Heads-up SNGs have to be some of the most intimidating game-formats ever. One goes head to head with a single opponent, in a test of poker skill that will always reward the guy who deserves to win. There are no distractions and additional opponents who can bail you out or offer you a free ride to a flop: at the heads-up SNG table, there’s only one person you can count on: yourself. The same goes for your opponent, and the knowledge that he’s equally compelled to bring his best can indeed be rather intimidating.

First thing’s first though: heads-up SNGs reward skill. Therefore, if (and be frank with yourself ) you know your skills are lacking, DO NOT play such SNGs. Heads-up SNG action is for skilled action junkies: you’ll get to play more hands per hour than anywhere else, which means you’ll end up paying more tournament fees. Sign up for a rake rebate deal (or maybe even for a poker prop deal) to make sure you do not sink below the red line on account of the poker rake (tournament fees) alone.

The fact that you are a certified action junkie doesn’t automatically mean that you’ll be a good heads-up SNG player too. As a matter of fact, many of the action junkies out there like to play loads of hands, but they loathe to get aggressive when required. This type of action junkie represents the shark-bait at the heads-up SNG tables.

Why does skill weigh in heavier in heads-up poker? That’s quite simple: at a full 6 or 10-handed table, you have a bunch of players going past the flop on drawing hands. What that means is that the luck factor will be much bigger, simply because there are loads more possibilities for suck-outs. At the heads-up table, it’s just you and your opponent. It’s a lot like PLO: you’re either truly ahead or well behind – that should make for a much simpler decision, and it also means that good decisions will have a much more direct and immediate impact on the flow of the game.

Coin-flips are some of the most intricate situations in poker, decision-wise. In some situations, taking a coin-flip is the right way to go. In others, it’s a mistake. In heads-up SNGs, you should avoid coin-flips regardless of how tempted you are to bring the game to a quick conclusion. In order to let your skills give you an advantage, you need to have a better win ratio than 50%. Chip away at your opponent’s stack gradually, until you force him to risk his SNG life in less than optimal situations (for him of course).

Drawing hands lose a lot of value in heads-up poker and made hands (like pocket pairs) gain a lot. Drawing hands lose value because you never really get the right pot odds to play them. You can play such hands if you’re set on being aggressive. You should never limp along on them though. Aggression is pretty much the key to the flow of a heads-up SNG, however, I should note that I’m not talking about blind aggression here. Add patience to aggression and you have a killer combo on your hands.

Calling all-ins at this early stage is also a no-no, unless you have something like Q,Q – A,A or A,K, which should give you enough firepower to tangle. Keep your eye on your position and avoid limping: being tight aggressive is aimed at eliminating this potential leak from your game.

Being tight aggressive will conserve your bankroll during the early going, but in 6-handed SnGs, it’ll take on another role as well: it’ll advertise and sell your tight image. Due to the short-handed nature of the game, selling the proper table image will be much more important than it usually is. The action will be more aggressive and starting hand values will plummet faster than in regular 10-handed SnGs, so making the right reads, and selling and taking advantage of the right table image will gain a lot of value.

By the middle stages, the blinds will have gone up to 30/60 or even 40/80, just significant enough to add an entirely new dimension to the game. Couple that with the fact that by then 2-3 of the original players will have been bounced, and you have a nice barrel of gunpowder just craving for someone to toss a match into it.

The fact that the game gets even shorter-handed and that the blinds seem to come about every other hand, will force you to loosen up more. This is the critical point of the SnG. You’ll have to slowly start thinking about making aggressive moves and going after your opponents’ blinds, still the situation may not be entirely ripe for that approach.

When the blinds go to about 50/100, that’s when you know it’s time to get rolling, and that’s when your early-stage tight image will come in handy. Getting down to 3-handed at this stage means the bubble will be just around the corner, so stealing blinds and ganging up on the short-stack will be the order of the day. This is when medium stacks will try to tighten up to ride it out and to slip into the money as the large stack takes care of the weakling. This is a common mistake. Don’t let the proximity of the money bubble influence your decision making. If you think you’re ahead, you should put the pedal to the metal. If you have a big stack though, try not to get tangled up with the other big stack at the table, but do take every opportunity to gang up on the weaklings.

