Tip #1: Play Fewer Hands And Play Them Aggressively
There is a limit on how many starting hands you can play before the flop in No Limit Texas Hold’em, even for the world’s best players. If you try to play too many hands, you’ll bleed away your chip stack (unless lady luck is on your side).
Developing a solid preflop poker strategy is by far the easiest and fastest way to improve your bottom line. However, while developing solid preflop ranges is relatively easy to do (like by downloading our free preflop charts) having the discipline to stick to them is difficult. Don’t allow yourself to get impatient and play a hand not worth playing. Learn for free at DominoQQ.
The best approach is to play a tight range of strong and/or playable hands, and you need to play those hands aggressively. Playing all of your hands aggressively, including the more speculative ones like 7? 6? or 5? 5?, allows you to disguise the strength of your actual hand.
When you raise, your opponents won’t know whether you have A-A, A-K, or 7-6, which makes you super tough to play against. Tight and aggressive wins the game!
Tip #2: Don’t Be The First Player To Limp
Limping (just calling the big blind preflop) is an absolute no-no as the first player to enter a pot. There are two main reasons why this play should be avoided:
- You can’t win the pot before the flop like you could if you raised.
- You give the players behind very enticing pot odds, making it more likely you face multiple players and thus less likely you win the pot.
The only acceptable situation in which to limp is when at least one other player has already limped. This is called over-limping, and it can be a good play because you are getting great pot odds to join the action so you can hit something good on the flop, hopefully.
Note: Want to upgrade your poker skills? Get our free preflop charts and start playing like a pro before the flop. Download now!
Tip #3: Semi-Bluff Aggressively with Your Draws
If you want to truly crush poker, you need to bluff effectively. But bluffing ineffectively is one of the fastest ways to lose your money at the table. So, how do you keep your bluffing frequency under control?
The most effective way to bluff is to let the cards you have dictate if you are going to bluff or not. This means bluffing with hands that have outs to improve to the best hand on a later street, such as straight draws, flush draws, or even just an overcard or two to the board.
Think of these draws as your backup plan in case your bluff gets called.
Poker players call these hands “semi-bluffs” because of their potential beyond the bluff itself. You can learn more about semi-bluffing here.
When you’re just starting out, bluffing with total nothing hands prior to the river is not advisable (except in one situation that I’ll tell you about shortly).