- 1/3 No Limit Strategy
- Texas Hold'em No Limit Strategy
- No Limit Tournament Strategy
- $1 $2 No Limit Strategy
No limit ring games are the bread and butter for many of the wealthiest poker players in the world. Tournament poker gets most of the attention, but no limit ring games are where the real money is made. There are ring games players out there right now earning several million dollars a year playing both live and online.
- The best and quickest way to improve your No Limit Hold'em strategy is by adopting a tight and aggressive approach at the tables. What this means is that you wait for solid hands, and then play then aggressively.
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- Most new players struggle with calling too much when they are just getting started playing No-Limit Hold’em. The call is seen as the safer option over a bet or a raise, especially if you have a mediocre hand. In addition folding always seems passive so the call often seems like the ideal choice.
- If you know the basics of Pot Limit Omaha Hi strategy, you should have no problems getting to grips with Omaha Hi Lo strategy, so here are some tips to get you started. Be prepared to fold on the flop. An essential Omaha 8 strategy.
Because there are two winning pots in this format, you should pick starting hands.
Ring games are difficult, but they are also rewarding. In no limit ring games, you have the freedom to take risks, develop a table image and play against weak players for extended periods of time. Poker tournaments have their advantages as well, but they do not give you as many opportunities to exploit your opponents.
One major advantage to no limit ring games is that you can play against the same opponents for extended periods of time. If you win an opponent’s entire stack, there’s a good chance that opponent will buy in again and continue playing. In tournament poker, you do not have the same opportunity.
No limit ring games also let you punish your opponents more severely. In fixed limit poker and tournament poker, you can only punish your opponents so much. In a ring game, an opponent’s entire buyin is always on the line. One mistake from one of your opponents can result in an instant payday for you.
Ring Game Strategy
There are a few ways to approach ring game strategy. For most players (especially new players) I recommend the tight-aggressive approach. The tight-aggressive (tag) approach is the most basic proven winning strategy. Many of today’s top ring game players use a simple tag style to make a killing in no limit ring games.
I will explain the tag style more in depth later in the next part of this poker strategy guide. For the rest of the guide, I’ll explain a variety of topics that all revolve around no limit ring games. There’s a lot to learn, but don’t let that overwhelm you. The complexity of poker strategy is what makes it such a fun (and profitable) game.
The strategy in this poker guide is written specifically for online ring games. The strategy will work for live games as well, but some of the things we talk about deal specifically with online poker. And plus, we figure that since this entire strategy guide is all online, most of you will be playing online ring games anyways.
If you do play live poker, that’s OK too. The general level of play in online ring games is much more skilled than at live games of equal stakes. If you can make a little money in online ring games, you’ll make a killing a live ring games.
And finally, remember that no poker strategy is guaranteed to make you a winner. If you apply the strategy you find here, you’ll be a winner of the long run. But in the short run, things can happen and you’ll go through ups and downs along the way. The key is to always play within your bankroll and to be able to take breaks when the going gets rough. Keep at it, though, and you can make a lot of money.
By: Cathy 'LadyHoldem' Roberts and Nikki Kopp
A good poker strategy actually happens well before you find yourself staring down a leather-ass grinder from across the poker table trying to figure out if he really has your kings dominated with a wired pair of bullets; the strategizing actually starts the moment you decide on a blind level.
How Many Poker Chips Should You Buy?
Let's say for instance you're going to sit down at a $1/$2 No Limit Texas Hold'em ring game. The minimum buy in depends on the specific casino, and is generally less when you're playing poker online than when you're playing at a brick and mortar type poker room.
PokerStars Requires 10 Times the Small Blind to Buy Into a Limit Game
At PokerStars the minimum buy in at a fixed limit table is ten times the big blind. So if you're playing a $3/$6 fixed limit game the minimum amount of chips you'll need to sit down is $30 (in Fixed Limit, the big blind is the size of the small bet, so in this case $3).
Before we go any farther, sitting down at a $3/$6 game with $30 will generally do one thing for you, it'll get you familiar with the chip buying process. When you sit down at a limit table with the minimum buy in, you look like a fish, you have no cred (table credibility), and for the most part you get called down to the river by half the poker table every hand. More often than not that leads to suck outs and losing buy-ins.
In this article however, we're going to focus on No Limit Poker buy-in amounts. So if you choose to play a $1/$2 cash game at PokerStars you're going to need at least 20 times the big blind according to their 'house rules'.
