Free Texas Hold’em Poker Online

One of the things that differentiates poker from other card games is that in poker, you don’t always need to have the best hand to scoop in the pot. A well-timed bluff can win you a pot that you would have no chance of winning at showdown with your 7-2 offsuit.

There is more to bluffing than just throwing some chips in the middle and then hoping your eyes don’t give you away. To succeed with a bluff in poker, you must know when a bluff is likely to succeed, and when you shouldn’t even bother.

TV and movies have romanticised the importance of bluffing in poker. Many a Hollywood blockbuster has the hero win the World Series by making, or reading, a particularly clever and risky bluff for all his chips. The truth however is that while an ability to make bluffs in effective situations is a characteristic of all good poker players, they are rarely the most important skill I a player’s repertoire. Hand selection, understanding position, and pot odds are skills at least as important as bluffing to successful poker player.

How to Bluff in Poker

Bluffing in poker when the situation is right is still a powerful and profitable move however. Here are some things to keep in mind when considering making a bluff:

When To Bluff:

Bluff when you have recently showed down winning hands: It doesn’t matter if the winning hand was Ace high or a full house, all that matters is that people saw you show the winning hand. That sticks in people’s memory (at least for a few rounds) and they will give your bets and raises more respect. Use that respect to win a few extra pots by bluffing.

Bluff when a small bet had a good chance to win a big pot: If you have a $1,000 and the pot is only $50, then shoving your entire stack in to win is probably going to lose money in the long run. You will definitely win the pot most of the time, but when you are called, you will have lost $1,000 trying to win $50. Conversely, if you bluff with a $25 bet to win a $50 pot, you only need to win 1 time in 3 to break even, and anything above that is profit.

Bluff against good players: This might seem counterintuitive, but one of the defining characteristics of a bad player is their inability to fold. A bad (or inexperienced) player will tend to call all the way to the river with a hand as week as bottom pair. A good player will usually be able to understand the strength you are representing, and will be more likely to fold their medium strength hands.

Bluff when your betting tells a consistent story: Lets say your raised preflop in a Texas Hold’em game holding 6-6. You get one caller, and the flop comes A Q 5. This is often a good spot to bluff, because your hand tells a consistent story: You raised preflop representing a strong hand (usually high cards), now the flop has come with some high cards, and you bet again. You could easily have hit this flop (although in this instance you didn’t) so your opponent will be likely to fold unless they hit the flop hard themselves.

When Not To Bluff in Poker:

There are some times when even the best poker player in the world wont be able to get away with a bluff. Be wary in these situations; often the best choice is just to let the hand go.

Don’t bluff when you’ve recently been caught bluffing. If you have bluffed and been caught the last 3 hands in a row, chances are slim that you are going to get away with a bluff on the 4th attempt. Change gears and play tight for a little while, and then you can go back to bluffing once your image has evened out a bit.

Don’t bluff against multiple players. The more players left in the hand, the higher the chances that someone has a hand good enough to call or raise you, and that’s not what you want to happen when you are bluffing.

Don’t bluff when an opponent probably has a strong hand. There are some situations where you can be reasonably confident that your opponent’s hand is pretty good. Lets say that your opponent raised preflop from under the gun and you called on the button with 22. The flop comes A K Q, and your opponent bets into you with a full pot sized bet. This would be an ill advised situation to put in a bluff-raise, since your opponent’s early position raise and large flop bet on a dangerous board likely indicates a very strong hand, 2 pair at minimum.

Don’t bluff bad players: There is a saying in poker: “If you try and bluff a bad player, you’re a bad player”. This is because bad players tend to call, even when they should fold. When you bluff into a bad player, all you are doing is helping your opponent to make “really great calls”, when they call down your bluff and they only have a weak pair.

Most inexperienced players play far too many hands, and go too far with them. Texas Hold’em is a game where preflop hand strengths make a huge difference to the playability and profitability of a hand, and one of the first things you realise when you start becoming a winning player is that most of the time “tight is right”. Playing fewer hands, and focussing only on hands that are high quality will make you money from players who are playing weaker hands than you on average.

