How To Win At Texas Hold Em
Good to Know Before MIT 15.S50 Begins
- How To Win A Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament
- How To Win At Texas Hold'em All The Time
- Texas Holdem Tips And Tricks
- How To Win At Texas Holdem Tournaments
- How To Win At Texas Holdem Everytime
- How To Always Win Texas Hold'em
Poker / Texas Hold’em Rules
Obviously, you should know the ranking of the poker hands, and how cards are dealt in texas hold’em. Know the terms straight flush, four-of-a-kind (or quads), full house (or boat), flush, straight, three-of-a-kind, two-pair, pair, high card; know preflop, postflop, flop, turn, river.
Betting Rules
A lot of Texas Hold 'Em strategy is based on the cards in your hand. You must be willing to suffer through a series of poor hands (e.g. 5-8, 2-6, 4-9) without getting impatient. The good hands will come, eventually, and you'll be in a better position to take advantage of them if you don't waste your chips trying to get something out of nothing. Starting with Opening Hands. The hands that you choose to go into battle with in Texas Hold’em are.
- You should know how betting in poker works. Understand the terms bet, raise, call, check, fold, and all-in. Check-raising means checking and then later raising in the same betting round.
- Know what a blind is. There will be a small blind and a big blind each hand.
- Know that preflop, the big blind is last to act. On each postflop betting round, the small blind is first to act, and the dealer is last to act. Know when a betting round ends (eg. if all players check, then the betting round ends).
- Other good terms to know for positions are cutoff (right of the dealer), hijack (right of the cutoff), under-the-gun (the person left of the big blind; first to act preflop).
Mathematical Concepts
In class we will run through an example to illustrate the terminology you should know.
- Suppose the pot has $500 in it, and your opponent bets another $250.
- You may call his $250, in which case cards are flipped over:
- If your cards beat his, you win the whole pot of $500 + $250 (that he just put in) + $250 (that you just put in) = $1000. You profited $750 from this gamble.
- If his cards beat yours, you get $0 back. You lost $250 from this gamble.
- Or, you can fold, resulting in a payoff of $0.
- In this example, we say that you are getting 3-to-1 odds to call. When you win, you profit 3 times what you risk losing.
- Suppose the probability that your cards beat his is 10%. Then your expectation for calling is 0.1(+750)+0.9(-250)=-150. By calling, you expect to lose $150 in the long run. Your expectation for folding is always $0. Therefore, you should fold, since your expectation for calling is negative.
- Suppose the probability that your cards beat his is 50%. Then your expectation for calling is 0.5(+750)+0.5(-250)=250. By calling, you expect to earn $250 in the long run. Therefore, you should call, since your expectation for calling is positive. If you were to play this game a large number of times, your average payoff per game would be $250, with 100% certainty. This is called the Law of Large Numbers.
- We say that a gamble has high variance if it takes a large number of trials to converge to the expected average payoff per game. A gamble has low variance if it converges quickly. In general, high variance means high risk, and high risk usually means higher reward, ie. higher expectation.
Book Recommendations
Miller, Ed, David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth. Small Stakes Holdem: Winning Big With Expert Play. Two Plus Two, 2004. ISBN: 978-1880685327. Only for limit hold’em, but still one of the classic books in poker and written by mathematicians.
Slightly outdated, but very good:
- Harrington, Dan. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 1: Strategic Play. Two Plus Two, 2004. ISBN: 978-1880685334.
- Harrington, Dan. Harrington on Hold 'em Expert Strategy for No Limit Tournaments, Vol. 2: Endgame. Two Plus Two, 2005. ISBN: 978-1880685358.
Rodman, Blair, Lee Nelson, Steven Heston, and Phil Hllmuth, Jr. Kill Phil: The Fast Track to Success in No-Limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments. Huntington Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1935396314.
Nelson, Lee, Tyson Steib, Steven Heston, Joe Hachem, and Bertrand Grospellier. Kill Everyone: Advanced Strategies for No-Limit Hold 'em Poker Tournaments and Sit-n-Go's. Huntington Press, 2009. ISBN: 978-1935396307.
More entertaining than educational:
Hansen, Gus. Every Hand Revealed. Kensington Publishing Corp., 2008. ISBN: 978-0818407277. [Preview with Google Books]
Not that practical, but theoretically very interesting:
Chen, Bill and Jerrod Ankenman. The Mathematics of Poker. Conjelco, 2006. ISBN: 978-1886070257.
Nazarewicz, Pawel. Building a Bankroll. Pawel Nazarewicz, 2012. ISBN: 978-0615589886. Mostly for full ring cash games.
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Image credit - Danny Maxwell
Whether you're playing with friends or at an online site, the goal of poker is to win. Of course, this is easier said than done today when you consider that there's a wealth of poker strategy available today. But that certainly doesn't mean your case for becoming a successful player is hopeless. This is especially the case if you read the following step-by-step guide on how to win at Texas Holdem poker.
Basic Texas Holdem Poker Strategy
Study Opponents and Focus
Image Credit - Yanning Van De Wouwer
The goal is to build a profile of everybody at the table so you can figure out what range they play in each situation. For example, if you see another player get caught trying to steal blinds with 6-5 unsuited in late position, you know that they have a wide range in these situations, allowing you to call against them with more hands.
How to be Good at Poker - Intermediate Tips
How To Win A Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament
Tools for learning Poker Strategy
How To Win At Texas Hold'em All The Time
Image credit - Raed Photography
Texas Holdem Tips And Tricks
How To Win At Texas Holdem Tournaments
How To Win At Texas Holdem Everytime
- Poker Articles - Abundant, and very good for learning the basics of how to win at poker. It's especially nice when articles are categorized in beginner, intermediate and advanced sections.
- Poker Books - These are a good way to get inside the head of a pro and see how they think when playing the game. Just be sure that the concepts are relevant and not outdated, though.
- Training Videos - There was an explosion of training videos in the late 2000s, as players moved away from books/articles and craved visual strategy. The great thing about training videos is that you get to see players actually playing online poker as they discuss different topics. But beware that not everybody who does training videos is a long-term winner.
- Live Streaming (Twitch) - This has become one of the most-popular ways to learn poker tips because you get to watch skilled pros in real-time. Plus, you might also be entertained by some of the better Twitch performers. Jason Somerville,Bertrand Grospellier and Jaime Staples have become stars through live streaming.
- Coaching - You can get one-on-one training by hiring a coach. The quality of coaching you get often depends on whom you hire and how much money you spend. But this option is worth pursuing if you want a good player to critique your play and explain what you need to do to get better.
- Heads-Up Displays (HUDs) - These are tools that help keep track of various stats on opponents and your own play during a session. Some online poker sites have banned these tools while others still allow you to use HUDs since they aren't technically cheating.