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Welcome to The Maverick Guide to Internet Poker
Texas Holdem - The Rolls Royce of Poker games.
It takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master
Issue 1
Welcome to the first issue of the Maverick Guide to Internet Texas Holdem.
This regular newsletter will keep you up to date with the very latest news and events from Get Minted Poker and will, over time, provide advice on basic strategy for Internet Texas Holdem for beginners through to intermediate players. Hopefully this will serve as a curiosity raiser and you will invest some time and effort to learn more about the game. A list of recommended reading can be found at the end of this newsletter.
In this first issue we will focus on those totally new to the game, outlining the rules of the game, a discussion on position and how it should affect your play, an introduction to odds and probability, a few quick tips for beginners and a glossary of chat room and Holdem terminology.
1.0 The Rules of Texas Holdem
Texas Hold'em is considered the Rolls Royce of poker games and is the game played on the World Poker Tour to find the World Poker Champion each year. It is also the most popular game played on the Internet and the one that most players play as their first choice game.
Each player is dealt two cards face down "in the hole" or "the pocket" which are for that players use only. 5 cards are then dealt face up onto the table which are community cards for all the players to share. The player that can make the best 5 card poker hand from his two hole or pocket cards and the 5 cards on the board (the community cards) wins that hand.
The poker hands in order of superiority from weakest to strongest are as follows:
- From 2 up to Ace high
- A pair
- Two pairs
- Three of a kind (also known as a set or trips) eg Q-Q-Q-2-7
- A run of 5 cards in a row (also known as a straight) eg 2-3-4-5-6
- A flush - all 5 cards of the same suits eg 2-6-7-9-Q of hearts
- A Full house - 3 of a kind and a pair eh 8-8-8-Q-Q
- 4 of a kind
- A Running Flush - A straight of the same suit eg 6-7-8-9-T of Diamonds
- A Royal Flush - A straight of the same suit AKQJT
2.0 The betting stages of Texas Holdem
Once the pocket cards have been dealt out to each player a round of betting takes place. Players can choose to bet, to raise the bet or to fold their cards. Once the betting has gone round all the players (and then back round again if there was a raise) the players remaining in the game see the flop. The flop is the first 3 community cards. A further round of betting takes place as before and the remaining players then see the turn which is the fourth community card. A further round of betting then takes place which is a more expensive round with bets starting at twice the price of the betting on the flop. The remaining players then see the final card called the river. After this last card a final round of betting takes place and the remaining players then turn over their cards to see who has won.
On any given betting round if no one has made a bet or a raise then you are given the choice to check which means a bet of nothing. If all players check their bets then they would all move to the next community card at no cost.
3.0 Position in Texas Holdem
The software for getminted poker is up to a ten player game, the most common maximum in Internet poker games. Your position and the position of your opponents can have a big impact on the strategies that you use.
The button defines what position you are playing in for each hand and moves around the table one player at a time in a clockwise direction.
- Seat 1 Small Blind
- Seat 2 The Big Blind
- Seat 3 Early position - also known as under the gun as player is first to act
- Seat 4 Early position
- Seat 5 Early position
- Seat 6 Middle position
- Seat 7 Middle position
- Seat 8 Middle position
- Seat 9 Late position - also known as the cutoff.
- Seat 10 Late position - also known as the button or the dealer.
Most beginners play their hands exactly the same no matter where they are sitting. Good players recognise that playing in the blinds and in early position gives them a considerable disadvantage. This is because in early position you have to place your bets before you get to see what your opponent has bet. You have to do this on each betting round all the way down to the river and final betting.
Because of this disadvantage good players play considerably tighter in early position meaning they only play very strong hands or very strong potential hands and they play a wider range of hands as they move towards late position.
4.0 Introduction to Poker Odds.
Being able to work out the odds of a specific situation is essential to making good poker decisions. Some poker players can work on gut feel that has been learned over the years but most players rely on the mathematics of a play.
This introduction is intended to give you an initial view into the decision making that good players make when choosing whether to play a given hand or not and to introduce you to the concept that the size of the pot makes a big difference to whether you should play or throw away a hand. The bigger the pot - the more you are going to want to play your hand (as the pot-odds are higher).
4.1 Defining the odds.
Odds tells you how many times an event will not happen. For example the odds are 4 to 1 against a flush draw being successful. Ie - you will hit a flush draw approximately 1 in 5 times or 20% of the time. (its not 1 in 4 as most people assume because you already have some of the suit in your hand).
This is calculated as follows. You have AK hearts in the pocket and the flop and turn give you 9h-7d-5h-2s. From your perspective there are 4 hearts that you have and so there are 9 hearts still out. For you to get a flush on the last card there are 9 chances (13 hearts less the 4 you have) out of 46 cards remaining (52 cards less the 4 of the board and the 2 in your hand). 9 times you will win, 37 times you will lose. The odds are therefore 37/9 which is 4.11 to 1 (or 4 to 1 rounded down).
4.2 Given the odds of making the draw should I bet?
Once you have figured out the odds of your hitting the card that you need on the draw you need to see whether it is worth making a bet. This is worked out by comparing the odds of hitting the hand to pot odds. The pot odds are the odds that the pot are giving you compared to the cost of the bet you have to make.
For example if you have to put £5 into a pot of £25 to allow you to draw the flush this is pot odds of £25/£5 ie 5 to 1. Given that the odds of making the flush are 4 to 1 the pot odds are generous and on average you will make money by betting.
