Advanced Poker Moves: Weapons to Beat Your Opponents. In Unit 3 we looked at the types of bets that you should have in your arsenal of weapons to use against your opponents. In this lesson we are going to add three more advanced betting strategies to make your strategy even stronger. Blind stealing is a strategy used by a player.

Everyday players are sitting down at the tables and consistently making fundamental mistakes because of lack of knowledge, misinformation or failing to maintain focus.

Poker dealers distribute cards to players and are in charge of overseeing the action at the poker table. There are specific skills and characteristics you must develop in order to become a great poker dealer. These apply whether you are hosting a poker night with friends or are looking to become a professional poker dealer. Jeffrey Coolidge/Getty Images. Probably the number one mistake beginning poker players make is that they play far too many hands. When you're just starting out playing poker, you want to play poker, and that means staying in hands that aren't very good just to be part of the action. Another one of my best online poker tips is to always enter the pot preflop with a raise. Now I know this might sound a bit crazy at first especially if you come from a live poker background where limping (just calling the blind preflop) is a lot more common. But in online poker limping is much less prevalent. Advanced Drawing and Pot Odds Theory When playing poker, you will often find yourself on a draw after the flop. To decide how to play your draw, you should consider the pot odds, implied odds, reverse implied odds, and the chance of a redraw.

Even just a small strategical adjustment in poker can potentially save you a huge amount in the long run.

In this article we will point out some of the best live and online poker tournament strategy tips you can use to improve your game as quickly as possible.

Tip 1: Play The Right Starting Hands

Whether it be lack of patience, or an unfamiliarity with opening ranges, many tournament poker players still open too wide. This is especially true when it comes to early and middle position opens, where there are still many opponents left to act behind who can be dealt a strong hand.

The problem is when called, wide openers are often at a range disadvantage. Often being dominated by their opponents, they are vulnerable to 3 bets since they frequently won't have a holding strong enough to continue under pressure.

Furthermore, although opening a hand like 7 ♠ 5♠ might at times not be a terrible strategy from early or middle position, speculative hands like suited connectors and gappers, as well as small pairs, work best with deep stacks behind.

These speculative hand types infrequently connect strongly with the flop, so those times they do you want to have deep stakes behind to have the potential to win a huge pot. Modern day tournament structures often only see deep stack play occur during the first few levels of play. This leads us into the next tournament poker tip, being stack size aware.

Learn which hands to open raise in MTT's - Watch lesson 6.1 from the Road to Success MTT Course. A power-packed 50 minute video below, just use one of the button options to unlock it and get instant access.

Tip 2: Be Stack Size Aware

Effective stack size plays a critical role in a tournament players success.

Having a deep stack, and therefore expanding an opening range to include a lot of speculative suited hands and small pairs is a tournament strategy that is going to be punished if a number of short stacks are yet to act behind. This most notably occurs in turbo tournaments where the average stack size is quite short.

Short stacks will be in push-or-fold mode. Being short, they don't have time to wait and will be looking to take any opportunity they can to move all-in. This high rate of all-ins will leave wide openers frequently being forced to relinquish their hands, without even having the opportunity to try to hit a nice flop. Problematic hands often include; J8s , KTo and weak Ax hands.

It's not just short-stacks that can cause a problem, aggressive players will be looking to attack wide-openers. This is especially true when a player opens with a vulnerable M8-M14 (20bb-35bb) stack. 3 bets get good leverage against this stack size, since continuing in the pot represents committing a significant portion of a players stack.

Wide openers would be wise not to commit a large percentage of their stack with marginal holdings, and so will be forced to fold, or face being in a high-risk situation. Staying aware of your own stacks utility, as well as anticipating how opponents will utilize their stacks, is an important tournament poker tip to keep in mind.

POKER TIP: If you are currently using BB to calculate stack size, here's a look at why using 'M' is a better MTT strategy.

Tip 3: Be Careful Overplaying In The Early Stages

As a stack gets deeper, the less willing a competent player will be to put their entire stack at risk since they have more to lose. It's rare to see good players all-in during the early stages of a tournament with hands like AKo or JJ preflop.

Smart players recognize that their counterparts aren't going to be risking their entire stack with weaker hands like AQo . Therefore, even a strong hand like AK could be at a significant equity disadvantage facing a deep stacked opponents all-in range. Could you fold QQ here?

Rather than putting in an extra raise, often times just calling with even very strong hands in the early stage of a poker tournament has great benefits.

• Allows your opponents to continue with hands they were folding to a re-raise that you have crushed.
• Disguises the strength of your hand and keeps you unpredictable.
• Prevents you from getting all-in facing a super strong range where often times you're crushed.

