WHEN TO BET

A major determinant of your success in a hand is not if you won or lost, but by how well you played it. Consistently making the right decisions – the right plays – is what’s most important when you play Texas Holdem. That means either winning the pot or folding. Establishing a betting strategy is an essential component to playing a hand well and getting your opponents to put chips in the pot when you have a strong hand, and minimizing your loses when it’s weak.

No matter how you develop your Texas Holdem strategy, you should occasionally deviate from your usual play so that you don’t become predictable. Good players will notice if you’re predictable and always check or call most hands, but then on one hand, if you suddenly start raising, they’ll know you have a strong hand and will fold. The goal is to get chips in the pot when you have the nuts, and you need people in the game to contribute chips to the pot. Mix your play up to confuse the other players so that you’re unpredictable. This also applies to you observing your opponents: if a player who usually folds or checks suddenly raises, you know there is a good chance they have the best hand at the table.

When you do have a very strong hand, you should begin betting small and gradually increase the size of your bets so you have more people contributing to the pot.

Knowledge of other players’ betting habits will help you determine how far you can push them before they fold.

Betting isn’t just done when you have the nuts – you can also use it to gain information about the strength of the other players’ hands. Re-raise if you want to see how strong your opponent’s hand is. An action like that might scare them into folding if they have a weak or mediocre hand, or they might call your raise or re-raise if they have a strong one. You might not want the pot to get too big, so bet defensively to make sure you don’t have to call a large pot.

Before you even think about betting, it is a good idea to develop a list of starting hands that you’ll play, in addition to understanding positional advantage and how you can play different hands in different positions and situations. Once you have your list, try them out first on free tables and make any adjustments that are necessary before you move to real-money tables.

What to play Texas Holdem? PokerStars.com is the biggest online poker site and they have busy, free tables with betting limits starting as low as $2-$4, which is great for beginners so they don’t burn through their free money right away. (Don’t worry: you can get additional free money if you do run out.)

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