The heads-up stage of every such tournament is pretty much a coin-toss. Your opponent has you figured out by that point and hopefully you have a few accurate reads of your own on him. Don’t let up, stay aggressive and keep taking the fight to him to force him to make a mistake. Sign up for poker rakeback too. While you will not be paying rake on every hand you play, you will pay tournament fees on each SnG you register for and that can go a long way towards crippling your bankroll. A poker propping setup or a nice rake rebate deal should take good care of that aspect.

Before we go any further: this article is about turning a profit at the SNG tables, it isn’t about how to get rich playing in low buy-in SNGs (because that’s what I’m going to discuss). If you’re looking for the big money, play in high buy-in MTTs because your investment/potential return ratio is much better there. SNGs (or STTs) offer a much smaller buy-in/payout ratio, but they do give individual players much better odds for reaching the money than any MTT ever could.

A typical MTT is a $1-$50 buy-in one (those which cost more usually feature much more aggressive play and harder-to-beat opposition), with 10 players (6 handed ones are kind of short handed so they too require a few strategy-tweaks). A regular 10-handed STT usually rewards places 1-3, which means there are 7 players you need to best to get to the money. Turn it around any which way you want to: that is not a superhuman feat. If you make it past the bubble, you’ll already make some money, so – in theory – you do not even need to win a STT to add to your bankroll.

Special “beginners” STTs feature more paid places (can be as much as 5 out of 10) but obviously, the payouts will suffer in this case.

From a strategy-perspective, a SNG can be divided into three stages: the opening stage, the bubble, and the money play.

The opening stage is the easiest to approach correctly: you need to play tight. Several factors tell you that you should act like that. First of all, because there are some pretty bad players in most of these low buy-in SNGs. As the tourney kicks off, many of them will adopt an all-or-nothing attitude and shove all-in on all sorts of drawing hands. Do not get in their way, these guys are out to beat themselves and I see no reason why you should step in to prevent them. Another – this time mathematical reason – is that the size of the blinds compared to that of the pots is small. Because of the pot odds that this situation generates, tight play should prevail. As the blinds get bigger and bigger in relation to the pot, you’ll need to gradually loosen up, right up to the point when the blinds will be so big that the pot odds will justify calling with just about any hand.

Anyway, the bubble is the most delicate stage of a SNG. As you approach it, play gets short handed, but not short handed enough to give individual starting hands a significant odds-boost. The blinds have already escalated so your stack is under pressure all the time. The best way to deal with the situation is to attempt to steal as many blinds as possible, and to win hands without showdown. The catch is, that while some players will be relatively easy to bully around (because they’ll be afraid to risk a bust on the bubble, so they’ll tighten up) others will fight back. This is where your player-reading skills will be called upon. On one hand you’ll be forced to take advantage of the pre-bubble situation, on the other hand you’ll risk running into a solid hand or a player who just refuses to be pushed around.

After the bubble bursts, I have an unhealthy habit of relaxing too much. Don’t commit the same mistake. Every player that you finish above in the tourney means significantly more money headed your way. Don’t be the farmer and settle for a cash finish. Always be the fox and aim to win. Some people just don’t have this “killer instinct” in them. These guys will have to work on developing it.

The same goes for the heads-up stage. At this point, the odds on starting hands as well as the pot odds will have been completely reshaped. Because of the huge blinds, calling becomes an option on just about any starting hand. Any call can mean an all-in though. Mind you that in heads-up play, the worst possible starting hand is no longer the 7,2o, but rather the 2,3 regardless of whether it’s suited or not.

Always sign up for a rakeback deal before you begin playing in SNGs. Every time you buy your way into one, you’ll pay a tourney fee. Rakeback will give you a nice refund on those fees, thus adding another little revenue-stream to your bankroll.

Like 7-Card Stud, 5-Card Stud begins with the deal. Each player receives 2 cards from the dealer, one of them face-up and one of them face down. Stud is not generally played with blinds, and 5-Card Stud is no exception. When played with bring-ins, the player with the lowest face-card needs to bring it in. Sometimes, it is the player with the highest face-card who acts first. When the lowest (or highest) cards are tied, suits are used as tie-breaker.

