Advanced Online Poker Play
Advanced online poker play.
There comes a time in every online poker player’s life when he/she will consider that he/she knows all about the basics of the game. This is the time to move on, to experiment with new things, and in the same time avoid mistakes that usually come with such a probing into the unknown.
Let's see some of the mistakes good poker players make. Remember, these guys are constant winners, so they're probably leagues above your skill-level ( and mine too) Do not be surprised that they sometimes make mistakes, though. Everybody makes mistakes, the difference between good and lousy players is in the frequency of these mistakes and the way they deal with such situations.
A mistake, good players make is that they raise on the river ( on the last betting round) with a marginally strong hand. This usually happens for a number of reasons:
1) calling is usually considered a sign of weakness, this is why most player avoid it
2) by just calling, a player risks winning only one bet instead of two, in case he holds the superior hand indeed.
The complex implications of this situation are far further reaching, though. Calling here, has the potential to net bigger benefits than raising.
First of all, your call can win you an overcall, and still bring you two bets, or the player you're up against, might raise anyway ( provided he has something solid-enough in the pocket ) and thus do the raising for you.
The object here is to keep as many players in the game as possible. Chasing them out on a raise is not something you want to achieve. Statistically, calling is the sound way to cope with the above presented situation.
Another mistake you'll be prone to, when advancing to tables requiring a higher level of skill, is that you'll assume that you won't be able to play as many hands as you’d like to against tougher player because of the fact that they'll play it way too tight. It is a common belief that a good poker player is also an extremely tight one.
You won't be able to extract as much profit from these players as you may have earned before, but the reason is not the fact that they're tight. A lot of good players aren't tight at all, still, you need to be much more selective about what you take down the street against them. What is the reason then?
Playing a loose table riddled with rookies will provide you a luxury you might not even be aware of in the beginning: whenever you decide to take a hand further or not, you need to consider that these guys will play their hands a certain way. Rookies will often play theirs the way you think they will. Good players will play their hands the way they should. In a word, whenever you take something down against tough opposition, don’t count on them making mistakes and playing things the way you need them to. Whatever you have, needs to be more or less bullet-proof. It needs to back you up all the way against pretty much anything these guys will throw at you.
It all comes down to common sense, really. Playing substandard hands against weak opponents is not a bad investment. There will be plenty of opportunities for them to make a bunch of mistakes in the relatively high number of betting rounds left till showdown. Good players won't make these mistakes, so you’ll need to tighten up against them.
Another huge mistake reasonable players often make is that they bluff against weak opponents. Weak opponents are good to target in general, however, bluffing is definitely not the weapon of choice against such opponents. One of the biggest mistakes these rookies make, is, that they call a lot, way more than a reasonable payer would. The chances of such a player not picking up the vibe you're trying to broadcast are obviously too high to consider bluffing as a viable strategy against him. The right kind of bluffing is nothing short of an artform. In order for your bluff to work well you need to select the victim extra carefully, and the very first rule of victim selection excludes weak players. You need to target a strong player who's been through something of a bad-luck streak in the game, and somehow grew to expect to get constantly and marginally outdrawn. Following that, much like a movie director, you need to build an elaborate set and plot line before you fire your gun.
When faced with tough opposition, in online poker, you obviously need to bring your absolute best too.
Avoid mistakes as much as you can, and stick to sound strategy.
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