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Texas Hold 'Em Lesson - Basic Betting Strategy Part 2

During our last lesson we discussed a general betting strategy that you can use when you play Online poker. As outlined, there are two types of situations that you can encounter within this basic betting strategy to determine how you should act. Either the players before you do not place a bet (as discussed in the last post) or they do (as we'll discuss today). A bet to you When the players before you have bet, you have one of three choices to consider. You can call, raise, or fold. If you hold a weak or mediocre hand when the players before you have bet you will have to look at the size of the pot to decide whether or not it is worth your while to stay in the hand. Otherwise, you will either bluff or fold. If you bluff, make sure that you convince the other players to fold or else you'll be in big trouble. To save yourself the cost of staying in the hand or attempting to bluff with a less than optimal hand, you will fold your cards. If you hold a strong hand you can either raise or check-raise. When the players before you have bet and you raise that original bet, the other players at the table will usually double-check their hands and the original bettor will know that she has competition. A raise in this situation can be a very powerful tool to force your competitiors to fold. The other option here is a check-raise where you call the original bet hoping that a third player will raise you. When that happens, you will raise the third players bet, but you must be cautious of this strategy if nobody else raises because you'll have lost out on a bet that you were willing to make. When you hold a very strong hand, or monster hand if you will, you will once again slowplay the hand. When you call the original bet, you are sending the signal that your hand isn't worth re-raising and will encourage other players to stay in the hand. If you are the last person to act, the effect of slowplaying is nullified because there is nobody else after you to place a bet. If another player to the left of you raises the bet after you've called, you will continue to call. You would not raise in this situation because you don't want to scare other players out of the pot. These basic betting strategies are useful in that they simplify the decision-making process, but they do make things easier for your opponents. If you follow a pattern when placing your bets, your opponents will be able to uncover the pattern that you're following and use it to their advantage. If your opponents have invested in software to track the games of both themselves and their opponents, you could be at a serious disadvantage. In our next lesson, we'll discuss what you can do to level the playing field with those players who use software and take advantage over those who don't.