The other benefit of playing tight preflop is that when you are playing only strong hands, it makes your play on later streets much more straight forward.

Your plan for how then entire hand will play out begins right from the point where you are dealt your two pocket cards. Unlike the flop and turn betting rounds, which you might only play every 5 or 10 hands, you make pre-flop decisions every single hand you are dealt into. If you play too loose pre-flop, splashing around with hands that aren’t going to be money winners, you’re costing yourself cash.

Therefore, the first poker technique that you learn should be playing tight before the flop.

Focus on only playing the best starting hands. These are hands that are either already powerful, like AA, KK, QQ, etc, or hands than make top pair with a very strong kicker, such as A-K, A-Q, etc. You can also play quality speculative hands such as T9s, 56s, small pocket pairs, etc. These are hands that can flop big hands light straights, flushes or sets, and take down big pots.

In a cash game, or at early stages of a poker tournament, don’t bother playing any other hands. Not only are they negative expectation, they can also be difficult to play after the flop.

A hand like Q-7s may look good, being a Queen and suited, but this hand is virtually unplayable. When it pairs its seven, it will very rarely be the top pair on the flop. When it pairs its queen, it only has a low kicker, and will often be behind any hand between Q8 to Aq. That’s the problem with this sort of weak hand: you can never be sure if you are ahead or behind. A hand like Q-7s also has no possibility of making a straight using both cards.

But they are suited! That surely is enough reason to play the hand isn’t it? Alas no. Being suited only adds a few percent to its chances of winning at showdown. Not enough to justify putting money into the pot with a weak hand.

Now compare that hand with a strong hand like AKs. When A-K hits the flop you make top pair with the best possible kicker. You’re never going to be outkicked at showdown. In fact if someone else hit top pair too, YOU are going to be the one out-kicking them! You can play this hand strongly.

Playing good starting hands make the later streets easier. When you hit the flop, you know that you have a quality hand that can see a showdown.

If you play hands that show a positive expectation pre-flop, you should be faces with very few difficult decisions later in the hand. Your good pre-flop hands are going to make good post-flop hands more often than your opponents who are playing weaker hands than you on average.

Playing tight is an excellent strategy, which should make you money from the looser players. Fold your weak hands but play your good hands aggressively. Selecting only quality hands will make the rest of your decisions easier, and put you in a great position to win.

Online Poker Tournaments Strategy has become a hotly debated topic between online players. The increase in poker tournaments being televised has led to a boom in new tournament players. After watching the pros clash on the final table of a major tournament, many viewers from all over the world immediately jump on their computer, login to their favourite poker site and join a Multi Table Tournament (MTT) or a Sit ‘N’ Go (SNG). There are a lot of poker tournaments online, with different structure and different formats, all of which call for slightly different strategies. If you want to make the final table and win the big prizes, you have to be prepared to play intelligent, disciplined poker, and you have to be willing to adjust your strategy based on the type of tournament you have chosen.

Popularity of Online Poker Tournaments

It’s easy to see why online poker tournaments are so exciting:

1. There’s big money in tournaments. With small buy-ins you have the chance to win huge prize payouts. There are many tournaments online in which you can buy in for as little as $5 and win thousands if you make it to the final table. Almost everyone can see the appeal of turning a small entry fee into a big win.
2. Online tournaments can be for just about every form of poker, including Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Stud. Razz, Badugi, and even mixed games such as H.O.R.S.E.
3. There is an online tournament or SNG starting every second of every day, so you can join one around the clock, whenever you are in the mood for a game.

Types of Online Poker Tournaments

The most common tournament poker structure online is called the “Freezeout”: a multi-table tournament that contains somewhere between 50 players to several thousand players.

The second most common tournament structure is a Sit ‘n’ Go: Usually a single table tournament which begins as soon as a specified number of players register (usually 6, 9 or 10, but sometimes more).

There are also re-buy tournaments where you have the option of buying extra chips during the tournament, as well as Adding On more chips at the end of a Re-buy period (usually an hour or 90 minutes)

Most sites also have ‘freeroll’ tournaments, which have no buy in at all, but still offer prize money. These freerolls are often offered to players who have played a certain amount during the month, or as an incentive to newly registered players.

