As a poker player, your ultimate goal is probably to one day get a shot at the biggest stakes available. Of course, few players ever actually end up realizing this dream. Nonetheless, moving up in limits is an integral aspect of any poker player’s career. Whether you are moving from the penny games to the dime games, or mid stakes to high stakes, there is always something new to learn.
A lot of players get overwhelmed and nervous when they eventually decide to make whatever jump they are going to make. This isn’t unusual at all, and you may only be reading this article because you are this exact same way. The remedy to this situation is quite simple on paper, but like most things in poker, will take some actual gameplay experience to really get a handle of.
Just as poker players constantly move up in limits, any good player will also learn how to move down in limits. There is a lot of negativity associated with moving down in limits. Aside from the obvious frustration, moving down in games is often indicative of some type of failure. While you may have very well failed in a higher limit game, there is next to nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. It is one thing if you took reckless shots or lost your bankroll in a fit of rage, but virtually every player will have to legitimately move down in stakes at some point in their career.
The more that you move up, the tougher that the games become, and the tougher that the games become, the less money that there is to be made. Unless you are Phil Ivey, you will most likely reach that one limit where you are no longer capable of winning at a respectable rate. Now, if this limit is something like 50NL, you have a lot of work to do. On the other hand, if you are in a 5/10 game and find that you just can’t generate a profit at 10/20, you might just not be good enough. Not being “good enough” is something that many players can’t and/or are unwilling to handle. Maybe you don’t have the proper bankroll, maybe your temperament is holding you back, or maybe you are simply getting outplayed on a regular basis. Whatever the reason is, moving down will help you regain your confidence and rebuild your bankroll.
The bubble is the most nerve racking part of any poker tournament. On one hand you are about to make the money, but on the other hand you may very well bust before you earn anything at all.
You are usually going to be in one of three positions as the bubble approaches: big stack, average stack, or short stack. The strategy that you adhere to will depend on how many chips you are working with. There is nothing more important than your relative stack size when you are playing the bubble in a tournament.
On the Short Stack Near the Bubble
If you have a short stack as the bubble approaches, be prepared to cross your fingers and hope for the best. For the most part, this is about all that you can realistically do. You are going to eventually have to go all in whether you have a strong hand or not. If you wait around for a big hand as opposed to taking your chances with a weaker hand, you might blind yourself out of the tournament, giving yourself no shot of cashing (or winning) at all.
Online poker has seen the prevalence of HUDs (Heads Up Displays) rise each and every year. These HUDs allow players to quickly analyze the way that their opponents play. For example, a quick glimpse of a HUD can tell you how aggressive a player is, whether they give up on the flop, and much more. Needless to say, all of this information makes game play much easier. There are a handful of general statistics that players tend to rely on, with the rest of the information being more secondary. If you are using either PokerTracker or Hold’em Manager or other similar software, the following sets of statistics will be on your screen whenever you sit down, so it is important that you know how to assess them.
PFR
PFR stands for pre flop raise. The pre flop raise number is the percentage of times (out of 100) that any given player makes a raise pre flop. If a player has a PFR of 40, you know that they are very, very aggressive, too loose actually. A PFR of anywhere from 16-30 can be profitable for short handed cash game players, whereas a lower PFR makes more sense for a full ring player. Remember that sample sizes are important for all of the statistics that you are looking at for these players. 100 hands is the minimum number for which you should put any faith in the data available.
In the aggressive environment of today’s poker games, particularly on the internet, 3-betting is a near necessity. If you are not 3-betting at least on occasion, you are going to be eaten alive. There is literally no winning strategy that does not involve a fair dosage of 3-bets. Now, there are multiple uses for 3-bets and there are different ways in which they can be implemented. For example, a 3-bet with pocket aces is incredibly standard from any position pre flop, where as a 3-bet with K2 suited might only make sense once in a blue moon. These different situations are what will need to be considered whenever the opportunity to 3-bet arises.
Position
As is often the case with fundamental poker skills, 3-bets rely heavily on position. 3-betting out of position is often asking for trouble, whether you do or don’t have a particularly strong hand. Obviously it doesn’t make sense to pass up on a 3-bet with a solid hand simply because you are out of position. It does, however, make sense to skip some 3-betting opportunities when you have a weaker holding and are out of position. To further complicate things, there are some rare spots where it could be ok to make a 3-bet out of position with a marginal hand, but these situations are far and few between. You should always be contemplating what your options will be after the flop is dealt whenever you are making a three bet pre flop, or any move pre flop for that matter.
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