One of the stranger moves in the poker strategy realm involves buying into cash games with far less than the minimum stack size allowed. For example, if you’re playing at a standard cash game table where the max buy-in is 100bb, some players will buy in with 20bb-40bb. The thinking is that the bigger stacks will assume you’re a fish, and give you a lot more action on any good poker hands you come across.

Expanding on this thought, a lot of big stacks immediately feel they have an advantage over the smaller stack, and will make big raises in late position just because they think they can push this supposed noob off of a hand. Assuming you’re the short stack and holding a great hand in this situation, your short stack strategy would work to perfection if the opponent has marginal holdings.

However, you also have to consider the other side of the coin, which is that you won’t be able to steal frequently or maximize value on the nuts when you are shortstacking in cash games. This alone is one big reason why most players won’t buy in for any less than the maximum amount in a cash game.

So in the end, is it worth playing as a short stack just to potentially get more action on good hands? In most cases, you’re better off going with the bigger stack – although some poker players actually do better with a short stack. Assuming you aren’t experiencing a whole lot of success with a max buy-in and you like to play tight while waiting for premium hands, perhaps shortstacking is worth a try for you.

Just make sure that you don’t get overly-aggressive with your little stack though since plenty of big stacks will be trying to bust you.

If you read much poker strategy or spend time on the forums, one term you might come across is a “polarized range.” For example, a player might write something to the effect of “my opponent had a polarized 3-bet range, so I 4-bet him in hopes of forcing a fold.”

The simple definition of a polarized range is when somebody only bets with strong hands like A-A and K-K, and really weak holdings like 2-2, 6-7 and J-8. There is nothing in between this player’s betting range such as pocket 7′s or KQ. They either bet with great hands because they actually have something, or they bet with nothing in order to steal a hand. So how does any of this help you?

Well knowing if your opponent has a polarized range is very important to dealing with their raises. As a general rule, it’s recommended that you call (instead of raise) somebody who has a very polarized range so you can judge your opponent’s actions on the next turn. Of course, the subject gets much more complicated than this, and you could spend hours debating the intricacies of playing against polarized 3-bettors.

But as you gain more information on specific opponents, you can begin to pick apart their polarized betting range. After all, good hands don’t come around very often, and if your opponent is 3-betting quite often with their polarized range, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to 4-bet them and force a fold. The key is to watch your opponent, and figure out how often they’re 3-betting with the lower part of their polarized range.

We’ll get more into this subject in future posts, but this gives you a solid overall definition on the subject.

Some poker players do quite well when it comes to the beginning stages of a poker tournament, only to find themselves struggling in the middle stages of tourneys as the blinds start rising and weaker players are thinned out. And this is unfortunate too because you’re wasting a lot of time by getting to the middle stages of poker tournaments – only to bust out before you have a chance at the money.

This being said, one of the main things you can do to improve your middle tournament play is look to steal as often as possible. Since the blinds are getting higher at this point, every pot you can steal will help tremendously. One of the best spots to steal at is in the blinds because you can watch for frequent late position raisers who are also hoping to steal.

Assuming you’ve watched them long enough to define a range for their late position steals, you will have a very good idea as to when to re-raise. It’s especially nice if you’ve seen a late position raiser fold after being raised by somebody in the blinds. Of course, if nobody has raised when action reaches you in late position or the blinds, then you can be looking to steal when no extremely aggressive players are left to act.

In addition to trying to steal blinds and small pots, you should also limit the amount of flops that you see. Now this isn’t to say you should become a nit who waits for the perfect hand to trap somebody with. However, you don’t want to be trying to see flops with every suited connectors hand because this will cost you a lot of blinds.

Above all, don’t wait to make your moves in the middle portion of a tournament because if your stack gets too low, you won’t be a factor.

One of the most romanticized poker playing styles is to play based on “feel” rather than by relying on a more mathematical approach. Getting into the specifics, playing based on feel depends more on your reading abilities and knowing opponents, as opposed to constantly taking pot odds, implied odds, and +EV plays into account. Some poker players swear by this style of play such as Chad Batista (pictured), who has made several million dollars in online poker tournaments, despite having never cracked a poker book!

