every Time
- 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
How To Win Texas Holdem Poker In Casino
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.
How To Win Trophies In Texas Holdem Poker
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.
How To Always Win In Texas Holdem Poker
Nazarewicz, Pawel. Building a Bankroll. Pawel Nazarewicz, 2012. ISBN: 978-0615589886. Mostly for full ring cash games.
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