Betting (low limit) continues in a clock-wise direction. Players may elect to call, raise or fold. Those who remain in the hand move on to third street. Third street is another face-up card which is followed by betting again. On third street, it is the player with the highest face-up partial poker hand who has to begin the action. Fourth street is another face-up card. The action is begun by the player with the best 3-card poker hand he/she can make with the 3 face-up cards. High limit betting commences followed by 5th street, or the river. 5th street is yet another face-up card. The player with the best 4-card poker hand begins the action, as betting is done on the high limit again.

After the last round of betting is complete, the showdown follows, and the player who makes the best 5-card hand with the 5 cards dealt to him/her (4 face-cards and the initial hole card) wins the pot. If everyone folds around to a player at any time in a hand, he/she automatically takes down the pot.

There are a few problems that 5-Card Stud’s play presents, and because of which it is not accepted in casinos or in official high-profile tournaments. I’m not even 100% sure there are any online poker rooms out there which feature this game.

Because there is just one hole card, and exactly 80% of each player’s hand is visible to his/her opponents, game-play becomes extremely predictable. Even average players can easily read their opponents’ hole cards and they’ll fold in time, ignore any bluffs or they’ll just keep pushing forth, depending on what the situation asks for.

One has to be extremely lucky or has to face a complete numskull to be able to drag him along and make him pay in this game. For this reason, when played among hardened professionals, the game degenerates into a see-saw of winning and giving up pots that tends to even up over time denying each player a definitive edge.

Each of the players only get 5 cards too, there are no discards, no supplementary cards or community cards, so they’re pretty much stuck with what they start out on. Winning hands also tend to stay in the one pair – two pairs range this way.

This is why 5-Card Stud may be a good game to play amongst friends, but it is definitely not suited for professional play.

To mend the above presented issues, variations have been made on the game-system. In some cases, the card dealt on 5th street is also a hole card. That gives players 2 hole cards and thus only 60% of their eventual showdown hand will be visible to their opponents.

In some cases the first two cards dealt to players are both face down. While they do manage to add some more suspense to the game, these rather desperate attempts to get a long-broken cart rolling will probably do little to nudge 5-Card Stud back into the big international competitions. Winning hand values are still going to be low, and players’ options narrow when it comes to making their hands.

Apparently, as long as there are only 5 cards used in a game of Stud, the resulting game-play is going to be impossible to alter through any other means.

Sign up for a rakeback deal now and move your online poker game into a different dimension. Rakeback will add serious money to your bankroll each month (or week), money that you do not have to do anything for.

Sure, you won’t be able to see X, Y or Z sweat on your right whenever he gets a pocket pair. You won’t be able to see A break B’s shades either, or C leaving the table on account of too much annoying talk by the other players. The most important poker tell that live players use though, will remain available online too. I’m talking about betting patterns of course. In high stakes games where playing the player rules supreme over playing the cards, betting patterns become just as relevant online as they are offline. If we move on to the lower limits though, things become somewhat more complicated. Let’s take a look at a relatively simple example. Stalling before making that bet on the river has always been an obvious tell. These days however, its meanings are much more difficult to decipher than back in the days when online poker was still in its infancy. People didn’t multi-table then. The notion itself may not have yet been invented, and software limitations certainly made it more than a handful to attempt play at several tables at once. Back in those days, people knew that their opponents were almost solely focused on that one game, and therefore concluding that the person taking exceptionally long before placing that crucial bet in the last betting round was in fact trying to appear as if he were bluffing, was only natural. You see, people are natural actors. Whenever they’re trying to communicate something through their actions instead of language, they feel the need to exaggerate, to make sure that they hammer home the message. In poker, this is extremely counterproductive and it gives them away.

Lately, the stalling on the river has been a tad harder to decipher. Nowadays many online players play at multiple tables at once. This makes for generally slower play, therefore if a multi-tabler stalls the last bet, it doesn’t necessarily mean he’s trying to fool people. By observing people’s betting behavior carefully though, one should be able to deduct with reasonable accuracy whether the opponent in question is multi-tabling or not. While multi tabling is not likely to happen at high-stakes tables, it is very common at low-stakes ones.

