Texas hold’em is popular because it’s a skill based game that gives you the chance to win lots of money.

1. Texas Holdem Videos
2. Texas Fold'em
3. When Should I Fold In Texas Hold'em

And this is exactly why I started playing the game. Visions of Chris Moneymaker and Greg Raymer winning giant World Series of Poker prizes convinced me to take up Texas hold’em.

The top 5 strategies for novice poker players, and intermediate-level poker players include the following: Opening Hands, Bet Sizing, Limping, Folding, and Positioning. Once you’ve mastered these 5 Texas Hold’em poker strategies, you’ll be able to incorporate many other strategies into your overall game plan. The key to good preflop play is to be selectively aggressive, with there being very little in the middle - you should either always be raising or folding. This makes things a lot easier if you are a new player because you have limited yourself to 2 simple (and profitable) options rather than getting confused with whether it is worth limping-in. While it is easy to learn poker rules so that you can sit down and play, it might take a hell lot of time to master the game, and that is why I decided to create this Texas Holdem strategy guide. While these top 57 best Texas Holdem tips alone will not make you a world-class player, they will surely help you build the right fundamentals, avoid many costly mistakes, and outgrow a big part of. If the action is folded to you and you have a hand you want to play, you should generally come out raising. If you don't think your hand is good enough to raise with, then just fold.

The only problem is that I didn’t bother learning much about poker before diving headfirst into the matter. I’d seen too many Hollywood movies where the hero stares down an opponent and out bluffs them with 2 7 off suit.

Needless to say, I donated a lot of money to other players until making it a point to learn Texas hold’em strategy. If you’re trying to get your bearings in poker, follow along as I cover 10 of the biggest mistakes that I made.

1. Fold…and Then Fold Some More

It’s often said that folding is the best play in poker. And this is one of the few tips that I learned before starting my poker journey in the mid-2000s.

But it was a while before I fully understood how often one should fold in Texas hold’em.

It’s easy to fold when you have 4 9 offsuit in early position. But it’s much harder to let go of 6 7 suited when you’re in middle position and wanting to play a drawing hand.

The truth of the matter is that you’ll be folding far more often than playing hands because you want to avoid playing hands with a low winning percentage.

Another aspect to consider here is table position. You generally need a strong hand when raising from an early position because you don’t have as much betting information from opponents.

Here’s an example of putting everything together:

• You’re on a 9-player table.
• You hold pocket 6s in middle position.
• One player raises from early position.
• Another player re-raises from early position.
• You fold because early position players are showing major hand strength.

My overall advice is that you should fold lots of hands in the beginning until gaining experience. You’ll likely lose money in the beginning, but you want to minimize losses by frequently folding.

2. Bet Sizing Is Crucial

The biggest Texas hold’em aspect that I was clueless on is bet sizing. This refers to the strategic approach that players take when deciding how much to bet in no-limit Texas hold’em.

Of course, every player at the table is bet sizing to a degree whether they know it or not. But it takes a skilled approach to maximize winnings in favorable situations and limit losses in unfavorable spots.

How you size bets will heavily depend on the situation. Here are some different scenarios that you’ll run into with Texas hold’em:

• You have the nuts and want to extract maximum value out of an opponent(s).
• You have a good preflop hand (e.g. aces, kings, queens) and are betting to isolate an opponent.
• You have a good drawing hand (e.g. K Q suited) and want to appear strong preflop.
• You’re isolated with a weak opponent and want to bluff them out of a pot with a marginal hand.

Texas Holdem Videos

These examples illustrate how there’s no one-size-fits-all strategy for each scenario. This is why bet sizing involves a delicate balance of profiling your opponents (discussed later) and understanding the situation.

Let’s look at an example:

• You have A A on a flop of A J J, giving you a set of aces.
• Your opponent bets the pot.
• The opponent has been playing tight.
• You’re certain that they have a set of jacks, leaving you in the lead.
• You need to bet in a manner that maximizes your value without forcing a fold.
• I’d use a 2x pot raise here because you should try and get something out of this situation without betting too big.

