Poker Tournaments

Win Your Next Free Poker Tournaments by Avoiding the Donks

I was recently playing in a free poker tournament where I had pocket Aces. I felt pretty confident so made a high raise, another player then raised again. Time to call… my opponent turned over 9/2 and made a set of 9′s. I knew then that my game was over.

Im sure I am not the only one who has met this fate (and thrown my computer mouse flying across the room) and I wont be the last.

Wherever you play your poker, you are bound to play against donks day in day out. I have found that I have experienced more donks on free poker tournaments site, NoPayPOKER.com. I know the reason for this is because NoPayPOKER is a totally free poker website where you never have to spend a penny of your own hard earned cash and it does attract many types of players from all over the world.

This does not mean there are not any good players at NoPayPOKER, in fact there are some very good players, far better than me. I have been playing at NoPayPOKER for about 8 or 9 months and have won around 22k in FreeDs, not a huge amount granted, but not bad in my opinion. However most of the money I won has come in the last 3 or 4 months.

It took me a while to notice, but at the end of a tournament, the players left at the final table were the good players and not the donks who were playing earlier in the game. This made me look in to it a little further.

I devised a strategy to avoid being donked, but although these do work, they are not 100% fool proof.

If they don’t win then all they need to do is sign up for the next free roll. On the other hand some players are just genuinely bad and don’t know how to play the game. So I would say unless you have pocket aces/kings/queens, don’t play the first hand.

My second point would be to establish who the good and bad players are on your table.

This can take ten or fifteen minutes in a free roll as there is a lot of table moving at the start. It can take a few hands to figure out whether the players are good or not. If one particular player is raising big, blatantly bluffing and generally getting on your nerves, just stay away from them. What tends to happen is they will win a few big hands, then loose a few, and then go on tilt. By working out how players are playing will not only help you avoid being donked but also in your all round game. Whilst playing on other sites I have taken notes on players to build up a profile of good and bad players. Nobody has to go as far as this when playing poker, but it is well worth keeping a mental note of the bad players.

My next bit of advice is one of the most important when playing any type of poker. Always play the cards, not your feelings. It is so hard at times not to let your feelings get in the way, but if you want to win then its imperative. Do not hold grudges against players on your table.

Finally throughout your time playing poker you have no doubt built up a whole catalogue of skills and tactics in which you use to good effect. However, my last point would be to throw these out the window when playing with donks.

Remind yourself where you learnt these skills, other poker sites, casinos, private games, etc.

What separates these from NoPayPOKER brings me full circle to my initial point. You learnt your poker skills whilst playing with your own money. It’s much harder to go all in first hand with 10/3 when you have just bought in for $100.

People always say it’s much harder to play poker against bad plays than good ones. All your bluffing skills, positional play, squeeze play forget, because a donk will call anything.

To summarise;
(a) Avoid playing the first hand
(b) Search out the good and bad players at your table
(c) Make a note of the donks you come across
(d) Don’t let your emotions get in the way of your hand
(e) Forget your poker skills when playing donks

Adopting these tactics will not win you free poker tournaments, but should help you in avoiding an early bath and should at least get you into the money.

Free Online Poker Strategy to Aggressive Hugger Play

I’ve been playing no limit Texas Hold’em for roughly six years now and have gained a lot of knowledge of the game. Since I have been playing the game, I have won large amounts of money playing poker on a lot of different paid and free online poker sites and in live games. I have also managed to lose plenty of games too. The times I have lost are normally due to playing an aggressive player. I’m tend to play my poker quite aggressively too and I quite enjoy being faced with another player who plays the same tactics as me.

Most recently I have decided to change up my style of play to increase and improve my earnings. My new style of play is all about ‘aggressive hugger’, a style of play that I have named. Hopefully this article will explain my new ‘aggressive hugger’ strategy.

I believe that the key to winning majority of the time is to play conservative, also known as a tight player. There are loads of poker players who do not understand the game all that well and by playing conservatively (being a tight player) should enable you to win more money from those players.

When I talk about playing conservative I mean only calling a raise pre-flop with the top 10-15 starting hands. A better time to play a hand with the top 15-20 hands would be if there was no raise pre-flop at the time, otherwise you should mostly be playing the top 10-15 starting hands.

Winning consistently you shouldn’t really chase straight draws very often especially for medium to large bets. When you are playing low stakes or free online poker tournament games you shouldn’t be trying to steal the blinds even if you are the button, also known as the dealer position.

