Poker Tutorial Cash Game
Poker’s most famous hand, a royal flush cannot be beaten. It consists of the ace, king.
- Best Poker Sites For Cash Games. Online poker cash games (occasionally referred to as 'ring games') are huge. It's the most popular way to play online poker for real money in 2021, with the no limit Texas Hold'em variant getting the most action. So, where are the best places to play poker cash games online? Top 5 poker rooms for cash games 2021.
- Raise Your Edge. Raise Your Edge has not been around as long as some other poker.
- Estimated duration: 45 mins. Learn the basics of Texas Hold’em to get ready for the big game. Estimated duration: 50 mins. Now you know the basics, it’s time to learn a few concepts and considerations to boost your poker game. Estimated duration: 65 mins.
- After all, cash games are the purest form of poker since there are no prize pools or ICM concerns to worry about. Mastering the information here will make you a beast in whatever game you choose to play. There is a reason cash game specialists are the best players in the world. Why Should I Trust You to Teach Me Poker?
I am really glad that you found my easy to follow complete Texas Hold’em strategy guide where we will cover the basics as well as advanced concepts on how to play poker. The four-part tutorial is designed to benefit beginners, intermediate players, and even advanced players. No matter what your background, this guide will help you sharpen your skills with the end goal of making you a big winner in your chosen game.
I have been playing and teaching poker for over 10 years and know how difficult it can be to find useful information that actually leads to winning money at the game. My strength has always been in breaking down the game into simplified and easy to understand elements that optimize the speed at which anyone improves at poker. It is my belief that anyone can become an elite poker player with a bit of knowledge and hard work.
First, we need to establish the entire reason we play poker.
What Is Poker and What Is the Object of the Game?
You may be wondering why I would even bother to define something that might seem really obvious to anyone reading this guide.
The reason is that the vast majority of people who sit down at a poker game really don’t understand what they are trying to accomplish or what the object of the game truly is.
- They may think it’s all about making a better hand than your opponent or winning some giant pot with their monster hand.
- Others may believe that the “secret” to winning is to know when to orchestrate a well-timed bluff or figure out your opponents’ tells so that you can spot when they are bluffing.
On all accounts, everything that thinks these things is completely off base. Let’s establish the object of the game and what should be at the forefront of every decision you make at the poker table. That information will allow us to hone in on a formal definition for poker.
So, what is the object of the game in poker? The object of poker is to win more money or chips than your opponents over your lifetime by consistently making better decisions than them at every possible decision point.
That’s it.
So here’s the formal definition of poker: Poker is a family of card games where individual players compete to see who can win the most money or chips over the long term.
Ultimately, your goal as a player should be to figure out how to win more money. In this guide, we will focus on Texas Hold’em since it is the most popular game today. However, many of the concepts we will discuss will be relevant for any variant of poker you choose to play.
The Goal of This Guide
The mission of this guide (and website) is to expedite your journey toward mastering all the simple and complex concepts of poker so that you can become the best player you can be. Unlike other poker tutorials, I am not going to spend a bunch of time telling you what hands to raise, what to 3-bet, when to c-bet, etc. Each of those topics could fill an entire book. Besides, there are hundreds of articles, books, forum posts out there that go into the minutiae of that information in depth.
Instead, my objective is to provide a solid fundamental and theoretical foundation that allows you to comprehend poker strategy in a more efficient way. Basically, I want to teach you the proper mindset and give you the fundamental knowledge that allows you to maximize your potential. Once you understand the basics of how to win money in poker, building a strategy around that core goal becomes much easier. Put another way, if you don’t understand the information in my guide, learning poker would be like playing golf with a blindfold.
Who This Guide Is For
I wrote this tutorial for everyone. Whether you are new to the game, are a struggling intermediate player, or even an advanced player this guide has something for you. Beginners will benefit from obtaining all of the basic knowledge that I wish I had when I started over 10 years ago. Intermediate players will likely find a few things that they might have missed along the way. Advanced players will sharpen their skills by getting back to basics as a refresher course.
