Your standard poker player will correlate bet sizes with a player’s relative hand strength. In some games and at certain limits this will be acceptable, but there are many situations where a small bet could be the biggest indicator of strength. The term value bet was derived from a bet that was only made to cater to the opposition. What is the use in betting $72 if your opponent is only going to call off $60?
Value bets work both ways, however, and you need to make sure that you aren’t the victim. When you have a strong hand you will want to extract each and every penny possible from the other players, but you want to lose the least whenever you might be beat. It is much harder to determine when someone else is value betting than it is to make a solid value bet of your own. You will have all areas of the value bet covered once you are able to not only identify spots where you should be value betting, but also the times where you are being value bet. A penny saved is a penny earned, and this is never truer than when dumping a hand when you are being value bet.
Prior Bets
The easiest way to analyze someone’s strength is to consider how they had been acting in the hand up until the spot you are currently in. Think about not only what the board is, but how they have been reacting as circumstances continued to change. Poker is a game that runs amuck with adjustments, and it is of the utmost importance that you change as the hand does.
Good poker playing demands an advantage. Here are some alternative methods you may want to consider to improve your game and give you an edge over other players.
HYPNOSIS
What your mind can conceive, you can achieve: these eight little words can be the key to attaining your goal, whether it be to quit smoking, stop biting your fingernails, or even play better poker. Hypnosis can be very applicable to poker when used for self-improvement. It can also be highly effective in helping you stay relaxed, increasing your attention and focus, controlling emotions, and improving your unconscious memory.
The word hypnosis is derived from the Greek word “hypnos,” meaning sleep, but it’s so much more. A better definition of hypnosis would be the art of communication and the avoidance of conflict. The act of hypnotizing is making someone go under a state of reduced consciousness while the person remains awake. The general state of mind of those under hypnosis is extremely open to positive suggestions and able to achieve an elevated level of relaxation.
Poker players love to make sick calls, but the problem is that there are usually 20 bad calls for every correct one. There is a big difference between making a tough call because you genuinely think you are good and making a tough call because it would be awesome if you happened to be good.
There are many poker players who make nonsensical calls on a regular basis just praying that they might luck out and take down the pot. Sure, they will inevitably take down a pot from time to time, but you won’t be profitable winning one out of ten times. You should be looking to make a solid call in a spot where your hand is going to be good a decent amount of the time.
It will take an expert read for you to pull off a good call because after all there is a reason why the call is difficult. You should definitely have a precise range narrowed down for the other player if you think your weak hand is going to be the best when you flip them over. Sometimes you will think that they are very weak, but their weak hand will be just a tad bit stronger than yours. You can’t call a bluff just because you are sure someone else is bluffing, you still have to be sure that you have the best hand. Making a bluff call is going to be extremely frustrating, so you should be very sure that you have the best hand before you make that really light call down. You will be wrong from time to time, but if you can look at the hand in hindsight and say that you would do the same thing again, the odds are that your play was just fine.
A straddle in poker is when the player after the big blind puts out a bet two times the big blind in the dark. The intent of a straddle is to help add some life to the game. Straddles, however, should be the most profitable for the players who aren’t putting them out. What is the point in putting out money if you don’t have to, especially when you haven’t even seen your cards yet?
If you really think about it there are few legitimate reasons why a straddle would ever be beneficial. Perhaps if your aim as a poker player was just to have fun you would be well served by straddling from time to time, but it isn’t going to give a big boost to your bottom line. What you can do, however, is learn to exploit the players who do straddle.
Live poker is going to be the place where you usually run into a player who straddles, and it is seldom a challenge to make their extra bet an addition to your stack. This doesn’t mean that there is any way that you could take down every pot pre flop that a straddle was involved in, but it does mean that in the long run a straddle is going to be to your benefit. Some poker players fear a straddle because they don’t want to have to unnecessarily risk any more money than they have to, but there is no need for your play to be risky.
Poker players are known for their inability to let a hand go. Once you play a hand you should try to put it behind you, but sometimes a little recollection will force you to realize that you may have made the incorrect play. Common sense is one of the biggest weapons that any poker player can have. If you are able to combine a little bit of common sense with some critical thinking you will have a huge edge on the vast majority of your opponents.
Poker is not a ridiculously complicated game, no matter what anyone tries to tell you. Poker is, however, extremely complex. There is a very big difference between complicated and complex. The word complicated implies that something is hard to understand or do, but complex just means that it will take some time to understand. Poker players tend to make a complex situation into a complicated one. This is definitely one of the most widespread flaws amongst poker players. Some players try to out-think their opponents so much that they end up confusing themselves.
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