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LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)– OnlinePokeReport.com, a top online poker portal dedicated to providing useful reports and information to poker players recently added new poker strategy a.

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Poker is a very famous game at the casino.

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The Classical Feast » Best Online Poker

Are you an emotional person?  Do you like to talk a lot at the table?  Is showing your hand, win or lose, something you do a lot?  These are all common traits associated with players that tend to give away too much information to their opponents when playing poker.  Sure you  might not have to worry about these types of things at your local home game or even in a very small limit table at the local casino, but the rest of the time, especially against skilled players, you’ll want to minimize the information and tells you may not even know you’re giving away.

Everyone has an unique personality, a way that they act, talk and react when they are in a normal state of mind.  However, poker as a game creates tense, stressful and emotional situations where people will start to act outside of their comfort zone and begin to give off signs, both physically and emotionally, that will alert other players that something is up.  This can be something as simple as a very talkative player that all of a sudden becomes mute and doesn’t say a word after looking down at their cards.  Perhaps they just realized they have pocket aces and now want to quiet down so they can focus on the hand.  Someone that has been playing with you for the last few hours will definitely notice that.

Another area where players all but completely hand over their strategic game plans is when they show their hand a lot to their opponents, regardless of whether or not they win or lose.  Showing your hand can sometimes be the right play if you’re doing it for the right reason, but I always see far too many players flip up their drawing hand or bluff for no reason whatsoever.  All this does is let your opponent know to watch out for the next time you play a hand exactly the same way, this way they can have an idea of what your hole cards are.

The point is that if you’re going to take your poker seriously, you need to worry about more than just hand selection and bet sizes, you need a table persona.  A table persona is the person you become when you play poker.  This person can act almost identically the way you normally do, but with a heightened sense of awareness.  Learn to recognize the way you act when you have a big hand, when you’re bluffing, etc.  See if you can start to act the same way all the time no matter what hand you have, in essence developing a “poker face”.

Being self-aware of the way you move, talk and react at the poker table will allow you to camouflage your play and protect yourself from giving away too much information.  If you move the same way no matter if you’re bluffing or value-betting, your opponents won’t be able to use this information to make a decision on how to react.  Failing to do so only makes it easier for them to get your chips.

By: Chris Iaquinta

Generally, experienced players like to recommend that newer/novice level poker players play their big starting hands very aggressively, and I have to agree.  Pocket aces do not guarantee a victory, even when raised with pre-flop, and limping with such a hand only allows other players to get involved with weak hands that may flop big.  Does that mean it’s impossible to slowplay a big hand?  Of course not, but the circumstances for making a decision to do so have to be right.

Let’s take a look at playing pocket aces aggressively and then passively, both from early position.  In the aggressive scenario, you raise about three times the big blind in early position.  Anyone with weak starting hands, small pocket pairs, suited connectors and the like will probably end up folding.  If you do get any callers it will likely be from players will hands like A-K, K-Q, medium pocket pairs, and big suited connectors.  Now when the flop comes, you should have a fairly good idea of where you stand considering that the players still in the hand had to call a raise in order to stick around.  If the flop comes K-K-10 and there are two players in the hand, you’ll know that it is very possible one of them stuck around to see the flop with a hand like K-Q in late position.  You may not win the hand now, but at least you can hopefully lose the minimum.  Getting this extra information came from playing pocket aces the way most experienced players would in early position.

Now let’s do the reverse.  You limp in early position with pocket aces and five other players also limp.  The flop comes Q-J-8 with two hearts.  How strong are you right now in the hand?  The problem is, you really have no idea.  It’s unlikely that another player would limp with a hand like Q-Q, so you can usually rule out trip queens in this situation.  But what about Q-J, or pocket eights, or K-10?  By letting players limp in to see a cheap flop when you hold a huge pocket pair, you’re opening up the possibilities for them to get lucky on the flop, turn or river, and the whole time you’ll be hard pressed to know exactly where you stand.

When you slowplay a huge hand pre-flop, you want to try and make sure that doing so is going to not put you in very uncomfortable situation.  If the table you’re playing at is very tight and you’re worried that raising with your aces pre-flop is going to drive away all of your opponents, you may want to try and limp in with aces in middle to late position and hopefully get no more than 2-3 other limpers.  From there you will probably want to play your aces aggressively on the flop, if for no other reason than to try and get some information as to just how strong your hand now is.

