How To Play Poker

How To Play Poker With A Profitable Style

Learning how to play poker is trivial. You just need to know the poker rules. Learning how to play poker with a profitable playing style, on the other hand, is not quite as simple.  

When playing Hold’em you can choose among a variety of actions. You can fold, check, bet, raise or call. Your actions form a pattern and that pattern is your playing style. Different situations are best tackled with different styles and players can have different styles by preference. This might sound complicated but it is actually very simple. All playing styles are based on the following four ingredients.

We get the following four combinations:

Tight aggressive
Loose aggressive
Tight passive
Loose passive  

The four playing styles represent four extreme player types:  

Genius is the strongest player and Calling station is the weakest player. Maniac is dangerous, especially to himself. Rock knows the odds but is not flexible enough to challenge the aggressive players. We get the following hierarchy:  

All forms of aggressive play wins over all forms of passive play in the long run. Using a passive style of play is not profitable. Aggressive players prey on passive players. To profit from poker you must use an aggressive style of play. However, simply being aggressive won't take you far. You need to develop a deeper understanding of the playing styles; what they require of you and under what circumstances they are best employed.

It is important to understand that a professional player does not limit himself to one single playing style. He adapts his style to the terrain. The terrain is formed by the betting structure, game type (cash game, tournament), table position and the playing styles exhibited by the other players. At the core, however, a professional player always remains tight aggressive as symbolized by Genius. All factors forming the terrain will be explored as you progress through the school. At this early stage we will focus on your fundamental style and to help you understand why tight aggressive should be its main component we have put together a quick analysis of all four styles.

Tight aggressive (Genius): The mathematical style. Your cards are more important than the other players. This style is highly effective and very accessible. Learning how to play poker profitably with a tight aggressive style is extremely easy. The only downside to this playing style is that you become very predictable if you adhere too strictly to it.

Loose aggressive (Maniac): The psychological style. The other players are more important than your cards. It is potentially powerful but very difficult to learn and impossible to master. Learning how to play poker profitably with a loose aggressive style is tough for professionals and impossible for beginners.

Tight passive (Rock): The ineffective style. You are giving your cards a mathematical evaluation but you are not raising the stakes high enough to profit with your good hands and you are on top of that very predictable. Learning how to play poker proftitably with a tight passive playing style is like learning the dead how to live. It can't be done.

Loose passive (Calling station): The amateur style. This is the worst possible style associated only with complete amateurs. Learning how to play poker profitably with a loose passive playing style is like learning how to breath under water. It can't be done.

As you can see it is all about keeping it simple. Make the most out of your strong hands and stay away from the weak hands. As you grow more experienced you will get better at pushing the margins to your advantage but you must never stray far from the tight aggressive main path if you are to profit in the long run.

How To Play Poker By Reading

Having a solid style of your own is a good start but it won't take you all the way. Knowing your opponent’s style is an equally important corner stone of Texas Hold’em strategy. By observing the actions of your opponents over time you should be able to determine their playing styles. 

►How large portion of their starting hands do they play?
►How large portion of the hands that they initially choose to bet on are eventually folded?
►What is their ratio of betting and raising to checking and calling?

If your opponent is tight aggressive you must thread carefully. You can’t really win money from a tight aggressive player. You can only resort to being tight aggressive yourself and hope to break even against him. Fortunately most players are not tight aggressive and you can easily extract money from them by adjusting your style. Learning how to play poker profitably against opponents other than tight aggressive ones is a walk in the park:

►Extract money from a loose aggressive player with pure and simple tight aggressive play.
►Extract money from a tight passive player with loose aggressive play when he does not have a strong hand and tight aggressive play when he has a strong hand.
►Extract money from a loose passive player with tight play and moderate aggression. Too much aggression and he will not bet at all. Wait with your most aggressive moves until the loose passive player has started betting.

How To Play Poker By Bluffing

Bear in mind that your opponents can also read your playing style and turn it against you. The risk with being tight aggressive is that you become very predictable and other players may stop betting against you on the few occassions when you bet. To prevent this from happening you must play a balanced and flexible game; a game where you are one step ahead at all times. Learning how to play poker by bluffing is the third and final cornerstone of Texas Hold'em strategy.

►If your play is too passive you will only be following the lead of other players and that makes it very hard for you to read them and very easy for them to read you. To read and bluff the other players you must push and test them; get them to play on your conditions. You can extract as well as hide much more information from other players by betting and raising than by checking and calling.

►If your play is too aggressive you will be winning less than you could be winning and losing more than you should be losing. Not only do you risk losing sight of the odds, you will also scare other players away from the pot. By occasionally acting passively in early stages of a hand you can inspire false confidence in other players and trick them into boosting the pot size. This is known as slow playing. Slow playing is only recommended when you are up against a single opponent.

►If your play is too loose you will lose more than you win no matter what opponents you are facing. Simple as that.

►If your play is too tight you will miss out on many opportunities to exploit the loose and passive play of others. Players are not perfect; they believe in luck, get the odds all wrong or simply don’t have the guts to challenge the aggressive play of others.

Learning how to play poker profitably by bluffing is not done in a day and most players never get the hang of it matter how much they play. A good rule of thumb is to keep the bluffing to a minimum when you are facing several opponents and push the bluffing to a maximum when you are facing a single opponent.

How To Play Poker - The Bottom Line

There are seven things you have to remember when it comes to how to play poker: