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The C-Bet

The continuation bet, also known as the c-bet, is an aggressive strategy that is characterized by successive raises. Specifically, a c-bet is when you raise pre-flop then follow that up by raising again on the flop, regardless of whether your hand was improved or not.

The pre-flop raise is a move that tells your opponents that you believe your hand is good or that you think your chances are big with your hand. The flop c-bet is a follow up of that move and shows that after the flop has dropped, you still like think you have the best chance to win. Your goal is to represent a strong hand by showing aggression and avoiding showdown by getting your opponents to fold.

Is is profitable?

In the lower stages of the game, where a lot of starters and beginners play, players usually make a lot of mistakes. One of these mistakes is not giving up on weak and marginal hands and always wanting to see the flop, thus leading to a lot of players calling your raise. The good thing about this is most of them are going to miss the flop, leaving a lot of dead money on the table. A good strong c-bet will usually get these players to fold and get the money to you.

Good Situations

The best time to c-bet is when the flop has helped your hand – or when it seems that the flop has helped your hand. When you raise pre-flop, the opponent is likely putting you on big cards. When these big cards appear on the flop, you can represent a strong hand and induce your opponents to fold by c-betting.

Flops that also seem like they do not help your opponent are good for this strategy. Basically, flops that do not help you both are most likely in your favor as you have shown aggression before the flop, meaning you were most likely ahead by then.

Heads-up play is also good for c-betting. The reason being that your opponent will not hit the flop as much as he’ll miss, making this an ideal situation for a raise.

Bad Situations

A c-bet will not be a good strategy when the flop has improved your opponent’s hand and gives him a good reason to call. The post-flop raise is made for the main reason of avoiding showdown and taking the flop. When the opponent has a better hand and a reason to not let go of it, then a c-bet will be a bad strategy.

Another bad situation is when the flop gives opponents a lot of draws, like when the flop gives someone a combo straight and flush draw. There is a very big chance that your opponent has hit something with this hand that raising him will probably be a bad play.

A multi-way pot is also not an ideal spot for a c-bet. The more players there are, the lesser your chances of having the best hand. Additionally, the raise that you will make will have to go through a lot of players and someone is bound to call it.

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You are a beginner. You thought poker would be easy. You start playing. You keep on losing. You try to get better but don’t know how.

Do you suck at poker? Is this game just not for you? Is there anything you can do to get better?

The fact is, you are not that far behind. Those players who keep on taking your money aren’t really as good as you. All you need is a mastery of a few basic principles of the game and you will get better.

One of the most basic poker strategies for beginners is to play with fewer hands. This allows you to cut your losses from playing mediocre hands to the flop, only to fold them when someone raises.

In poker, disregarding specific suits, there are 169 possible starting hands. Out of these hands, only 5 of these are considered as premium. These hands are:

1. Pocket Aces (AA) 2. Pocket Kings (KK) 3. Pocket Queens (QQ) 4. Suited Ace King (AKs) 5. Pocket Jacks (JJ)

These are the 5 hands that a beginner should always play if no one else has raised before him. Other than that, playing a hand less than AA or AK may be considered a mistake.

I’m not saying that these 5 hands are the only hands you should play with. What I’m saying is you should learn to fold more often. The strategy of playing only good hands is known as playing tight and is the most profitable strategy for a beginner.

If you are not facing a raise, then you may play any hand with any kind of value. If you are facing a raise, then you should select the hands you would play with. A good idea is to choose hands that may give you the nuts or hands that help you not get dominated by your opponent’s hand.

As a beginner, the hands you should play with should only be the top 10-15 starting hands in Hold’em. This gives you the best chance to win and maximize your profits. Here are the top 15 starting hands:

1. Pocket Aces (AA) 2. Pocket Kings (KK) 3. Pocket Queens (QQ) 4. Ace King Suited (AKs) 5. Pocket Jacks (JJ) 6. Pocket Tens (TT) 7. Ace Queen Suited (AQs) 8. Ace Jack Suited (AJs) 9. Ace King Off Suit (AKo) 10. King Queen Suited (KQs) 11. Ace Ten Suited (ATs) 12. King Jack Suited (KJs) 13. Ace Queen Suited (AQs) 14. Pocket Nines (99) 15. Jack Queen Suited (JQs)

For the best poker advice, head on to IncreaseYourPokerIq.com and become a great poker player today!

Read the villain!

Poker tells are clues on how well your opponents play. They give you a slight idea on what type of opponent you have and on what type of cards he probably has. It allows you to make good reads on your opponents and allow you to make better decisions with your hands.

This is easier to spot in live poker as you can see your opponent right in front of you. But in online poker, tells are much harder to come by and very much harder to spot, especially for beginners. Knowing this, I have compiled some of the easier and transparent online poker tells for you!

Basic Poker Tells

The guy who must always see the flop

This player always wants to see the flop, no matter what kind of hand he has. He will call or limp in frequently to try and see if he can improve his bad hand on the flop. This guy lacks caution and experience and can be very easily taken advantage of.

The Nit

This player always wants to make sure that he has a good hand before betting to see the flop. He doesn’t like betting on draws and he almost never bluffs. He doesn’t like taking chances and only bets big when he has a monster. If you are heads up and this player bets aggressively, it is very likely that he has a very good hand. It would be best for you to fold against him, unless you’re also holding a very strong hand of course.

