Poker Tournaments

Learn How To Play Poker For Beginners Basic Poker Game Process Guide

In this learn how to play poker for beginners session you will learn the basic poker game processes. Happily for you, once you get the hang of them they’re not as hard as they may seem at first glance. So, let’s begin by looking at free online poker freeroll tournaments which is the sort of game you should start with as a poker beginner.

free online poker freeroll tournaments vary from 20 to hundreds of players. A good point with these game is that most of the other players you’ll find on them are no more than average and many are beginners too.

So, to start, you login to your free online poker site and go join a game. As mentioned each of these tournaments will have multiple tables. You can divide the number of players by 10, and you’ll know how many tables are a part of the tournament. If the number is not exactly divisible by 10 as is likely then you round up, so if there are 77 players it means there will be 8 tables to start.

Now the online poker software of the site you play at will seat you at a randomly selected table and seat. There are loads of games running daily round the clock on good free online poker sites so don’t worry about your success (or lack of!) initially, there are always more games to enter.

Who Wins and How?
Fundamentally, the winner of any 1 hand will be the player who has the best cards.

The outline of the game process is this:
You take your seat and the game starts. The Dealer Button player is selected and the small and large blind players make their bets (all covered below so don’t worry!)

Firstly you are given two cards, known as pocket cards, only you can see these. Next there is a round of blind betting, it’s called blind as there is no way to guess or infer what cards other players have, no more than 3 raises to the first blind bet are allowed which is a rule that remains so in future rounds.

Next, the Dealer will expose 3 cards on the table. These are called community cards, and can be used by all of the players who are participating in the hand.

At this point, another round of betting occurs.

Next the dealer adds one more card to the community cards to make four face up cards for all players to use.

This is followed by another round of betting.
Last, the Dealer will add a 5th card to the community cards. Again followed by another round of betting.

Now lets look at this in more detail:
The first two cards you get that only yoiu can see are called Pocket Cards or just Pockets for short. They are dealt out, one at a time, left to right, to everyone at the table. Only you can see your pockets, never show anyone else these cards!

The Dealer then exposes 3 “community cards” to all players on the table. This stage is known as “The Flop”.

When he exposes the 4th “community card”, it’s known as “The Turn” (or, 4th Street).

And, when he exposes the 5th “community card”, it’s known as “The River” (or, 5th Street).

All 3 to 5 “community cards” that are exposed on the poker table at any one time are known as “The Board”.

Every player who is participating in the hand through the process of betting (if you “folded”, you’re no longer in the hand), attempts to make the best possible five-card hand.

They can use any 5 of the 7 cards that are available to them; one, both, or none of their pocket cards, together with 3, 4, or 5 of the “community cards”.
The player with the best 5 card hand wins all of the money that has been bet (The Pot).

The “Dealer Button” is involved in every hand to be played. One of the game’s participants gets the Dealer Button (DB); the selection of the player who first receives the DB is done by the free online poker software.

If you are playing at a live game such as in a casino then the DB is a round disc, normally with a D printed on it. At a paid or free online poker site, the software will automatically place a symbol of sorts on your PC screen to identify the DB.

the DB position is very important as the a players to the left of the DB have to make the blind bets.

The DB is the best position to have and blind the worst, no something to worry about now, the NoPayPOKER.com intermediate level article series Building A Bankroll goes into great depth on this subject. Additionally, at the end of every hand, the Dealer Button (DB) moves one position to the left; thus, everyone acts as the “virtual dealer” in an Internet game, and, everyone is forced to place “blind” bets.

Blind Bets? What are they?
This is how the game starts.
The player to the immediate left of the Dealer Button (DB) is compelled to put up the Small Blind (SB).
The player to the immediate left of the Small Blind (SB) is compelled to put up the Big Blind (BB).
These “blind bets” are placed in the pot, in front of the dealer. This essentially kickstarts the betting, and, it”s all done before anyone has gotten any cards!

This, for the lack of any other rational reason, means that the winner of the hand that’s about to be played, will, at a minimum, collect the small amount of money that has been “forced” into the pot by the blind bets.

In a multi-table freeroll, or any No Limit free online poker tournament game, the size of the Small Blind (SB) and the size of the Big Blind (BB) are very low at the start of the game. And, every player in the game begins the game with the same amount of free online poker faux-money; or, for practical purposes, poker chips.

Usually, in 15 minute intervals, the size of the “blinds” increase.
As an example, if the beginning “blinds” were $10 (SB) and $20 (BB), within 15 minutes the “blinds” would change to $20 (SB) and $40 (BB).

