Unknown Facts About How to Play Texas Hold'em - Rules, Instructions, Examples IndiaIf a miscalled hand occurs in a multihanded pot, the miscalled hand is dea. Texas Facts Texas is the second largest U.S. State and the largest southern state. Its landscape includes deserts, cave systems, mountains, canyons, forests, and the Rio Grande, a river that forms the border between Texas and Mexico. Texas is known for its Spanish influence, museums, scenic attractions, and cowboy culture. Quick Facts Capital: Austin Population.

Texas hold’em is popular because it’s a skill based game that gives you the chance to win lots of money.

And this is exactly why I started playing the game. Visions of Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer winning giant World Series of Poker prizes convinced me to take up Texas hold’em.

The only problem is that I didn’t bother learning much about poker before diving headfirst into the matter. I’d seen too many Hollywood movies where the hero stares down an opponent and out bluffs them with 2 7 off suit.

Needless to say, I donated a lot of money to other players until making it a point to learn Texas hold’em strategy. If you’re trying to get your bearings in poker, follow along as I cover 10 of the biggest mistakes that I made.

1. Fold…and Then Fold Some More

It’s often said that folding is the best play in poker. And this is one of the few tips that I learned before starting my poker journey in the mid-2000s.

But it was a while before I fully understood how often one should fold in Texas hold’em.

It’s easy to fold when you have 4 9 offsuit in early position. But it’s much harder to let go of 6 7 suited when you’re in middle position and wanting to play a drawing hand.

The truth of the matter is that you’ll be folding far more often than playing hands because you want to avoid playing hands with a low winning percentage.

Another aspect to consider here is table position. You generally need a strong hand when raising from an early position because you don’t have as much betting information from opponents.

Here’s an example of putting everything together:

• You’re on a 9-player table.
• You hold pocket 6s in middle position.
• One player raises from early position.
• Another player re-raises from early position.
• You fold because early position players are showing major hand strength.

My overall advice is that you should fold lots of hands in the beginning until gaining experience. You’ll likely lose money in the beginning, but you want to minimize losses by frequently folding.

2. Bet Sizing Is Crucial

Texas Hold'em Facts Rules

The biggest Texas hold’em aspect that I was clueless on is bet sizing. This refers to the strategic approach that players take when deciding how much to bet in no-limit Texas hold’em.

Of course, every player at the table is bet sizing to a degree whether they know it or not. But it takes a skilled approach to maximize winnings in favorable situations and limit losses in unfavorable spots.

How you size bets will heavily depend on the situation. Here are some different scenarios that you’ll run into with Texas hold’em:

• You have the nuts and want to extract maximum value out of an opponent(s).
• You have a good preflop hand (e.g. aces, kings, queens) and are betting to isolate an opponent.
• You have a good drawing hand (e.g. K Q suited) and want to appear strong preflop.
• You’re isolated with a weak opponent and want to bluff them out of a pot with a marginal hand.

These examples illustrate how there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for each scenario. This is why bet sizing involves a delicate balance of profiling your opponents (discussed later) and understanding the situation.

Let’s look at an example:

• You have A A on a flop of A J J, giving you a set of aces.
• Your opponent bets the pot.
• The opponent has been playing tight.
• You’re certain that they have a set of jacks, leaving you in the lead.
• You need to bet in a manner that maximizes your value without forcing a fold.
• I’d use a 2x pot raise here because you should try and get something out of this situation without betting too big.

The one thing that you want to avoid as a beginner is betting without a plan.

This is exactly the problem that I suffered when starting out. I’d do stupid things like go all in with a marginal hand just to steal blinds.

You might steal the blinds a fair number of times with this strategy, but you’re in major trouble if a good hand calls you.

3. Proper Bankroll Management Is Crucial

Like many new poker players, I started out with absolutely no clue on bankroll management. Instead, I just used side income to buy into whatever cash game stakes or tournaments I felt like in the moment.

