How to play pocket pairs

Beginners are always extremely glad to see two similar cards in their pocket and most of them will treat those cards as if they were a care-free ticket to a big fat pot.
The way these hands should be played however is much more complicated. First of all, if your pocket pair is a small one, it is not exactly a hand you should risk you stack or tournament life on. Think about it this way: a small pocket pair will find it extremely difficult to improve in any way as it will be hard for it to make straight a flush or a set.

At a full 10-handed table, with many people seeing the flop, the odds for a small pocket pair are rather dismal. How should you play your pocket pairs then? Are they a hand that should be mucked? Not by a long-shot.
In poker, among the multitude of odds, the implied odds are probably the most important. This is what good players exploit all the time when they’re playing on a deep stack, and this is exactly what makes the playing of small pocket pairs worthwhile.

Trying to see a flop on your small pocket pair every time is a very healthy strategy because sometimes you will flop a set which is a huge hand meant to take down huge pots. Certainly, most of the time you will not make your set and that’s going to cost you money, but the few times that you do make it, will yield you a revenue big enough not only to cover those costs but to leave you with a nice surplus too.
In this respect, your aim is to see the flops as cheaply as you can which means there will be a lot of limping. Seeing cheap flops will minimize the money you spend on seeing your flops, and this way it’ll maximize your winnings when you do make the set you’re looking for.
In short handed games, which often tend to be much more aggressive than full 10-handed tables, limping along will not be the best way to play your pocket pairs.

In this case, you need to play them aggressively, raising them preflop. Isn’t your goal still to spend as little as you can on the fruitless flops? It certainly is, but in an aggressive game, the circumstances make it pretty much impossible to lower your flops-seeing costs if you limp. Therefore, you have to play your pairs aggressively, because under the given circumstances, such an approach will provide more ways to win a pot than any other.

If you raise preflop and do hit your set, you’ll already be dealing with a nicely built-up pot, and it’ll be that much easier to pot commit someone.
If you miss you set (which you will most of the time) you’ll still be able to play good old fashioned poker on the flop. Firing out a second bet will often earn you the pot right there, and on top of it, a continuation bet like that will only be a semi-bluff as you’ll still stand a chance to hit your set on the turn.

Why you should always play against weak opponents

If you’re an online poker player, particularly an online Texas Holdem player, you’ll often see or hear people at the table complain about how they suffered a bad beat from a numskull, and how they’d prefer to play against good players who know when to yield to pressure. As a matter of fact, you’ll almost always see the victim of such a hand bash the winner, calling him a noob, a donk or whatever else is on the menu.
While the guy may be right in his assessment of his opponent’s poker playing abilities, his thinking is fundamentally wrong and the fact that he bashes the guy for the bad call he made is a big mistake.

The object of poker is to win money. Whether you play in a poker tournament or a cash game, that’s what it all comes down to. Where does the money come from? From the bad players. A good player, who would’ve yielded to your pressure in the hand in which the fish kept on calling and beat you on a runner-runner will himself walk away with money from the table, so if you were looking to take his bankroll home, you’d better think again.

Sure, it’s really frustrating to see the A,A you just posted your whole stack on go down against a 7,4o, and definitely, a good player would not have called your all-in on a hand like that. Believe it or not though, in the A,A vs 7,4o match-up you just won a little even though you lost a whole lot. If I knew I would get my A,A called by a player with 7,4o all the time I’d be truly glad, because of the simple fact that A,A wins against 7,4 approximately 85% of the time. That means your opponent will only win 15% of the time and that is a huge edge. Yes, despite the fact that you just lost a big hand, you did the right thing as far as poker strategy is concerned, and in the long-run, if you keep on doing the right thing, there’s no way the rookie is going to get the better of you.

Forget the immediate result-oriented thinking and focus on the strategic side of the game, which says that you won a little money the second your opponent decided to jump all-in against your A,A.

A good player will not jump into that setup, and he would probably have given you that hand, but in the long-run, you were not going to make him pay for his mistakes.
I’ll tell you what’s so frustrating about playing a fish: you can not read him. A good player can sometimes be read, but if he’s truly good he’ll find ways to trick you anyway.
A bad player cannot be read, but you don’t really need to read him at all in order to make off him.
Just keep an eye out for the nuts and bet the living daylight out of him. A pathologic chaser is the surest victim at the table.
Next time you get your nuts cracked by a bunch of rags remember this and you’ll find it easier to avoid the tilt.

SNG strategy: dealing the final blow to the short-stack

Now that you know the advantages SNGs provide for under bankrolled players, and you understand why it’s imperative that you do your initial bankroll building through these poker tournaments, let’s take a look at a few more subtle aspects of SNG strategy.