That's actually a pretty standard minimum buy-in. And if you're short-stacking, it works. Perhaps you've staked out a pretty juicy table, the players are crazy passive, they raise into each other pretty deep, they get callers, but re-raises (in our dream world here) get folded to. The average chip stack at this table is between $300 and $450.
Playing the Aggressive Role with a Short Stack
A more aggressive and/or under funded player might play a short stack here, as their base strategy is making big moves to build a strong stack. So you sit down with $100, the blinds are $1 and $2, making the standard raise here $6, which is not going to scare the opposition off of a hand.
Instead you're going to raise it up a bit, and if you do get called the pot will be worth fighting for. Six bucks is the standard, so bet around $10-$16 preflop. You'll have to adjust this for the table standard of course.
If the preflop bet is already regularly $12, that's obviously not going to make a big difference in the number of callers you get. Ultimately you want one caller; two at most, you don't want 4-5 people in the hand with you to catch a couple pair or a great draw on the flop.
You might not get any action the first few times, which is good as you're picking up blinds and small bets without risking your stack, and you're building a reputation as an aggressive over-better. Soon enough though the other players will tire of your preflop over-betting habits, and buy into your preflop bet.
That's of course why you're playing only strong hands. You're not limping here and you're not seeing a lot of flops. This isn't small ball which we'll discuss later. We're not pushing with nine ten suited until after we've built our stack.
Whenever you've got odds to bet, you're betting big. Another thing to note here is that unless you've got live monster hands, you're playing in position, taking advantage of late position, and laying down almost every single early position hand.
1/3 No Limit Strategy
When the flop comes, you shove. Pure and simple, unless you absolutely know you're beat, you shove. Hint: If you've bet $18 preflop (1/5th of your stack) with KQ suited, and an ace flops onto a rainbow colored board, do not shove. You're beat.
In my own personal experience here, I always pray to God everyone folds, though I'm usually quite pleased when someone calls. Every now and then you will get beat, sucked out on etc. This is poker - that happens, and if you weren't expecting it you better get used to it quick.
You should utilize this cut throat short-stack strategy until you're no longer playing with a short stack.
Once you have built up a stack that's more comfortable, generally dominant to the other stacks at the table, it's time to put on the brakes, slow down a bit, realize that you probably have a huge target on your chip-stack, so play a bit more cautiously. Now we'll discuss how to play once you have the big stack.
Playing the Big Stack
When you're playing with a larger chip stack you can see more flops, play a larger range of hands, and perhaps if you're a more advanced poker player dip into a small ball strategy whereas you might see a flop with cards as low as 67 suited, relying more on your personal feel for the other players to make tough decisions such as when to raise them off their monsters after a bad flop, and when to fold because you were dominated by a monster wired pair all along. Learn more about playing suited connectors.
There are also reasons for starting out with a solid chip stack in the first place; for one thing, it's less likely that you'll lose your entire stack in one hand when you buy in solidly at say 50 times the big blind.
If you're stacked deep, it's also less likely that other players will pick you out as the player to poke at and steal blinds from. After all, everyone at the table needs to pick up at least one set of blinds per round just to stay even, and if they're not getting cards the best way to do this is by picking on the short-stack.
Beware however that if you buy too many chips, you can still be prematurely labeled as a fish. This could be a good thing if you're a strong player, not so good if you're weak.
Another advantage to having a large stack is taking advantage of the short stacks, especially if they're not paying close attention to table position. These guys are betting big and playing fast poker as we explained above. Maybe they've read this article, but... so did you.
Texas Hold'em No Limit Strategy
So you lay in wait, you call with some trapping hands, and you catch them. They shove all in just after your 78 suited makes a double draw on the flop and you hit an eight on the flop, giving you top pair with your draw. The short stack shoves and you've got chips to play with, so you eat him up like the fish that he is.
No Limit Tournament Strategy
Additionally, as the player with the biggest chip stack, you have the ability to push the table around a bit, helping you to pick up that extra pot every round, which will keep your stack even in the very least.
Before you start making any big moves you should still sit back and watch the table and try to get a feel for how the players are playing. Is it an aggressive table? Or a table full of fish? You'll have already done some of this homework if you studied lobbies before you sat down of course. Waiting and evaluating can benefit you greatly!