Outdoor Lifestyles

When you have a big hand like KK and a good large stack preflop what is the best way to play it? And how does everyone else react? Regardless of if you simply play free poker online 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.

Concluding Big Hand Preflop
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 free online poker 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 online poker tables to get it nailed.

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When you have a big hand like KK and a good large stack preflop what is the best way to play it? And how does everyone else react? Whether you play free poker games for pennies or high stakes in Monaco this is a critically important situatio and you need to know how to play it best.

For our example we will look at an example from the World Series of Poker:

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 just call and then wait for someone to move all-in after him, but that would make him do some thinking…

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.

In summary - Big Hand Preflop
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. The reason why is that when you really learn how to play poker well you can turn mercenary and hunt them down in droves in low stakes real money games as well free poker sites that pay out real money like NoPayPOKER and happily build your skills and bankroll!

To make this work first, learn how to play poker 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!

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All in or fold? Bluffing as a concept is easy for the free online poker beginner to understand but a devil to master, even the best pro players blow it frequently.

Bluffing can reward you or demolish you.
When playing with real money, I would be extra careful when it comes to bluffing. I will discuss my ideas and concepts of bluffing in no limit money and free poker.

Here is the first lesson of bluffing that I find works most of the time (if done right) It’s the gut feel after an opponent checks after the flop, turn or river that they have nothing so you can bet confidently.

The best way to demonstrate this is when you are playing someone heads up. If there are only two of you and you have top pair or top kicker, you are most likely to win. The reason is because the other person only has two cards out of the deck just like you so the chances are slim. When you bluff against a heads up player, make sure you know something about that player, so you know when to bluff at just the right time.

Next, you have to understand what is at stake when you produce a bluff. If you push all in and you know you do not have the best hand, you must consider the worst. You may get lucky, or you may not. Bluffing is similar to betting on red or black in roulette, it’s a fifty-fifty chance. If you are bluffing in fun free poker you may think it does not matter because it is not real, true maybe but you’ll never become a very good poker player with that approach and you will never move beyond the free texas hold em level.

Bluffing is only part of the game but can never be mastered. Even the poker professionals would agree that even they still do not know when to make a bluff or not. Sometimes it is hard to tell if someone is slow playing you or they just simply do not have anything.

Third, another concept of bluffing is the persistent value bet method. During this method, you are betting on nothing from the flop all the way to the river hoping they will fold if they have chased their hand. If you bet the same amount on the flop and turn but bet a little higher on the river with your bluffing hand, the other person is most likely to fold their hand to you. But again, this does not always have the same outcome every time.

Finally, my favorite part of bluffing is when you try to produce a bet that seems like a bluff, but is not. The best bluff bet is the famous all in or the bet pot. Also, if you are playing with the same group of cash or free texas holdem poker players on a regular basis, you can change up your style by betting an amount they would not expect. The best way to get as much as you can get from someone out of a hand is to simply call all the way and go all in on the river, hopefully they will think you missed what you were chasing and they will call.

In closing, I hope you now understand a bit more about bluffing as a whole. It is one thing to be a poker professional but being a bluffing poker professional is an entire different world. Bluffing is either something you are good at or not. If bluffing works for you most of the time, you may be just lucky or you may truly have the gift of bluffing mastered. But just remember, the most important concept to understand about bluffing is that it will NOT always be successful.

If poker of bluffing is new for you be sure to get low or no risk practice in first. Try it on, test, fail, succeed and learn on free texas hold em sites before you start to try and bluff with real money!

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Single Table Tournaments, or SNG as they are called, can be serious Bankroll boosters with a little forethought prior to play. I currently play a lot of free online poker sites as well as $5.00 and $10.00 SNG’s at several poker sites with a fair amount of success. This is a simple version of how I play them.

Solid and Tight early on.
This means that early in a tournament you only play premium hands. Position is very important. Pairs from 22 thru 99 I only call and then only up to only 3 times the Big Blind. A larger raise and I fold them.

Big pairs such as 10/10, Jack/Jack, Queen/Queen, King/King & Ace/Ace I will always call for a raise on a short table.

Be prepared to call an all in with any of those. Hands like QJ, QK, KJ, and A 10 I play like small pairs and fold to raises larger than 3 times the Big Blind.

