We all have a basic understanding of Texas Hold’em. We know the rules and how the game is played. What most of us don’t know is basic strategy and what it takes to win. Most people like to think they have it all figured out and play their own style. Yet, they can’t seem to understand why they lose almost always. You’re now asking yourself, what are these mistakes and how do we fix them? Let’s start with the costliest of the online poker mistakes.
Limping into pots
Most beginning players will look down and see some sort of hand they feel is playable.
Regardless of where they sit at the table, they will decide to limp in and look to see a flop. Next thing you know someone raises the pot in you online poker India.
The flop comes down and we completely miss every piece of it and are forced to fold our hand. The very next hand the same set of actions takes place and yet again we lose more money. Yes, sometimes we will hit our hand and win some chips, but that will happen far less often than the times we lose money.
The reality is that you probably would have never lost to if you had raised pre-flop. The purpose of raising pre-flop is to put more money in the pot when we have a strong hand. It also gets people out of the pot with weaker hands and gives us the greatest possibility of winning the hand.
Raising the pot pre-flop allows us to win the pot by making people fold rather than just hoping to hit a piece and winning that way. When we raise we take the initiative and force our opponents into making decisions. This is a much better approach then hoping to make a pair or some other hand. If you’re giving yourself two ways to win rather than one, this is obviously a much better option.
Playing any two suited cards
This next mistake is similar to the last. It’s more about the hand selection of when players limp into a pot. Online poker real money players often think hands like Q2 or K5 suited look so pretty and because they are suited decide to play them. They also compound this mistake by limping in instead of raising. If you’re going to play a hand like this, at least raise so we gain the advantages discussed in the previous mistake. There will be times to play hands like these but for the sake of this discussion we will not go into that.
The problem with playing these hands is they have little value and can cause you to lose more money than you should when we hit some piece of it. You’re mainly looking to make some sort of flush or flush draw with these hands. You will only flop a flush about 1% of the time and a flush draw roughly 10% of the time. The other times you’re left folding and losing the money you put in, or worse, making a pair and losing to a bigger pair.
You can see the problems that arise when playing this type of hand. We will rarely hit much on the flop and when we do, it will almost always end badly.
Calling with no odds
Best online poker is a game of math. We use pot odds to make decisions on whether calling a bet will be profitable in the long run.
Players fail to realize that they need certain odds to make certain decisions correct. This will make them losing players in the long run. The reason they keep doing this mistake is because they only remember the times they made their hand and won a nice pot. Not understanding that if they look at stats from all the times they had a draw, they actually lost more than they have won.
Getting attached to a hand
This mistake can be costly. Beginning players usually only look at the strength of their hand and make decisions based on this. If a player holds AA, they are unable to realize in certain situations there is no way that their hand is any good.
What makes this mistake even worse is when we have a strong hand, more of your money probably went into the pot because we felt our hand was strong enough due to the fact that it was AA or KK etc.
Over time you will start to understand when your hand is no good and just get rid of it. Just because you have aces does not mean you are guaranteed to win. At some point you will realize that aces may as well be 72 given the board texture and just muck your hand.
Slow playing strong hands
In poker it’s so hard to make a really strong hand such as a full house or even a flush. When we do make these strong hands it’s very important to get as much money in the pot as we can. There are times to slow play a hand, but for the most part, especially at lower limits where most of your opponents are bad and call regardless. It’s much better to bet and try to win as much as possible.
The main problem with slow playing a real money poker hand is letting someone outdraw you.
Happy playing!