Poker Guide

Poker

There are many different versions of Poker out there. However, if you are going to choose one, then it better be No-Limit Texas Hold ’em.

This is the most common poker variant that online casinos offer these days, which is unlikely to change soon.

This is the game that you see in famous poker tournaments. It is also featured prominently in many popular films such as Casino Royale, Maverick, and tons of others.

This means that even if you are not an avid poker player, you would still benefit from reading this guide, as all of those films and tournaments will suddenly make sense.

What is Poker?

Poker is a game of skill, luck, and psychology. That’s right—it takes all of these to be an excellent poker player.

Although there are tons of different varieties of the game, all you need to know is that Texas Hold ’em requires you to make the best five-card hand out of 2 cards that you are dealt with (known as your pocket cards or hole cards) and five community cards (the board).

Aces can be used for either high or low on straights, making it easier to extract value from hands like Ace-Jack suited.

As if this wasn’t complicated enough, knowing which hands beat other hands at showdown is crucial. This will allow players to extract a lot of value from their opponent’s mistakes and make many folds that would otherwise be -EV.

What Should I Not Be Afraid to Fold?

Now that we have the basics down, let’s put it into action! There are very few hands in Texas Hold ’em that you will never want to fold if there is no other money in the pot besides your initial bet. The strongest of these hands are AA, KK, QQ. These hands play extremely well post-flop, so it is essential to know that when these hands are in your starting hand, you need to be putting money into the pot!

What Should I Continually Call With?

So now that we know what hands can continue on post-flop let’s look at some hands you should consider calling with. The strongest of these are JJ, 88, AJ, KQ. These hands play decently well post-flop, so it is essential to notice when they are in your starting hand but not put too much money into the pot. Additionally, these are excellent trapping hands, as it is unlikely for your opponent to have a strong made hand given how rarely he would have called raises preflop with them.

Strong Made Hands You Should Not Fold

We will look at some made hands you should not fold to wrap up this section. These include above-average suited connectors such as AQs, AJs, KQs. It would be best if you also tended to avoid calling with weak one-pair hands such as KT. These hands have good equity against a range of random holdings, but they do not tend to make powerful top pairs on the flop and might be outdrawn easily by trips or a straight.

Good Non-Made Poker Hands

On a slight tangent from calling bets preflop, this section is going over some good non-made hands that can use their equity post-flop to win pots without the help of making trip kings or better.

Of course, this includes any poker hand with which you would like to see a cheap flop, as all of the hands below tend to have good equity against a range of random holdings.

This is a list of hands you should raise with preflop and continue to play post-flop as if they were made hands. This includes any hand which can realistically produce the top two pairs or better on the flop. In general, these are not bluffs as much as premium draws – drawing hands that lack quality high-end kickers such as KK or QQ but still have outs to win the pot. There are some standard exceptions to this rule listed below:

These include mediocre pairs such as KT, QT, and small flush draws. However, these holdings tend to be profitable bluffs when paired with backdoor cards that work in your favour on the turn and river.

Basic Poker Terminology

Poker is not a highly complex game once you get the hang of it. Before a game starts, the player to the dealer’s left puts the “blind”. This is something similar to an ante bet in which the player places a certain amount of money on the table to make the game more interesting. If there weren’t a blind, folding hands would come without consequences and money lost.

After the Blind has been placed, each player on the table gets two cards. These are called hole cards and are dealt face down.

Once completed, players get the chance to make combinations between their hole cards and the five community cards that are dealt on the table. Mind you, these five community cards aren’t put on the table right from the start.

First, the dealer puts down three community cards. This is called the flop. After the flop, a lot of betting goes on, but more on that later.

The fourth community card put on the table is called the turn. Finally, the last card is called the river.

Other basic poker terminology that you should be aware of includes terms such as:

Bet – when you bet, others need to match your bet to proceed to play the round,
Check – you stay in the game, but you don’t do much else,
Call – when you match what is in the pot,
Fold – you are out of the hand,
Raise – you put more money in the pot.

There are other poker terms that you are going to need help with. For example, the names of the winning hands usually make quite a lot of problems for beginners. Not to worry, though, as those are the next ones we will cover.

