How To Win Poker Texas Holdem

Good to Know Before MIT 15.S50 Begins

Poker / Texas Hold’em Rules

The best position in Texas Hold 'Em is 'on the button.' When you're on the button, you're the last person to act in three out of the four betting rounds—after the flop, the turn, and the river. While it’s entirely possible to win from any position on the table, the majority of your Texas holdem winnings will come from late position, while most losses will come from early position. Limit the Number of Hands You Play The single biggest Texas holdem mistake bar none is playing too many hands.

Obviously, you should know the ranking of the poker hands, and how cards are dealt in texas hold’em. Know the terms straight flush, four-of-a-kind (or quads), full house (or boat), flush, straight, three-of-a-kind, two-pair, pair, high card; know preflop, postflop, flop, turn, river.

Betting Rules

  • You should know how betting in poker works. Understand the terms bet, raise, call, check, fold, and all-in. Check-raising means checking and then later raising in the same betting round.
  • Know what a blind is. There will be a small blind and a big blind each hand.
  • Know that preflop, the big blind is last to act. On each postflop betting round, the small blind is first to act, and the dealer is last to act. Know when a betting round ends (eg. if all players check, then the betting round ends).
  • Other good terms to know for positions are cutoff (right of the dealer), hijack (right of the cutoff), under-the-gun (the person left of the big blind; first to act preflop).

Mathematical Concepts

In class we will run through an example to illustrate the terminology you should know.

  • Suppose the pot has $500 in it, and your opponent bets another $250.
  • You may call his $250, in which case cards are flipped over:
    • If your cards beat his, you win the whole pot of $500 + $250 (that he just put in) + $250 (that you just put in) = $1000. You profited $750 from this gamble.
    • If his cards beat yours, you get $0 back. You lost $250 from this gamble.
  • Or, you can fold, resulting in a payoff of $0.
  • In this example, we say that you are getting 3-to-1 odds to call. When you win, you profit 3 times what you risk losing.
  • Suppose the probability that your cards beat his is 10%. Then your expectation for calling is 0.1(+750)+0.9(-250)=-150. By calling, you expect to lose $150 in the long run. Your expectation for folding is always $0. Therefore, you should fold, since your expectation for calling is negative.
  • Suppose the probability that your cards beat his is 50%. Then your expectation for calling is 0.5(+750)+0.5(-250)=250. By calling, you expect to earn $250 in the long run. Therefore, you should call, since your expectation for calling is positive. If you were to play this game a large number of times, your average payoff per game would be $250, with 100% certainty. This is called the Law of Large Numbers.
  • We say that a gamble has high variance if it takes a large number of trials to converge to the expected average payoff per game. A gamble has low variance if it converges quickly. In general, high variance means high risk, and high risk usually means higher reward, ie. higher expectation.

Book Recommendations

Miller, Ed, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Small Stakes Holdem: Winning Big With Expert Play. Two Plus Two, 2004. ISBN: 978-1880685327. Only for limit hold’em, but still one of the classic books in poker and written by mathematicians.

Slightly outdated, but very good:

  • Harrington, Dan. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play. Two Plus Two, 2004. ISBN: 978-1880685334.
  • Harrington, Dan. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 2: Endgame. Two Plus Two, 2005. ISBN: 978-1880685358.

Rodman, Blair, Lee Nelson, Steven Heston, and Phil Hllmuth, Jr. Kill Phil: The Fast Track to Success in No-Limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments. Huntington Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1935396314.

Nelson, Lee, Tyson Steib, Steven Heston, Joe Hachem, and Bertrand Grospellier. Kill Everyone: Advanced Strategies for No-Limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments and Sit-n-Go's. Huntington Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1935396307.

More entertaining than educational:
Hansen, Gus. Every Hand Revealed. Kensington Publishing Corp., 2008. ISBN: 978-0818407277. [Preview with Google Books]

Not that practical, but theoretically very interesting:
Chen, Bill and Jerrod Ankenman. The Mathematics of Poker. Conjelco, 2006. ISBN: 978-1886070257.

Nazarewicz, Pawel. Building a Bankroll. Pawel Nazarewicz, 2012. ISBN: 978-0615589886. Mostly for full ring cash games.

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I just wrote a blog post about increasing your chances of winning at Blackjack, and I thought, you know what, this would make a great series of posts!

How

So, now I’m writing a post about how to increase your chances of winning at Texas holdem.

The good news is that the casino doesn’t care if you win at Texas holdem or lose at Texas holdem.

The house isn’t banking the game, so you don’t have to deal with beating the casino.

The bad news is that you still need to beat your competitors at the table. Here are some tips on how to do that:

Tighten Up

If you’re not winning often enough at Texas holdem to break even or show a small profit, you probably need to tighten up. Some of the more experienced poker players reading this might think they’re playing tight enough already, but if that’s true, why aren’t you winning enough to break even?

If you’re a beginner, you might not even know what I mean when I suggest you “tighten up.”

Put simply, playing tight means playing fewer hands and folding more often.

This way you’ll be putting your money in the pot when you have a better probability of winning the pot.

It’s important that you have a gas pedal and brakes, too.

You might have a super hand preflop, but if the flop doesn’t fit your hole cards at all, you should be ready to get away from the hand before it’s too late to get out.

This doesn’t mean you have to lay down and die every time you don’t get a perfect flop. You can still make continuation bets against weak opponents.