Now that we have discussed the various forms of poker, click on one of the links below to delve further into the strategy.

To win an online multi-table poker tournament, you can’t just rely on getting dealt premium hands. You’ll need to bluff, steal blinds, check-raise, and pull all sorts of tricky manoeuvres, but above all, you must be aggressive, right to the very end. Here are a few tournament tips that will help you get to the final table and take home the big prizes a bit more often:

1. Bet big hands aggressively

In most online tournaments, there are lots of players who are willing to call all the way to the river with weak hands, or weak draws. These players will call huge bets down with top pair/medium kicker because they don’t believe that someone would bet two-pair, a set, or a straight so hard. Most people like to slow play their big hands, and even give free cards, so by betting your big hands aggressively, you may actually be MORE likely to get called. You’ll also get some calls from players paying too much to draw, so make sure you charge them the maximum all the way.

2. Call raises with your low pairs early

In the early stages of most multi-table tournaments you usually have 75-150 big blinds, so seeing some flops with your low pocket pairs isn’t going to damage your stack very much, even if you fold every time you miss your set. The times you DO hit a set though will give you an excellent chance to win a big pot, or even double up.

Your implied odds at this early stage of the tournament are usually so big that it can be worth investing as much as 1/20th or 5% percent of your stack to try and hit a set. If you are in position, you can profitably call for almost 10% of your stack, particularly with the larger pocket pairs, as you might be able to win the pot by betting even when you miss your set.

3. Semi-bluff your drawing hands

Let’s assume that you raised with two big suited cards (such as AK) and had one caller. Now the flop has comes 7 high. You would usually make a C-Bet on this sort of a flop anyway, to try and win the pot immediately. If you have flopped a flush draw to go with your overcards however, you can be extremely aggressive, raising your opponents bet, firing another barrel on the turn, or even check raising if you thing your opponent will bet when you check. You can often check raise all-in on a flop like this, with nothing except 2 overcards and a flush draw, because you will usually have 15 outs (9 cards that make a flush, and 6 cards that give you top pair top kicker), so you are actually a FAVOURITE in the hand against someone with a weak overpair like 99. Combined with the chance that your opponent will just fold and give up the hand, aggressive play when you have a healthy flush draw is an excellent way to accumulate chips.

4. The Shove

Many players, particularly when they are new, will let themselves get blinded down so low that their stack is no longer intimidating. This means that when the push all in, one (or both) of the players in the blinds will call them, just because they are getting good Pot Odds. Even if the short stack doubles up in this situation, they will still only have 7 or 8 blinds, and will need to push all in again very soon to avoid getting blinded down again! When your total stack is down to around 10 big blinds is when you have to start shoving all-in. At 10 blinds you still have enough chips that people cant call you with any old rubbish, so you have a good chance of winning the blinds uncontested.

You’ll need to pick the right spot to make you move, as the stack sizes of the players in the blinds can be even more important than your cards. Make sure you’re the first player into the pot (unless you have a premium hand), that way you have the maximum chance of everyone giving up the blinds without a fight.

If the action is folded around to you in late position, you can push all in with any ace, any pair, or any suited connector. The closer you are to the button the looser you can be with your hand, simply because there is less chance that one of the remaining players will have a good enough hand to call you.

The best time to push is when the blinds have medium sized stacks. If they have less than you, they might be getting desperate, and decide to call with any 2 cards. Likewise if the players in the blinds each have very large stacks they won’t be scared of you and may call light too. The best stacks to push into are medium stacks, as they are the players who you can damage the most. They won’t want to risk a large proportion of their stack with anything but a premium hand. Even when they do call, 5-6 suited will beat A-K about 40% of the time, which will bring you well and truly back into the game.

