A fool and his money are soon parted, especially at a poker table. Don’t be seduced by the occasional victory by way of a bluff—if you want to succeed at poker, you need to have a strategy. Devise and hone your poker strategy today by accessing our site’s news, information and poker education features. Our experts will prepare you for success!
Online Poker Strategy
Poker has been played for real money on the internet since 1998. The past 20 years have seen the game grow from a niche market to a multi-billion dollar industry. In the beginning, the game was relatively simple to beat, but players have since used technology to enhance their skills.
Evolution in bet sizing
Internet poker strategy has evolved at an exponential rate and if you are not continually using technological resources to elevate your game, you are simply being left behind. One example of the constant evolution of poker is bet sizing. We’ve seen standard open sizing vary from 2 to 4 big blinds and flop continuation bet sizing vary from one-third to two-thirds pot over the years. Watching recent footage of the best players in the world shows that this range is starting to expand even further. Surprisingly, we are just now starting to act on the fact that there is literally no limit to the bet sizings you can choose when playing online poker.
Internet strategy sites can help you understand which sizings most players are using and why they are using them. One online tool many poker players use to improve their strategy is training videos and Tournament Poker Edge is home to some of the best in the industry.
Reasons for betting
TPE has online poker training videos from some of the best coaches in the industry with proven success in both the live and online arenas. With a membership, you gain access to their pre-game strategy development in theory videos, their in-game implementation in live play videos, as well as their post-game evaluation of their online strategy in hand history review videos.
One of the most popular videos for teaching the various reasons for betting is Andrew Brokos’s Hand Reading series of theory videos. In it, he gives a simple system for categorizing your and your opponent’s range of hands that gives some structure to your online poker strategy.
Monster hands are very likely to be best. They include two pairs or better. Marginal hands have some value but may not hold up if a lot of money goes into the pot. These are mostly one pair hands. Air hands are very unlikely to be best unless they improve on future streets. These include draws and hands with very little equity.
Here’s a strategy example from the online video series. Andrew reviews an internet poker hand where Hero raises first to act and gets a call from the player on his immediate left. The flop comes Kd3s2s and he makes a continuation bet which is called. His reason for betting is that he has a range advantage on this board meaning that he has monster hands like KK, AA, 33, and 22 in his range whereas the caller only has 33 and 22 since he likely would have 3-bet preflop with the stronger starting hands.
He also has marginal hands including strong, quasi-monster ones like AK which are likely to bet and weaker ones like QQ which are unlikely to bet. Given that he bet, his range now consists of monster hands, strong marginal hands, and air hands like A high, spade draws, and backdoor draws like QdJd.
The Ac falls on the turn and Hero bets again. This card promotes A high hands from air to marginal hands and AK from a strong marginal hand to a bonafide monster. At this point, the only air hands in his range are spade draws and backdoor broadway draws that improved to a gutshot.
Even though this range is extremely strong, Villain decides to call again. This means he is unlikely to hold weak marginal hands like pocket pairs, air hands like weak draws, or strong monster hands like a straight. His range now consists mostly of relatively weak monster hands like a set of deuces, strong marginal hands like AQ, and a few strong draws like QsJs.
The 4s falls on the river. This card is significant because it promotes the flush draws to monsters and demotes the weaker monsters like two pair to marginal hands. Hero decides to check on this river card. He is unlikely to do this with a flush or a big set and there is some chance he would bluff this card with the few air combos remaining in his range, so this indicates that his range is now mostly marginal hands. Villain’s range also consists of mostly marginal hands since he would have raised the turn with a straight and his weak monsters like a set of deuces have now been demoted to strong marginal hands.
The fact that Villain’s range consists of mostly marginal hands means that Hero should bet with his strongest marginal hands and choose a sizing that he expects to be called by worse a little more than half the time. Instead, we see that the river goes check, check and Hero wins with AK, a hand he should have bet on the river, and Villain loses with KTo, a hand he should have folded on the turn.
These errors are frequently made by most players in internet poker tournaments. If you are making the mistakes that these players made, be sure to check out the rest of Andrew’s video series for more details on how to improve your online poker strategy in these spots.