One of the most frustrating situations for beginning players who have spent time learning poker strategy arises when they’re stuck on a table full of calling stations. As you may know, calling stations are usually horrid players who are willing to call with ATC, which doesn’t make them so tough one-on-one. However, if you’re playing against a bunch of them at one time, it seems like you can never capitalize on good hands.

Using a hypothetical instance of this, let’s say that you’re on a six-max cash game table with all stacks relatively equal. You’re sitting on the button with Ah-Jd, and all three players in front of you limp in; you make a 4xBB raise, which draws one caller from the small blind, a fold in the big blind, and calls from two out of the three limpers. The flop comes out As-6c-8s, which is seemingly good for you.

The first two players check, while the cut-off makes a pot-sized raise. Feeling good about your hand in this instance, you call, and so does the small blind. The next card is Ks, which prompts a shove from the small blind, and the CO calls. You fold your top pair, and watch the two play out the remainder of the hand – only to see that the small blind is holding K-6, and the cut-off is holding 9s-5s.

Situations like this are quite common in micro stakes and home poker games, and can be really frustrating to those who know the game. After all, what can you do to beat a table full of players who are determined to see every card?

Fortunately, players such as these are the easiest to beat when you consistently make strong plays because they’re willing to pay your good hands off. The key is to play a tight-aggressive game where you’re frequently value betting and making big preflop raises. For instance, if your 4xBB preflop raises are inviting too many callers, make a 7-8xBB preflop raise to isolate one player and press the advantage on your good hands.

Another thing you can do against terrible calling stations is to limp in along with them (assuming you have a drawing hand), and beat them with postflop play. If you don’t connect on the flop, simply fold because it’s only cost you a BB; if you do connect, make value bets to extract maximum value from the opponent(s).

One of the most popular challenges in online poker is to try and build a bankroll without making a deposit. The idea is that you jump into freerolls, and earn your initial money from these tournaments. Once you’ve earned a small amount of money playing freerolls, you move up to low stakes cash games and/or poker tournaments, and keep building your bankroll.

Essentially, this is the ideal model for somebody who wants to play online poker for a living because they never have to risk their own money. So what many players often wonder is how easily they can accomplish building a bankroll without depositing.

And the answer to this thought is that not making any deposit at all definitely creates a tough road ahead. Now you might be thinking to yourself, “Sure, that’s exactly what somebody from an online poker site would want me to think.” But in all honestly, it’s just the truth that it’s very difficult to build your online poker bankroll without ever making a deposit.

First off, you have to consider that it’s hard to win money in most true freeroll poker tournaments because the field size is quite inflated when compared to the prize pool. After all, who doesn’t like to play poker for free money!? Assuming you do win any money from a freeroll, it’s usually not enough to allow you to play very high stakes; and the lower the stakes you start at, the longer it will be before you can move up. Furthermore, a small bankroll doesn’t give you any chance to survive if bad variance strikes.

To sum this thought up, if you don’t have enough extra money to make an online poker deposit, then starting a bankroll through freerolls may be your only option. However, those who do have a little extra money set aside for starting a poker bankroll would be better served to at least make a small deposit. This way, you take a huge shortcut towards building your bankroll by not having to spend hours grinding in freerolls and $0.01/$0.02 cash games just to make a few extra dollars.

Okay, so I’m not anywhere near original with this article since bluffing in poker has been strategized to death. Even still, it never hurts to rehash a few pointers about bluffing once and a while. That being said, here are some advanced bluffing tips for you to check out.

Tip #1: Play like you have the hand you’re representing - One of the best bluffing tips that I can give is to always play like you’ve got the hand you’re representing. For example, if you had QQ preflop and you bet big, then you’re going to have a hard time bluffing when the flop comes out 5-6-7 rainbow. After all, why would you make huge preflop raises when you had a 5, 6, or 7 in your hand? In short, it would be better not to bluff like you had a straight in this instance.

However, if you had QQ and the board came out K-7-K rainbow, you’d have a better chance of selling a bluff because your preflop betting patterns would suggest you could have AK or KK. When playing against good opponents, only bluff when your previous betting patterns suggest you could have what the board is showing.

Tip #2: Focus more on your opponent’s tendency to fold, rather than their cards – A big misconception regarding bluffing is that it’s mostly about what the opponent is or isn’t holding. For example, if the board is K-T-3 rainbow, many beginning players would worry about whether the opponent has a king or 10 when trying to bluff. However, you also have to think about the opponent’s tendencies even if they don’t have top pair, or another strong hand.

So if you were trying to bluff with Q-J against someone very unlikely to fold, you also have to consider that they could beat you with a pair of 3′s or ace-high after calling/re-raising. Long story short, if you discount an opponent’s willingness to fold, it’s just another way that your bluff can be beaten.

Tip #3: Look at things from an opponent’s perspective – This tip expands on the first one in that you need to at least play like the hand you’re trying to represent. In the same vein, you also have to consider what your opponent is likely to think you have based on previous betting patterns/play.

Without getting into a long-winded essay on this point, it’s important to be honest about how you’ve played the hand, as well as the entire session/poker tournament. For example, you can’t play like you’re on a flush draw, then suddenly expect a higher-level thinking opponent to believe you hit trips when the board pairs. Also, you can’t play uber-tight throughout a session, then bet big on a totally dry board. So always consider how you’ve been playing, and decide if your opponent would truly believe you have what you’re trying to represent.

A broad poker tournament topic that new players sometimes struggle with involves what hand ranges they should be playing in certain situations. For example, they aren’t quite sure what range of hands to play when deepstacked, shortstacked, sitting in early position, on the bubble, etc. And while there’s no definitive answer on what cards to play in each situation, there are some factors that will guide you towards the correct range of hands to play.