It means that you shouldn’t take weak hands too far.

Winning in the long run in poker rooms and Texas Holdem poker sites means losing less money on pots you probably weren’t going to win.

Saving a few dollars is just as important as winning a few dollars.

Bet and Raise More Often

The next step is get more aggressive – this means betting and raising more often.

If you’re playing tight, you usually have strong hands.

When you bet and raise with those strong hands, you do 2 things to help you increase your chances of winning:

  1. You get more money in the pot when you have a better chance of winning a showdown.
  2. You pick up money from the pot when all your opponents fold.

This means that if you have strong cards, and you’re the first one in the pot, you should bet instead of check.

I’ve read a book recently by Ed Miller where he suggests that tight aggressive players always fold when raised to. I don’t think most tight aggressive players play that simply at all.

But most players who aren’t winning enough are playing too many hands, and they’re playing the hands they are playing too passively.

You should bet more often than you check.

You should raise more often than you call.

If you don’t feel good enough about your hand to raise with it, you really don’t need to be calling with it, either.

I’ve seen at least one person describe a tight aggressive strategy as being a “raise or fold” strategy.

That’s not quite right, but it’s closer to optimal than you’re probably playing right now.

Semi-Bluff More Often

I laughed at a friend of mine who’s loose aggressive not long ago because he told me, “Bluffing is an essential part of the game.”

Tips On How To Win Texas Holdem Poker

That might be true, but most beginners bluff too often and also bluff too many opponents.

Bluffs work best when you’re bluffing against 1 or 2 opponents.

A better option – for most players – is to learn how to semi-bluff.

How To Win Poker Texas Holdem

A semi-bluff is a bet or a raise you make with a hand that probably isn’t ahead, but it has the possibility of winning on a later round.

How To Win Texas Holdem Poker

The classic example is on the flop in a Texas holdem game when you have 4 cards to a flush and you’re facing a single opponent who you think has a medium pair.

He’s ahead of you, but you get 2 more cards.

If you bet into this pot, he might fold. You’ll win the pot right there and then.

But some of the time, he’ll call.

When he does, you have about a 1 in 3 probability of winning at the showdown by hitting your flush.

Most beginners know what bluffing is, but they don’t know what a semi-bluff is and don’t semi-bluff often at all.

It should be a go-to move for a Texas holdem player.

Play within Your Bankroll

You should have enough money set aside to play Texas holdem with that you’re not stressed out about every bet on every hand. Scared money always loses.

This depends, in part, on your goals as a player.

If you’re just playing recreationally, and you don’t care about the money, it’s okay to play with a smaller bankroll than you would play with if you were trying to play professionally.

The idea behind bankroll management in poker is that you want to avoid going broke because you had a run of bad luck.

This means not playing in games where the bankroll is more than 5% (or 2%) of your total bankroll. In some cases – if you’re conservative – it might mean having 150 times your buy-in as a bankroll.

Most experts agree that the bankroll requirements for a sit-n-go tournament player are different from the bankroll requirements for a multi-table tournament player.

If you want to make optimal poker decisions, you need to have a big enough bankroll that you’re willing to bet and raise when you have a small edge.

Pay Attention

I’ve known a lot of ABC poker players who don’t pay attention to hands they’re not playing in. Once they’ve folded, they just watch television or daydream.

If you’re going to increase your chances of winning at poker, you need to pay attention to how your opponents play the game.

Every hand they provide you with information about their playing tendencies, whether you’re paying attention or not.

If you have an opponent who raises every time he sees a flop, you won’t know his tendency unless you’ve been paying attention to how he plays.

In fact, most opponents aren’t this predictable. You should pay attention to your opponents’ ranges.

Do they bet into the pot 50% of the time? 70% of the time?

What do they do most of the time on the turn and the river?

Understanding these tendencies is critical to winning against such opponents.

Read a Book (Or Several)

Some poker players are naturals and learn everything they need to know at the table.

But if you’re a beginner, why wouldn’t you want to tap into the ideas of some of the experts in the field?

Reading Harrington on Holdem isn’t going to do anything but improve your game, no matter how much experience you have at the table.

At least read David Sklansky’s Theory of Poker.

You can pay for tutoring and coaching. You can even buy a MasterClass membership and learn from Daniel Negreanu and Phil Ivey.

But reading poker books is cheaper and a good place to start.

I lost at poker big-time and consistently until I started reading books about the game. The first book about poker I ever read was Andy Bellin’s Poker Nation, which isn’t the best strategy guide ever.

But for a beginner, it was a lifesaver.

Take Care of Your Health

This probably sounds like some frou-frou hippy-dippy nonsense, but if you take better care of your health, you’ll make better decisions at the poker table.

Win

This means drinking enough water, eating a variety of nutritious food, getting enough rest, and exercising regularly.

A Texas holdem player isn’t an athlete in the traditional sense, but a strong mind resides in a strong body – so do what you need to do to keep your body healthy and strong.

Probably the worst thing you can do for your health AND your poker game is to pollute your body with alcohol and drugs.

Some very talented poker players have destroyed their poker careers and their lives by abusing drugs and alcohol. Read about Stu Ungar if you want a specific example.

Conclusion

You increase your chances of winning at Texas holdem by becoming a more skilled player.

At lower stakes, this probably just means folding more often and betting or raising more often than you’re doing now.

When you start playing for higher stakes, it will take more effort to be a winner.

But it’s worth the hard work.