For example, I might deposit $100 on a poker site and start playing in $0.10/$0.20 cash games ($20 buy-in). Beginners may think this is enough money because you have five cash game buy-ins.

But the problem is that poker contains a fair amount of luck. Even the most skilled players need a large bankroll so that they can survive downswings.

This begs the question of how you figure out how much money you need.

The first matter involves determining how much disposable income you can put towards poker. I’ll use $1,000 as an example for both cash game and tournament players here.

The second step is to determine what stakes you can comfortably play with this amount of money.

A good guideline for cash game players is to only play stakes where you can afford 30 buy-ins or more. With $1,000, you’d need to play $0.15/$0.30 stakes ($30 buy-in) or lower.

A general guideline for tournament players is to have a bankroll worth at least 100 buy-ins. Taking the standard 10% tournament fees into account, you’d want to play in events with less than a $10 + $1 buy-in.

Tournament bankrolls can differ, though, because even good players can go 30 or more tourneys without cashing. You may decide to play stakes where you can afford 200 buy-ins or more.

The overall point is to put effort into bankroll management before you start playing real money poker.

4. Playing Aggressive Doesn’t Mean Being a Maniac

When I first started taking Texas hold’em strategy seriously, I kept reading about how players need to be aggressive.

I remember seeing references to players like Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey pulling off incredible bluffs thanks to their aggression. I also saw where some top online players raise with drawing hands against tight opponents.

This sparked me to turn up the aggression and start making more bets and raises with marginal hands. Sometimes it worked, but the majority of the time it caused me to bleed out money much faster.

The truth is that I’d become a maniac without even knowing it. And this is only effective until you run into skilled players who can identify your hand range and betting patterns.

Needless to say, I learned that being aggressive doesn’t mean raising like a crazy man and trying to push everybody out of hands. Instead, you should gain more experience before opening up your hand range and being more aggressive.

You need to play at certain stakes for a while so that you can identify patterns and better spot weak players. This allows you to pull off bluffs and steal more pots.

5. Pot Odds Help You Make Decisions on Drawing Hands

I often struggled with deciding when to make calls with drawing hands on the flop and turn. The process would’ve been much easier if I understood pot odds at the time.

Pot odds is a method of calculating how much money you need to contribute to the pot. You can then use this info to help you decide whether it’s worth calling with a drawing hand.

You can either use ratios or percentages to figure out pot odds. I personally like percentages and will use these in my examples.

But keep in mind that you can also use percentage to odds calculators if you’re more comfortable with odds.

The first step with pot odds is deciding how much you must contribute to the pot.

1 – The pot is worth $80.

2 – Your opponent bets $20.

3 – This makes the pot worth $100.

4 – You need to call $20 to stay in the hand.

Texas Hold'em Facts Game

5 – We divide 20 by 100 to find out the percentage you contribute.

6 – Your pot odds are 20% (4:1 odds).

The next step is to consider your number of outs, or remaining cards that will complete your hand. Here’s how this works:

• You have Q J, and the flop is 10 9 3.
• Four 8s and four kings will help you make a straight.
• This gives you 8 outs to make your hand.

The last step is to figure out your hand equity, or chances of making your hand. And we use a simple formula that involves multiplying outs by 2 and adding 1.

Here’s how this works:

• 8 outs x 2 = 16.
• 16 + 1 = 17% chance of completing your straight.
• Your hand equity (17%) is lower than your pot odds (20%).
• Don’t make this call, because you’re contributing more to the pot than you’ll win in the long term.

Implied odds and reverse implied odds add advanced layers to calling with draw hands. But knowing pot odds is enough to get you by as a new player.

6. You Need to Profile Other Players

Another big mistake that I made as a beginner involved multitasking during online poker sessions. I’d read Yahoo articles, download music, and check my fantasy football team in between hands.

I thought that as long as I understood basic strategy, I’d be fine on the poker tables while doing all this other stuff.

But the truth is that you need to develop a good understanding of your opponents. And this only happens when you profile them during hands.

A few things that you want to look for include how they bet in certain situations, what hands they take to showdowns, and how often they’re seeing flops.

