Poker sites keep upgrading the features they offer to their players, and it’s not just window dressing. The players who actually take advantage of these features are the ones that tend to do the greatest and improve the fastest.

To get an idea of what kinds of online poker site features that are out there, let’s take a look at those offered just by one site–Carbon Poker.

• Time Bank – like rollover minutes for more time to think about your playing action when you need that time the most
• Deal It Twice – allows players who are heads-up and all-in to agree to have two turn and/or river cards dealt
• Quick Start – enter your precise gaming preferences (i.e. style, table stakes, etc.) and instantly be taken to an appropriate table where cards are just being dealt
• Rabbit Hunt – learn from your mistakes (and successes) by seeing what that card you would have been dealt would have been had you not folded
• Multiple Windows – view all tables (cash and tournament) that you’re playing in at once on your screen
• Expose One Card – or two! If you think it’ll throw your opponent off (or on tilt) you can choose to reveal one or both of your hole cards

Player Tags – keep track of your observations on your various opponents by tagging them so you’ll remember the next time you sit down at a table with them

In our companion article on Basic Texas Holdem Strategy – Playing the Cards, you learned how to identify what hands are worth playing and for how long. But if playing superior poker were that simple, a computer program could do it (and believe you we – many have tried, all with miserable results). The reason why? What else is there to poker that makes it far more complex and strategic than most would have you believe?

In a word – people. In two – human beings. The fact is, on these sites, you are not playing against a computer. You are playing against another person with a different risk tolerance, level of experience, strategies, and personalities. Anybody can play the cards. The superior poker player plays his or her opponent. What does that mean? Here are a few key examples:

Position:
If Location-Location-Location is everything is real estate, than Position-Position-Position is everything in Texas Holdem. Exageration? Sure. But the lesson is a powerful one nonetheless. The farther along in the betting round you are seated, the more information you get to glean from your opponents before acting yourself. And being last to act (called being “On the Button”) is prime real estate. This is why everyone is more likely to try to Bluff when they are in last position, why you should be wary of this, and at the same time why you should also consider doing the same thing. If you’re in last position and you sense weakness around the entire table, you can work it to an almost sure win.

Learn to Smell Fear:
A player is more likely to stay in with a weaker hand when they are in the big or small blind. The rationale is familiar to many in a strategy-cum-cliché’ “defend your blinds”, a questionably wise morsel of advice that suggests you consider enduring a tad greater risk when you already have money at stake. The best way to capitalize on this suggestion, though is to realize that a ton of other players do it, most of them unconsciously. Therefore, it’s always worth asking yourself a player is Calling, or even riskier Raising, simply because they don’t want to lose the money they’ve already poured into the pot – blinds or otherwise. If you sense a bet is a defensive act, that puts you in a powerful position.

Folding:
It’s not a dirty word. It doesn’t make you a wimp or a woos or whatever they’re calling you in chat. Folding is what happens most often at the World Series of Poker and all the World Poker Tour Events – which is how the editors know which parts to cut out. Don’t let the glitz and excitement of a televised tournament fool you. In between each nailbiting hand you witness are inordinate inconsequential and flat out boring hands where most players fold and one person walks away with the blinds. Not great televison, but a sign of wise poker strategy. Take great care in choosing which hands you will play, weighing in all the factors available to you. And when you play, play 100%. And the rest of the time, sit back and let your opponents beat the crud out of each other for a little while. Rest up for your next bout.

Tilt:
We are human. We have feelings. Those feelings can be hurt, especially when money is at stake. Tempers flare, words are exchanged – and not all of them are later regretted. In poker it’s called being put On Tilt, and it’s a surefire way to impair your judgment and start making poor decisions. And while we are by no means advocating belittling your opponents over the chat feature in order to distract and weaken them, realize that it does happen. At the very least, don’t let yourself be thrown by it. You can also learn to recognize when a player is on tilt already and take advantage of it. That’s a legitimate part of Texas Holdem and other players will certainly be watching you like buzzards for the same cues of (mental) decay. If a player’s chip stack is rapidly shrinking, if they’ve just sufferred bad beat, or a string of bad beats, if they start playing erratically – all of these are online cues of an opponent being on tilt. And all of them can be exploited by the observant player.

Mixing It Up:
Whatever strategies you employ, don’t employ them chronically or to excess. In other words, don’t give your opponents a chance to get a clear read on you. The entire time you’re sitting at a table, your opponents are trying to read you – to see what kind of a plyaer you are – tight, loose, aggressive, sly, sloppy, fearful, etc. Even the best poker strategies are worthless once your opponents are on to you. Prevent that from ever happening by making your bottom line strategy – and therefore quite intentionally the final strategy in this article – to mix up your poker strategies all the time.

