Evaluating Starting Hands In No-Limit Hold'em TournamentsWritten by Marc W.
There are three main factors that influence how you should play your hole cards in No-Limit Hold'em Tournaments. They are: your position, size of your chip stack, and size of blinds. As a basic rule you need to avoid marginal hands that appear playable pre-flop but which can lead to huge losses in a single pot. The classic starting hands that fall into this category would be any Ax lower than AQ where both cards are unsuited, any Kx unsuited lower than KQ, and low suited connectors. The tricky aspect of no-limit hold'em both in a tournament structure and in a regular cash game is that these hands can also lead to greatest rewards. They are extremely volatile, however, and much of skill of no-limit is knowing how to recognize when that starting hand is a liability and when it could potentially break an opponent. This requires a great feel for game after flop. Naturally beginners lack this experience and nuanced understanding of game, and so it is far safer for a novice to limit himself to playing premium cards only before flop. The problem then becomes one of predictability - if you only raise with big pairs you are unlikely to get any action, and when you do get action you're in trouble because rest of table clearly knows what you're holding to begin with. If you are one off button or on button you should loosen your restrictions and play more starting hands, including those marginal ones, provided no one else has entered pot showing obvious strength. To vary your play effectively you should also consider raising with these hands as a semi-bluff tactic, but no more than one in four times. Keep most of your initial raises down to between 75% and 100% of pot. If you make it 3 times size of big blind to go that typically equals an 80% pot bet. This will protect you in case you get re-raised or called by stronger holdings. If there are limpers in front of you and you are going to raise then you need to make a significant bet, especially in no-limit where you have to make it punitive for other players if they intend to draw out. In that case you could raise as much as 6 times big blind.
| | Discover YOUR Online Poker RoomWritten by Robert Myer
As all poker sites on internet call themselves poker rooms so that is what I’m going to call them too. The first thing you have to do to check out a room is to download their software. You should download at least five rooms but ten is better. Set up accounts in each one so that you can enter their rooms to get an idea of how they operate. The first thing to look for is layout of “home page”. Does it make you feel comfortable? Is it easy to understand? These are not important points but they need to be thought about. One very important point is ease of navigation inside room. Can you find game schedule easily? Is help readily available? Do they break down free games from money games? Do you have to search through entire list of games to find what you want? Write down your impressions of each room so that you can make judgments later . Now play in some of their free games to get a feel for how software works. This will help you decide whether you want to play at room or not. There’s no use going any further in checking a room out if you don’t like playing there. After you have done above you have probably eliminated one or two rooms. Now you have to decide what games and what type of games that you want to play. Do you want Hold’em, Stud, Omaha? Do you want tournaments or ring games? Do you want freerolls or money tournaments? Or do you want some combination of all of them?
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