The one thing that you want to avoid as a beginner is betting without a plan.

This is exactly the problem that I suffered when starting out. I’d do stupid things like go all in with a marginal hand just to steal blinds.

You might steal the blinds a fair number of times with this strategy, but you’re in major trouble if a good hand calls you.

3. Proper Bankroll Management Is Crucial

Like many new poker players, I started out with absolutely no clue on bankroll management. Instead, I just used side income to buy into whatever cash game stakes or tournaments I felt like in the moment.

For example, I might deposit $100 on a poker site and start playing in $0.10/$0.20 cash games ($20 buy-in). Beginners may think this is enough money because you have five cash game buy-ins.

But the problem is that poker contains a fair amount of luck. Even the most skilled players need a large bankroll so that they can survive downswings.

This begs the question of how you figure out how much money you need.

The first matter involves determining how much disposable income you can put towards poker. I’ll use $1,000 as an example for both cash game and tournament players here.

The second step is to determine what stakes you can comfortably play with this amount of money.

A good guideline for cash game players is to only play stakes where you can afford 30 buy-ins or more. With $1,000, you’d need to play $0.15/$0.30 stakes ($30 buy-in) or lower.

A general guideline for tournament players is to have a bankroll worth at least 100 buy-ins. Taking the standard 10% tournament fees into account, you’d want to play in events with less than a $10 + $1 buy-in.

Tournament bankrolls can differ, though, because even good players can go 30 or more tourneys without cashing. You may decide to play stakes where you can afford 200 buy-ins or more.

The overall point is to put effort into bankroll management before you start playing real money poker.

4. Playing Aggressive Doesn’t Mean Being a Maniac

When I first started taking Texas hold’em strategy seriously, I kept reading about how players need to be aggressive.

I remember seeing references to players like Gus Hansen and Phil Ivey pulling off incredible bluffs thanks to their aggression. I also saw where some top online players raise with drawing hands against tight opponents.

This sparked me to turn up the aggression and start making more bets and raises with marginal hands. Sometimes it worked, but the majority of the time it caused me to bleed out money much faster.

The truth is that I’d become a maniac without even knowing it. And this is only effective until you run into skilled players who can identify your hand range and betting patterns.

Needless to say, I learned that being aggressive doesn’t mean raising like a crazy man and trying to push everybody out of hands. Instead, you should gain more experience before opening up your hand range and being more aggressive.

You need to play at certain stakes for a while so that you can identify patterns and better spot weak players. This allows you to pull off bluffs and steal more pots.

5. Pot Odds Help You Make Decisions on Drawing Hands

I often struggled with deciding when to make calls with drawing hands on the flop and turn. The process would’ve been much easier if I understood pot odds at the time.

Pot odds is a method of calculating how much money you need to contribute to the pot. You can then use this info to help you decide whether it’s worth calling with a drawing hand.

You can either use ratios or percentages to figure out pot odds. I personally like percentages and will use these in my examples.

But keep in mind that you can also use percentage to odds calculators if you’re more comfortable with odds.

The first step with pot odds is deciding how much you must contribute to the pot.

1 – The pot is worth $80.

2 – Your opponent bets $20.

3 – This makes the pot worth $100.

4 – You need to call $20 to stay in the hand.

5 – We divide 20 by 100 to find out the percentage you contribute.

6 – Your pot odds are 20% (4:1 odds).

The next step is to consider your number of outs, or remaining cards that will complete your hand. Here’s how this works:

• You have Q J, and the flop is 10 9 3.
• Four 8s and four kings will help you make a straight.
• This gives you 8 outs to make your hand.

The last step is to figure out your hand equity, or chances of making your hand. And we use a simple formula that involves multiplying outs by 2 and adding 1.

Here’s how this works:

• 8 outs x 2 = 16.
• 16 + 1 = 17% chance of completing your straight.
• Your hand equity (17%) is lower than your pot odds (20%).
• Don’t make this call, because you’re contributing more to the pot than you’ll win in the long term.

Implied odds and reverse implied odds add advanced layers to calling with draw hands. But knowing pot odds is enough to get you by as a new player.

