Free Poker Strategy

Poker Strategy: Continuation bets are bets which follow up a bet made during the previous betting round. These are most likely made after a preflop raise, and are not always a sign of strength.

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The value of making this continuation bet is partly that unless you are facing a strong pocket pair (which you would expect a reraise from preflop in most cases) your opponent will miss the flop more often than not. Your opponents reaction to your continuation bet will also tell you more about their poker hand than if you simply check and they bet. If you check the flop, you would expect a raise from your opponent on the basis of the weakness you have shown, regardless of what cards they are holding.

Despite checking being a potential sign of weakness, it can be turned into a show of strength if you come over the top of your poker opponents subsequent raise with a reraise of your own. You must be careful if you have missed the flop completely though, as you need to be sure in your judgement that your opponent is only betting pick up the pot uncontested. Continuation bets are often made if a player hits a part of their hand and feels they are in front, or if they pick up a strong draw. Different players will have different tendancies in this regard and so it can be a bonus to know the people you are playing against.

You may sometimes find players who will reraise your continuation bets, especially if you have a loose table image, which gives you a tricky decision to make. If you choose to reraise again to convince your opponent you have the best of it, you are getting a lot of chips into a pot in an uncertain position. As with most aspects of poker, reading a situation and extracting information via your betting will help you a lot.

Poker: I have spent a considerable amount of time playing Texas Holdem in an agressive way throughout the early phases of MTT’s. My reasoning behind this type of play is that you need to take command of a table and try to accumulate chips early to stand the best possible chance of winning.

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It is of course possible that the poker cards will not fall your way and you will find yourself short stacked. In this instance I usually simplify my aggressive play rather than cease it altogether. If you still have enough chips to cause significant damage to an opponents stack, then playing your strong hands very fast preflop, prevents opponents from pressuring you out of pots on a missed flop.It is always easy to say that bluffing is the best way to lose a big pot, but such aggression always has to be calculated carefully. If you have a generally aggressive style of play, you find yourself quickly developing skill with judging post flop situations, and seeing more clearly when a flat call is a trap.

Having said all this, it is important to understand the value of tightening up in certain poker circumstances. When you have accumulated a strong stack, it is sometimes best to sit back for a while. As mentioned previously, when you find yourself getting short on chips, the best form of aggression is infrequent all in betting, preflop, with strong hands and with position in mind. Loose and aggressive play is liable to get you more action when you make a very strong hand too, so be sure not to slow play your big hands when you are playing a loose aggressive game.

You might think that the term ‘tight aggressive’ would seem a contradiction in poker strategy, but this is not necessarily so. When you talk about tight aggressive play, the tightness in play is encompassed by the narrow range of hands such a player chooses to play. When playing a tight game, you should be folding a very high percentage of hands you are dealt, waiting for premium cards before making a move.

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There is an old saying in poker strategy that ‘tight is right’ and for players who are relatively new to the game and unsure of their post flop judgements, it can help you succeed. One point you should remember if you are playing tight aggressive, is that you need to mix up your poker strategy sometimes and you will become predictable if you play the same way for hours on end. With this tight aggressive poker strategy, the aggressive factor of it is linked to the way in which you play those strong poker hands when you pick them up.

You want to be leading out with a raise preflop, and putting out tester bets when you can to put the pressure on your opponents. You will often find that the fact that you have been playing tight can work in your favour if you choose to bluff. Remember that your opponents will have noticed your tight poker strategy, and will be a little fearful of the potential strength of your hand. Tight aggressive is a good way to play in certain poker situations, and I sometimes like to play this way if I have a nice chip lead, rather than getting involved with more marginal hands.

Stone Cold Bluffing is never a poker situation that is ideal, especially if you are shortstacked, and you should not undertake such a move purely for the enjoyment of making a dangerous move work.

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If you find yourself raising in late position with a fairly weak hand like (A,2) and your opponent calls a preflop, you can raise on a flop such as (2,4,9). There is a reasonably strong chance your opponent has a hand such as (K,Q) or (A,J) and has missed altogether.

You would expect a poker preflop reraise from hands such as (A,K) and perhaps (A,Q) so I think we could usually count these out. Even if your opponent has a small pocket pair that has missed, they will very likely fold the flop. If they don’t, an (A) or (2) can still give you a probable winning hand. Knowing individual players can help here, as you must beware of players who have the skill to reraise with nothing in this position, and those that wouldn’t even attempt it.

For the above reasons, it is often more beneficial to make probing bets when you have some part of the board cards, but that is not to say there is no place in poker for stone cold bluffs. If you do feel in a position to make these type of bluffs, you have to be very accurate with your reading. Making a big bluff against a strong hand when you are drawing dead is certainly no profitable way to play. So you have to feel very assured your opponent cannot call before making these strong plays.

Sometimes you can make a smaller stone cold bluff on the flop after missing, remember it doesn’t have to be a huge bet. If you think about it, you wouldn’t make a huge bet on the flop if you had flopped a very strong hand for fear of forcing your opponent out, so there is no need to bet big when you are bluffing the flop either. Remember there is a story to tell when bluffing. Try to make controlled bluffs on the flop or turn, as information gathering excersises whilst there are still cards in the deck that will probably win you the hand.