Now the hands that can get you into trouble.
AJ, AQ, and AK….you got to know when to fold them!! They are great hands when down to 3 or maybe 4 players left, but early on they are dead to any pair.

It’s an important strategy knowing when to put these cards down in the early stages of a free poker tournament. One tactic I believe works well is showing my cards when I win- pulling out these double kings etc shows the other players I haven’t blagged once; well this may change once we get down to the final three as I wont be showing any cards then!

By doing this you will get the opportunity to have some great robberies. Your opponents have only ever seen your victories and therefore have no reason to start doubting you now.

As you just played the best cards at the start you have opened the door for the ‘bingo’ players to put themselves out. The odds are by being strong and rigid the chance will fall for you to knock a few opponents out yourself.

The bottom line is- you’re playing to win- and by winning you hope to make some money, and making money on the sit and go games takes a lot less effort. The majority of the time the top three will get some money and by coming third you normally break even. Therefore making the cash is crucial to doing well in sit and go poker games.

Another factor in play is a pet peeve of mine. I cannot count the times I have seen a table fold to a dead seat. There is nothing like seeing a deadhead getting free chips. The key factor here is PAY ATTENTION. You have to be in the game and not on vacation.

Add with this there are always the common sense fundamentals when playing for money. I’m one of the old school and being in my fifties I have seen the game evolve in many forms over many decades. To quote one of mu idols “No limit holdem can be taught in half an hour but can take over a lifetime to master”.

To this I’d add, when you start or if you’re already familiar with poker but struggling - go and practice on micro/low stakes or free online poker site tournaments. There are some great ones out there and you can play loads with little or nothing at risk and in doing so really build your confidence and skills before starting to risk it bigger.

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Bluffing is considered by many as an art form and can take a long time to establish any level of skill. Most people believe bluffing is as simple as keeping a straight face and having balls of steel- but let me reassure you there is a lot more to it than this. The ambitions of any poker player can be reflected by the degree of bluffing that they will involve during play. For example you may find players trying their luck while playing free poker online, but at the money tables the same player plays a lot more conservatory. In this article I will share my experiences and provide tips of bluffing in no limit Texas Hold-um.

Although a lot of bluffing comes down to judgment and instincts there is still an awful lot you can learn. The 1st example of bluffing amounts to the majority of play: if your instincts kick in after an opponents checks from the flop, turn or river then you can gamble high. A great example of this when playing an opponent heads up. If there are only 2 players and you’re holding a top pair or top kickers- you have a brilliant chance of winning. I will explain why; your opponent only has 2 cards from the pack the same as you meaning the chances are small. If bluffing a heads up opponent, just ensure you have done your research and understand this type of player, so you know when the correct time to bluff is.

Next, you have to understand what is at stake when you produce a bluff. If you push all in and you know you do not have the best hand, you must consider the worst. You may get lucky, or you may not. Bluffing is similar to betting on red or black in roulette, it’s a fifty-fifty chance. If you are bluffing in free poker, you may think it does not matter because it is not real, but that does not make you a very good poker player. Bluffing is only part of the game but can never be mastered. Even the poker professionals would agree that even they still do not know when to make a bluff or not. Sometimes it is hard to tell if someone is slow playing you or they just simply do not have anything.

Third, another concept of bluffing is the persistent value bet method. During this method, you are betting on nothing from the flop all the way to the river hoping they will fold if they have chased their hand. If you bet the same amount on the flop and turn but bet a little higher on the river with your bluffing hand, the other person is most likely to fold their hand to you. But again, this does not always have the same outcome every time.

Finally, my favorite part of bluffing is when you try to produce a bet that seems like a bluff, but is not. The best bluff bet is the famous all in or the bet pot. Also, if you are playing with the same group of players on a regular basis, you can change up your style by betting an amount they would not expect. The best way to get as much as you can get from someone out of a hand is to simply call all the way and go all in on the river, hopefully they will think you missed what you were chasing and they will call.

In closing, I hope you now understand a bit more about bluffing as a whole. It is one thing to be a poker professional but being a bluffing professional is an entire different world. Bluffing is either something you are good at or not. If bluffing works for you most of the time, you may be just lucky or you may truly have the gift of bluffing mastered. But just remember, the most important concept about bluffing, in pay games or free poker, is that it will NOT always be successful.

