Poker Strategy: Live Poker
Learn how to transition from online play to your local casino.
Live poker games tend to be much softer than their online counterparts, but it’s still crucial to adjust your game so that you don’t leave any money on the table. While you could probably play like you usually do online and still make a profit, it’s far better to acclimate yourself to common live poker situations so that you can maximize your returns. There are many more multi-way pots in brick-and-mortar poker, so you’ll want to become familiar with how to take advantage of these bloated pots. Then there’s the whole aspect of spotting tells while giving away nothing yourself, which is largely missing from poker played over the internet. Adding live poker to your repertoire can really boost your bottom line. The articles below focus on traditional poker, as played around a physical table, so they’ll help you get a leg up on your opponents in casinos and home games.alike.
Featured Live Poker Articles
Personal Attacks and the Check Raise
There’s a weird school of thought that check-raising in live poker is unfriendly or ungentlemanly behavior. But it is merely just another tool in your strategic arsenal. It’s usually not used to make a personal assault against an opponent. Use it to bet for value or bluff as usual.
The UTG Live Straddle
Straddling under the gun is sometimes done in live, loose poker games. When a player straddles, the blinds lose value, but every other position gains value. Because the pot will play about twice as large as normal, you should change your starting hand requirements to take account of the straddle.
More Poker Tells and Reviews
When playing live poker, you can get important tells on your opponents by carefully paying attention to their movements and actions. Whenever players seem to deliberately go out of their way to give you information, the actual information is usually the opposite of what they’re trying to tell you.
Fnord’s Brick and Mortar/Live Poker Guide for Online Players
There are a few important principles to remember when transitioning to live poker play from the online tables. In live poker, you should try to maintain a fun, friendly image. You don’t want the rest of the table to realize that you’re playing serious poker. Beware of relying overmuch on tells.
Most Recent Live Poker Articles
Breaking Down the Non-Hold’em Games Part 1
As No Limit Hold’em continues to become tougher to beat, many players are turning to other games instead. In this article, we’ll go over the rules and outline simple strategies to help get you started in non-Hold’em poker games. Pot Limit Omaha has become the most popular “other” game.
Bust-Out Blues
It’s happened to all of us at one point or another. Even the great Phil Ivey went bust several times before hitting his stride. Rather than beating yourself up over it, take your bust-out as an opportunity to learn. But before you leap right back into the action, take a few minutes to consider how you want your comeback to go down. Will you make the same mistakes you did the first time around?
Dumb People Believe in Downswings
A funny look at the mythic term, “downswings,” this article debunks the existence of players being on downswings or upswings. The logic? Since every hand dealt in poker is independent of all others, you cannot up-or-downswing; you can only have an historical period of increased losses or winnings.
NLHE Foundations #04: Putting Opponents on Pre-Flop Ranges (Part 1)
Introduction This is part four in the NLHE Foundations Series. I've designed this series to give players a clear path from the beginner to intermediate levels in no-limit hold'em. There's a lot more to this series than these posts because there's private content and...
Looking More Into Implied Odds
Learning implied odds on a deep level is something virtually no microstakes or small stakes players do, and it can drastically help your game.
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.
Revisiting the EV Calculations Tutorial Series
This week’s column details not one but two of the most critical poker training series I have ever put together.
NLHE Foundations #03: Calling to Close the Action in No-Limit Hold’em
This is the third installment in the No-Limit Hold'em Foundations Course. Before you read this lesson, you should have completed lesson 1 and lesson 2, and this includes doing the exercises and posting them in the forum threads for each lesson. Also make sure to sign...
Learning the Other Games
Even if you’ve never played anything but Texas Hold’em, there are universal poker principles that will make it easy for you to learn how to play other variants of the game before you master them. Your position, seat selection and bankroll management are critical when you are picking up a new game.
The Importance of Bonuses and Rakeback
This month at 100nl on PokerStars I've paid $0.056/hand in rake after a sample of ~50k hands. Since I get about 750 hands/hour, this amounts to about $42/hour. This is also 2.8 ptbb/100. To make sure the peoples of the Beginner's Circle understand this properly: if in...
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...
Handfuls of Trouble
Much like a big, juicy fast-food burger on a television commercial, there are hands in poker which look amazingly delicious, but are in reality terrible for you. It seems as though both of these apparitions come along when we’re at our weakest, fooling us and giving rise to poor decision making. But whether it’s the hunger for food or the hunger for cash, we must keep our appetites in check, lest we affect our long-term health.
Tactics vs. Strategy (Part 4): Practical Use of Strategy
In our final installment of this series, we look at how strategic and tactics are related and other resources for continuing your study.
Tactical Thinking – Is It Enough?
Wherever you go these days, be it on poker forums, poker websites or poker magazines, you will be confronted by a myriad of information concerning how to play certain hands in certain situations. Now before I go any further, there is absolutely nothing wrong with...
How to Decide Which Hands to 3-Bet for Value Pre-Flop
If you want to learn about how to 3-bet for value before you see the flop, you’ve found the right article. This will teach you how to 3-bet and when it’s appropriate to do so. You’ll also learn about your 3-betting range, calling range, folding range and why they are critical to your success.