Success stories such as this often get players to thinking about whether they’d be better off focusing more on opponents and the situation rather than the math. In fact, some players believe that they play better when they put statistics and math on the back burner during poker games. But when you really stop and think about things, it seems a little silly to truly believe that you’d actually be a better player by not taking poker math into account.

Sure reading abilities and analyzing your opponent are extremely important, but you don’t have to abandon poker odds in favor of dedicating everything to how you feel at the table. And while Batista may condone not using conventional poker strategy methods, the average player is going to be better off combining every facet of poker strategy that they have time to study.

Going further with this concept, do you think that Daniel Negreanu or Erik Seidel play entirely based on feeling? Well maybe in the 80′s they did, but this is a new era of poker, and you really have to focus on all factors in the game instead of just your reads and experience.

In addition to this, even if you experience quite a bit of success without taking math into consideration, you could just be running good, and this style of play won’t hold up over several hundred thousand hands. After all, it’s hard to tell if you’re truly a good player or not until you get several hundred thousands hands into your career.

There’s a reason why so many people play aggressively in online poker, and it’s because this strategy puts opponents in some awkward and difficult situations. Assuming the player is any good, they can force opponents into making mistakes since people are more focused on looking them up, rather than playing solid hands and making +EV plays. Assuming you’re having trouble with aggressive poker players, hopefully the following tips will help.

See the Flop and Trap

One of the best strategies for dealing with aggressive players is trying to see as many flops as you can, then trapping the player when you connect. Of course, this can be difficult sometimes because opponents like these raise and re-raise preflop often, so you’ll just have to pick your spots to trap. Also, make sure that the opponent likes to play aggressively postflop so your trapping efforts are worth it. Good postflop trapping hands include any pocket pair (turn into sets), suited connectors (AK-9T), and high one-gap hands (AQ-KJ).

3-Bet More Often

When you’re getting raised frequently, it’s important to 3-bet for value as much as possible. Assuming you’ve gathered enough information to define the aggressive opponent’s range, you should know what cards will play well in a 3-bet situation. For example, if their raise range includes suited connectors as low as 8-9, gap hands as low as Q-J, and pocket pairs down to 6′s, there are quite a few situations where you’ll have the holdings to 3-bet.

Wait for Great Preflop Hands

Perhaps the easiest way to take advantage of an aggro player is to wait for great preflop hands like AA, KK, QQ, and trap them preflop. Some things to think about here include making sure that the blinds are low enough to where you can wait (tournaments), and realizing that you could lose the advantage postflop while trying this strategy. Also consider the skill of your opponent since they might be able to sniff out the plan through your preflop betting actions.

There are plenty of tough situations that arise in online poker, but one of the toughest definitely involves dealing with players who over-bet weak Hold’em flops. For example, let’s say the flop comes out 5s-8h-7s while you’re holding Ah-8d, and a player bets twice the pot.

Obviously this isn’t a situation where you want to snap call or re-raise right away because, while you have top pair, there are so many different ways in which you could be beaten. However, you could also be dealing with somebody who has 7′s, 5′s, a straight draw or a flush draw. Sometimes your opponent(s) could even be somebody who is totally bluffing, and doesn’t even have a draw.

In any case, a lot of how you deal with over-bettors on bad flops depends on the player’s tendencies beforehand. For example, a lot of micro stakes fish like to over-bet with middle pair on a bad flop, or they’ll even bluff with nothing as we just discussed. However, you also have to deal with somebody who’s ahead of your 8′s at this point with pocket 9′s or better, and they want to protect this hand by giving drawing hands bad odds to call.

One more type of situation you have to think about is the good player who hit a set on the flop, and so they make a big continuation bet to seem as if they’re someone who missed the flop and are c-bet bluffing.