Winning Hands

The goal of No-Limit Texas Hold ’em Poker is to make the strongest five-card combination possible. To do this, players use their two hole cards and three of the community cards which work best with them.

There are ten winning combinations in Texas Hold ’em. If you are playing any of the other versions, you should know that winning hands are more or less the same. Otherwise, those games wouldn’t be called Poker.

The lowest hand in Poker doesn’t have a pair or any other winning combination. This is called the High Card—basically, your highest card of the five. In 99.9% of the cases, this will be a losing hand unless you can bluff your way to victory.

Next comes the Pair. As the name implies, this is any pair you can make (A-A, 4-4, J-J etc.).

More potent than just one Pair is Two-Pair. This means that you have two pairs in your five-card hand (7-7 and K-K).

Three of a Kind is stronger than two-pair. It means that the player has three same value cards (8-8-8).

Straight is a sequence of 5 cards in a different suit, and it trumps three of a kind (2-3-4-5-6).

Flush is any combination of five cards that are in the same suit.

This is bettered by a Full House (Q-Q-Q and A-A). A full house is three of a kind and a pair.

Four of a Kind is what you see most often in films, and it means that there are four cards of the same value (3-3-3-3).

Straight flush is stronger than four of a kind and is a sequence of cards but in the same suit (4-5-6-7-8 all hearts).

Royal Flush, the best hand in Poker is the Royal Flush. This is a straight flush, but with the five strongest cards from 10 to A (10-J-Q-K-A).

So how is Poker played?

Now that you know the basic poker terminology and winning hands, it’s time to play a real poker hand. It would go something like this.

First, the player on the left of the dealer puts the blind. After this, the dealer gives two cards to each player. These are face down. Each player evaluates their options after looking at the cards, and after this is done, the player on the left of the dealer can choose to do one of two things: bet or check.

Let’s say the player bets, and everyone else follows suit and calls his bet. This means that all players are still in the game. If one or more players wanted to fold, they could have done it as early as this stage. Similarly, if any of the players wanted to raise, they could have done that as well.

After this first part of the hand is finished, the dealer puts the three community cards (the flop) on the table. Again, these are dealt face up.

In most games, dealers “burn” one card from the deck before presenting the community cards, but this is not important, so we will not dwell on it.

Now that players can see the flop, they have the same options as before: bet, check, fold, or raise. As soon as everyone has decided what to do, the dealer deals the next community card, the turn. Once again, everyone goes through the same motions: bet, check, fold, or raise.

The last card the dealer puts face up on the table is the river. The same as with the previous stages of the hand, the players that remained active this late in the hand decide to bet, check, fold, or raise.

Poker Odds and Probabilities

Before we describe the winning strategies in Poker, it is worth knowing how difficult some poker hands can be. Most poker beginners would benefit from this as they know how often they can expect some hands to come. These are just some random hole card combinations and the odds and probabilities they come with:

Any pair (17-1) 5.9%,
Pair of aces (221-1) 0.45%,
Ace and king in the same suit (331-1) 0.3%.

As you can see, the chances of getting any pair are pretty good. You are bound to get a pair once in every 17 hands. However, getting a pair of aces is next to impossible. You would play with a hand such as this only once in 221 hands.

Even more unlikely to occur is to get an ace and king in the same suit. This would come once in 331 hands, which means that if you play 100 hands per day, you will get a suited K-A combo once every three days.

Poker Winning Strategies

Those odds and probabilities might have discouraged you from sitting in on a poker table. However, it would be best to remember that they are the same for all players.

This means that everyone on a poker table starts with the same chances of having a winning hand. Therefore, both a new player and a poker pro will statistically get the same quality of cards in the long run.

However, Poker is anything but a game of chance. Poker pros utilize many winning strategies, and a beginner will learn that those odds mean nothing pretty early in a poker game.

That’s why it is essential that poker players, especially beginners, try to implement some tried and tested poker strategies.

A good tip in this regard is to only take part in about 15-20% of the hands if nine players are on the table. This is because that’s the percentage of good hands that you can expect to get on any given poker night.

To simplify this even further, sit out four out of five hands if you want to minimize your poker losses. This might sound like a lot, but if you do this, you will last much longer on the table than if you call every bet a pro makes.