Tip 4: Continuation Bet Aggressively But Not Always

Players have learnt the value of c-betting, but it's a strategy that is often misapplied. Being the preflop aggressor shouldn't lead to a mandatory c-bet and double barrels.

This is especially true in multi-way pots yet players continue to make fruitless c-bets with weak holdings into multiple opponents.

Even in heads-up situations, key factors to consider include;

• How does the flop texture interact with players ranges?
• Who has the strongest range?
• Who has nut advantage (the biggest share of super strong hands)?
• How passive or aggressive is the opponent we're facing?
• How does the stack size/SPR allow us to operate on the flop and future streets?

The following hand illustrates the effect nut advantage can have on profitable continuation betting and how it applies to this tournament poker tip:

Tip 5: Be ICM Aware

The Independent Chip Model or ICM, is a great model players use to make more profitable decisions when deep in a tournament and especially at a final table.

Unlike in cash games, chip values fluctuate depending on the stage of the tournament and the competing opponents stack sizes. At it's most extreme, ICM strategy can make A♠A♣: an easy fold preflop.

Imagine a situation in a satellite where 9 players get a World Series of Poker entry and there's 10 remaining. The action folds around to a player with 100,000 in tournament chips who moves all in from the small blind. You're sitting in the big blind with A♠A♣: and also 100,000 in chips. You look around and see a few opponents with only 1000 chips left, which is the size of the current big blind. Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon.

Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon. Moreover the chance that they collectively out survive your 100,000 stack is extremely remote. You'd likely be a 99% chance to get a WSOP entry, so why would you call with your A♠A♣ and risk busting next around 20% of the time?

Aside from calling too wide in spots when the most profitable strategy is to proceed tightly, the opposite can also be true when it comes to pressuring your opponents. ICM allows players when they have the opportunity to assert pressure on there opponents stacks, to go ahead and do so liberally, since thinking opponents counter-strategy is to play a tight range of hands.

Here's an example of how drastically a hand range can change when the opportunity to assert pressure at a final table exists. 5 of the 6 remaining players at the Pokerstars Sunday Millions have 15bb's, whilst the UTG player has a short 2bb stack. Since the 15bb stacks wants to avoid busting out next and missing out on a large pay jump before the immanent bust out of the 2bb stack, the small blind can adjust their all-in range. Instead of the profitably 57% all-in range in normal play, they can move all-in with 100% of hands to apply pressure on the big blind.

Whilst the big blind should adjust their calling range from the regular 36% to just 10% of hands to account for the ICM effect in play.

The PokerNerve Road to Success course teaches players how to master ICM situations, which is key to tournament poker success since ICM comes into play as the prizes become significant. If there was only one tournament poker tip that you take away from this article, it's that you need to know ICM!

Tip 6: Bet The Appropriate Size

Strong players are capitalizing on their opponents tendencies to bet too big or too small in a number of different situations. With some similar considerations to that of continuation betting, when selecting a bet size important aspects include;

• Which player's range does the board texture favor?
• Who has the greatest nut saturation?
• How does SPR influence our betting strategy

There are many great articles online about bet sizing. You should be sure to check out ThePokerBank's and the Pokerology's to learn more about this tournament tip.

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Tip 7: Take Equity Realization Into Account

Possibly due to the popularity growth of Twitch, many poker players approach to big blind play has evolved. The current trend is to defend the big blind with virtually any 2 cards, as some top pros elect to do, and the justification for this is taking advantage of the excellent pot odds being offered.

While the inclusion of antes combined with commonly seeing a small open raise size does offer the big blind generous pot odds, this has led to a fundamental flaw in the way many players approach big blind play in poker tournaments. The key concept overlooked, is equity realization.

Equity realization reflects a players ability to take a certain hand, and win their share of the pot, frequently enough, to make it profitable in the long-term. Although some top pros have the ability to win their equity share of the pot even out of position, less skilled players rarely do. This leads to a large chip loss in the long run.

It is quite difficult to realize of your equity when out of position, with no initiative and a weak range. This means them glorious odds you are being offered aren't quite as good as you think!

The following article explains this crucial tournament poker tip in more detail; Equity Realization.

Tip 8: Don't Miss Double And Triple Barrel Opportunities

'One and done' is the plight of many aspiring tournament poker players. Everyday at the tables I see players missing profitable opportunities to double, or even triple barrel. Understanding what turn and river cards are advantageous to a players range, along with opponent tendencies, are crucial parts of a winning barreling formula.

The most common scenario at the table, is a heads-up pot where the big blind calls an open-raise. And this happens to be a great spot to barrel. Big blind defenders have a wide range, and it's important to pressure this wide range, especially on only partially connected board textures with one or multiple high cards.