General Factors

The general factors you want to consider when figuring out acceptable hand ranges include your stack size, the blind levels, what stage the tournament’s at, how many players are at your table, and how each individual is playing.

Deepstacked Early in a Tournament

To put these aspects into a scenario, let’s say that you’re holding KQ in late position early on in a tournament. Assuming there is little action ahead of you, KQ would be a solid hand to play as long as you can see the flop for cheap. However, if somebody makes a big raise in early position, there is little reason for you to re-raise them unless they’ve shown the tendency to fold to such actions. After all, you’re most likely deepstacked at this point, and you can afford to wait for premium hands like AA, KK, QQ, JJ and AK to play a situation like this.

Shortstacked Late in a Tournament

Let’s say that you’re in the middle of a tournament, and you’ve only got 10bb left in the same situation. At this point, you need to increase your stack size fast because the blind levels are increasing, and KQ in late position might be your only decent opportunity to make a move. If you fold here, your stack will only last a few more orbits, while a shove may even force your opponent to fold. Even if the opponent doesn’t fold, you could still be ahead with KQ.

As you can see, the situation will play a big role in the range of hands you should play. Going back to the aforementioned scenarios, opponents’ playing styles will also heavily factor into how you handle the situation. For example, in the first scenario where it’s better to fold KQ, if the raiser is a complete maniac, you could be in a position to steal their stack by calling or re-raising. So always consider all of the variables when deciding what hands to play in poker tournaments.

One of the first things that many people learn about poker is that it involves a lot of variance. You’re dealing with uncertain outcomes in poker, and no matter how good you are, nothing is a given when it comes to the short-term.

This being said, many beginning players wonder when is a good time to assess their play since it’s hard to determine short-term success. Going further, they want to know how much of a sample size is needed before trying to identify problems and fix leaks. And the answer is that you can start assessing your play after the very first session played.

Now this doesn’t mean you’ll have a good indication of success after your first session, but you can at least start to improve in terms of poker strategy. For example, if you struggle with handling 3-bets from aggressive players, this is something that you should review immediately after a session. That way, you can better identify what range of hands aggressive opponents could be holding when they’re 3-betting.

Of course, it’s important to note that you won’t be able to fix bigger leaks just by reviewing a session or two because they take time to identify. In addition to this, you won’t be able to truly measure how profitable your play is until you’ve played thousands of poker hands. Interestingly enough, it could take a 100,000 hands or more before you have a truly accurate assessment of your profitability.

But until you reach that number, just keep reviewing your play every session (if possible), or once every few sessions. Also don’t forget to check out poker strategy frequently in order to pick up tips that’ll improve your play.

One very helpful tool that many online poker sites provide is the ability to take notes on other players. This lets you jot down quick observations/thoughts on each player at the table so you can use the info for future reference.

Unfortunately, the problem that many beginning poker players run into here is not knowing exactly what to write down. Furthermore, when they do write something down, they miss a lot of the action because it takes so long. So the idea is that you want to be informative, yet quick while taking your notes.

This being said, it’s important to categorize notes for each player into preflop and postflop information. In addition to this, it’s also good to keep track of certain actions each player has made with various hands to help define hand ranges. For example:

Preflop Seat 1 – villain limped UTG with KK.
Postflop Seat 1 – villain check-raised with flopped set.

Now this might be a simple example, but you can still get the idea on what important notes to take on opponents. It also helps tremendously in the speed department if you can abbreviate certain words to save time. Taking the aforementioned examples, you could write PF 1 – villain limped UTG w/ AQ. Obviously you don’t have to do exactly the same thing as mentioned here, but as long as you can understand your abbreviations, shortening words keeps you from missing action.

Looking at things from a broad perspective, you should take notes on anything that you think could be of use later. Contrast this to the more generalized note taking strategies some players use such as:

Player Seat 1 – Loose-aggressive
Player Seat 2 – Weak-passive

While this might help out a tiny bit, it doesn’t really give you any actions that will shape hand ranges. So make sure that your online poker notes are somewhat detailed – even when you’re trying to keep things brief.

Continuation betting is definitely one of the most universally understood poker strategy concepts among players. After all, c-betting simply involves following up your pre-flop raise with another raise after the flop to show hand strength and steal the pot (even if you missed the flop completely). But just understanding c-betting doesn’t mean that players always understand when to make quality c-bets – especially when it comes to poker tournaments. This being the case, it’s worth looking at some of the basics of making c-bets in tournaments.

Difference between Cash Game and Poker Tournament C-bets

While the fundamentals behind making a c-bet are always the same, it’s important to note that the quantity of c-bets you make in cash games and poker tournaments will differ. The reason why is because you’ll be dealing with different stack sizes in poker tournaments, so it’s not always wise to make c-bets when you’re short-stacked.

After all, if you get re-raised, folding could take a huge chunk of your stack, and you can’t get it back. Cash games, on the other hand, give you the option to re-fill your stack when it gets low; so if you see an +EV c-betting situation, you can always go for it. Long story short, most tournament c-bets can’t be made lightly.

In-game Factors that go into C-betting

Now that we’ve established how important each c-bet you make in a tournament will be, you need to think about all of the factors that go into successful c-bets. For one, stack sizes will play a big part since you have more of a c-bet luxury when your stack is bigger; couple this with your opponent having a short stack, and this creates a more favorable c-betting situation.

It’s also important to understand your opponent’s pre-flop betting range based on how they’ve been playing. You can then couple this range with the board texture to figure out how likely an opponent is to have hit anything on the flop. To illustrate this with an obvious example, if you’re playing against someone who only raises preflop with premium pocket pairs like AA through JJ and the board shows A-J-K, this is not a good time to c-bet if you’ve got undercards.

In an overall sense, you need to take several factors into consideration before making a c-bet.

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.