Even though people cannot personally see each-other at the online poker table, they can interact in a variety of ways. The chat feature can deliver some rather unexpected and in the same time quite easy-to-read tells. Some people will never use the chat window while others just can’t keep their mouse-cursors off it. People talk about all sorts of things in the chat, and some of them do vent their emotions there too. Those who end up on the wrong end of an extremely bad beat often vent their anger and begin ranting in chat. Even though there’s absolutely nothing that they’ll solve by doing it, they feel the need to let others know about the “injustice” that just befell them. Such ranters are usually on tilt. Take note, and proceed to exploit the situation with caution: you do not want to calm the tilter down in any way. On the contrary, you need to further fuel his personal little war with the world, with luck, with the online poker industry and with who knows what else. Tell the guy who’s just pulled of a nasty little runner-runner on the victim: “nice hand”. That’s always a sure way to have your tilter steaming mad.

The guy who gloats in the chat window (there will always be plenty of those) is more likely to be a long term loser than anything else. Sure, he’s got to tell everyone how he made the final table in the 10 o’clock rookies’ freeroll, because it is one of the few things he can in fact brag about. Those who win consistently, do not feel the need to attract unwanted attention.

Likewise, the player who delivers “rock solid” poker analysis on every other hand through the chat feature, is most likely a newbie himself. He feels the need to constantly re-assure himself that he does in fact understand what’s going on, and just has to let others know he is not the rookie which he in fact is. A good player doesn’t have to constantly re-affirm his knowledge of the game. If he does resort to the chat, he will instead look to mislead opponents by making goofy remarks and appearing naive. The use of the auto buttons can also give away precious tells. Some of the newly appeared poker rooms feature interfaces in which people can gesture just like in real life, thus introducing some of the old fashioned live poker tells to online poker.

If a person at the table knows about rakeback and he/she recognizes its benefits, you’re probably not dealing with a rookie. Even though rakeback represents a humongous edge in the battle of the EV, amazingly few people are well-informed about it.

On higher limits, play will be less chaotic, but players will be much better and therefore your job won’t get any easier. Here though, you can no longer afford to stick to basic tight-aggressive play. You need to force your edges, and since this is not no-holdem territory anymore, you’ll be able to deploy some more advanced weaponry.

The Check-raise bluff is one such weapon. You cannot use something like this in low limit Holdem because you cannot bluff people there. Your $0.4 raise will not scare anyone, and you cannot shove any more into the pot.

In order for this move to be efficient, you need to play at a $10/$20 table at least. The check-raise is a weapon well-known for NL players. You check your turn in order to have someone else bet into you and then, when he does, you complete the trap by raising him. Good players will catch on immediately that they just walked into the trap, and good players are the ones most likely to fall for it too, because they’re tempted to bet into a pot that is checked around to them to steal it. Make sure you get fairly accurate reads on your opponents before check-raising them. A player who doesn’t understand the trap he just walked into will be much harder to bluff this way.

The benefits a check-raise bluff can provide you in Limit Holdem are obvious: it’ll enable you to scoop up some pots you would never have won otherwise. The risks are numerous though. If you get read and you’re caught red-handed on your bluff, it’ll be a costly business. If your opponent is too dumb to understand the situation, it’ll cost you a lot.

The check-raise semi-bluff is another great weapon, extremely deadly when used against tight-aggressive players. Its goal is the same as that of the simple check raise bluff, but it carries additional value: it gives you a shot at not only recovering when – for whatever reason – your check-raise bluff backfires, but also to take down a huge pot on it.

Again, only resort to these tools when you’re playing in a high limit game. High-limit tables feature experienced opponents, who – unlike rookies – will be vulnerable to your check-raises.

Bluffing on the flop should be another important weapon in your arsenal. If you get a fairly good starting hand and you raise preflop on it, you might want to fire a second bet on the flop even if it misses you. Sometimes it’s a great move, which – again – results in your winning a pot which would otherwise have ended up in an opponent’s pockets.