Some poker sites allow you to use software that offers data on your opponents. But if you’re not allowed to use software, then you’ll definitely need to watch your opponents’ tendencies.

The goal is to know enough about your opponent that it helps you make profitable calls and folds.

7. Dedicate a Portion of Your Poker Sessions to Strategy

The way I started learning poker strategy was by reading online articles whenever I was in the mood, and this helped me develop a decent strategy base.

But the problem is that I wasn’t fully unleashing the potential of the information I was learning because I didn’t use what I’d learned until the next poker session, which was sometimes 2-3 days later.

I ultimately found that the best way to learn is by dividing your sessions up into strategy and playing.

The ratio depends upon if you’re a new or experienced player. The latter group will need to dedicate less time to learning the game.

As a beginner, I recommend spending 1-hour studying strategy for every 2 hours that you’re playing. If you’re going to play in a 4-hour session, then you can tack on another 2 hours for strategy.

Assuming you don’t have 6 hours to dedicate to poker, you can instead play 2.5 hours and spend the remaining 1.5 hours learning.

The key is that you’re studying and then applying what you’ve learned immediately to the tables. This helps reinforce strategy and can also make you perform better during sessions.

8. Being Pot Committed Is a Mathematical Concept

I was once one of many poker players who had a misunderstanding of being pot committed. My thinking was that if you bet enough in a hand, you should risk of the rest of your chips no matter what because you’ve invested so much into the pot.

This is completely wrong, though, because pot committed refers to using math to decide if folding is no longer a viable option.

Here’s an easy example of how you can determine whether you’re truly pot committed:

• You bet 50% of your stack by the flop.
• An opponent shoves their stack on the turn and has you covered.
• The pot now contains 50% of your chips and 100% of the opponent’s chips.
• Your pot odds are 25% (3:1 odds) to make the call.
• You only have to win this hand 25% of the time to break even.

You should make this call if you have over a 25% chance to win based on your cards and the opponent’s playing tendencies.

Again, being pot committed isn’t just about how much you’ve invested into a hand. You also have to use math to determine whether you should risk the rest of the chips.

9. Chips Mean More in Tournaments

Chips are obviously important in cash games because they represent your money. But what I didn’t know is that chips are even more valuable in a tournament.

Chips represent your tournament life, and you’re finished once they run out.

This is why it’s critical to understand differences in value between a cash game and tournament chip stack. The main thing to be aware of is that you should avoid thin value situations in tourneys.

A good example is the times where you gain a slight advantage by calling based on pot odds.

You should always call in cash games when you’re getting good pot odds because the goal is to maximize your long-term expected value. But there are times where it’s too risky to call in a tournament when you’re barely getting favorable odds.

One exception is when your chip stack is worth less than 10 big blinds. At this point, you should shove with any decent hand so that you can double your chip stack and gain some leverage.

But do your best to avoid risky situations in the early stages of tournaments, when the blinds aren’t a factor.

10. It Takes a While to Prove That You’re Beating Certain Stakes

Many poker players want to quickly climb the ladder and play higher stakes. I myself was in this boat because I’d sometimes take shots at the next level when I wasn’t even beating the current stakes.

The truth is that it takes a large sample size to determine whether or not you’re beating a specific limit. The general guideline is that you should play at least 100,000 hands before knowing if you’re successful at the current stakes.

Does this mean that you have to play 100,000 hands, though, before you can move up?

No, especially if you’re crushing a limit and are fairly confident that you’re superior to the opponents. But it helps to play as many hands as your patience allows before moving on to higher stakes.

Conclusion

Poker is one of the most difficult forms of gambling. You’re not playing against a static house edge, but rather players who have critical thinking skills and the ability to adjust.

But, as many players have proven over the years, poker can be beaten. The key is that you need to continue studying strategy and gaining experience.

Of course, it certainly doesn’t hurt to get off to a good start. And by not making the same mistakes that I did the beginning, you can play better and give yourself a stronger chance to win.