6. You Need to Profile Other Players

Another big mistake that I made as a beginner involved multitasking during online poker sessions. I’d read Yahoo articles, download music, and check my fantasy football team in between hands.

I thought that as long as I understood basic strategy, I’d be fine on the poker tables while doing all this other stuff.

But the truth is that you need to develop a good understanding of your opponents. And this only happens when you profile them during hands.

A few things that you want to look for include how they bet in certain situations, what hands they take to showdowns, and how often they’re seeing flops.

Some poker sites allow you to use software that offers data on your opponents. But if you’re not allowed to use software, then you’ll definitely need to watch your opponents’ tendencies.

The goal is to know enough about your opponent that it helps you make profitable calls and folds.

7. Dedicate a Portion of Your Poker Sessions to Strategy

The way I started learning poker strategy was by reading online articles whenever I was in the mood, and this helped me develop a decent strategy base.

But the problem is that I wasn’t fully unleashing the potential of the information I was learning because I didn’t use what I’d learned until the next poker session, which was sometimes 2-3 days later.

I ultimately found that the best way to learn is by dividing your sessions up into strategy and playing.

The ratio depends upon if you’re a new or experienced player. The latter group will need to dedicate less time to learning the game.

As a beginner, I recommend spending 1-hour studying strategy for every 2 hours that you’re playing. If you’re going to play in a 4-hour session, then you can tack on another 2 hours for strategy.

Assuming you don’t have 6 hours to dedicate to poker, you can instead play 2.5 hours and spend the remaining 1.5 hours learning.

The key is that you’re studying and then applying what you’ve learned immediately to the tables. This helps reinforce strategy and can also make you perform better during sessions.

8. Being Pot Committed Is a Mathematical Concept

I was once one of many poker players who had a misunderstanding of being pot committed. My thinking was that if you bet enough in a hand, you should risk of the rest of your chips no matter what because you’ve invested so much into the pot.

This is completely wrong, though, because pot committed refers to using math to decide if folding is no longer a viable option.

Here’s an easy example of how you can determine whether you’re truly pot committed:

• You bet 50% of your stack by the flop.
• An opponent shoves their stack on the turn and has you covered.
• The pot now contains 50% of your chips and 100% of the opponent’s chips.
• Your pot odds are 25% (3:1 odds) to make the call.
• You only have to win this hand 25% of the time to break even.

You should make this call if you have over a 25% chance to win based on your cards and the opponent’s playing tendencies.

Again, being pot committed isn’t just about how much you’ve invested into a hand. You also have to use math to determine whether you should risk the rest of the chips.

9. Chips Mean More in Tournaments

Chips are obviously important in cash games because they represent your money. But what I didn’t know is that chips are even more valuable in a tournament.

Chips represent your tournament life, and you’re finished once they run out.

This is why it’s critical to understand differences in value between a cash game and tournament chip stack. The main thing to be aware of is that you should avoid thin value situations in tourneys.

A good example is the times where you gain a slight advantage by calling based on pot odds.

You should always call in cash games when you’re getting good pot odds because the goal is to maximize your long-term expected value. But there are times where it’s too risky to call in a tournament when you’re barely getting favorable odds.

One exception is when your chip stack is worth less than 10 big blinds. At this point, you should shove with any decent hand so that you can double your chip stack and gain some leverage.

But do your best to avoid risky situations in the early stages of tournaments, when the blinds aren’t a factor.

10. It Takes a While to Prove That You’re Beating Certain Stakes

Many poker players want to quickly climb the ladder and play higher stakes. I myself was in this boat because I’d sometimes take shots at the next level when I wasn’t even beating the current stakes.

The truth is that it takes a large sample size to determine whether or not you’re beating a specific limit. The general guideline is that you should play at least 100,000 hands before knowing if you’re successful at the current stakes.

Does this mean that you have to play 100,000 hands, though, before you can move up?

No, especially if you’re crushing a limit and are fairly confident that you’re superior to the opponents. But it helps to play as many hands as your patience allows before moving on to higher stakes.