Sometimes, it’s easy to make the call. If you’re in position and the pot gets checked around to you, it is in a way your obligation to fire a second bullet. Sure, someone may have flopped a monster and may be slow-playing it, but if you get called at least you know you’re up against a hand there.

Slow-playing is something to consider, but only when you have a truly good hand and you’re fairly certain you won’t be outdrawn. Whenever you slow-play, you give up control, you let your opponents land free cards and that may often have fatal consequences. While I do not like to slow-play, sometimes it is indeed the optimal decision as you aim to get as much money into the pot as possible. Regardless at what limit you play, or whether you play NL or Limit, signing up to a rakeback deal will always give your odds a huge lift. While a good rakeback deal will have an immediate though minor influence on your pot odds, you’ll only be glad you signed up for it at the end of the month, or whenever the poker room delivers your rakeback money.

Starting hand selection is even more important in Omaha and Stud than in Holdem, because the nature of Texas Holdem offers bad players who play too many hands a fighting chance, unlike Omaha and Stud. Schooling is another extremely frustrating factor which is only present in Holdem, further reducing the importance of starting hand selection there.

The plague of playing too many hands is present in 7-Card Stud too. Some players grow too attached to their antes and often attempt to defend them through hell or high water. If you’re one of these players, forget about going to great lengths to defend your ante. The antes are small and you can afford to lose many of them while waiting for a good starting hand. The big losses do not occur on account of the antes, but rather on hands players chase onto late streets on rags.

The deal contains 3 cards in Stud, two of them face down and one face up. That’s a pretty big percentage of your eventual showdown hand, so it is indeed worthy of your undivided attention.

Let’s look at a few starting hands and how you should play them.

You’re dealt trips from the get-go. This is a very tricky situation. On one hand, you’ve happened upon a monster that has the potential to win the pot, even if all later streets miss you. On the other hand, you’ve got a bit of a dilemma. A set is certainly worth slow-playing for value, but you do not want to allow too many drawing hands to see later streets to keep your trips protected. This is where the ability to read your opponents comes in handy.

You’re dealt a high pair. This is one of the more sensitive situations. To take such a hand to victory requires a more thorough understanding of the game, and calls upon several skills. For a manically tight player, a high pair (whether it’s entirely in the pocket or hanging out half-way) means trouble. He’ll have to do something he hates: he’ll have to raise on them. Because it’s not exactly a dominating hand, a high pair (10s or above) needs serious protection. The more people limp along with you the more value you lose on it.

The main problem with these pairs is that they’re easily outdrawn, and if you get something like a pair of Qs or Js, an opponent holding a higher pair (Kings or rockets) will have you beat from the get-go.

Look out for re-raisers and pay attention to their upcards. If your pair of Qs is re-raised by someone with an A, you’d do better to get out of his/her way. This is another issue with high pairs: you need to raise to get a read. Make sure you do not become too predictable folding when smelling a higher pair than yours. People will latch on to your mindset and they will begin to bluff you.

Getting a partial flush is something people are generally just crazy about. They love the suited cards, and they treat them as if they were a guaranteed ticket to a large pot. Remember though, in Stud, correctly assessing the odds on a flush draw is a tricky business. First of all, you need to consider your highest card. If you have an A-high draw, it’s ok. K-high or Q-high is pretty good too. Remember that out of the 13 same suited cards, you already hold 3 in your hand. If some of the other players’ face-cards are same suited too, you need to subtract them from your number of outs. Having a high card in your flush draw might come in extremely handy in such situations as it may pair up, and thus it gives you some pretty good additional outs.

Because your number of outs might take a hit, you need to crank up the pot odds as much as possible in order to make a call profitable. The more people stay in the pot, the better off you are, and if you’re allowed to get some more cards cheap, then you’re doing fine.

If the pot odds are ruined by people folding or by a large raise in front of you, you’re better off folding this one though, especially if your outs don’t look too rosy either.

Remember, whichever is your favorite poker variant, signing up to a rakeback deal always makes a lot of sense. Rakeback instantly boosts your EV, without any further efforts required on your part.

