Texas Holdem Pot Odds

Because some players have difficulty with the concept of pot odds and others stumble over the practical task of calculating them in the heat of battle, it’s time to demystify and sweep out whatever confusion still surrounds this subject while simplifying the arithmetic for readers. In fact, no arithmetic is needed at all. Instead, a handy chart is included that ought to prove helpful to new and experienced players alike.

This chart shows odds against making your hand with two cards to come (flop to river), as well as with one card (turn to river) remaining.

Hanging on to unprofitable draws for whatever reason ? and many players persist in drawing to long shots even when they really do know better ? can be a major leak in one’s game. For many it’s the sole reason they are lifelong losing players instead of lifelong winners.There’s no real excuse for that kind of play. Even if you are not mathematically inclined (and if you’re in this category, you’re in the majority. Most people I know loath doing calculations while playing poker) you now have two surefire ways to get the answers without having to do anything more difficult than multiplying by two or four, or memorizing a simple chart. Now all you have to do is count the size of the pot, or even approximate it, compare one to the other, and make your decision. It’s that easy. Really

Post Flop Analysis

Betting after the flop is a very complicated activity. There are so many different scenarios that you have to adapt your decisions to the situation you are in. Although it is not possible to give you a black and white action for each scenario possible, we can lay out some guidelines and examples to help you make decisions.

The start of the decision process is to look at what has just been dealt on the flop. After the Flop has been dealt then you and your opponents have seen 5 out of the 7 cards that go towards making your final hands.

Carefully analyse the 3 community cards that are on the table, and these are the kind of questions you should be asking yourself:

1. How does the flop help my hand?
2. Has the Flop helped my Opponent?
3. What Draws are on the Flop?
4. Is there a board pair on the flop?
5. Are you in front?

Importance of Aggressive Poker

Aggression is a key part of poker. Playing aggressively means that we bet and raise to put pressure on our opponents. By putting pressure on our opponents, it forces them to make a decision, and pressurises them to make bad decisions. It’s our opponent’s bad decisions that makes us our profit. All the time we are trying to take advantage of our opponents bad decisions whilst minimising our bad decisions.

Reasons for being aggressive:

Limits the number of players – It forces weaker hands out of the pot, which in turn makes your stronger hand even more powerful. Weaker hands can quite often become a lot stronger hands if given the chance to hit cards on the flop.

Increases the size of the pot – By raising we are increasing the size of the pot when we have a strong hand.

Two ways to win the Pot – By being aggressive we have given ourselves two ways to win the pot, not only can we win by having the strongest hand, but we can also win by forcing our opponents to fold, even if they have a stronger hand.

How much should I Raise?

An opening Raise in general should be between 3 to 4 times the Big Blind. Anywhere in this range is ok, and as guide to start with I would raise the following amounts:

• When you are in EARLY POSITION – Raise 4 times the Big Blind
• When you are in MID POSITION – Raise 3.5 times the Big Blind
• When you are in LATE POSITION – Raise 3 times the Big Blind

You should mix and match the size of your raises to prevent your opponents getting a reading your betting patterns, but the above can act as a general guide whilst you get used to your new raising strategy.
The reason to Raise more in Early position is because we are out of position and want to put as much pressure on our opponents as we can.

How much should I Re-Raise?

A Re-Raise should in general be between 2 – 4 times the original Raise, As a guide:

• When it has been Raised from EARLY POSITION – Raise 2 times the Raise
• When it has been Raised from MID POSITION – Raise 3 times the Raise
• When it has been Raised from LATE POSITION – Raise 4 times the Raise

The reason for this is it is more likely that a player in late position has raised with a weaker hand than a player in Early position.

Poker Position Concept

What is Poker Position?

The first concept that I am going to show you is the Poker Position Concept. This is one of the most fundamental concepts of Poker, and it’s very important that you understand this before you move on. Position refers to where you are seated on the table in relation to the dealer button. Play always goes clockwise so the position you are in determines what order players act in, which has a big effect on the decisions we make.

We split the table into 4 positions, Early Position, Mid Position, Late Position and the Blinds.

Poker Position on a 10 man table:

Early Position – The 3 seats to the left of the Blinds, these are the first people to act after the cards have been dealt.
Mid Position – the next 2 people after the Early Positions
Late Position – The last 3 people (the last person being the player with the dealer button)
Blinds – The players who put in the small and big blind, these are the two players to the left of the dealer button.

The best position to be in is Late position. – The reason for this is that we get to see everybody act before we have to make our decisions. This means we have more information in order to make the correct decision. Also the later we act the less people there are to act after us, so therefore less chance that a person still to act after us is holding a strong hand.

Illustration:

You have a marginal hand 3-3 and are in late position, you may be considering playing, but if a player in Early Position raises, then you will more than likely fold your hand. Compare this to holding the same hand in Early position, you have now got to make the decision on whether to play or not before you see other peoples actions, which could lead to you putting chips in to play the hand and a player in later position raising and forcing you to fold your hand.

Can you see the difference – in both situations you have folded your hand, but when in late position you have done so without committing any chips into the pot, whereas in Early position it has cost you to fold your hand.

How to play Positions?

It is for the reason outlined above that we prefer to play in a late position. You will see that we play a lot more Starting hands from a late position, and only play the strongest hands from early position.

Winning Poker Hands Chart

Now that you understand the importance of position and aggression, we are going to look at which poker starting hands we are going to play and in which position. First of all print out our Poker Starting hand chart, or set our wallpaper as your desktop, as this will be a key reference tool for you.

Full Ring Poker Charts (limit and NL Texas Holdem)Printable Format – To view and print this you will need Microsoft Word.

• full-ring-poker-starting-hands-chart.doc

Desktop Wallpaper – Click on thumbnail, wait a second for picture to load then right click on the image and select “Set As Desktop Background”.

Starting hands are split into 8 groups named Group A to Group H. Group A are the strongest hands in the game, while Group H are more marginal hands. The little ‘s’ next to some of the hands stands for Suited, so two cards of the same suit.

Another cool desktop wallpaper I found and used – but I still prefer the one above, but go ahead try it out.