Observe Your Villain’s Habits!

In poker, live or online, you have to make good reads and predictions on your opponents. Using poker tells helps make this easier. This knowledge may help improve your poker game in leaps and bounds. You have to read your opponent’s behavior, assign him to a range, then make informed decisions based on that. This will help you become a better player in no time!

There are a lot more poker tels you can use online. And they all involve observing your opponent’s behavior including the speed of his action, the size of his bets, and how it all compares to his previous betting patterns. It also helps to see if your opponent makes use of check boxes. Like if a player instantly raises you, it probably means he used the bet/raise all button and that he has a very strong hand.

You have to have the right poker mentality to improve and be a winning poker player today!

The first step towards becoming a player who does not merely build his poker ego on baseless arrogance and luck or a player who never deviates from a few set rules in order to stay safe against better players, the first step to becoming a good player is to realize that there is always room to improve. Poker is a game of introspection as much as a game of skill, luck, or of “reading” opponents. You must first decide whether or not you want to take the winding way of the tireless perfectionist (who never achieves his goal) in the first place. Then you want to learn to be frank with yourself and define precisely your current strengths and weaknesses.

There are also talented players out there who do not project arrogance and do not play by a few rules they learned either from the literature or at the table. Their roadblock to improvement is to rest on their laurels and never grow. No inspiration here, these lazy players rely on rare strokes of brilliance to win a couple of hands..

Neglecting weaknesses and relying on a few strong points is perilous behavior for a poker player. Opponents aren’t all nitwits and can zero in on the fact that you constantly make the same moves, although successfully, and can figure out a way to get around them. They will eventually surprise you with one large move against you. Such players have paid attention to more facets of the game and have improved their skills. They have confidence in the variety of moves they make.

No boxer ever boxed with just one hand. Hone your best qualities, but do keep sharpening as many of the other required abilities as you can. The next step towards progressive improvement after you recognize your weaknesses is to learn to do that which, as Bartleby the scrivener would say, “you would rather not to.”

To learn this takes two basic things: to realize that a game isn’t worth it unless you intend to win and to acquire a disciplined habit of doing things you dislike. The first may be a subtle point. Some people mechanically try to acquire a habit without know why they are doing it and they eventually give up or don’t get far. You must see that to blindly follow a routine or to rely on a single great skill in the blind hope that you will not have to deal with the rest of the game is not engaging the game for real.

A good golfer will have visions of where he wants the ball to go and the ideal way to put it there. A good poker player must do the same: envision himself as more than a competent player of the game, feel the rush of excitement that leads to triumphant results, and come to the decision that this is a good thing. If your imagination is too stifled to experience this feeling, you need to admit to yourself that you really don’t get it and explore other opportunities that will successfully engage you. If this vision, however, stirs your passion, work on improving all your skills and the results will amaze you. As an added bonus, achieving the discipline it takes to consistently do things that do not appeal to you and you may even fear, is in itself rewarding.

The author is a successful limit cash game player. He plays poker online and receives Rakeback at Poker Nordica and Rakeback at Doyles Room.

A common mistake in online poker is to play way above your bankroll. That’s because most new players don’t even know they should have between 15 and 25 times their buy-in sitting in their combined, online poker accounts. So for example, if you want to learn on ten buck tournament tables, your minimum bankroll should be two hundred dollars. If you put one hundred dollars down every time you sit at a no limit cash table, you’re minimum bankroll should be two grand. So as you can see your choice of poker game, has a substantial impact on what level of bankroll you need to cover your bets.

The minimum poker bankroll for a multigame budget is probably around $300 and this is after you have built up your bankroll by winning enough hands. Now keep in mind $300 is a not the number you hold in your pocket. This is a separate account for your poker playing, and you’ll only be using a low portion of that each sitting.

We all learn in distinct ways and normally find one of the 4 types of games whether it be sit and go tournaments, multi-table tournaments, fixed limit ring games, or no limit cash games, one will in the end become a favourite for your discovering the game and bankroll building. Since there are numerous personalities in poker, it is altogether standard to favor one over the other that you are most productive at. In fact, it’s advisable to stick with the game that is working for you the best, because that strategy can finance your education in other poker games. You should in reality keep track of all of your games, and win/loss, so that you do know which game, time, and level are most effectual for you at this stage of your hold’em experience.

Variance is actually part of your poker bankroll. The reason why a poker bankroll might appear unreasonably high likened to the amount you are earmarked to play with is because of variance, luck, or training. You can’t expect to begin with a low bankroll and be a perfect player, nor can you deflect the sometimes viciously long runs of weak cards and terrible beats. If you play consistently within your bankroll, these performance drops are much easier to get over, allowing you to return the following session, projecting your same moneymaking game.

Making bankroll management a precedence is an absolutely indispensable skill that all of the best players in the world realize and exercise. What genuinely matters in the mental process of building a bankroll is how relentless you can become at making good decisions. This takes practice and you can expect to play upwards of a hundred thousand hands before you altogether realize how good and bad things can get, and a greater understanding of your own style of play and restrictions.

Your task is to keep learning more and more, as you will learn that the players who do know their profit goals, maintain a solid bankroll and stick to good principles are ALWAYS the ones who seem to have good records on shark scope and tournament database sites. The logic is simple, but not playing within your poker bankroll will cost you a lot of reloads.

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