You gotta know when to hold’em, know when to fold’em, know when to walk away, know when to run. You never count your money when you’re sittin at the table, there’ll be time enuff for countin’ when the dealin’s done.” -Kenny Rodgers, The Gambler

When we play, we must realize, before anything else, that we are out to make money. –David Sklanzky

Limit poker is a science, but no-limit is an art. In limit, you are shooting at a target. In no-limit, the target comes alive and shoots back at you. – Jack Strauss

I have taken a different path in life. –Doyle Bruson

If, after the first twenty minutes, you don’t know who the sucker at the table is, it’s you. -David Levien and Brian Koppelman, Rounders

You call…gonna be all over, baby. – Scotty Nguyen

Your best chance to get a Royal Flush in a casino is in the bathroom. -V.P. Pappy

I like to bet anything. –Amarillo Slim

I don’t believe in superstitions. They’re bad luck. –Bobby Valentine

Poker is the game closest to the western conception of life, where life and thought are recognized as intimately combined, where free will prevails over philosophies of fate or of chance, where men are considered moral agents and where – at least in the short run – the important thing is not what happens but what people think happens. -John Luckacs

Gets down to what it’s all about doesn’t it. Making the wrong move at the right time –Lancey Howard, The Cincinnati Kid

Cards are war, in disguise of a sport. -Charles Lamb

Holdem is to stud what chess is to checkers -Johnny Moss

In a game of poker, I can put the players’ souls in my pocket. -Beausourire

HOLLY: Queen to Rook Eight. Checkmate.
QUEEG: That’s an illegal move.
HOLLY: Oh, sorry. Queens don’t move like that. I was thinking of poker. – Red Dwarf “Queeg”

You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. If you win for thirty days in a row, that makes no difference if on the thirty-first you have a bad night, go crazy, and throw it all away. –Bobby Baldwin

I need some money. You got any money? –Daniel Negreanu

Everybody here loves to check-raise. Nobody in Ireland check-raises; we just bet the crap out of everything. – Irishman at the Rio during the 2008 WSOP

I believe in poker the way I believe in the American Dream. Poker is good for you. It enriches the soul, sharpens the intellect, heals the spirit, and – when played well, nourishes the wallet. -Lou Krieger

Poker, n. A game said to be played with cards for some purpose to this lexicographer unknown. -Ambrose Bierce

You can shear a sheep many times, but you can skin him only once. –Amarillo Slim

Poker is… a fascinating, wonderful, intricate adventure on the high seas of human nature. -David A. Daniel

Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died. -Seven Wright

It’s immoral to let a sucker keep his money. -Bill Jones

See, in my world – the world of high-stakes gin and poker – we play for cold, hard cash. It’s all business, pure and simple. Anyone who thinks cardplaying is a ‘game’ – I’ll show you a loser. Money… M-O-N-E-Y. That’s how you measure success. One dollar at a time. One chip at a time. That’s how you keep score.-Stu Unger

The strong point in poker is never to lose your temper, either with those you are playing with or, more particularly, with the cards. There is no sympathy in poker. Always keep cool. If you lose your head you will lose all your chips. -William J. Florence

If the luck was not influencing the poker I always would win. -Phil Hellmuth

Is it a reasonable thing, I ask you, for a grown man to run about and hit a ball? Poker’s the only game fit for a grown man. Then, your hand is against every man’s, and every man’s is against yours. Teamwork? Who ever made a fortune by teamwork? There’s only one way to make a fortune, and that’s to down the fellow who’s up against you. -W. Somerset Maugham

It never hurts for potential opponents to think you’re more than a little stupid and can hardly count all the money in your hip pocket, much less hold on to it. –Amarillo Slim

Poker’s a day to learn and a lifetime to master. -Robert Williamson III

Whether he likes it or not, a man’s character is stripped at the poker table; if the other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life. -Anthony Holden

There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a “flush.” It is enough to make one ashamed of the species. -Mark Twain

The commonest mistake in history is underestimating your opponent; it happens at the poker table all the time. ~David Shoup

I must complain the cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand. -Jonathan Swift

“How long does it take to learn poker, Dad?”
“All your life, son.”
-Michael Pertwee

With spots quadrangular of diamond form,
Ensanguined hearts, clubs typical of strife,
And spades, the emblems of untimely graves.
-William Cowper

