Welcome to the Top Tips
Welcome to the ParadisePoker top tips archive. Here you'll find a collection of past tips by our resident poker expert, Dave Hold'em. There will be a new tip every fortnight covering a range of poker topics for novice, and the more seasoned players.
Tip 1
Tournaments or Cash?
Poker is poker. It’s a simple statement, but true. Whether you’re playing cash games or tournaments, a flush beats a straight, and the strongest hand at showdown will take the pot. But it doesn’t follow that a successful tournament player is going to clean up at the cash tables, and vice versa. Tournaments and cash games are different beasts and a lot of players – even top pros – will make a decision early on to specialise in one or the other.
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Tip 2
Omaha Hi strategy
There are a lot of similarities between Hold’em and Omaha. Both are games with a flop, turn and river. But, where you get dealt two cards in Hold’em, in Omaha you get four and you have to use two of these, combined with three on the board, to make your hand. It might seem like a relatively subtle difference but it makes the way the game plays completely different.
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Tip 3
Pot odds
You don’t need a degree in maths to be a successful poker player but you do need to know the basics of pot odds to be a solid all-round player. Why? Poker is a gambling game and each hand offers you a proposition with attached odds.
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Tip 4
Bluffing
You don’t need the best hand to win at poker, you just need to make your opponent think you’ve got it. That’s where bluffing comes in and it’s one of the most satisfying moves you can make. Be warned though, poker is not a game of wild bluffs and counter-bluffs.
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Tip 5
Danger Hands
A danger hand is either a hand you shouldn’t be playing, or one that can win or lose you a lot of money. Playing 2-7 offsuit out of position is very dangerous, but it’s also extremely easy to avoid. What about Aces? It might seem strange to label Aces as a danger hand but weak players will go bust with Aces probably more than any other hand.
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Tip 6
Omaha Hi/Lo
Omaha Hi/Lo adds another dimension to the game and you need a pretty sharp head to keep up, but luckily there are a lot of weak players that will make elementary mistakes. In Omaha Hi, the strongest hand wins the pot at showdown, just like Hold’em.
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Tip 7
Bankroll management
You might have got into poker for the love of the game, the glitz, glamour and gamble, but here’s the bad news – without a little bit of money management, you’re never going to make it as a successful long-term poker player, no matter how good you are. Some simple rules first.
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Tip 8
Sit-and-go strategy
Sit-and-gos, or single-table tournaments, are a great low-risk way to build a bankroll if you've got the discipline and patience to play them well.
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Tip 9
Multi-table tournament strategy (MTTs)
In contrast to single-table tournaments MTTs require a very different strategic approach. Because most of the prize money is situated in the top few places, often from a field of hundreds or thousands, in multi-table tournaments your main aim should be on constant chip accumulation, so that you put yourself in a great position to make the final table.
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Tip 10
Short-handed/heads-up play
Whether you're playing cash games, MTTs or STTs, the same fundamental
rings true when you're in a short-handed (2-6 players) scenario: get
aggressive. And it's easy to see why. With fewer players the odds of
premium hands being dealt is obviously far less.
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Tip 11
5-Card Draw
Once the game of choice in America's 'Wild West', 5-Card Draw is now
finding a new surge of interest on the internet.
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Tip 12
Position
There are lots of different ways to play poker. Talk to any of the big-name players and you'll never get the exact same advice twice.
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Tip 13
Tilt!
Tilt is the scourge of the poker player. It happens to everyone but how you deal with it can make the difference between winning and losing your entire bankroll in one crazy anger-fuelled session.
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Tip 14
Satellite strategy
If you're a tournament player and you see poker as your road to riches, you need to start playing satellites.
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Tip 15
Continuation betting
In the old days, before Doyle Brunson wrote Super/System, poker was a tight, conservative game. These days the opposite is true and if you're going to survive you need to arm yourself with the right moves.
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Tip 16
Pre-flop Hold´em strategy
The two hole cards that you get dealt at the start of a hand of Hold´em are the only cards that distinguish your hand from your opponents´ at showdown.
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Tip 17
Post-flop strategy
Pre-flop play in Hold'em is relatively easy. In fact a lot of younger tournament players actually play most of their poker pre-flop to avoid the hard work that can arrive on the flop.
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Tip 18
Value betting
You're in a pot with a single opponent and he's check-called your bets all the way down to the river. You're fairly sure that you've got the winning hand but now he's checked to you again, what do you do?
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Tip 19
7-card Stud
Stud is one of the oldest forms of poker around, and although overshadowed by
Texas Hold'em nowadays, it's enjoying somewhat of a resurgence thanks to its
inclusion in the increasingly popular H.O.R.S.E. tournaments and cash games.
It's also one of the most difficult forms of poker, requiring great observational
skills, memory and aggression in order to win.
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Tip 20
Beating rebuy tournaments
Rebuy tournaments play very differently to standard freezeout MTTs. The aim is still
the same – to win all the chips – but rebuy tournaments, as the name
suggests, offer a rebuy period (usually one hour) when you can buy back in for a
fresh stack of chips when you bust out. Most rebuy tournaments allow you to make
unlimited rebuys during this period, before giving you the option of ‘adding-on’
more chips to your stack for another buy-in. This boosts the prize pool dramatically, and
it means you won’t know what you’re in line to win until the freezeout part
of the tournament begins. Once all rebuys and add-ons have been completed, the tournament
plays to a finish like a standard MTT.
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Tip 21
Natural selection
It might surprise you to hear this but being a consistently winning cash game player
doesn’t just depend on your prowess at the table.
In fact it doesn’t
really matter how good you are as long as you’re better than the people you’re playing against.
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Tip 22
Making effective notes
Poker is a game of incomplete information and it follows that the more you know about your opponents the more of an edge you’ll have. It’s fairly easy to pigeon-hole players after you’ve been sat with them for an hour or two, but what happens when you bump into the same player two or three months down the line? Unless you’ve got a photographic memory you’re not going to remember anything about them.
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Tip 23
Beating Winner-Takes-All and Triple-Up SNGs
There are lots of different types of SNGs available on Paradise Poker and each one takes a different strategy to beat. The most profitable – and also the hardest to cash in – are the Winner-Takes-All games. Unlike standard or short-handed SNGs that pay out three or two places, Winner-Takes-All SNGs don’t pay out anything to the runners-up and finishing second gets the same as finishing last, and is much more painful.
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Tip 24
Plugging your poker leaks
Every poker player has leaks and they can be extremely costly. You could be a big winning player across a number of sessions, but this could end up being for nothing if money is constantly leaking from your bankroll.
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Tip 25
Spotting online tells
Tells are a huge part of the live game, where even the most experienced players can give away glaringly obvious clues about how strong (or weak!) they are in a hand.
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Tip 26
Building a big stack in MTTs
There’s nothing better than accumulating a monster stack in MTTs.
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Tip 27
Smallball poker – size is everything!
Smallball poker is the tournament strategy enjoyed by Daniel Negreanu, Gus Hansen and a lot of other veteran pros.
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Tip 28
Spotting the sucker (and keeping him at your table)
Poker’s a game of skill and luck. Over time the luck will even out, which means that the more skilful players will win.
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Tip 29
Mixing your game up
Being predictable at poker is one of the quickest ways to ensure that you’re a losing player.
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