Poker Ring Game Strategies and Tips

Ring Game Strategies

Cash Table Strategies are numerous. Many professionals play their hands as a function of their personal style of play, reads they have on their opponent(s), their position, the size of their stack, number of people at the table, and the size of their opponent's stack.

Ultimately, what we will advocate is a very conservative style of play with a goal of steadily increasing your bankroll with minimal risk. By definition, the conservative style of play is one where the player plays only premium starting hands and strong drawing hands from position. In Low-limit Texas Hold'em (sometimes referred to as No-Fold'em Hold'em), connected cards (such as 78) and suited cards (such as Ah3h) take on additional value. The reason for this is that these types of hands put you on possible draws for very strong hands (flushes and straights).

Because many of your opponents are playing these types of suited/connected hands, it is not uncommon for you to lose frequently with big starting hands such as AA, KK and QQ. In limit, when you flop a straight draw or a flush draw, you will almost always have the correct pot odds to chase your draw, especially if there are multiple people in the pot. Be very careful when you are drawing to the straight when there is a flush draw on the board also. Remember, Outs refer to number of cards that will make you the probable winner. If a flush is already possible, you do not want to be drawing for a straight as you may already be drawing dead -- or drawing with zero outs.

Betting Strategy

In both Limit and No-Limit Hold'em, a smart betting strategy can have two beneficial results. Smart betting can save you bets when you are on a draw, and extract extra bets from your opponents when you have a made hand already. Most of the opportunity for strategic betting in Limit Hold'em comes through effective use of bets with drawing hands from position.

Let's look at an example. Let's assume you are in late position, and you have limped with 6h 7h. The flop comes A 4 5, with two hearts. You have flopped a monster draw. It is checked to you, in this situation it is advisable to bet the flop for three reasons.

The first reason is that you may win the pot with that one bet, since the other players in the hand have indicated weakness by checking all the way to you.

The second reason is that, if you are called, and the turn does not bring one of your outs, the action will most likely be checked to you again and you have, in essence, bought BOTH the turn and the river cards for the one small bet on the flop.

The third reason is that, if you are called, and the turn DOES bring one of your outs, you can continue to bet and you have a strong chance of winning even more money since you have increased the odds for other people to continue calling. And, at low limits particularly, many players will continue to call your bets all the way to the river.

Notice that this is only possible when you have the advantage of position on the other players. For this reason, you are better off playing the suited and connected cards from the later positions.

Another important betting strategy relates to calling bets on the turn. Often the pot odds justify calling a bet on the flop if you have have a draw to something strong (even if it is a runner runner draw to the Ace high flush). A common mistake that many novice limit players make is calling the turn and then folding on the river. Try not to get in the habit of calling bets all the way to the river and then folding . Often, when deciding whether or not you are going to call the turn, you should also be giving thought to whether you are also prepared to call a bet on the river. If your hand is not that strong to begin with, you should seriously consider whether or not you are prepared to put in an additional two big bets (or more).

Finally, in Limit Hold'em, it is often difficult to protect your premium starting hands such as AA or KK. When you DO have one of these hands, and there is a raise in front of you, reraise the hand in order to put the maximum amount of pressure on the players that are left to act behind you. Big pairs are ideally played against as few hands as possible, and leveraging someone else's bet with a raise is one of the best ways to chase out the drawing hands.

Using this proper betting strategy will help you get maximum value for your made hands, while minimizing the amount of investment required to draw for strong hands.

The final step in your introduction is to equip you with a few tools that you can use to evaluate your play so that you can fine tune your game and improve your hourly win rate.