Conclusion

Poker is one of the most difficult forms of gambling. You’re not playing against a static house edge, but rather players who have critical thinking skills and the ability to adjust.

But, as many players have proven over the years, poker can be beaten. The key is that you need to continue studying strategy and gaining experience.

Of course, it certainly doesn’t hurt to get off to a good start. And by not making the same mistakes that I did the beginning, you can play better and give yourself a stronger chance to win.

Casinos are always looking for new games to offer bored gamblers. Over the last decade or 2, these games are more commonly related to poker than anything else. But games like these—including Scientific Gaming’s Ultimate Texas Holdem—are more akin to blackjack than to poker. In fact, dealing Ultimate Texas Holdem is considered dealing a novelty casino game. The College of Southern Nevada covers how to deal Ultimate Texas Holdem in their blackjack class.

What’s the big difference between Ultimate Texas Holdem (and games like it) and “real” poker games? The main difference is who you’re competing with. In a so-called real poker game, you’re competing with the other players at the table. If you win money, you’re winning it from them. If you lose money, you’re losing it to your competitors at the table.

This isn’t a value judgment. It’s perfectly all right to play house-banked casino games. Gamblers do it every day. I’m pointing out the distinction because it’s important to know what you’re getting into when you play a casino game.

With that as a premise—understanding in detail what you’re getting into when you’re playing a casino game—I offer you this post: “The Definitive Guide to Ultimate Texas Holdem.” The idea is to share everything you would ever need or want to know about Ultimate Texas Holdem. Luckily, it’s not that complicated a game. There’s no need to write an entire book about it, like you would do with blackjack or poker.

Ultimate Texas Holdem is a card game where you play heads-up against a casino dealer. Other players at the table are also playing heads-up against the dealer. It features a progressive jackpot, among other payouts.

You start by making 2 equal-sized bets:

• The Ante Bet
• The Blind Bet

At most casinos, the minimum bet is either $5 or $10. The maximum bet is usually between $50 an $500.

You also have 2 optional bets you can make:

• The Trips Bonus Bet
• The Progressive Bet

You start by getting 2 hole cards from the dealer—these are 2 cards that are dealt to you face-down, just like in regular Texas holdem.

When you get those cards, you can choose from the following actions:

• Check
• Bet 3X the Ante (A “Play” Bet.)
• Bet 4X the Ante (Also a “Play” Bet.)

After you’ve made your decision, the dealer reveals 3 face-up cards—the “flop.” (This is also how regular Texas holdem works.)

If you checked when you got your hole cards, you have the option now to place a bet of 2X the Ante (another example of a “Play Bet.”) After that decision is made, the dealer turns over 2 more face-up cards—the turn and the river, in Texas holdem terms. Note that the action here is different than in traditional Texas holdem. Normally you’d have a turn, followed by a betting round, then the river, followed by another betting round.

Once you’ve made your decision, the dealer reveals her hole cards and announces the final hand. If your hand beats the dealer’s hand (using the standard poker hand rankings), you win even money on your Ante bets and the Play bets. On the other hand, if the dealer’s hand beats yours, you lose your Ante, Blind, and Play Bets. If you tie, then these bets are all treated as a “push.” (A push is when your original bet is returned to you, but without any winnings. You have neither a net win nor a net loss.)

The Blind Bet is handled differently. It pays off if you win AND if you have a straight or better. If you have less than a straight but still beat the dealer, the Blind Bet is treated as a push. The Blind Bet is paid off based on a pay table. The better your hand, the more it pays off. (It’s like video poker in this respect.)

Texas Fold'em

Casinos generally use a shuffling machine called an “i-Deal single deck specialty shuffler.” That’s because this game was created by Shufflemaster, which is now a division of Scientific Games. Shufflemaster’s reason for existence is to sell shuffling machines to casinos, so creating new cards is something they do in service to this goal.

The Blind Bet and the Trips Bonus Bet have 2 different pay tables.