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First off a free poker tournament mistake to avoid, namely, the absolute stupidity of “checking it down” when a player is all-in, just to move up in the money of a poker tournament.

Maybe there is a scenario when this is ok- an example would be if there’s not a lot of cash floating about in the pot, or there is no chance of making a profit by making the gamble. This doesn’t move me away from my bad feelings towards checking it down just to go up in the cash however. I guess my feelings come because this type of play stops the chance to win the pot. In addition this can allow the opposition to catch you, when they would have clearly thrown in. It’s a great deal safer and stronger to play to gamble instead of check if you have the cards. This way you won’t loose any more than you have to.

The following part of this article will illustrate the significance of online free poker tournament bankroll skills.

It’s extremely effortless to be out of your entire budget by not having the basic bankroll supervision experience. I have found that Chris “Jesus” Ferguson’s methods work fairly well in practice. For this method, you can only purchase into multi table poker competitions for no more than two percent or your total bankroll and Sit and Go poker games for five percent of your full amount.

At NoPayPOKER we suggest that in cash games you should not invest more than 3% of your total roll though Ferguson says 5% is ok. So it comes down to your attitude to risk at this point.

This is very important because good bankroll management is the key to success in online poker. It is also very important to move down in stakes if you go on a bad losing streak. This is problem the hardest thing you can try to do. Moving down in stakes is even more important than keeping a good roll management technique in mind.

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Limit hold-em is one of the easier of the poker games to understand and for this reason is very popular especially with the free poker sites. Its not that the rules differ to those of other poker games it’s simply the process of placing bets is different. The maximum value is identical to the big blind and you can’t place a wager in excess of that maximum value- therefore the only way to get this elevated is to check in the 1st round of gambling in early positions and gamble in the later positions. It’s good practice to widen the parameters of hands your willing to play with; this will adapt your usual method of play.

The basic’s are pretty much the same with three simple rules that are bet, bet, and bet. Pre-flop you want to bet the pot as much as you can with your big hands and call the minimum with most everything from low suited connecters on up in the later positions. After the flop you want to bet with any made hands or draws equal to or greater then a flush draw taking the strength of the finishing hand into consideration.

The main idea is to just bring up the pot as much as you can whenever you think you may win the hand. The pro and con of limit hold’em is that it is much easier to chase a hand to the river for both you and your opponent and this is the reason that you should just bet, bet and bet. They will get their share and you will get yours when the time is right. Hopefully this guide will help, give it a go, on a free poker site if you can and see how it goes and above all have fun!

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It doesn’t matter if you are a free texas hold em player aiming to win virtual currency or a high stakes roller improving your playing skills will obviously help you win more poker and articles on skills are everywhere. However what is often overlooked is the fact that choosing the right games to play also has a massive impact on your success or lack of it!

For example, there’s an old story about a poker pro who was the sixth best player in the world but never made any money. That was because he chose to only play against the top five best players in the world. The moral of the story is that you make money when you possess a clear edge over your opponents.

Don’t be overconfident

Everyone wants to be the best and play the best. It’s a matter of pride. However, unless your name is Phil Ivey, you probably won’t have an advantage over every opponent in every game. It’s also important to recognize that even the top poker pros will sometimes step down a level and play lesser competition because it’s more profitable.

If you can’t beat players at lower level cash games, you shouldn’t try to play at higher level cash games. You’re going to go broke trying. Start out on free texas hold em games if you need to and work up from there.

This is the way of it online and offline. I remember one time, for instance when I came across a $1/2 no limit Texas Holdem game at a minor casino in a small Florida town. In 2 hours I just about doubled my money while not taking a single pot. The players there were very passive and loose and I was able to pressure them with large bets and got paid off for relatively strong hands. This is a great example of picking the right table!

I also remember one time when I played for five hours in a $1/2 no-limit hold’em game at a five-star hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. I barely broke even. The players were tight and aggressive and played back at me when I tried to put a move on them. I knew afterward that I picked the wrong table.

What kind of game to look for

The first thing to keep in mind is your bankroll. If you can’t afford to play $5/10 live or $.50/1 online, then you shouldn’t do it. You should move down to a more affordable level even free poker if necessary.

