Poker Tournaments

Free Poker Skills Heads Up and Short Handed Play

Heads up and short handed poker is much different then your normal style of poker. Much like cash games you need to see more hands and become more aggressive. Way to many times I get to the end of a long free poker tournament and the player with me just seems to give up. I start off aggressive with any Q+ or good low blind hands like J7 off suit. Although these hands are often a waste of money; here they are more often then not the best pre-flop hand.

Remember that you have to be prepared in heads up & short hand to be ready to gamble almost everything that hits on the flop & even occasionally if nothing hits.

Keep your opponent guessing while keeping an eye on his normal bet range. If anything should seem off from what he/she is usually doing its ok to lay one or two down now and again. Also in heads up A high is most often the best hand on the flop.

If your opponent decides to try and switch roles with you by betting back even bigger or frequent my best advice is to let him/her. Switch roles and see if he/she is as good at catching the awkwardly high/low bets as you were. You may find you need to switch roles with the opposing player a few times before you get the result your looking for but eventually they will break down.

During the heads up game you will see many poor losses. Commonly due to opponents playing a vast amount of hands without anyone being able to put one another on any set hand preflop. Like most things in life its better not to put all your apples in one cart unless the cart is made of iron! Cards such as AX or K9 are decent at this phase of the competition although they’re still not brilliant- I would say a decent 30% with just about any hand.

Good luck in all of your poker and free poker.

How to win a Free Online Poker Tournament by Giving Up Hand Chasing

Many free online poker players and way too many higher stake players have a bad habit called “chasing”. A bad habit that you will recognise as having analogies in many human pursuits not just poker, especially money and relationship ones!

To ‘chase’ is to call the hand when they think that they are behind in the hope that they can stay in game and get a better hand later on.

I always say that I would chase down a parked car, just in the hopes I hit. This could be considered a negative thing, because people just think “Oh, they are just a bad player”.

Some poker players to try to get the chaser out of the game by betting higher in the hope that they fold, however, there are always some chasers who are determined to stay in and will call.

Many players chase a hand because they are pot committed. This is when they have invested many chips into the hand and chase hoping to hit their prayer, regardless of the consequences.

They say people who do this have a lack of discipline, which means no patience, and in a rush to play the hand. Admittedly, chasing is a bad habit to have when playing poker. It is something that can work out beneficial from time to time, but certainly not something that needs to be played day in day out. With that said I must say that playing a 4/6 versus an AK is thrilling especially when it hits.

If you are a self confessed chaser and find it difficult to stop, try to do it less often by knowing when its time to fold. By chasing too often you can put yourself in a vulnerable position and end up losing. Pick your chase carefully if you want to win.

Chasing is also based on pot odds but that is another article in itself. I advise that you learn all about hand and pot odds whether you chase or not, it’s a very important skill for anyone who wants to move out of free online poker into higher stakes games and make a profit.

Free Online Poker Tournaments Guide to Finding Out How Good a Player You Really Are!

Now and again I sit back and wonder how good I actually am when playing in free online poker tournaments.

Most of the time I think I play quite well, I know mostly every detail there is to know about poker tournaments and have won plenty of them, but at the end of the day, the only way to know for sure how good I really am, is to take part in as many tournaments I can, and also play as many players as I can.

I think its important to play against new players all of the time. Its all very well playing with people you know, but you will never advance your skill as you know how they play and wont learn anything new.

Its easy to fall into a trap in thinking that everybody plays pretty much the same, but experience has taught me that this is far from the truth.

Fact is that it’s going to cost you some money to learn how to play poker because it’s not the same as watching on television than in real life at a poker table. You might lose a lot until you really know how to play your cards right.

Reading the rule book and tips on how to play poker won’t get you anywhere until the cards are in your hands and only you can tell yourself to fold, call or all-in.

I suggest you go to different online poker tournament sites as well as real casinos around your state or country and test out all the poker tables and see how good you really are.

Start off at lower amount tables so it doesn’t cost you too much if you lose. You will get some bad beats but if you stay focused, you’ll win in the long run if you stick to your game plan.

Bear in mind that when you are playing in a live casino rather than with friends or family, the game play will be very different. There is little conversation in a casino game and it is all taken much more seriously than having fun with people you know.

At casinos people there are out to get all your money no matter how they get it. So you should watch a few minutes but you sit down at a casino table. Once you get a good feel of the game and you feel your skill level is better, then move to a higher limit table.

If you continue with this strategy, you should find yourself making quite a bit of money at the end of the day. If you have never played against people you don’t know, playing free online poker tournaments is a great way to start as you they are free and you wont lose any of your own cash.

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.

How to Steal the Blind in Free Poker Tournaments

Theory has it, that if you were to enter a free poker tournament at a no limit table and manage to steal the blinds just one time when the deal button rounds the table, that you could win the tourney. This is even though you have never raked in a huge pot.

I do not recommend this approach in your next free poker tournament, but it certainly makes a case for the importance of stealing the blinds. Lets breakdown exactly what stealing the blinds means and when the play should be used.

In short, stealing the blinds is defined as making a pre-flop raise that is designed to induce folds and win the hand pre-flop. When making this move the value of your hole cards is of no importance. You do not intend to see a flop and when successful all players remaining in the hand will fold.

A raise in late position with AQs that induces folds may have the same affect, but it is certainly not the same play.

Since our goal is to induce folds there are several things we must consider before pushing a raise across the line.

What is my position?
Has anybody else called the big blind pre-flop?
Are there many big blinds left in the stack
How healthy are the stacks of those left to act?
What is my image at the table?

Any attempt to steal the blinds should be made from late (preferably last) position; this gives us the advantage of seeing how everyone else plays pre-flop before we decide to steal.

Generally we will only want to attack those players in the blinds as their money was in before they got a look at their cards. It is acceptable to make a play for the blinds against 1 (maximum of 2) calls, but only if those calls were made by players who have played loose all night.

It is never okay to try a steal when there is a raise in front of you! Let’s assume we are sitting on the button (last to act), there is one call (by a loose player) and the rest of the table has folded.

We must now determine if our chip stack will allow us to make a move on the blinds. The intent of our raise is to take away any equity in the pot and make the only smart play for the blinds a fold, but our stack must be adequate enough to afford to do so.

In our hand there is a small and big blind in the pot and we have 1 caller. Using $100 / $200 blinds as an example the pot is now at $500. In order to take the equity out of the pot for anyone considering a call we must raise at least 3 times the big blind.

Many players still see a 3x raise as standard, however I have found a raise of 3.5 or 4.5 to be extremely effective (3x = 600, 3.5x=700, 4.5x=900).

Ideally we would like to have 30X the big blind or more left in our stack after we make the raise (30x=6,000), so our chip stack of 8,000 will allow us to attempt the steal in this position.

Note that this play is much more effective when your image at the table is that of a tight player that raises with solid hands.

As with all poker, whether you are playing free poker tournaments or casino poker live, its all about patience. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you do, another player will always have a better hand. Stealing the blind can be an effective method at times and gives you an opportunity to hold out for premium hands.