Here’s a common pay table for the Blind Bet:

Keep in mind that the Blind Bet pays off regardless of whether the dealer qualifies. Also, notice that 3 of a kind doesn’t pay off for the Blind Bet, which is an interesting quirk of the game. The pay tables can vary—the casino gets to choose from multiple options. For example, some casinos pay off 40 to 1 instead of 50 to 1 for a straight flush. This changes the house edge for the game, of course.

Here’s a common pay table for the Trips Bonus Bet:

Here are a couple of facts to keep in mind about the Trips Bonus Bet:

• Your hand doesn’t have to win. It pays off regardless of whether you or the dealer wins.
• It wins even if you don’t have to use your hole cards. You can just play the board (the flop, turn, and river.)
• It wins even if you fold.

How the Progressive Bet and Jackpot Works

The progressive bet in Ultimate Texas Holdem is also an optional side bet. At most casinos, this bet is a flat $1 bet. But at some casinos, the Progressive Bet is $5. You can win 1 of 2 progressive jackpots in this game—the smaller jackpot, or the larger jackpot. To win the smaller progressive jackpot, you must use at least 1 of your hole cards. The smaller progressive pays off for hands that are a full house or better.

To win the bigger progressive jackpot—which is 100% of the jackpot—you must use both your hole cards and the flop to form a royal flush. If you hit the royal flush on the turn or the river, you don’t win the bigger progressive. You can also win a percentage of the full big progressive jackpot

When Should I Fold In Texas Hold'em

Casinos also feature something called an “Envy Bonus.” This is a bonus paid to any player at the table when one of the other players wins the progressive jackpot.

Casino games where you make decisions usually have a house edge that varies based on how well you make those decisions. In other words, your strategy matters. There’s always a mathematically correct play in every situation. In Ultimate Texas Holdem, your strategy is limited to whether you make Play Bets during the various stages of the game. For me, this isn’t an intuitive decision. You can find various websites offering strategies for this, but I have another recommendation:

The house edge is the amount of each bet that the casino projects you’ll lose on average based on the probabilities behind the game. Obviously, the lower the house edge, the better for the player. You should do everything you can to minimize the house edge on any casino game you play.

If you use perfect basic strategy on Ultimate Texas Holdem, the house expects to win a little over 2%. Let’s assume that the house edge is 10% if you don’t know basic strategy. What does that do to the cost of playing the game in the long run?

There’s an interesting post at Two Plus Two from a gambler describing his basic strategy for Ultimate Texas Holdem. I don’t know how close it mirrors a mathematically perfect strategy, but here’s what “nonprofitgambler” says is the correct way to play:

Preflop, he suggests raising with any of the following hands:

• Any ace
• Any k5+, and any king suited
• Q5s+, Q8+
• J8s+, JT+
• 33+ for pocket pairs

That small “s” after the number means that the cards are of the same suit (they’re “suited.”) On the flop, he says most people play the same, and that it’s correct—if you pair anything, you raise. But those obviously aren’t the only hands you should raise with here. You should also bet flush draws, straight draws, and combination draws. This means you have 4 cards to a big hand. On the river, you should bet any kind of made hand, but some boards are scarier than others.

Finally, I’d like to point out that the house edge on Ultimate Texas Holdem isn’t outrageous, but blackjack is still almost always a better deal. With perfect basic strategy, many blackjack games have a house edge of just 0.5%. This means you get the same kind of entertainment for closer to $2/hour instead of $8/hour.

You can play a nice, free version of Ultimate Texas Holdem at this site. It has a place where you can toggle the sound on and off. You can also toggle the “give advice” button off an on. If you’ve never played Ultimate Texas Holdem before, this page is a great way to practice. It’s refreshingly free of advertising, too, which is rare and unusual in this industry.

Also, if you like Ultimate Texas Holdem, I suggest you give multiplayer Texas holdem in the poker room a try—if you haven’t already. It’s a lot more fun, and you have more of an opportunity to get an edge, since you’re competing against other players.

That’s it for my “Definitive Guide to Ultimate Texas Holdem.” I can’t imagine any information you could want about the game that I’ve left out. But if I did miss something, or if you have questions about Ultimate Texas Holdem that remain unanswered, please put a note in the comments.