Omaha Hi-Lo is the most popular Omaha version (although it is played Hi only too, and in PL variations) so all considerations below will be about Omaha Hi-Lo.

An Omaha showdown hand consists of three cards off the board and two from the player’s pocket. Players cannot use one card from their pocket and four off the board or any other combination but the above said one. They may use the same or different hands for their Highs and Lows but they always have to stick to the “two from the pocket tree off the board” rule.

This is extremely important when it comes to the way one’s pocket hand cooperates with the board. Omaha is a game in which a hand can never be viewed in isolation, and in which reading the board is even more important than in Texas Holdem.

One of the most difficult things about reading an Omaha board is reading the low hands. Everyone is used to high hands, so that shouldn’t pose a problem, low hands are different though.

In the “game of nuts as Omaha is often referred to, the very least you can do is to be capable of reading the nut low. The “nut low” means the lowest possible hand on the given board, by the way.

The lowest possible hand in Omaha is 5,4,3,2,A. If you read it as a number (54,321), the hand which read out similarly is closest to this number is the nut low.

Let’s see a few examples of tricky low hands: Let’s see a board of 4,6,7,A,K. While you do want to have A,2 in your pocket hand because they are the two lowest cards, and you would indeed make an excellent low hand with these cards on the board given above, you need to be aware that yours will not be the nut low hand. The low that you can make with your A,2 will be 7,6,4,2,A. The nut low belongs to the player with a 2,3 in the pocket, because his low hand will look like: 6,4,3,2,A. You didn’t see that coming, did you? Now, if you were to read the numbers out like I said above, you’d get 76,421 vs 64,321 out of which the latter is obviously the lower.

You need to know what the nut low is on every board regardless of whether you have it or not. The reason is, you need to assess the strength of your low in relation with the nut low. No other method will give you an accurate idea of how strong your low hand really is.

Why should you even begin thinking about playing Omaha Hi-Lo? Well, the idea is quite simple: if you manage to master the game, it’ll be an excellent way to build up your bankroll. It is no secret that most Omaha players are abysmal. Its nature gives skilled players a huge edge over unskilled opposition. Playing good starting hands in Omaha can alone turn you into a winner. Schooling, which is so irritating in Texas Holdem has no place in Omaha. Loose Omaha games can be beaten simply by waiting for the nuts, and in that respect, it is somewhat mathematically simplistic.

In Omaha, a much higher percentage of your eventual showdown hand becomes available much earlier than in Holdem. You get a plethora of information, and you won’t have to deal with uncertainty so much.

To sum things up, here are a few basic Omaha strategy recommendations:

• Try to scoop the pot whenever possible, but remember, while taking down the entire pot is what you should really aim for, taking one half of it is still much better than nothing.
• Play a starting hand which has A,2, A,3 or 2, 3 in it. These cards give you a much better shot at making the nut low. Avoid taking your 6,7,8,9s to the flop.
• Be tight on the flop. Remember what I said above about the game giving you much more information on the flop than Holdem. Use that information wisely.
• Play your 2 usable pocket cards depending on how the other two pocket cards relate to the hand you’re trying to make.
• Play with rakeback. Whether you play Holdem or Omaha, rakeback will give you a huge additional edge.

People-even rookies-instinctively know they have to semi-bluff in certain-obvious-situations. Take the 4-card flush on the flop, for instance. It’s a 9-outer situation with 2 cards to come, which people instinctively recognize and take their chances on it. They realize there’s a pretty good chance the card will come, but they are aware there’s also a pretty good chance it won’t. In that situation it makes sense to everyone that semi-bluffing is the right choice because it gives them two chances instead of just one for the win.

Another situation that begs for a semi-bluff is when a player has an open ended straight. There are still enough outs to justify a semi-bluff, yet there are also enough reasons for the person attempting the play to root for a fold.

A gutshot straight simply doesn’t have the outs needed to justify the move. The bad thing about the above presented two situations is that they’re extremely easy to read, and most reasonably good poker players will read such semi-bluffs. Under these circumstances the board texture becomes a telltale clue. That means these semi-bluffs will probably fail because they won’t generate enough value when the cards hit and because opponents will simply not play along and fold most of the time.