And, thereafter, as the game progresses, the “blinds” continue to go up every 15 minutes.

In the end, at the final table in a tournament (the last remaining 10 players), the “blinds” could easily reach the point of being $2,000 (SB) and $4,000 (BB).

Now don’t be alarmed, the dollar amounts tied to the Small Blinds (SB) and Big Blinds (BB) in the preceding paragraph, during all freeroll games played on free online poker sites are “fictional” amounts of money. It’s not real money. It’s merely a “tournament representation” of money; it’s free online poker faux-money, they’re poker chips, not real dollars.

This is one reason why it is a very good idea to learn to play poker as a beginner on free poker sites, it can get very expensive very quickly if you start on a real money site!

Winning and Money

The good news with a poker tournament is that the 1st place player doesn’t take all the money. Yes, the absolute winner does get a lions share but other players do get a cut too. How many players and how much is determined by the number of players who enter and the size of the pot. You an find out this information before the game starts.

As the game progresses players are knocked out and tables amalgamate. At some point only those who will share the money are left. If you are still in at this stage then you are now “in the money” or “in the bubble” as it is also commonly called.

When just 10 players are left you will be on the “Final Table”, typically to win any decent amount you need to be here even in very large poker tournament though places lower than this can often at least pay back your cost of joining the game if it is a buy in game.

Right at the end with just 2 players left you will be “head to head”…but that is a story for another day!

Summing up How To Play Poker For Beginners Part 1
In this stage we looked at basic game processes. In part 2 we’ll get into more detail on the stages described and look at what you actually physically do and consider some essential basic free online poker strategy.

Nick runs marketing for leading free online poker site NoPayPOKER.com. NoPayPOKER.com uses a virtual currency, FreeD which makes the poker games totally risk free, this makes NoPay the ideal place to learn how to play poker for beginners. More experienced players also like it as it’s a great place to try new ideas and stategies out, plus the fact that the FreeD can be swapped for real Dollars is a nice touch too!

Learn How To Play Poker And Read Set Hands

Regardless of if you just play free poker online or play for the highest stakes imaginaable a Set is one of the most unreadable hands in Texas Hold’em. A Set is made ip of a pocket pair plus one of the Community cards that has the same rank as your pocket pair. For example, if you have 4-4 and the Community cards are 5-4-10-J-K, you have a Set of Fours. Sets are unreadable because most players are accustomed to reading (a) two different hole cards, (b) high cards or overpairs, (c) draws that complete the Board, or (d) cards anyway related to the Board cards.

Given that your hand reading habits usually are a combination of limiting possible hands to the given characteristics, how would you put someone on 5-5 or 4-4 when it is much easier for you to put him on A-K (for top pair, best kicker), A-Q (for a made Straight), or K-10 or 5-4 (for Two-Pair), or even A-A (a high pair)? Or maybe you’ll put him on one Five, say, 6-5. But on two Fours or Fives? This is why Sets are very potent in Boards which have no Straight or Flush potential.

But lets suppose in a Flop of Q-7-2 with no Straight or Flush possibilities, you have 3-3. You check in the hope of trapping and the other player bets. You raise all in then he immediately calls and reveals Q-Q. You thought your opponent had A-Q or K-Q. How is this possible? It’s possible. Even in this spot you are more at risk.

Because there are no Straight or Flush potentials your opponent will fold cards that didn’t fit into the Board cards. If you read hands according to the criteria above, you might put your opponent on A-Q, K-Q, or even Q-7 (can you go as far as 7-2?!). Here because you are the one who moved all-in, the outcome of the hand is not fully on your control; it’s up to whether your opponent calls or not. But suppose the situation is reversed. The player with the Q-Q checks, you bet, then the response is a raise all-in. What would you do?

If you find yourself slammed in a situation like this (which usually occurs on the Flop) on a cash game, take it as it is. Pay him off. Another time you will have the Q-Q, another player will have the 2-2, and you will be paid off. But in a tournament, you have plenty of givens to consider (and you might want to consider these even in an ordinary cash game). Compare your stack sizes relative to each other. If the difference is great, expect one of you to put his chips in the middle.

A Set could be the best hand both of you can have to get a double-up. If you have the smaller Set get eliminated, attribute it to bad luck. However, assuming both of you have stacks above chip average, and you are put to a decision costing you all or almost all your chips. You have 2-2. You are not likely to be blinded out in a few hands.

You might like to reason out: I have a Set. He raised me enough to put me all-in, or almost. He may do it with Q-7, (and whether your opponent had Q-7 or not will depend on what happened preflop. If no raise occurred it might be with Q-7, and you can safely call. Whether your opponent had 7-7 or not can also come under similar scrutiny) or if there is a raise, it might be with A-Q.