RedChipPoker has a great article on spotting profitable double barrel opportunities which you can read here: THE +EV DOUBLE BARREL GUIDE

Tip 9: Check-Raise More Flops

The biggest difference between the current tournament population, and the future generation, will likely be their approach to check-raising the flop. This opportunity typically occurs in a heads-up pot, after defending the big blind verse an opponents raise.

Currently, MTT players only check-raise the flop in this situation around 7-8% of the time, when closer to 20% is a more optimal strategy. On certain flop textures, check-raising close to 25% of the time is an extremely profitable strategy. And if players are getting out of line with their c-bets, then check-raising at an even higher frequency could be a profitable exploit.

By giving up too easily on a wide range of board textures, or taking a more passive approach and simply calling, c-betting can be done with reckless abandon. However, by selecting a nice mix of check-raising hands, combining some strong hands with some good semi-bluffing candidates, a check-raiser can become tricky to play against and exploit the average players tendency to over c-bet.

POKER TIP: Applied correctly and check-raising becomes a super powerful weapon in your arsenal leading to more profitable poker results. But also think beyond the flop, there's plenty of check-raising opportunities you may be missing. This video demonstrates an interesting turn check-raise situation.

We discuss check raising strategy in more detail in our post over on unfeltedpoker.com.

Tip 10: Develop A Good 3betting Strategy

Whilst 3 betting aggressively is a strategy many players employ, especially in online poker circles, failure to apply optimal 3 betting strategies has certainly led to a lot of spewy poker. Simply attacking opponents who are suspected of opening wide doesn't cut it in the modern poker world.

Players have learnt to deal with 3 bets more profitably, by mixing in some calls with timely 4 bets. Moreover, the role stack size plays when it comes to 3 betting it still largely misunderstood by much of the poker community.

Sure there are certain stack sizes where 3 bets gain a lot of leverage, but how about the role blockers play? And when is 9♦7♦ a better 3 bet candidate than K♦T♠ ? These are just some of the considerations when it comes to a profitable 3 betting strategy. See how to design strong 3betting ranges in this article by Donkr.

Bonus Poker Strategy Tip: Avoid and Deal with Downswings

As a poker player you want to earn your money as easily and as stress-free as possible right? Well, understanding ROI, variance and bankroll management can help (see TopPokerValue's article on bankroll management).

All poker players at some point experience downswings. In some cases, this can affect their play, volume or state of mind.

You'll be miserable, hating poker, playing less and earning less per tournament as your play will suffer.

Along with finding ways that work for you to keep a positive mindset, taking pro-active steps can help keep you confident by knowing you are dealing with the situation like a professional whilst at the same time taking positive action to get back on track and winning.

What is ROI and variance?

Every tournament you enter has an EV associated with it. So if you enter a $10 tourney, as a good player maybe you have a 30% ROI, so you make $3. So it doesn't matter whether you brick that tourney or win it for $5000, you make $3 in the long run.

Now, of course, you don't make $3 each time. 80-85% of the time you lose that $10, some percentage of the time you win a little bit, and some very small percentage of the time you win a lot. How small those ‘small percentages’ are primarily depends on not only your skill edge, but also the field size which is an extremely important concept that is often ignored.

Variance is a factor of two things:

1) Your edge

2) The field size

Example 1)

You play the Hot $55 which has $30K guaranteed, every day for a year on Pokerstars. It has 1600 runners and you have a 5% ROI, because turbo ROIs are small. Your average yearly profit is $605 however you will lose money on the year 55% of the time.

Example 2)

You play a $20 tourney with $3K guaranteed on a softer site every day for a year. It has 200 runners and you have a 30% ROI, because it's a normal speed tourney and you’re against an easier field. Your average yearly profit is $2400 and in this case you lose money only 12% of the time.

A lot of people would look at those two tournaments and make a decision based on the buy-in and 1st place prize money as to which was better to play, and it would be grossly wrong. Once you accept all the above, you realise that the 'up top' number is largely meaningless.

Poker Dealing Advanced Tips For Beginners

Yes, on the same site bigger fields may mean a lot of fish have registered to play, but you'll find a lot of small field, soft, non-peak hour tournaments have a great pro-to-fish ratio and hence are great value. Of course once you consider other sites that have smaller fields, you'll often find they are a better choice than what might be running on Pokerstars.

So what can you do?

When players start losing money and along with that, confidence, not only does their game deteriorate but they often compound that problem by failing to make rational decisions. Often losing players, or players on a downswing, go 'bink chasing' and decide to take a shot to win all their money back in one tourney. Or load up some quick $82 hyper-turbos to try to turn it all around quickly.

