Here are some key concepts of advanced poker playing. There is no doubt that you can enjoy the simple game of poker while being familiar merely with the basics. Even if it is just for fun or symbolic stakes. Well, there is no law against playing without getting too deep into any rules. Assuming the minimal level of interest however, it comes the time when knowing your way around and listening to your gut all the time just isn’t enough anymore.
For the purpose of this article, we assume the reader wasn’t born yesterday and has some knowledge about poker, and is familiar especially with basic Texas holdem tips and strategies – simply put: knows the ABC’s of the whole thing. Other than that, presented concepts of advanced poker playing, still don’t qualify as rocket science, but consist of a nice set of good practices to improve overall game performance.
Let’s start with responding to a raise. It’s clearly easy to bet with pocket aces but the wild variety of problematic situations and weird turns of events may become tricky to deal with. Besides, even with monster cards you want to pose as a big unknown to others in order to encourage them to put their money into the game. Other than the obvious strength of your own hand, there are few things to consider in the decision-making process. There is the number of players in the game when the raise came in, the players yet to act after the raise, as well as your own position on the one who made the raise. Pot odds and the size of your stack should also be an important part to determine your involvement in the immediate future.
Deciding about the reaction on the raise or whether to make a bet, and simply figuring how far into the game to go, should involve another important concept that is recognizing when your opponent is ‘pot committed’. It means whether the player has invested already a significant amount of his stack. On such occasion, he would be rather unlikely to drop out of the race under most circumstances, because otherwise he’d be left with too little. On one hand, it is a great opportunity to push him to his limits and force the all-in, if we feel particularly strong ourselves, on the other – trying to pull an unconvincing bluff would surely backfire.
By winning a few hands without being called you must have faced the dilemma of showing or mucking your cards. Sometimes it feels like messing with opponent, say, tricked by your bold bluff, and showing him your lousy cards is a good idea. However, as a general rule one should be advised that the less your table buddies know the better. Instead, watching others revealing their good hands and bluffs may provide useful information about their intentions in tries to impose some behavioural patterns on you.
Taking in all those above mentioned factors into consideration and successfully adapting them in your game may not be enough to take down the best players. There are many nuances that could change the course of events. However, absorbing this knowledge should definitely give you a significant edge over institutional and recreational players, and could help turn profit in the long run.