And that brings us to our next point. The biggest mistake that beginners make is constantly calling hands. They don’t know whether to fold or raise, so the safest bet in their mind is to call.

However, this is also the surest way to lose all of your poker money, especially if playing against seasoned poker players. They would soon see that you are there for the taking and have a field day with you.

A good piece of advice to counter this destructive practice is to bet instead of call. This is because if you constantly call, sooner or later, you will have to show your cards. If you are in a duel with a poker veteran and you call all of his bets, chances are, he is priming you for the slaughterhouse.

If you bet, on the other hand, you can win a hand without even showing your cards. The best poker players utilize this strategy, and if they do it, then so can you.

The last piece of advice you should heed is to back seemingly weak hands. For example, let’s say you have a pair of 4s, This is not something to write home about, but it is probably worth waiting for the flop unless someone bets an incredible amount. In that case, steer clear and fold. However, if you can get to the flop without spending many of your chips, you should be good.

So now the flop is dealt, and, let’s say, the cards on the table are 5-4-J. This is a disastrous flop for the other players on the table who might have pairs of aces or kings. However, it’s perfect for you. Your hand is ‘concealed’, and those hoping to win the hand don’t know who they are up against.

After the turn and the river have been produced, this is the full set of community cards: 5-4-J-3-J. If some of the other players had a solid pair to start with, they would undoubtedly call any bet you make. Instead, however, you are taking those guys for a ride with the full house you now have.

Poker Games

There are several different types of poker games that are popular. The two most common are Texas Hold ’em and Omaha Hold ’em.

Texas Hold ’em

Texas Hold ’em Poker is probably the most played form of Poker in bars and casinos worldwide. It’s also one of the most accessible forms of Poker for beginners to pick up because it uses a standard deck of 52 cards with no jokers required, which means that there are just 0-51 fixed numbers for players to keep track of when placing bets.

Omaha Hold ’em

Omaha Hold ’em can be considered an advanced version of Texas Hold ’em. This game uses four cards dealt down (hole cards) to make the best 5-card hand.

The game is similar to Texas Hold ’em, except players are dealt four hole cards instead of two. Players must use precisely two of their hole cards with three cards from the board (community cards).

Triple Draw

Triple Draw is a game where the players are given the option to make up to three draws on each betting round. The game can be played with either a fixed limit or pot-limit betting structure.

Limit Hold ’em

Limit Hold ’em is played with fixed bet sizes, and it is only offered at select online poker rooms. This version of Texas Hold ’em (and all its variations) follows particular rules regarding how many cards are dealt on the flop, turn, and river; what community cards are considered “out”; proper hand values; etc.

Face Up No Limit

Also known as Pineapple Poker, Face Up No Limit games can be found at some online poker sites Rules vary depending on who you play with, but in most cases, you are allowed to use any combination of cards on the board or in your hand. You can also choose whether to go all-in on every bet, wait for an excellent hand before going all-in, or some other option in between.

Sit & Go No Limit

This is a fixed limit game with no pre-set duration or number of hands. Therefore, Sit & Go tournaments are not affected by waiting lists and do not have an entry fee beyond the buy-in amount.

The games are dealt on playing surfaces that include wood, plastic laminate, marbleized paper, Formica brand tops with aluminium foil glued to them, chip tray liners made from copper flashing, glass tables with metal frames.

Seven Card Stud

Texas Hold ’em and Omaha Hold ’em are both forms of Poker that make up the early games beginners must learn before moving onto more complex types like triple Draw, seven-card stud, etc. They both use a standard deck of 52 cards; no jokers required. The difference between them mostly depends on how many cards each player gets dealt.

Poker Guide Conclusion

Poker is an absolute casino classic. It requires a combination of luck and knowledge, and this means that the only way for players to get better is to keep playing it.

It is expected that beginner players will lose some money at first. However, if they play with the right strategy, they can shorten this learning curve significantly.

The best way to be good at Poker is to bide your time and not to call every bet that other players make. It is estimated that you should sit out a good portion of your hands on a poker night.

This also means that you shouldn’t get over-enthusiastic about a hand and should try to look at things with a cool head as often as possible.