Online poker differs from live poker in a very important way, online poker is not a “sure thing” as you could have a great hand and absolutely nothing else and win a lot of money and in the same hand your poor hand may have zero value at all leaving you out of pocket and possibly worse in some cases. This is because of the fact that online texas hold’em variables are not as easy to read as live variables. One of the best ways to work out your opponents hands is to have a keen eye on all the players as soon as they put a bet in the pot and also all the players leave the table and this is the scenario when you can make good observations about their styles.
Once you know the players you are playing with you can start to play a little more carefully and more strategically if you know what you are doing. One of the best ways to do this if you are a beginner is to learn how to effectively judge your opponents hands.
Texas hold’em is not a particularly easy game to learn and if you are joining a real table for the first time you will need to practice out a few hands yourself in order to recognize what hands are more easily playable than others.
First of all you are probably realizing that you need more than just basic pre-flop skills to be able to win at this game, and this is all fine. The thing that you need to have is patience as you will be folding more often that other players at the beginning and this is part of the game. If you really want to win at this game you need to be able to wait for a decent hand and then bet it accordingly.
One of the best tips I can give you is to learn to identify the types of players and learn to adjust your playing style to suit them. Some players are callers, some are aggressive, others are skilful and deceptive. If you know the type of player you are up against you can tailor your game to try and isolate them with aggressive raises or hands that try and bully them out of the pot.
Imagine yourself playing in vodka138 tournament late in a tournament where you are hanging on to reach the money and this player just keeps raising your blinds and your antes and you just don’t know what to do. This is a situation where you need to know what to do. Your only other option would be to fold and not have a very big stack later on in the round. This is the worst position you can be in at this point. The later your position the less information you have about your opponents hands and you are potentially throwing money away.
Also, the further the expense of the tournament the more you have to pay in fees and add to your stack to stay in. This expense is directly tied to the marginal amount of information you have about your opponents. The rule is the more information you have the better off you are in terms of hand prediction.