Whatever your background, this guide will help you either build or rebuild a poker game that is firmly based on sound fundamentals and theory. Once you master all of the concepts I have laid out for you, the rest all comes down to adjusting to your opponents. Your ultimate level of success in Texas Hold’em, or any other poker variant, depends on how well you adjust your strategy based on what other players are doing at the table.
What Format Will I Learn to Play?
This guide will focus on teaching you to win at Texas Hold’em cash games. Even so, the knowledge you will gain here will have relevance for any game format you choose. After all, cash games are the purest form of poker since there are no prize pools or ICM concerns to worry about. Mastering the information here will make you a beast in whatever game you choose to play. There is a reason cash game specialists are the best players in the world.
Why Should I Trust You to Teach Me Poker?
Because I actually win big at poker. I am not some famous “poker star” or someone who travels to the World Series of Poker every year. I am just one of many poker professionals who you have never heard of that plays poker as a side hobby instead of as a career.
The best thing is that I have been grinding the stakes that everyday players, like you and me, play right now in the real world. I know how the games run from 2NL all the way up to 600NL. I can teach you how to crush those games because that’s what I have been doing for years. I also am a winner in MTTs, SNGs, and even have won over 100 local live pub poker events. No matter the format, I can help you play better.
If you want a brief history of how I got started in poker, check out the about page. Or, if you prefer to see it with your own eyes, I have a ton of content on YouTube that shows me playing and talking through hands. In 2017 I completed something called the Spare Change Challenge, where I took some loose change from around the house and ran it up to $4,000 in about 70,000 hands. During that span, I also took first place in a small stakes MTT for $1,800 and had an ROI of 150%. By the way, the picture at the top of this page is one of my graphs.
What You Will Learn
For ease of navigation, I have split up the guide into 4 parts:
- Part 1: Basic Rules of Texas Hold’em Gameplay
This part is for people who are either complete beginners or need a refresher on how exactly the game is played. If you an intermediate player and already have a firm grasp of how to play Texas Hold’em, you may skip to part #2. - Part 2: Basic Poker Fundamentals & Theory
In this part, we cover the basics of poker strategy and fundamentals as well as where the money comes from in poker. - Part 3: Fundamentals of Advanced Poker Theory
The goal of part three is to start bridging the gap between the fundamentals of poker and how we use that information to formulate a winning strategy. - Part 4: Building Your Poker Strategy
Once you understand the basic fundamentals and theory, it’s time to create a core “vacuum” strategy that will serve as the foundation for all of your play. We will also discuss the mental side of poker and how to study and improve your game going forward.
Resources
Low stakes cash games almost by definition are supposed to be easy. After all, these games are often populated by some of the least skilled players that exist. Then as you play higher and higher limits, the competition becomes increasingly more competent and even world class at the highest stakes.
However, not all small stakes cash games are created equal. This is often the case right now for online poker players, especially those playing from places where the options are limited. Players are sometimes forced to play in relatively tough lineups online, even for very small amounts of money.
In this article I am going to discuss some of the best ways to beat tough low stakes cash games.
Succeeding Against Competent Low Stakes Poker Players
If there is one weakness that most competent players at the lower stakes have in common, it is an unwillingness to put big money in the middle without the nuts.
They will often pretend to be strong by making aggressive plays early on while the pot is relatively small, but once big portions of their stack are at risk, they will back down unless they have a really strong hand. And, of course, the great thing about poker is that it is really hard to make a strong hand.
Understanding this can lead to many profitable situations at the lower stakes where if you just have a little bit more heart than your opponent, you can take away many pots with little or nothing.
Now this doesn’t mean that you should turn into a maniac and start double-floating or raising the river every single hand. That’s a recipe for disaster. The key to taking away more pots versus competent poker players is all about knowing their tendencies.
More precisely, this means knowing who the weak players are.