The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent. -David Mamet

Poker is a microcosm of all we admire and disdain about capitalism and democracy. It can be rough-hewn or polished, warm or cold, charitable and caring, or hard and impersonal, fickle and elusive, but ultimately it is fair, and right, and just. -Lou Krieger

Poker reveals to the frank observer something else of import -it will teach him about his own nature. Many bad players do not improve because the cannot bear self-knowledge. -David Mamet

Baseball is like a poker game. Nobody wants to quit when he’s losing; nobody wants you to quit when you’re ahead. -Jackie Robinson

It’s fun, isn’t it? – Luke Can Cleve

You have it in your power to turn a bad-beat around simply by realizing this simple truth: The more bad beats you encounter, the luckier you are. It’s a sign that you are playing against opponents who continually take the worst of it, and if you can’t beat someone who always takes the worst of it, you can’t beat anyone. -Lou Krieger

Industry executives and analysts often mistakenly talk about strategy as if it were some kind of chess match. But in chess, you have just two opponents, each with identical resources, and with luck playing a minimal role. The real world is much more like a poker game, with multiple players trying to make the best of whatever hand fortune has dealt them. In our industry, Bill Gates owns the table until someone proves otherwise. -David Moschella

Most of the money you’ll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but from the ineptitude of your opponents. ~Lou Krieger

In life’s poker game, the optimist sees the pessimist’s night and raises him the sunrise. -Robert Brault

I’ve often thought, if I got really hungry for a good milk shake, how much would I pay for one? People will pay a hundred dollars for a bottle of wine; to me that’s not worth it. But I’m not going to say it is foolish or wrong to spend that kind of money, if that’s what you want. So if a guy wants to bet twenty or thirty thousand dollars in a poker game, that is his privilege. -Jack Binion

Many players learn just enough to lose money that they wouldn’t ordinarily risk. –Ian Andersen

There’s opportunity in poker…. If Horace Greeley were alive today, his advice wouldn’t be “Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.” Instead, he’d point to that deck of cards on table and say, “Shuffle up and deal.” -Lou Krieger

Poker is to cards and games what jazz is to music. It’s this great American thing, born and bred here. We dig it because everybody can play. -Steve Lipscomb

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e., everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won’t tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time. -Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, Good Omens

People who don’t straddle go to hell. –Little Mike

Hold’em – like life itself – has its defining moment. It’s the flop. When you see the flop, you’re looking at 71 percent of your hand, and the cost is only a single round of betting. -Lou Krieger

[Poker is] as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you could find outside an advertising agency. -Raymond Chandler

I swear I’m never playing this stupid game again. – Almost every poker player ever.

In Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Stud, as well as any other form of poker than has more than 1 betting round, an “out” is any card that, if drawn (or put on the board as a community card), will improve a player’s hand to one that is likely to win. Knowing the number of outs you have is an important part of poker strategy. For example in Texas Hold’em Poker, a player with 2 clubs in hand, and 2 clubs on the board has nine outs to make a flush: there are 13 clubs in the deck, and four of them have been seen, leaving 9 clubs that might come on either the turn or river.

Although there are many people who believe that secret to being a successful poker player is knowing when to bluff, or being able to read obscure tells, the truth is that maths and calculating outs plays the most important role of all in any form of poker.

Below is a table detailing Poker Outs. For more information you may want to read: Poker Pot Odds and Outs