As you can see, it’s very difficult to generalize players who over-bet the flop, and you need to have some good information on them before deciding what to do. Assuming you don’t have enough info on the player(s) you’re dealing with, it could be a smart decision to lay down your cards, and wait for another hand to bet some major chips.

As many online poker players know, multi-tabling is the best way to play more hands and exploit your edge (if you have one) at a certain limit. Most players are pretty good about gradually working their way up from two tables, to three tables, four tables, and so on. However, unless you’re Bertrand Grospellier or Randy Lew, there’s going to come a point where you just can’t keep up with the action. Maybe it will be six tables, maybe it will be 12 tables, but trust me – all multi-tablers will reach a wall at some point.

And when this happens, you’ll get timed out on hands, be forced to sit out on some tables, and make plenty of poor decisions. All of these problems could arise because the action is too fast for you, or because your monitor/computer hardware just can’t keep up with everything. In either case, it’s important to focus on what you need to do better when these things happen.

Sometimes it’s the simple stuff, such as your computer programs and/or equipment just not being up to date. For example, if you’re running Windows XP and can’t keep up with the action, perhaps an upgrade to Windows 7 is your problem. Likewise, if you’re having trouble tiling tables and being able to see on a 19″ monitor, you should get a 24″ monitor or bigger, provided you can afford it.

Of course, most people’s dilemma is that they have trouble paying attention to all of the tables and making good moves. The solution to this problem is to have hotkeys ready for all of the actions you’ll be making. To make things easier on yourself, it’s highly suggested you find a program that will help you set the correct hotkeys up for each action.

Assuming you can get all of the basics ironed out when moving up in multi-tabling, you’ll be able to make more profits with less stress!

Assuming you’re looking to make the switch from No-Limit Hold’em to Limit Hold’em, one of the most important concepts that you need to understand is how suited connectors are more valuable hands in the Limit game. Now to some poker players, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because the game is still played the same despite betting structures changing. There’s still two hole cards, five community cards and four betting rounds.

However, the different betting structure in Limit Hold’em means more players on average are going to see the flop. That said, you’re going to have more cases where you’re getting the right pot odds and/or implied odds to make a call with suited connectors. Basically, the high number of multi-way pots in Limit Hold’em increases the amount of times that playing suited connectors will be the correct play.

Seeing as how there are a lot of multi-way pots, suited connectors are worth more; it’s also worth mentioning how other hands go down in value. This is especially the case with small pairs because you have to make a set to win most pots with these. Because of the fact that your chances of flopping a set are only around 12%, you’re going to be folding these quite often when you don’t connect.

Furthermore, when you do flop a set, you may not be able to extract maximum value because the bets are capped in Limit Hold’em. In short, proceed with caution when you have small pairs in Limit Hold’em, and value suited connectors a little higher because of the pot odds/implied odds that you’ll be getting.

If there’s one common theme in online poker, it’s that many of the best players are very aggressive. And part of being a really aggressive poker player is that you need to make sizable raises. But even with this being said, there are plenty of people who commonly make min-raises (2x the big blind) at the poker table. And this brings us to the question of whether or not min-raises are ever truly acceptable at the table.

The most obvious time when min-raises work is when you’re in the late stages of a poker tournament. At this point, the blinds have become a huge factor, and even a minimum raise can have a big effect – no matter whether you’re trying to force a fold, or attempting to extract maximum value from an opponent.

Another time when min-raises are the correct move is when you’ve created an aggressive table image, and you want to trap an opponent. Assuming you’ve made much larger raises before, a minimum raise is likely to encourage a much bigger re-raise from your opponent – rather than you making a big raise right away. If they fall for your trap, you’ll be getting a lot more value out of great hands.

One more time when a min-raise can work is if you’ve got a speculative hand, and you’re trying to see the flop for cheap. By raising instead of merely calling, you indicate a little bit of hand strength, so players with good, but not great hands will be less likely to make a huge raise to force you out of the pot. However, you also have to be careful here because players with position often look for min-raisers who are just trying to see the next card for cheap.