Poker Strategy: Cash Games
When the value of your chips actually means something.
Tournaments may get all the TV time, but experienced poker pros know that cash games are where the steady money flows. Especially when deep stacked, cash game poker features subtle intricacies that just don’t come into play when you have only 20 big blinds or fewer. Whether you like six-max or nine-handed tables, you’ll find articles below to help you with your strategy. Learn all about putting your opponent on a range, bet sizing, bluffing, value betting, and the other considerations that today’s top players are familiar with. Our focus is on No Limit Texas Hold’em poker because it’s the most popular format, but we have articles on other poker variants too. Every improvement you make in your cash game strategy will reap rewards today and for the rest of your playing career, so don’t hesitate to improve your knowledge with the assistance of FTR.
Featured Cash Games Articles
Blind Stealing 101
A few people have been posting stats threads lately and I've seen a trend that really needs to be addressed. Most of the people I've seen stats on are not stealing blinds nearly enough, and aren't defending their blinds nearly enough. I've decided to type up something...
Online Poker Tells – Online Timing Tells
By carefully observing the speed with which your opponents act at the poker tables, you can often glean valuable information about the strength of their hands. Perhaps more importantly, you should always attempt to prevent your opponents from gaining any such information about your hands.
ISF’s Heads Up Cash Game Strategies
When playing heads-up No Limit Hold’em poker, you need to modify the strategies that you would use at larger tables. Remember to focus on every hand and adjust to the specific player you’re up against, because every hand you play will be against him or her.
Developing a Feel for Equities in No-Limit Hold’em Part 1: Draws in Your Range
In order to become a top No Limit Hold’em player, you need to learn to consider how different flops affect the equity of your range and your opponent’s range. It turns out that adding draws to a range on the flop doesn’t drastically lower that ranges equity.
Continuation Betting in NL Hold’em
An easily digestible explanation of continuation betting in No Limit Texam Hold’em. This article demonstrates which hands are ideal for c-bets, which aren’t and how, when and against whom a c-bet should be used to maximize winnings. It also explains how much you should bet in certain situations.
Most Recent Cash Games Articles
Poker Hand Strategy | Poker Starting Hands with Deep Stacks
Deciding what range of hole cards you’re going to play depends largely on your stack size. If your stack equals 60BB or less, you should aim to hit big pairs. If it’s between 60BB-150BB, you can play suited connectors and gappers. Above 150BB, you can play cards with flush or straight potential.
Playing Small Pairs in NL Full Ring
There is a tremendous sub-culture of players who see small pocket pairs and get carried away with their profit potential. Personally I play pocket pairs very sparingly in full-ring NLHE games. The modern online poker environment is getting tougher by the month and...
No Limit 2-7 Single Draw Strategy (Part 4): Pre-Draw Overview
By using the shortcuts we have developed over the course of this series, it’s not all that difficult to figure out what percentage of hands you’re playing in any given situation.
Online vs. Live Poker
In the past when live games became tough to beat players turned to online poker to hone their skills, get multi-table bonuses, and make money. With the games online getting harder by the day it is quite ironic the same players find themselves heading back to the live...
Pointers for Micro Stakes No Limit Holdem
(This is a post I wrote a while back which I hope will be useful for newcomers to micro-stakes NL. It should be useful up to 25NL, but it's specifically aimed at the player of a few weeks' experience, who understands the basics, but doesn't know much strategy. I hope...
Raising Behind Limpers
I'm going to try to tie this in as much as possible the points I made in my post on blind stealing, Blind Stealing 101. I think that for the people who don't already raise behind limpers often, it will be best if they think of it as an extension of blind stealing at...
No-Limit 2-7 Single Draw Strategy (Part 5): Post-Draw With Draws
Check out all of the factors that go into post-draw play with drawing hands and how they affect range distributions.
Value Betting Dilemma
First, two hands.... $5/$10 No Limit Holdem 6 players Stacks: UTG fakker11 ($1594.00) UTG+1 GIVEmeSOME99 ($815.00) CO traheho ($1062.00) BTN Bttech86 ($1000.00) SB Hero ($1095.00) BB zero2lose ($2772.75) Pre-flop: ($15, 6 players) Hero is SB 4 folds, Hero...
No-Limit 2-7 Single Draw Strategy (Part 3): Draw Combos
This week, we look at something that can be made very easy or very complicated: the ways to be dealt one-card draws.
Texas Holdem Poker Hands Position (Full Ring)
Depending on your position, your poker hands order will change; this is especially true when the table is full. The later you are to act, the more liberal you can be with the order of the hands you choose to play. The closer you are to being first to act, the more conservative you’ll need to be.
Making Our Strategies More Robust and Avoiding Auto-Pilot
You shouldn’t play the same way against all opponents. By considering how strong or weak you want your ranges to be in certain poker situations, you can get the best of your adversaries. Learn how to modify your default ranges for increased profits.
No-Limit 2-7 Single Draw Strategy (Part 2): Pat Hand Combinations
Hand combinations for no-limit 2-7 single draw are much more complicated than hold’em, but they can be made relatively easy with this method.
Developing a Feel for Equities in No-Limit Hold’em Part 2: Equity is Not Everything
One of the things that a lot of people have a big misunderstanding about is the difference between equity and expected value. We're going to look at a few examples in this week's article that should help players to develop some clarity on this issue. We'll start with...
The $6,000,000 Poker Player
There is a growing debate in today’s poker world over who is the best player around. Many names get offered as the best of the best but there is truly no way to know who the best Texas Hold’em player in the world is. As the game of poker has grown...
An Introduction to Abstract Thought in Poker (Part 2)
Being able to think a little abstractly about the learning process in poker will help you to see the big picture instead of being stuck in the short term.