Outs Number On the flopfor the turn On the turnfor the river Turnand river combined Example of Draw
1 Out 46.0 to 1 45.0 to 1 22.5 to 1 Gutshot Straight Flush Draw
2 Outs 22.5 to 1 22.0 to 1 10.9 to 1 Pocket Pair to Set
3 Outs 14.7 to 1 14.3 to 1 7.0 to 1 1 Overcard
4 Outs 10.8 to 1 10.5 to 1 5.1 to 1 Gutshot Straight
5 Outs 8.4 to 1 8.2 to 1 3.9 to 1 Pair + Overcard
6 Outs 6.8 to 1 6.7 to 1 3.1 to 1 2 Overcards
7 Outs 5.7 to 1 5.6 to 1 2.6 to 1
8 Outs 4.9 to 1 4.8 to 1 2.2 to 1 Straight Draw
9 Outs 4.2 to 1 4.1 to 1 1.9 to 1 Flush Draw
10 Outs 3.7 to 1 3.6 to 1 1.6 to 1
11 Outs 3.3 to 1 3.2 to 1 1.4 to 1
12 Outs 2.9 to 1 2.8 to 1 1.2 to 1
13 Outs 2.6 to 1 2.5 to 1 1.1 to 1
14 Outs 2.4 to 1 2.3 to 1 1.0 to 1 Straight Draw + overcards
15 Outs 2.1 to 1 2.1 to 1 0.8 to 1 Flush and Straight draw
16 Outs 1.9 to 1 1.9 to 1 0.8 to 1
17 Outs 1.8 to 1 1.7 to 1 0.7 to 1
18 Outs 1.6 to 1 1.6 to 1 0.6 to 1
19 Outs 1.5 to 1 1.4 to 1 0.5 to 1
20 Outs 1.4 to 1 1.3 to 1 0.5 to 1
21 Outs 1.2 to 1 1.2 to 1 0.4 to 1
22 Outs 1.1 to 1 1.1 to 1 0.4 to 1

Poker Odds are an incredibly important part of Texas Hold ’em, as well as any other form of poker. If you don’t know how to calculate poker odds and pot odds you will often find yourself having to guess whether a play is correct or not. Inexperienced players often think that there is some secret to being a successful poker player, like being un-bluffable, or being able to read obscure tells in the merest twitch of an opponents eye, but the truth is that maths plays the most important role of all in any form of poker, and knowing Poker Odds is one of the most relevant aspect of the game to understand.

The term “odds” simply means “The chance of something happening compared to how much you win if it does happen”, and it is amazingly powerful information to have at your disposal. What are the chances of your overcards improving to a pair? What are the chances of hitting another Diamond and making your flush? These are the sorts of questions that the Poker Odds chart below will be able to answer for you.

For more information you may want to read the complete article: Poker Pot Odds and Outs

Outs Number On the flopfor the turn On the turnfor the river Turnand river combined Example of Draw
1 Out 46.0 to 1 45.0 to 1 22.5 to 1 Gutshot Straight Flush Draw
2 Outs 22.5 to 1 22.0 to 1 10.9 to 1 Pocket Pair to Set
3 Outs 14.7 to 1 14.3 to 1 7.0 to 1 1 Overcard
4 Outs 10.8 to 1 10.5 to 1 5.1 to 1 Gutshot Straight
5 Outs 8.4 to 1 8.2 to 1 3.9 to 1 Pair + Overcard
6 Outs 6.8 to 1 6.7 to 1 3.1 to 1 2 Overcards
7 Outs 5.7 to 1 5.6 to 1 2.6 to 1
8 Outs 4.9 to 1 4.8 to 1 2.2 to 1 Straight Draw
9 Outs 4.2 to 1 4.1 to 1 1.9 to 1 Flush Draw
10 Outs 3.7 to 1 3.6 to 1 1.6 to 1
11 Outs 3.3 to 1 3.2 to 1 1.4 to 1
12 Outs 2.9 to 1 2.8 to 1 1.2 to 1
13 Outs 2.6 to 1 2.5 to 1 1.1 to 1
14 Outs 2.4 to 1 2.3 to 1 1.0 to 1 Straight Draw + overcards
15 Outs 2.1 to 1 2.1 to 1 0.8 to 1 Flush and Straight draw
16 Outs 1.9 to 1 1.9 to 1 0.8 to 1
17 Outs 1.8 to 1 1.7 to 1 0.7 to 1
18 Outs 1.6 to 1 1.6 to 1 0.6 to 1
19 Outs 1.5 to 1 1.4 to 1 0.5 to 1
20 Outs 1.4 to 1 1.3 to 1 0.5 to 1
21 Outs 1.2 to 1 1.2 to 1 0.4 to 1
22 Outs 1.1 to 1 1.1 to 1 0.4 to 1