If you already have a number of SNG tournaments under your belt, you know that one of the most frustrating problems rears its head when the time comes to dispose of the short-stacked player.
It is almost a rule that whenever a player takes a big hit to his stack he goes into berserk mode and begins shoving all-in.
Now then, on one hand you know the guy cannot possibly go all-in several times in a row and always hold a very solid hand (like AA, KK, AK, all the way to J,J) but you’re still finding it difficult to call him down, and apparently so do the other players around the table.

Avoiding big coin-toss hands is something that SNG players train themselves to do. In order to knock the short-stack out of the game though, they’ll have to do just that.
Healthy SNG strategy is based on aggression, but when the short-stack is prepared to risk his tournament life on a vast selection of starting hands, your aggression is worth nothing. The fears linked to the lack of action of the deep staked players could be summed up like this: if I call him on this 10,Q not only do I risk of taking a big hit, I’ll also chip him up which is definitely the last thing I want to do and I may even end up looking like a donk in the process. After all, this guy must have something if he’s prepared to stake his tournament life on it.

The reality is though that the short-stack cannot possibly have a valid hand every time he shoves all-in. Now then, calling him on 7,2o doesn’t make much sense anyway and if you have a really solid hand, your decision is gleefully simple. If you have something like a 9,8 or J,10, it becomes much more complicated, and most people will fold such hands because they fail to take a look at the odds. The thing is, if you’re getting the right odds for your hand it is worth to call even if you happen to be the underdog. If you’re getting 2-1 odds on the call, it is generally worth to make it. Make sure though that you know the guy is not a rock who suddenly decides to shove all-in.

Now look at it this way: since your short-stacked opponent cannot possible have a high pair in his pocket every time he makes the move, it means he most probably has a couple of unpaired cards matched up against your unpaired cards. No two unpaired cared are a huge underdog when faced with another set of unpaired cards in Texas Holdem. As a matter of fact, the hand-odds are surprisingly even. I bet you didn’t know that a 4,7o will win against an A,10o 35% of the time…
Your hand needs to be seriously dominated in order to get much worse odds. If your pot odds are right, and your hand odds are nowhere near as dire as you think, what’s the problem then?
Sure, your opponent may end up winning, but then again poker should be about making the right choice and not about being forced into mistakes by someone’s desperate actions.

SNG strategy tips, aggression and blinds-stealing

As a beginner getting by on a short bankroll, you should really place a focus on whipping your SNG play into shape, because SNGs will provide an excellent way out of your under-bankrolled status. If you win a fraction of a bankroll through a freeroll, or you make a very small deposit, you should definitely play SNGs to get things rolling.
A Sit’n Go tournament provides great individual odds for players because there are a very limited number of opponents one needs to dispose of in order to make it to the money. The initial investment/potential revenue ratio is not the best, but at this stage you need the superior odds to stay in the game rather than the spectacular wins.

Definitely do stick to Texas Holdem tables when you begin building up your roll, as that’ll offer you some protection against more experienced opponents. Some online poker rooms offer beginners’ STTs which reward more finishers than regular Single Table poker tourneys.

General Sit’n Go strategy is about aggression except the opening stages of the game. In the beginning the your stack/BB ratio allows you to play optimal poker, but past that stage you’ll need to turn on your aggression if you expect to stay in and catch one of the paying positions. You need to develop your blinds-stealing capabilities, because there’s one delicate point in the game which will require you to steal blinds in order to survive.
This moment generally comes about midway through a SNG, when the blinds are already big enough to provide a significant addition to your stack if you manage to steal them, and they are already putting you under sufficient pressure to justify such measures.

The problem with blinds-stealing is that you’re going to be raising on hands you wouldn’t normally consider for such antics under other circumstances. Many players who pretty much nail down the basics of optimal Texas Holdem play for themselves, will have some trouble overcoming the instincts that tell them they’re taking a foolhardy risk. Regardless of what your instincts tell you, this dirty work needs to be done, and whoever does it better will live to see the money stages of the STT.

Another delicate point in a SNG is the bubble. As nobody likes to become bubble boy, the battle for the blinds will somewhat tighten up on the bubble, especially if there are several short-stacks at the table. People will be waiting for one of the short-stacks to bust out and they will therefore make les than optimal moves. Deep-stacked players will avoid calling down huge bets or all-ins from other guys who represent a real menace to their stacks, and the short-stacks will probably tighten up looking for the other guy to make a move first.

As a true “fox” aiming to win the tourney rather than to merely make it to the money, you’ll be able to take full advantage of this less than optimal play on the bubble.
Whip your short-handed and heads-up skills into shape too because that’s what you’ll have deal with if you make it that far in the game.