People get overly fixated on what's 'up top' and wanting to score big in one tournament. That’s a sure-fire strategy to fuel a down swing. If your house got knocked down would you try to slap it back up in a week? Take that opportunity to rebuild a better, stronger house.

Make sure you're adding in some study and keep focused (see Sky's Matsuhashi How To Study Poker series), and stay fresh and positive as you approach each session. Be smart and get back into profit quicker instead of enduring a 6-12 month variance rollercoaster!

Closing Words On Tournament Poker Tips

Poker is a multi-faceted game which makes it fun but challenging. Challenge yourself to factor in the relevant concepts, and make more profitable decisions. Tighten up from the big blind, and in general around the table. This tip often quickly improves a new players results, or those that have a got a little sloppy with their play.

Calculate stack size using 'M'. Always be aware of your own, and your opponents stack sizes so you don't get yourself caught in awkward situations. One awkward situation that often comes up is when you hold an overpair to the board and an opponent puts the heat on you. Don't be afraid to make big lay downs to preserve your stack, especially in the early levels.

Be aware of your cbetting frequency. There's no need to waste tournament poker chips cbetting every time, especially when the pot is multi-way. Pick your spots to make profitable plays. Remember when it comes to the final table, regularly profitable playing ranges might alter due to the payouts. ICM is the key when it comes to those final big decisions.

Another key to success is knowing when to fire multiple bullets at your opponents. Barreling, especially against a wide big blind range can really help increase your non-showdown winnings. Finding ways to accumulate chips without always having the best hand is what top players do. This is why check-raising and having a good 3 betting strategy is so important. Correct use of these strategical concepts and the other tips outlines will get you winning more at the tables.

Now that you've acquired some great holdem tournament strategy tips to help you achieve MTT success, go out there an implement them!

One of the quickest way to improve your poker game is to take on a poker coaching, a course or join a poker training site; if that is something that interests you be sure to check out the PokerNerve road to Success Course for some advanced poker tournament strategy or you can check out HowToPlayPokerInfo's guide on poker training & poker courses to find the right option for you.

Any other poker tournament strategy tips? Leave them below in the comments, we would love to hear them!

You are Now Starting: Unit 5 – Advanced Poker Strategy

In this final unit we are going to start to take your strategy to a higher level by introducing some advanced poker strategies and concepts which you can incorporate into your new poker strategy that you have learned so far in this course.

We are also going to complete the Poker Bankroll Challenge and our goal of turning your initial $25 stake into a bankroll of $1,000. This new bankroll will then provide you with the funds to compete at the higher stakes table on an ongoing basis and the sky is the limit on the amount of profit you can earn going forward.

So far the strategy we have taught you is solid and should be profitable if executed correctly.

A-B-C poker is great for the lower stakes tables, but as you move up the stake levels and start to face players with a higher standard of play and experience, then you will need to take your strategy to a more advanced level.

Poker Dealing Advanced Tips 1x2

This not only gives you more weapons in your Arsenal to use, but it will also help you to understand when some of these advanced concepts and moves are being used against you and the best way to counteract them.

We are only going to scratch the surface of advanced poker strategy in this unit. Poker is a constant learning process and we will continue to cover more advanced topics in other courses which you can take once you have completed this one.

Lets start by looking at some general advanced poker concepts…

Know When a Player is Pot Committed

Always be aware of your opponent’s chip stack and whether they have become pot committed.

When we say a player is pot committed we mean that he has already committed a significant portion of his stack into the pot, and that he is unlikely to fold now, because he would be left with too low a stack.

Usually if a short stacked player has more than half his chips committed before the flop then he is pot committed. The chances are he’ll either raise all-in before the flop if given the chance or move all in after the flop whether he has hit his cards or not.

Never try to bluff in this situation, as it will be very hard to chase them out of the pot, there’s no point in bluffing if your opponent is not going to fold.

However this also provides an opportunity, by knowing that our opponent is pot committed, we know that there is a good chance that he is betting with a weaker hand than normal, so it allows us to relax our hand requirement a little to call with a more marginal hand and still be confident that we are in the lead.

Responding to a Raise

In the situation where you are involved in a pot and someone raises behind you it is never an easy answer on what you should do. It depends a lot on the size of the raise and the situation at the table.