Now, top pair, top kicker is a weak hand to risk an above-average stack. And there is no Straight and Flush incoming, so the all-in could be made only with an extremely strong hand. It might also be with A-A or with K-K (most probably it is) but it might also be just with Q-Q. If I put him on those three hands, there is a 2/3 chance I’m right, but a 1/3 chance of wrong, and when I’m wrong I will be busted. So I’ll fold.

If you have the middle Set (Set of Sevens), the same analysis may also apply. But you will be much safer since there is only one Set to kill you instead of the two possible Sets a while ago. If you have the Set of Queens, enjoy! The above analysis is agonizing and painstaking, especially when it all amounts to giving up one of the most cherished hands in Hold’Em.

Reading Sets Summary

It takes some time to learn how to read hands, it’s not something the unthinking donk “chip flingers” seen on many free online poker tables even consider. Most players it seems can’t or won’t put the time in, they claim to play just for fun which misses out on the key fact that winning lots of money is a lot more fun!

Ironically the fact that so many players play at this low skill level is excellent news for you. The reason why is that when you really learn how to play poker well you can go mercenary and hunt the “fun donks” down in low stakes real money games as well as free online poker tournaments sites that pay out real money while you happily build your skills and bankroll!

As ever practice makes perfect so read, understand and play free poker sites to learn how to play poker good and get your skills finely honed.

Free Online Poker Guide To How To Manipulate Other Players And Steal The Pot

You may play $1000 Buy in, you may play free poker games but what you do not do is just play your cards. You also play the player, or to put it another way, you aim to manipulate other players so that they do what you want them to do. The desired end result of course is that they give you money!

There are two elements in this. In regard to your play you are trying to read the other players, read their play style, figure their emotions and drivers and from here play your cards optimally.

On the opposing player side you are trying to play them to increase the degree of error with which they classify your style of play, motivations and actions.

To learn how to do this lets look at an example of playing the player in action from a WSOP event.

BLINDS 50k/100k

1) A has Ac-Qh raises 350k
2) B is on big blind, has Kc-Js, calls 230k (Pot 880k)

K-J is usually a bit weak to call a raise. Moreover, B doesn’t have position over A, but he calls because he wants A to guess.

From the big blind, generally we just call because we are on a discount, so we might have 6-5, 10-8, and a bunch of other indeterminate hands which require guessing.

FLOP 4d-5h-3d

B bets 535k

Because small cards fell, B now wants A to think that his call from the big blind hit the Flop, and that his hand may well include those indeterminate hands like 5-4, 8-5, or even 6-7, or two Diamonds. But what did A think?

A raises to 1.8m (Pot 3.215m)
B needs 1.265m to call

Here, A thought that B’s bet was just a continuation bet, and with small cards falling A’s belief is reinforced that B is just trying to finish the hand. How would small cards likely hit B?

Additionally, B has been playing aggressively all night (stealing pots, etc.) so B could be betting with something (which is not likely with small cards falling) or with nothing. B could be playing just about anything, especially from the big blind.

At this point A made a gamble that B had nothing. He may have also figured out that if B had something and then moves all-in later then he can move out quickly. So he raised to try B’s strength.

B folds

B folds, because, indeed, he has nothing, and if he calls, he will be committed to continue. (Had B moved all-in then it will be a good all-in, for A could still be guessing at this point what B’s hand was. But B’s cards were not strong enough.)

Also, he folds, because A raised from late position, which allows for a wider range of hands, like even 5-4 or two Diamonds.

Poker, indeed, is not simply a game of good hands versus good hands. Experienced poker players will win with bad hands under the right conditions.

We give credit to B for first trying to win with a bad hand, a good effort to play he player. Unfortunately for B, A did the playing the player task superbly too, having noted previous actions and motivations and related that to current con text and probability and so played out to win well.

Summary
It takes time to learn how to play poker online or offline at a level above the unthinking, uneducated “chip flinging” seen at many tables.

Ironically the fact that so many players inhabit this dumb donk zone is great news for you. That’s because once you learn to play poker at an above average level and combat the “all-in-all the time” maniacs then you can take them apart in coldly calculated genocide anytime you like in low stakes money games and when you play free poker games that pays real cash such as that found at www.NoPayPOKER.com.

As ever practice makes perfect so read, understand and learn to play poker for free on the free poker tables to get it nailed.