Next, your skill. Be honest now, can you compete at this level? If you can’t or are not sure (and not sure means you probably can’t) then drop down a level or even 2. If needs be play free texas holdem poker or micro stakes in order to hone your skills and build self confidence.

Once you’ve decided the level you can beat, you then need to be choosy about the particular table you want to sit at. Ideally, you want to play at a table where you see players making a lot of fundamental errors like playing too many hands or playing too passively. A loose and passive table is probably the most profitable table. A loose game will allow you to win big pots because players will call you down with weak hands, and a passive game affords you the opportunity to hit your draws cheaply and bully your opposition.

It’s not always possible to find a passive loose table when you need it. But with a bit of surveillance you should be able to work out if a game is at a level you can compete strongly and win at. Yes, it’s good to be a good player but poker is about winning so it’s no good to be a good player beat by better players, instead aim to be a good winning player! So practise the game selection process first, look at micro and free poker sites and work up from there.

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The idea of private poker is not a new concept; on the contrary it has been around since the dawn of time- well since poker started anyway!! The main obstacle most enthusiasts of the private game face is finding a suitable time that doesn’t affect work or home life.

With the huge growth of online poker and free poker online most sites are now offering the ability for players to make their own private, passworded games they can play with friends and while not quite the same as the traditional poker night most of us are use to it can still be a great alternative, you can choose the stakes you want to play for and depending on the site also choose your starting chips and blinds.

While Texas Holdem is one of the most popular online games Omaha is now making a big come back and on many sites both are available in the private games.

Many sites offer you only a ten minute window to join the private game so you need to do all your inviting before making the game although some do offer time scheduled games so be sure to check multiple sites prior to making a decision.

Another good tip on the organisational front is to find how easy the game is to find and access once you have set it up. Some of the bigger sites make this extremely difficult- once you have found a site you can use and find, be sure to spread the word.

At this point I should also make the obvious clear that as your playing over the internet you must obey the ‘house rules’ of the hosting site. Some sites have bans on bad language and also remember anyone has the ability to try and join your game or see it.

After locating a site that offers the type of game and the features you want, you will find both money and free poker sites that do all you need to do is schedule a time that your friends can be online, make the game and begin playing.

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I love to play poker. I love the skill. I love the thrill. I love the challenge. But I’ve got to admit, my desire to play poker is slowly dying away. I, personally, put the blame on a little of everything. Online sites, TV, casinos, really anywhere you can find a game.

Poker, mainly Texas hold ‘em, has been pushed on the public almost too much. Everyone thinks they’re going to be the next great champion. Now sometimes I’ve seen players get frustrated because the person they’re losing to just started learning how to even play the game.

But for me, it’s not even so much that anymore. I feel a lot of the challenge has just been taken out of the game. There are a lot of people nowadays who just don’t know, or don’t care, what they’re doing. People flop bottom pair, middle pair, top pair with BAD kicker, gutshot straight draws, open ended straight draws, flush draw with two cards in their hand, or even flush draws with one card in their hand. Sometimes, they don’t even flop anything. And, they have no excuse why they may even call a bet to go any further, but they do.

A lot of people play hands that have really no business being played for any sort of bet. But why do they do it? That’s the frustrating part. Some think they’re lucky. Some think they’re skilled. A lot of it just factors up to dumbness.

As stated before these players all have ambitions and harbour dreams of becoming the next big thing. These guys seek and chase the feel of hitting their cards for victory. Alternatively if there dreams stop short of being the next poker ace, they think of the new riches they’re destined for.

One of the factors I put this down to is the free online poker sites. The public sees so many poor hands being rewarded and want in; I guess a lot of the poor plays are born from this.

Ok- maybe I jumped the gun a bit by laying into free online poker sites- as I understand the reasoning for poor play taking home the pot. The methodology is continuation, and they must ensure people go onto the next table asap.

So what happens? Most end up seeing that miracle gutshot hit. Or the one outer hit. Or even worse; the runner, runner (nothing funner) hit. I just wish I could find a site that wouldn’t allow that to happen so, so much. But I never know if my desire will return. Even if I could find a site like that, there’s always the “other” problem. The vast number of players out there who really have no business gambling like that with real money involved. But who am I, or you, or anyone, to judge what might make other people happy?

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