Online Poker for Fun
Playing online poker for fun , or for free, can be a great way to learn the basics of Texas Hold em. After all, its absolutely free, fun, and in no way will cost you a penny to learn. If you plan on learning how to play on learning poker at a casino, the minimum blinds for these events are usually 1/2 , or 2/4 and the buy ins are usually a $50 dollar minimum and up. Making your learning period an expensive one. You can wait until you get invited to your friends home game, but then you will probably slow the game down a bit, and you will still make mistakes that will cost you money. Home games are usually tournament based as well and maybe you would just like to play poker for fun in your spare time and not have to commit to 4 or 5 hours every Friday night.
So lets take a look at playing online poker for fun or free play. What I would suggest you do is actually install software on your computer from one of the many cash game sites. You can find many list of online poker rooms plastered all over the net and most of them offer free play tables. The reason I suggest this is because you want your No Limit Hold em experience to be as close to the real thing as possible. The next thing is that if you do decide to play for real online poker money later on, you will become familiar with the software and the adjustment will be that much easier for you. Also most sites offer free rolls, that being tournaments that you can join for free and win real money. You can actually build a bank roll from a Zero investment. Everest Poker is a great place to start
The big Difference between online poker for fun, and the online poker for real money
Free play tables are LOOSE. And by loose I mean a wide variety of players will use there play poker money, or fun poker money, in a non caring manner or fashion. They play almost every hand, they will sometimes chase weak draws, and almost always chase strong draws. If you raise AA in late position on free tables you might as well just push all in , because you will almost always get one or two callers because they just don’t care!! They can always reload there online poker chips because they are free!! If you get AA playing for real money in a real money cash game, you would never just push all in because you will almost NEVER get a caller.In these types of games its actually best to loosen up your game as well. Because people are almost always playing worse hands than you !!
This being said, Online poker for fun or free play is still a great way to learn the game. You can learn how the blind structures work, or how strong drawing hands are, or the advantages, or disadvanteges of slow play etc. If you give yourself a goal to make 1000 free poker chips into a million dollar roll you will never find an easier place to do it. Just remember, this is not how real cash games are played, and when it comes to online poker for real money its completetely different.
Online Poker Strategy - Cards
When Playing Online Poker, the cards can seem cruel at times, but this is all part of the game. Nobody can predict exactly what cards will come, just what will happen over time given certain situations over time. For example of we hold two spades as hold cards, and the flop is two spades, and a club, we know that we will land a flush around 32 percent of the time by the river. Basically 1/3 or of the time or 1/5 per card. So when drawing with these hands we need to determine pot odds to decide whether or not its worth the draw.
People who play very little poker, or players who maybe play a lot of online poker and just refuse to look at the obvious strategies pertaining to cards, will always blame luck, or bad rivers or whatever and refuse to look at the odds. Profiting Poker players know that this is an over time game, and winning will depend on not only their play, but how poorly their opponents play. This is why a big online poker card strategy is to select the right tables!! Once on the loosest tables, just sit back, play quality hands, play them aggressively when hit, and let the amateurs make all the errors. Do not get impatient !! Every time a player makes an error this is a good thing, even if your not in the pot!!
A big online poker strategy that I can offer you is this. The three biggest card draws you can have are a Full house draw (holding a pair) , a flush draw, and an open ended straight draw. They hold almost the exact same odds for hitting !! 1/5 per card, or 1/3 from flop to river, so if someone is betting on the flop and you don’t know if its ok to draw or not , relate there bet to the odds you have and do some very easy math.
Lets say your hold cards are [Ah 10h] and flop of [2h 3h 6c].
Your stack $100
opponents stack$100
amount in pot $6
Opponent bets $6 dollars and its your turn to act. This is good call because we will land our heart 1/5 times. So our math is 5x (bet amount) of $6 dollars witch = $30 . Basically this means that in order to make this call good over time we need to make 30 dollars total just to break even . seen as how he bets $6 dollars, and the pot is already $6, (=12 total) we need to make another 18 dollars from him if we hit (He has $100 so we are gravy) We also have the Ace/10 over cards that might give us the best hand but we wont consider that for this example. If the turn comes our beloved heart, almost NEVER slow play this hand. Bet big because we do not want him to draw to a bigger hand for free. If you miss just check and let him bet again , and do your math over, taking into account the pot size, the 1/5 chance to hit, and the implied odds on his stack. Just be careful of going to deep on implied odds on the turn, because its tougher to get a big bet out of flushed board on the river. If the player bets out on the turn I usually fold unless I find myself against a real fish who pays off flushes consistently.
I hope this online poker strategy helps you with your card game !! Good Luck on the tables !!
TY-Fish
Playing Small Pocket Pairs No Limit Hold em
When I play small pocket pairs in No Limit Hold em cash games, I am generally calling to see the flop in hopes to see a set. But the problem is that I do not want to spend a lot of money to do so. Basically I only call someones raise to see the flop ONLY if there raise is small enough or they have enough chips to justify the call.
Here is my logic. When calling a raise with any pair I will hit a set approximately 1/8 times. If I am playing .50cent / 1dollar blinds, and someone raises the pot to 4 dollars. I am holding pocket 4’s. Remember I know I will hit 1/8 times, I need to win 4×8 ,($32 dollars) for my call. And this is JUST to break even over time!! I am not playing poker to just break even, or lose money so I need to do some extra math to add a buffer.
Here is how I work it .(I am bad at math so I do it this way) The bet is 4 dollars so I think 4×8 is $32. I then double the break even point 32x 2 witch works out to be 64 dollars. If the player has close to 64 dollars or more I will play in hopes of rolling him or her for his entire stack. I might also make a call if 2 or more players are in the pot with stack sizes totaling more than the $64 bucks.
Why add a buffer ?? Why not play straight up?? Several things can happen when I do hit my set so I need to account for this. Sets are not always the nuts on the flop !! They can lose to flushes, straights or even higher sets on the flop or even worse on the turn or river. Also I play my sets very aggressively and quite often they player will fold to me right on the flop because he is wise to my play, or he was betting air pre flop and missed the flop.
