Poker Strategies

As some example, the best strategy on poker is to one way or another fool the other player to believe you have a different hand and, to find out what your opponents have.

First of all, at some point you will need to learn about odds. We are not going to get into too much details here but sometimes odds can avoid to bring you down or to win.

Odds are basically chances, the better your choices, the better your chances to win and vice-versa.

A very simple example about odds/changes is this: if you are playing against 3 other players, your odds are 4 against 1 or 25%.

The poker psych-strategies that you can use in a game are:

Deception
Deception tries to indicate that you have a poor hand when you do not. Bluffing the most common form of deception to induce opponents to fold with superior hands.

Position
Position regards the order of the player in the table regarding betting position. Generally speaking, the later is your position, the more you have seen opponents reactions thus, the easier to react.

Raise
There are several reasons to raise a bet. Generally speaking, it is either to raise money or to scare opponents.

Call
Call is also important to fool an opponent. Specially if the opponent believes that you have a bad hand.

Gap
Gaps tries to scare opponents by raising a raise. Since players then naturally to avoid confrontation, even with good hands, they might fold.

Sandwich effect
Many times you are in a starter position at the table and doesn't know what others do so, you need a good hand here to create a sandwich and re-raise your opponent upfront.

Loose/tight play
Loose players are the ones tend to fold less, even with weak hands. Tight players are the ones that play fewer hands and will not continue with weak hands.

Aggressive/passive play
Aggressive play regards "betting and raising". Passive regards "checking and calling". Most of the time aggressive is considered stronger because offer more chances of folds and related mistakes.

Hand reading and tells
Hand reading regards the guess which a player makes about the opponents hands based on past plays in the pot.

Tell regards the possible detection of an opponents hand based on behavior.

Table image and player profiling
As you observe tendencies and patterns of opponents, you can make guesses about potential holdings.

Equity
Equity regards the share of a player or winning the pot. Normally expressed in percentage or expected value.