Identifying the Weak Players at the Lower Stakes
Free Poker Tutorial Online
One of the easiest ways to spot the weaker players is by looking at how often they go to showdown. If you are playing online and are using a HUD, then you can simply refer to their WTSD% (went to showdown %).
Players who are averse to playing bigger pots without a strong hand will often be on the low end here. Typically when I spot somebody whose WTSD% is in the low 20’s or below, I can almost be certain that this is the type of player who can be moved off of hands.
Now there is one important caveat to using this stat — you need to make sure that you have a decent sample size on the player. If a player has only gone to showdown five times, for instance, then this stat could be wildly off the mark. This is why I always like to have at least a couple hundred hands on my opponent before relying too heavily on this statistic.
If you are not using a HUD, another way to identify the weaker players at the lower limits is simply to pay attention to the frequency of pots they win and the types of hands they are showing down.
If they tend to play a “fit or fold” type of game — e.g., making just a single continuation bet and then giving up if they don’t get the fold — then this is the type of player who you want to float against a lot and take pots away from. Weaker players will also rarely show up with a bluff or call down with a weaker hand like middle or bottom pair.
Taking Pots Away From the Weaker Players
There are a few other important points to consider when you are looking to win more pots versus the weaker players in these games.
1. Frequency
First, you need to make sure you aren’t trying to bluff the same player every single time. You need to lay off and just let them have the pot from time to time.
Otherwise you run the risk of appearing like a maniac to a particular player and forcing that player to start fighting back. You want to make aggressive plays just often enough in order to make it believable.
2. Equity in the Pot
Secondly, you want to make sure that you have some equity in the pot when you are making an aggressive play. There is often no reason to run a bluff when you literally have nothing at all. Always try to have a least some sort of weak draw like a gutshot, or a semi-playable hand if making a move preflop.
On the river, of course, sometimes it will make sense to bet or raise with absolutely nothing because this is the only way to win the pot. However, on all previous streets always make sure that you have outs.
3. Board Texture and Situation
Lastly, it is very important that you make aggressive plays in the right spots and in the right situations. For instance, it is not a good idea to three-bet light preflop versus a tight player who opened under the gun. Most people will open with their tightest range from early position.
It would make much more sense to make this play versus someone opening from the button or the cutoff. The reason why is that most people will open with their widest range from late position because they are often just trying to steal the blinds.
Postflop, a similar logic applies. If you are the preflop caller it isn’t a good idea to make aggressive plays on Broadway heavy boards like . Somebody who raises preflop is more likely to have some of these cards in their range.
It is a much better idea to semi-bluff on a board that is wet and has lower cards — e.g., like . As the preflop caller, you are more likely to have cards that connect with a board like this. And more importantly your opponent is less likely to have connected in any major way with these kinds of boards.
If you are the preflop raiser, the exact opposite applies. You should absolutely use scare cards such as an or a to your advantage. A weaker player will often let go of a middle pair-type hand because they are afraid that you hit the Broadway cards that you are representing.
Final Thoughts
You are never going to “crush” a tough lineup of decent players at the lower stakes. Your opponents simply do not make enough big fundamental mistakes in order for this to happen.
Poker Cash Game Tutorial
In fact, the best approach to these games is actually not to play in them at all. There should always be at least one really bad player at the table when you are playing at stakes this low. But for various reasons this is not always possible in today’s online poker environment.
Hopefully if you do find yourself at a tough low stakes table, some of the strategies outlined in this article will help you gain a bit of an edge versus the more competent players in these games.
Nathan “BlackRain79” Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books, Crushing the Microstakes and Modern Small Stakes. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.
Want to stay atop all the latest in the poker world? If so, make sure to get PokerNews updates on your social media outlets. Follow us on Twitter and find us on both Facebook and Google+!
Tags
cash game strategylive pokeronline pokerlow stakes strategyaggressioncontinuation bettingbluffingsemi-bluffingdrawing handsno-limit hold’em