Much like a real bluff, a semi-bluff needs the circumstances to work for it to be successful. Being in or out of position is again an essential detail here.

If you’re in position (everyone else acts before you) you have a number of factors working for you. First the obvious one: you’ll have a pretty good idea about what everyone has as you’ll watch all of them act in front of you. That’ll clue you in to whether or not going for a semi-bluff is a good idea. On the other hand, even if you get called, people are likely to just check on the next street and that’ll give you a free card which might just complete the hand you’ve been chasing.

When out of position though, not only will you have to bet into someone blindly, and then pray that the other players get intimidated, you also wouldn’t get the benefit of the potential free card. You’ll be the first to act on the next street and that’ll have you faced with the dilemma of whether or not it is worth continuing with the bluff.

In order to achieve maximum efficiency on your semi-bluff, you need to be on something your opponents will find difficult to put you on. A gutshot straight draw might be an example, but a small pair in the pocket is also a good choice provided the table is short-handed.

As a general rule: the more of your hand you’re hiding in the pocket (using both pocket cards) the more difficult it will be for your opponent to make an accurate guess.

Semi-bluffing on the small pair in a short handed situation is profitable because of the fact that you usually win more money on it when trips do come than you lose when they don’t, if you play them carefully. By semi-bluffing them successfully, you’ll make your win-ratio even higher and thus make the play even more profitable.

Learn how rakeback can radically improve your poker play. Watch the best of the pros duke it out in full-length poker videos downloadable from poker torrents.

Is reading poker books a sure way to acquire online poker prowess? I’m not so sure about that anymore. You see, those books are generally excellent. They are written by true professionals, with tens of years of experience in poker, all of them not only making a mere living off the game, but amassing fortunes on account of their poker skills.

Who am I to doubt their ways? A nobody. Despite all that however, here is an interesting thought: what if those books were not even written about the same game you play day after day on your home PC?

They are about live poker, they discuss live poker situations and they address live poker issues. Turns out, online poker has few things in common with this game they’re writing about, other than its rules.

For one thing, live poker players are used to being bombarded with a plethora of tells all the time. There are so many poker tells, from facial expression to signs of anxiety, and the mirrors of the soul: the eyes, that it would be tough to even queue them all up here.

Sometimes people will look absolutely disinterested in their hand, they’ll even get up and leave the table when they have nothing but rags. You will never have such easy tells in online poker.

Things that are forbidden in real poker are not regulated in any way in online poker. People can play while on the phone or while having visitors over. They can be playing together with a rookie, trying to teach him/her to play… Calls can often be made by a simple mistake (allowing the rookie to play on his own, or by clicking on the wrong button of the interface). Online poker is a world apart from its casino brethren.

Not only will a good live poker player have to deal with a shortage of tells, he’ll also have to deal with opponents under circumstances he’d never experienced or thought possible.

Sometimes, online players do not even aim to become long term winners. Promotions like rakeback, cashback or prop deals will allow them to be slight losers at the end of the month and still end up making money. At a live poker table you’re always 100% sure of your opponent’s goals. In online poker…that is simply not the case.

There is a lot of multi-tabling going on online as well. People play at 2-6 tables at a time, possibly more, in order to maximize the rake they generate, which will get them more rakeback and their bonuses unlocked. Multi tabling is also one of the simplest ways to squeeze some significant dough out of low and micro limit tables.

How are you going to play against a guy who is paying attention to 5 more tables in the same time?

There are tells in online poker too, only they have absolutely nothing in common with the tells you may get used to in casino poker. Betting patterns are the most powerful tells here, including the speed of reaction. If you check then suddenly 3 other players check on you almost instantly, that means they already had their user interface set to check/fold before you made your decision. That means, they probably do not have a thing.

Looking for clues to whether someone is multi-tabling or not is also important. This guy will play plain strategy. Bet when he has something, fold on everything else. He cannot afford to credit more of his attention to any particular table, so he’ll have to play it in a simplistic manner.

I order to learn to play online poker properly…you’ll probably have to wait till books on this specific subject come out, or – if you cannot afford to wait – go out there and learn through trial and error.