Basic Texas Hold'em Strategy Part 1

Evaluating your Cards and the Table

The first decision you make in any round of poker is evaluating your cards. When you look at your cards make sure that you give little or no information to other players. A positive reaction to your cards might scare away other players if you drew a good hand, decreasing the value in the pot. In Texas Hold’em this is especially important because the only cards that set you apart from your opponents is your two cards.

Knowing what is good

A good general rule to follow is to fold immediately if you draw a non-pair with both cards less than ten. These hands put you almost entirely in the hands of the flop, meaning that it is essentially completely up to luck for you to get a winning hand. Actually your chances are statistically less than other players unless the flop gets you a straight or a flush. However some players will choose not to fold in the case of eight and nine of the same suit (or similar situations) because of the possibility of a straight or flush. This is normally regarded as an aggressive play that is more likely to lose in the long term.

            In terms paying in it is important to realize the value of the ante. If the big blind is low enough it may is worthwhile to pay in to see the flop even if you have weak cards. This forces you to pay into the pot every round but if played right, it can reverse this loss and then some with the potential of a great hand. Especially in Texas Hold’em you will often draw poor or completely useless hands. After a series of bad hands, a player might be tempted to play aggressive off of a mediocre hand (because it is good compared to the previous weak hands) unless they can bluff effectively it often leads to wasting chip attempting to grow the pot when you don’t have the cards to win. The good hands will eventually appear, but you must be willing to wait and not play too aggressively with your chips.

The Flop

One of the biggest problems with newer players is the idea that they cannot back out of the round after the flop. In their mindset, once they invest into the round they see backing out as losing chips. However it is much more accurate to describe backing out of a round as maintaining tempo. Losing heavily in a round makes you play more conservative, and therefore limiting your possible gain. More than often the best option is to check. Checking gives you a chance to see more cards if your hand is weak, and if it is strong, you can convince other players that it is not.

Example of Texas Hold'em odds:

Wednesday Feb 11 2015

“Every time you play your hand the way you would if you could see your opponents' cards, you gain, and every time your opponents play their cards differently from the way they would play them if they could see your cards, you gain” -David Sklansky

When I first started researching I realized that a lot of the terms used I was not familiar with. So with this post I hope to identify and define key terms.

Position-the position of the player in terms of playing order

The Gap Concept- when a player needs a better hand to play against someone who has already opened (or raised) the betting than he would need to open himself

The Sandwich effect- states that a player needs a stronger hand to stay in a pot when there are opponents yet to act behind him

Aggressive play refers to betting and raising. 

Passive play refers to checking and calling

Hand reading is the process of making educated guesses about the possible cards an opponent may hold, based on the sequence of actions in the pot

Multiple level thinking is accounting for what the other opponents think about the hands

Pot odds are the ratio of the size of the pot to the size of the bet required to stay in the pot

It is important for me to keep this ideas in mind as I move onto more complex theories like chance calculation, bluff strategies, and analyzing fold/check patterns.

First Post

Today marks the start of my independent study project. The subject I have chosen is poker. Poker is an interesting game to me because is requires both skill and luck. It is interesting how the game seems like luck but skilled players are able to win consistently despite the odds being the small for every player. My goal in this project is to be able to explain poker in terms of strategy and the odds behind the rules.

Poker is a professional "sport" and annual tournaments are held in Las Vegas. However most of the player are not skilled and just want to gamble their money in hopes of "hitting it big". I find it interesting how a player eliminate luck from the equation, and how the game is used in casinos to attract people into playing a game that is essentially rigged against them (house takes a portion of the money).