Your Position at the Table
Your table position is especially important in no-limit holdem. Anytime you play a hand in no-limit holdem online poker game, you could e putting your entire stack at risk. These are good reasons to select the hands that you play very carefully. Remember that the earlier you have to act, the stronger the hand you need. If you are an experienced poker limit holdem player, the most important thing to remember in this section is that until you get more mileage under your belt you will not be playing as many hands in no-limit holdem as you have been playing in limit holdem. In other words, you must be more selective in no-limit holdem.
Play more conservatively in early positions. Whenever you enter a pot from a front position, you are laying yourself open to raises and reraises from players who can act after you do. In the first three positions after the blind, you definitely want to play only premium hands and usually bring it in for a raise when you enter the pot. You can play more liberally from middle to late position in unraised pots when two or three limpers are in the pot. You are looking for a situation where you can poker winning principles a pot and may be double up, all the while trying to avoid getting eliminated. Always remember that you cannot win the tournament during the first round of play, but you can lose it if you make a mistake.
If you are last to act in no-limit tournaments you can often pick up the pot with a modest bet when it is checked to you. The legendary Doyle Brunson once said that he could beat any no-limit game without looking at his hole cards if he had last action and nobody knew he hadn't looked. This should give you an idea of just how important position is in all stages of a tournament.
How Many Opponents You Have
The relative strength of a starting hand changes depending on the number of players in the game. Because more people are playing against you when the game is 10-handed, you need a stronger starting hand than you would need when the game is five-handed, for example. A marginal poker hand that you would throw away when the game is 10-handed may become playable when the table is short. Also remember that when the game is 10-handed in the early stage of the tournament, there isn't much blind money in the pot to fight for, therefore you have less reason to try to steal pots with substandard hands.
Trouble hands can be even more trouble in no-limit holdem than they are in limit holdem than they are in limit holdem. The blinds are very small in relation to the risks involved, so why get involved with a K-Q when someone raises in front of you? You could lose your whole stack with this trouble hand.
What kinds of hands do you raise with in the first round? If you're early position, you want to have a big pair, A-K or possibly A-Q to bring it in for a raise. Be leery of raising with A-J there's always the chance that someone behind you will reraise and you can't take a lot of heat with A-J. You might want to just limp in with A-J, but if you do raise with it, we suggest that you raise only three times the size of the big blind cash course.
With A-K or A-Q, we also suggest raising three to four times the bigs blinds. Then if one or two players call, you can take a stab at the pot limit holdem on the flop to try to pick it up, if you hit or if you don't. If you hit the flop, you might check it and give someone behind you the opportunity to bet so that you can check-raise him. So if you get a hand to trap them with, you can open the noose with a check and then tighten the noose with a check-raise when they bet.
We know that raising from up front with hands such as K-J or K-Q is shaky, but what about raising from middle to late position with these hands? In the early stage of the tournament, you usually do not raise with these trouble hands, even if Nobody has entered the pot. Why? Because the blinds are so small that there's practically nothing in the pot to steal. And if you get played with by somebody who reraises Behind you, he probably has a better hand than yours.
The only times that you might consider raising with one of these marginal hands are: (1) A player with very few chips has limped into the pot in front of you, and (2) The blinds are players who will give up their hands easily. In any other circumstances, you need a premium hand in order to raise from middle to late position during the first round of play.
"In the first round I don't do a lot of raising," Brad says, "because with $10-$15 blinds there is only $25 in the pot. " When you see someone limping in no-limit, especially if he's sitting in the first few seats, a warning light should flash in your mind. A limper can be dangerous. They can always Be limping with a big hand. So you might just limp with the trouble hands if you want to play. Of course you don't really need to play them because the blinds are so high low poker in the first level.
You want a premium hand when you raise because there's very little to pick up anyway. The ratio of reward to risk favors the risk when the blinds are small.
"I'm just trying to manage the size of the pot," Brad says," "and I'm protecting my chips. I don't want to lose any chips Because they're valuable. " Your poker chips are your army and the fewer soldiers you have, the more valuable each one is.