Free Poker Sites Guide To Winning A Big Hand Preflop

What do you do with a big hand preflop when you have a big stack, like K-K? And how might the other players react? Regardless of if you simply play free poker for pennies or are at the final table in WSOP this is a core situation that you must know how to explot to the full.

Here is a great example from the WSOP:

BLINDS 40,000/80,000

A has As-10c moves all-in (Pot 1.296m)
B has K-K reraises to 5m (Pot 6.296m)

B has two options here. He can call and wait for an opponent to go all-in, though that would make him think…

Could it be A-A? Or Q-Q? If it was Q-Q there is a slight chance he might fold K-K, and regret it. But a big reraise can drive Q-Q or lower out, like what happened to another player:

C has Jd-Jc

(C’s comments on B’s hand were: “Why did you make it so much? … You like your hand that much?”) If C calls, it’s for all of his chips.

C may think that B has A-K, but there are two all-ins in front of him, and one of them might be A-X (and with A-X he is still not safe) or a pair, but a suspiciously heavy raise to about 60 times the big blind is almost always a signal for A-A or K-K. So C could wait for a better opportunity than now.

C folds (Pot 2.39m)

C’s fold was brilliant, after the reraise, but it will still be brilliant even if B did not reraise. B might bet again on the Flop and C may not continue and just let go of the chips.

B’s reraise will work if he has A-A or K-K, but I doubt it if he will do the same with A-K or Q-Q, but it may have the same effect of making C fold. As for A, let us wish for his good health. B won the hand later.

Summary of Big Hand Preflop
I know this may seem like a lot to take in all at once, the fact is though that while poker is an easy game to learn it is hard to be very good at, hence the crazy stupid “chip flinging” you will come across on many poker sites.

Ironically the fact that so many players inhabit this dumb donk zone is great news for you. That’s because once you learn to play poker at an above average level and combat the “all-in-all the time” maniacs then you can take them apart in coldly calculated genocide anytime you like in low stakes money games and when you free poker that pays real cash such as that found at www.NoPayPOKER.com.

To make this work first, learn to play poker online free on free poker tables where you can learn while you lose but without losing real money, then once ready to can move up to low stakes and start to get rich!

Play Free Poker Guide To Specializing In Poker Tournaments Or Cash Games

You can’t be good at everything. In poker be it the win a lot of pennies free poker type or big cash it is why people become experts or specialists in their particular games.

It is the same as in any profession, field of study or in the workplace where people find their unique niche for the company that they work for and devote their efforts to becoming as good as they can in order to be promoted and earn more.

So how does this relate specifically to the world of poker games?

Like this, some poker players are brilliant cash game players, while others are expert tournament players. Of course, there are players that are great at both cash games and tournaments though they are few and far between.

The majority focus on one or the other because they find they are more successful in that sort of poker.

How do you determine whether cash games or tournaments are your speciality? Well, it’s not always clear. Of course you need to play plenty of both types, and while you do here are some factors to look for to help you decide once and for all.

Should You Focus On Cash Games?
If you’re a patient player who looks to play only in clear +EV situations, then you may prefer cash games. Full-ring games are all about waiting for premium starting hands and extracting the most value from them in the most favourable situation possible. Thus, cash games are good for players who don’t deal with variance very well.

The biggest mistake a beginning cash game player can make is playing too many hands. You don’t want to commit too many chips in marginal situations.

The opposite can seem to be true in the late to middle stages of a tournament.

Should You Focus On Poker Tournaments
It is correct to play tight in the early stages of a tournament, but once the blinds start to escalate you’ll need to loosen up your starting requirements. Once you’re low on chips, you’ll need to look to move all-in to survive. You may also need to put yourself in situations that may –EV in certain occasions. If you’re one of the big stacks, it’s also correct to start playing looser to bully the other players. It’s all about accumulating chips to either survive or thrive in tournaments. It’s not for the faint of heart or those who can’t deal with variance.

The biggest mistake a beginning tournament player can make is not pushing all-in enough when they get low on chips. Because the price of blinds increase as the tournament goes on, your chip stack can easily get whittled away.

Tight players can’t win tournaments.

Poker Game Specialization Conclusion
If you like tight then it is best to focus on cash games. But if you like action then tournaments are going to be your thing. With that said, it is possible for tight styles to work in tournaments with a few adjustments, and a loose style can work in cash games can work under certain circumstances.

Ideally do your testing in free poker games that way you can learn to play poker for free and find your style while not losing lots of money in the process!

To read more articles like this and learn to play hold em check out NoPayPOKER.com’s blog which is full of play free poker tutorials and offers a fantastic zero risk free poker site where you can put theory into practice.

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.

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.

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.