Slowplaying a hand like AA or KK in a tournament could make a little more sense, but again it depends on the scenario.  If someone else at my table is short stacked and I have to act before them pre-flop, I may check with my big pocket pair with hopes that they’ll push all-in.  In both a cash game and tournament I would also probably limp in with a big hand if I were in the small blind or big blind and only had one or two callers following me to the flop.

So in the end, yes there are definitely circumstances where you can try and slowplay your big hands pre-flop, but always try to make sure that you are doing so in situations that will put you at the least amount of risk as possible.

By: Chris Iaquinta

When it comes to very basic poker strategy, continuation bets rank right among the top in terms of tactics that beginning and novice players should have a very good grasp of.  A continuation bet is when a player that raised the pot pre-flop makes another bet on the flop.  He is “continuing to bet”, which is more popularly referred to as a continuation bet.  The reason this type of play is so super important to have in your arsenal is that it plays up one of the most successful strategies in pre-flop and post-flop techniques, aggression.

The popular saying in poker is that if you always just check and/or call, you are only giving yourself a few ways to win the hand, while if you are the player that bets and raises, you are giving yourself multiple paths to win the hand.  The main strength behind a continuation bet is that it allows you to continue to use the momentum of your pre-flop raise to try and win the pot on the flop even if you didn’t make your hand.  Let’s say you have a hand like A-Q, raise it in middle position pre-flop, get one caller, and the flop comes J-7-2.  This flop wasn’t likely to have hit your opponent who called a pre-flop raise, so if you make a continuation bet, you are very likely to win the pot right there, as you are continuing to convey hand strength just like you did pre-flop.  However if you had limped in to the pot and hand the same flop, leading out with a bet is much harder to do with confidence.

Continuation bets also are smart plays because they allow you to get a lot of information about your opponent’s hand.  If you raise pre-flop, get called, and then make a continuation bet on the flop and get called or raised, you are now going to have a very good idea of what your opponent has.  This is why aggression is usually always favored over slow, timid strategies, as if enables you to win the pot while at the same time giving near-maximum information about the hand, while simply limping and calling removes virtually all of those benefits.

Continuation bets work best primarily in heads-up situations, especially if you yourself missed the flop.  If you raised pre-flop and got three or more callers, you may want to hold off on a continuation bet if you have a hand like K-Q and the flop comes A-J-8, as it is likely that someone has an ace and is going to call your continuation bet, leaving you with few outs on the turn and river.

Making these types of plays doesn’t always guarantee victory, but they are crucial parts of your poker arsenal that you should not take likely, as in the long run it will be far more profitable.

By: Chris Iaquinta

In my last two columns, I’ve discussed hand selection as it pertains to early and middle position. Hand selection in these two classifications, especially early position, require fairly strict discipline when it comes to choosing hands to get involved in a pot with. Middle position offers up a number of opportunities to safely open up your hand wide, while late position offers the most flexibility of all the starting positions.

The biggest advantage of acting in late position is that you will have the maximum amount of pre-flop information possible for that particular hand. While early position plays won’t have a clue what their opponents in middle position are going to do, you have the luxury in late position to having already seen what course of action they took and can now plan your play accordingly. This doesn’t mean call or raise with any two cards in the deck, but it does allow for some fairly open hand selection.

In late position, you’ll want to raise with the higher end selection of hands from early and middle position, plus you can also considering raising (and definitely calling) with these new entries: 6-6, 6-6, A-10, K-J, K-10, 10-9, 9-8. Obviously K-10 and 9-8 aren’t going to be worth raising with, but if your table is constantly limping in, there shouldn’t be any harm in seeing a flip with a very marginal hand like 10-9.

If you flop top pair with a hand like K-10, you’ll want to be very cautious as it is still very possible that another player at the table limped with an above average hand like K-Q. Luckily, if you’re seating on or to the right of the button, you’ll get the opportunity to once again see all the action and decisions made post-flop before you have to make a decision as to how you want to play the hand. Did everyone check to you and you have top pair? A bet will likely get the entire table to fold, with only those that maybe hit a piece of the flop or have a draw sticking around to see the next card.