As suggested above, if you start with a pair and don’t pull a 3rd of that kind on the flop, you’re treading in dangerous waters. 3-of-a-Kind is not that hard to come by, and at a poker table of 6-10 people, if you don’t have one by the time the flop comes, there’s a good chance someone else does.

Speaking of 3’s, many people chase flushes and straights with only three cards towards them (ie. three hearts or 9-10-J of any suit) after the flop – called Three-to-a-Straight or Three-to-a-Flush, depending. This is more often a losing battle than not and therefore generally considered unplayable. The odds of the next (and only) two remaining cards – the Turn and the River – both filling out your potential straight or flush are so slim that you’re better off bluffing (if feasible, based on the cards on the table) or cutting your losses and folding out of the hand.

The exception to this is if you have Three to a Straight Flush. This may be worth investigating a little further. The odds are still slim, but depending on how much it costs to stay in, it may be worth it to see if you can nail this rare and killer hand.

If you have four to a straight, you’d be best served distinguishing whether it’s an Inside Straight Draw (ie. 4-5-7-8) or an Outside Straight Draw (ie. 4-5-6-7). As should be obvious, the odds of pulling that straight are significantly better for an outside straight draw than an inside one, to the point where the former is often worth playing and the latter usually not.The exception to this is an outside straight draw with an Ace (either A-2-3-4 or J-Q-K-A) as in each instance there is still only one card that can help you, not two, making an outside straight draw with an Ace as hard to make as any inside straight draw.

Now you know the basics – the hands typcially worth staying in and those that aren’t. This, of course, is with Bluffing notwithstanding, but we’ll save the intricate topic of bluffing for another article altogether. In the meantime, you can now at least feel confident sitting in at a Texas Holdem table knowing in the most basic sense what hands to hold and what hands to fold.

As in life, though, nothing in poker is that simple, which is why we’ve given this article a companion piece on Texas Holdem psychology or Playing the Player. This will give you a deeper insight into what’s really going on behind those hole cards and poker faces. So read on, if you dare…!

“They” (whoever they are) say that poker is 70% luck and only 30% skill. Having said that, describing Texas Holdem Strategy can come across as dictating rules to winning the game. However, nothing can be farther from the truth. Strategies are guidelines to what works best in most typcial situations. A poker game, of course, with multiple individuals, each with their own personalities, and all with the same singular desire to win, is many things – but rarely a typical situation. Therefore, take these guidelines not as hard and fast rules, but as insider information as to what is most commonly considered wise gameplay.

At best, these strategies will make you a contender in any game, regardless of your experience level and that of your competitors and can hopefully get you started learning how to develop your own less rigid and structured style of play. At worst, you’ll be able to identify the tricks and techniques that your (allegedly) poker-savvy opponents are attempting to use on you. Either way, learning basic Texas Holdem strategy is a win-win situation.

Starting Hands

In Texas Holdem, your two hole cards are the only ones that make your hand distinct from your opponents’ which makes them one of the (though not the sole) most important factor in determining how (and whether) you should play the hand. There are precisely 169 starting hands possible. At least half of these are considered totally unplayable (unless, of course, you go into the hand planning to bluff, in which case, any hand is playable).

Widely considered the best starting hand is A-K suited, though some will argue that a Pair of Pocket Aces is even better. The arguments for each are strong, making it worth considering both of these starting hands as “the best”. That said, many playes, professional and otherwise, proclaim other hands than these two as their favorites to start with.

Extrapolating from there, a player serious about winning might seriously consider folding out of a hand should their hole cards feel to be a Pair or a Suited Connecter (two numerically consecutive cards – or pictorially, ie. J, Q, K – of the same suit).

If you start with a Pair (of anything) and don’t pull “Trips” (or 3-of-a-Kind) on the Flop, then at that point you might want to consider folding. If you start with a suited connector and don’t pull 2 more cards towards a straight or a flush after the flop,, your fantastic starting hand is suddenly not so fantastic.

Another worthwhile starting hand is Royalty (J,Q, or K) with a Suited Kicker. The kicker is the card in your hand that does not help make your actual hand. A novice may consider this a throwaway card, but it’s much more valuable than that. In the case of a tie, it is this card that determines the winner. Therefore, the higher your kicker, the better your hand (which is also why many players prefer high suited connectors as a starting hand rather than a pocket pair – as with a pair you have no kicker other than the highest shared card on the table, but if you have a high suited connector, you could still conceivable pull a high pair and have the remaining card as a killer kicker). That said, being dealt a J,Q, or K and an unsuited kicker is also a decent (though not great) starting hand.

Check back tomorrow to read part 2 of this basic hold’em strategy.