So there are no hard and fast rules on whether you should call a raise but there is a thought process that you can work through in order to make your decision:

1. Your Hand – did you come into the pot with a solid hand or did you enter with a marginal hand?
2. How many players were in the pot when the raise came in? – a raise against one player shows less strength than a raise against multiple players.
3. How many players are yet to act? – a raise from the dealer button or blinds may just be an attempt to defend the blinds or foil a steal, whereas a raise from a player in early or middle position indicates a lot more strength.
4. Will you have position on the raiser after the flop? – if they are one of the blinds then you will have position after the flop so this can allow you call with a slightly more marginal hand.
5. How aggressive is the raiser? – a more conservative player should be given more respect for a raise than an aggressive player although don’t just assume that an aggressive player is bluffing – remember – he may have a solid hand just as much as you.
6. What are the pot odds? – you should be more willing to call a raise with good pot odds than one with bad pot odds
7. Your stack – are you approaching being short stacked? Have you got time to turn this opportunity down and wait for a better opportunity to get your chips into the pot, or are you in situation where if you folded here, you would be forced shortly down the line to put in your chips in a weaker situation that this one due to your short stack.

If you work through the above factors then it should help you to make an informed decision on whether to make the call or not.

Showing Hands

If you win a pot before the showdown, then you have the option to either muck your cards (without revealing them to your opponents) or to show the hand before you muck, thus revealing the hand you had.

Most internet poker rooms give you this option, with two buttons that will popup with an option to show your cards, after you have just won a pot by your opponent folding.

I see a lot of beginner players showing their hands, and most of the time this really is a mistake. Why? Because you are are giving free information to your opponents about the actions you took with that particular hand or type of hand, it helps them to read your future actions.

The general rule is to not show your hand unless you have to – stick to this, there is no need to give additional information to your opponent if you don’t have to.

However, even though you are not going to use this tactic in your strategy you need to be aware of it, and why other people might do it. Every time an opponent shows us their hand we are going to pay a lot of attention to it, and then walk through the actions they took throughout the hand to help us spot betting patterns and read our opponent in future hands.

But we can’t automatically assume that those patterns will repeat in the future, and you need to understand the reasons why someone might have shown their hand.

Poker Dealing Advanced Tips Skills

Players who show good hands are either

• Overexcited at getting a big hand and not getting a chance to show it or
• They are showing you a good hand so that next time they want to steal the pot you give them more respect because they have shown you that they raised with a good hand.

Poker Dealing Advanced Tips Tricks

Players who show bluffs are either

• Trying to temp you into tilt mode or
• Trying to get you to jump to the wrong conclusion – the next time they make a raise the chances are they’ll have a good hand, and because you’ve seen them bluff the pot, they are hoping that you jump to conclusions and assume that this is just another bluff and call with a weakened hand.

Generally you will be able to judge the above based on how good the player is, and whether they are capable of advanced moves like this designed to trick you.

Back to the statement of “Poker being a game of information”, yes we are constantly trying to interpret the information that our opponents gives us, but also you can control the information that you send out to opponents as long as you are aware of what information they have received and how you can use that against them by reversing the story next time you are in a pot with them. Keep them guessing and keep control of your information flow and you will be the one in control.

Time to Up the Stakes

You are nearing the end of the course and so it is time that we again stepped up our efforts to reach our goal of $1,000 from an initial stake of $25. Your bankroll should now be over $200 and things will start to move quite quickly from now with just 4 more stages of the challenge remaining before you hit your goal of $1,000.

So far you have learnt a solid basic strategy and built upon that with some advanced strategies. You now know the process and tools required to make all your poker decisions.

We are going to move away from the 5c/10c tables and on up to the 10c/20c tables for the next few stages. Again you may see a slight improvement in the quality of opponent, but there are still plenty of bad players at these stake levels.

Don’t be intimidated by the increase in stake level but as usual be cautious when you first start until you get used to any differences it may present. Remember the amount of the bets and raises will go up in line with the increase in stake levels, but the maths and our strategy remains the same. There will still be plenty of fish at this level, but there will also be a few more better players thrown into the mix as well.

Now we’re moving onto bigger stake levels, make sure you do not stray from your strategy at all, any mistake will have a bigger dent on your bankroll at higher stake tables. Just play how you have learnt and practised throughout this course and remember the returns from a higher stake table are also more!

Poker Bankroll Challenge: Stage 9

• Stakes: $0.10/$0.20
• Buy In: $20 (100 x BB)
• Starting Bankroll: $203
• Target: $100 (5 x Buy In)
• Finishing Bankroll: $303
• Estimated Sessions: 5

Use these practise sessions to continue to get into the minds of your opponents, study what actions they are taking and try to understand their aim behind each action. Try to spot patterns and when an Opponent shows their hand, pay attention and step back through all their actions and store that information. At the same time be in control of the information that you are sending out and always be aware of what your opponents know about you and factor that in to your future decisions and actions.