Go back now and reread all three positional hand selection pieces, as knowledge of this information is going to prove to be invaluable again and again for as long as you play poker.

Hand selection, especially for newer players, is absolutely crucial for poker success.  Understanding what hands you should play and when will only make a number of decisions that come later in the hand easier to make.  Failure to know exactly which hands to raise, call or fold with depending on your position often leads to players not knowing how strong or weak their hand is compared to their opponents.  To get a better idea of how to base your hand selection on when it is your turn to act, lets start with early position.

Early position is the designation assigned to the first 2-3 players that have to act in the hand.  Players in these positions are at a disadvantage since they need to make a decision without knowing a lot of information about that particular hand.  Coming in with weak to marginal hands in early position is strongly discouraged because it opens you up to being raised by an opponent in mid to late position who holds a better hand.
To protect yourself as much as possible, you’ll want to limit your hand selection in early position to include AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 10-10, 9-9, AK, AQ.  These aren’t completely steadfast choices either.  AQ in early position can often be a dangerous hand to play, as if you’re raised pre-flop it’s hard to tell if you’re dominated or not, so you’ll want to reserve playing AQ in early position when you’re at tables where there is not a lot of pre-flop raising.

Occasionally you can try and limp in with weaker hands like KQ suited or small pocket pairs in early position, but you should only do so when it is likely that you won’t get raised.  It’s hard to call pre-flop raises with hands like these, and you’re just giving the chips away if you’re seated at a table with opponents that like to pre-flop raise all the time.  Next time we’ll take a look at hand selection as it applies to middle position.

By: Chris Iaquinta

When it comes to how to play big hands both pre and post flop, there are usually two very different mentalities that players may slip into.  One is the defensive strategy that will lead a player to bet and raise a lot of chips in order to protect their hand, and the other is the sneaky player that will happily try and trap an opponent, even when it means letting the other player take a free card that could vastly strengthen their hand.  Is one style better than the other?  As usual, it depends on the situation.

As with most scenarios in poker, there is a right and wrong time to do certain things.  Slow playing a big hand can be very advantageous under the right circumstances and could lead to you netting a lot of chips, however you want to make sure you avoid putting your hand in a dangerous situation.

Here’s a simple example:  Say you have 4-4 in middle position and you limp pre-flop.  Two other players limp in and the flop comes Q-J-4 with two hearts and you’re first to act.  A lot of players will check in this situation, hoping that someone with a Jack or Queen will bet, but the problem with checking here is that it gives players with a straight or flush draw the opportunity to see a free card on the turn, one that may completely dominate your hand.  There is simply too many dangerous cards that could come on the next street here, which is why you should try and protect your hand with about a pot-sized bet.

Now if you still had pocket fours, limped in against two other players and the flop comes A-9-4 rainbow (rainbow meaning that no two suits are the same), you can comfortably check here to try and induce bets/bluffs from the other two players, as it is extremely unlikely that one of them holds a hand that beats yours.  The difference between this situation and the one above is the risk percentage.  Giving a free card in scenario #1 could very easily lead to you getting beat, while a free card in scenario #2 is highly unlikely to produce the same result.

Other factors to explore when slow playing big hands is the types of players you’re playing against.  It’s much easier to try and trap a very aggressive player that has no problem betting on every turn with marginal hands, while trapping a very tight player that only plays premium cards can be both risky and far less profitable.

Now in situations where your hand is practically unbeatable, such as when you hold full houses and Ace-high flushes, slow playing is often the only way to accumulate more chips.  You may have to put out a value bet on the turn or river in case your opponent is all too happy to constantly check on each street, so just make sure you bet an amount that should incite a call from a player that holds at least top or second pair.

In all scenarios where you flop a big hand, ask yourself “How can I make the most money out of this hand while still keeping the percentages in my favor?”  In some cases you’ll have no choice but to bet out on the flop in order to protect your hand, even if that means everyone else may fold and you win the minimum.  The goal is always to keep the odds in your favor as long as possible while still attempting to win the maximum amount of chips.

By: Chris Iaquinta