I say this because if you are in a low stake game, the majority of the time a player will call pretty much any type of hand, whether it be decent or sometimes pretty bad. When you are playing for lows stakes or on free poker sites then winning a lot of times isn’t as important to the players as if they were playing for high stakes.

In poker there is a thing called position. Position is the spot you are playing from, for instance the first position after the cards are dealt is a lot different from the big blind position or the dealer position. The position you are playing determines how you should play the hands you have. Conservative players pay careful attention to position when playing poker. It is a critical element in their style of play.

Following the traditional, conservative strategies mentioned above explains the “hugger” part of my newly coined phrase. In the poker world, a “hugger” is referred to someone who plays very tight conservative poker. In order to bring in second word “aggressive”, I will explain how that is incorporated into my new found strategy.

Aggressive play is usually all about large pre-flop raises with great cards, followed by aggressive continued betting. If an aggressive player has a rubbish hand, they will not let on that they are not in a strong position. An aggressive player usually believes and portrays that he/she has the best hand.

So the combined elements of a conservative or “hugger” and the aggressive style of play are combined to form the “hugger/ aggressive’ strategy. Observing a conservative style by playing premium hands in an aggressive manner is my new adopted strategy. While holding premium hole cards, I will then play them in an aggressive manner by raising large pre-flop bets in accordance with position techniques while utilizing aggressive betting strategies.

Give it a go, try being an aggressive hugger on free online poker sites and low stakes and as long as you’re an OK player I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how well it works.

Free Poker Tournaments Guide to Bad Bluffing and Coward Method

Many poker players struggle with bluffing. Even apparently easy game scenarios such as free poker tournaments online can be difficult; hesitation or faster than usual play can be easily read by experienced players and the bad bluffer wiped out. Once we move offline into live play then the situation only gets more difficult.

So what can you do, apart from getting better at bluffing, as a bad bluffer who still wants to play and not lose all the time?

Well, for a start, look at changing the way you play. The main reason for being so bad at bluffing is lack of courage, also known as being a coward. You can turn this around though and for this reason we will call this the ‘Coward Method’.

How it works – An Example Game

For starters, when playing in a free poker tournament, wait for the right hand before starting.

Remember though unless you have that winner hand A,A or A,K etc it is best not to get involved in the big raises and the All In bets early on.

I like to think these people are the amateur, new or players that are in a rush and quite frankly want to lose. Of course one or two of them could actually have a good hand. Either way the Coward Method will keep you in the game past these mad moments

Now comes the time to bet.
You have a decent hand, half the table have either called the Big Blind or Folded. You decide to call as well. Luckily nobody decides to raise to a stupid amount and the Dealer does the Flop.

Yes, two pairs. Scan the cards and estimate the chances of being beat with the cards as they stand. For example if you have the highest pair and for good measure a second as well you can check whether you are at risk of straight or a Flush.

It’s looking good so you decide to Check. Yes that’s right Check. Your plan now is to convince the others you have a bad hand. If somebody bets pretend to think about it and then Call. This will cause the players to think that you are in doubt of your hand and they will up the betting.

The Turn and still nothing significant to leave you worried. You check again, the same thing happens, small bet, Call and then the River, no reason to be worried, you still have the Highest Pairing and a second pairing.

This time the Opponent does a Higher Bet, this time, you think about it for even longer and then double the amount the Bet.

This approach normally causes either a match bet or an All In. This depends on the player. I have noticed some Players after putting down a large number of Chips during one hand get annoyed at this point and throw everything in.

Success the plan worked and now you have a tidy amount of chips. Sit back and Fold a lot of hands from this point on waiting for that right hand again.

Of course this doesn’t always work, despite how confident you can be you can’t always have the best hand and luck still has a say in the result of a game.

It is always worth remembering that there is a risk when you check if you have a winning hand. By the turn and river your chance may be over and you may have blown it. It is always a chance in poker, but I have found I have more success when I play like this.

Normally as the Blinds increase you have to get stuck in a bit more. Those early successes count for nothing in the end if you don’t attempt some of the bigger pots. However you should still be conservative about it and choose carefully the hands to play.

Only the other day I played my first tournament in a year or two and came 2nd out of 102. I only lost due to the other player bluffing me. He had gone all in a few times and I finally decided to call him. Typical on this occasion he had a great hand. If I had played to my strengths and waited he may have gone All In against one of my good hands.

Hopefully I have provided another option for players who don’t really have a game plan. Try this out in lower stakes and free online poker tournaments and get comfortable with it, then you can go try some high stake hands and come out ahead.