4.3 Implied Pot Odds
Implied pot odds are the relationship between the current pot and the future bets you expect to win on this hand if you hit your card. For example continuing with the above example you may estimate that your opponent will bet on the river (because he always has so far or you think he has a good second best hand) and so the implied pot odds will be the £25 current pot odds plus the bet your opponent will make after the river (say another £5).
You can therefore expect to win £30 for your £5 bet and so the implied pot odds are £30/5 or 6 to 1. Note that you do not have to account for your own bet of £5 on the river as you will only bet this if you actually draw the winning card.
If you think your opponent would call a raise on the river he would be betting an additional £10 and so the pot odds would be £35/5 = 7 to 1.
4.4 Calculating your odds of making a card
In an internet game you have to make all these decisions within about a 10 second time frame which does not give you long. With practice you will become very fast at calculating the odds of a given play but early on a table will help your speed. The following table tells you the odds of any given out, an out being the number of cards that will improve your hand to a winning hand.
In the heart example listed above there are 9 cards (or outs) that would improve your hand to a flush, which will win the hand as you have the nut flush (the ace). That is odds of 4 to 1 as detailed in the table below (9 outs - the typical flush draw).
In our example we also hold the AK hearts which given the cards on the flop and the turn gives us 2 overcards. If an Ace or a King also falls on the river that card may also give us a winning hand. There are 3 aces and 3 kings still outstanding and so this gives us a further 6 outs (as long as we think that a pair of Aces or Kings would be a winning hand) making a total of 15 outs (flush draw with two overcards) which is 2.1 to 1. As long as the pot odds (or implied pot odds) are more than 2.1 to 1 we should bet.
Number of Outs One Card drawing on the flop*
- 20 1.3 to 1
- 19 1.5
- 18 1.6
- 17 1.8
- 16 1.9
- 15 (Flush draw with two overcards) 2.1
- 14 2.4
- 13 2.6
- 12 (Flush draw with overcard) 3
- 11 3.3
- 10 3.7
- 9 (Flush draw) 4
- 8 (open-ended straight draw) 5
- 7 6
- 6 (two overcards) 7
- 5 8
- 4 (a gut-shot draw) 11
- 3 15
- 2 (trying to hit a pocket pair) 23
- 1 46
If this is all confusing or is making you want to know more see the recommended reading list at the end of this newsletter.
5.0 General Advice to Beginners
The following pieces of general advice serve to help beginners overcome some of the more obvious pitfalls during the early stages of their Hold'em playing days.
- Most good players play a tight game, which means they do not play many hands. Beginners especially should wait until they have a hand that they like before committing funds (especially large amounts) to the pot. What constitutes a good hand pre-flop will be the subject of later issues. You should be aware that some good players play a loose game but this takes considerably more skill and is the domain of more advanced players. As a guide a tight player will play approximately 15%-20% of their hands pre-flop.
- Play fewer hands from early position as you will have to bet first on each hand which is a considerable disadvantage. Conversely you can play more hands from late position as this gives you the flexibility of acting after you have seen all the other players bets.
- A good general rule for playing starting hands is only play a hand when a raise behind you would not be so bad.
- You will lose money playing in the blinds and playing from these positions is a matter of damage limitation. The only advantage of playing in the blinds is that you can play many hands that you would not play from any other position as you have already put money in the pot so the cost of a further half bet (in the small blind) or no further bet (if you can check in the big blind) is worth a punt with many hands. If the flop comes up in your favour (for example you hit two small pairs) it is very difficult for your opponents to play against as they cannot read the hands you are likely to have as easily as when you bet from other positions. This also makes bluffing easier in the blinds.
- Don't try and bluff if there are more than 3 players in the round. It will rarely work as the odds are that at least one of them has a hand worth calling or raising you with. Bluffs work best against strong players as they are more likely to understand the hands you could have and the risks of them playing on. Beginners tend to call most bets once they are in the pot and so bluffing has little effect.
- Try and mix up your play a bit. If you always follow the same actions for a given set of cards you will be easy to read by your opponents. On the Internet this is less of a problem than in real games as players move around tables more often and are less likely to be playing regular opponents or the same opponents for a long period of time.
- Learning to fold your hand (throw it away) when you do not get the cards you were hoping for from the board can make a huge difference to whether you end up winning or losing at poker. Just because you have money in the pot does not mean its worth putting more money in if there is a good chance that someone has a better hand than you. Even after the river it is often not worth calling bets (unless the pot odds are very good) just because you are curious to find out what you opponent has.
- Be wary of players making large bets after the turn or river. Most players do not bluff as much as you would think and usually only bet heavily when they have a strong hand. (that being said Internet players tend to bluff more than players offline as they don't have the problem of maintaining a poker face). When faced with a large bet, If you don't have a strong hand you are most probably beat. Often on the Internet players slowplay which means they pretend they don't have a strong hand in early betting rounds and then bet large amounts after the turn or the river. As a general rule most players on the Internet slowplay too often.
- Take advantage of the freeplay tournaments on the site to learn your game. Take you time, watch and learn and take your chances when they come. Try and avoid getting pulled into a large betting round early unless you are sure you have a very strong hand. Live to fight another hand and let the maniacs bet themselves out of the competition.
- Be wary of what hands the turn or the river could have made for other players. A very common mistake is to be so happy you have landed a straight on the river that you forget that someone else could have made a flush. You bet hard and end up having to omg in the chat. Whenever there are 3 cards on the board that are the same suit someone could have a flush. Similar problems arise when there is a pair on the board giving you two pair and you miss the chance that this could have made someone 3 of a kind or even a full house.
Internet chat has created a lot of shorthand jargon used in the chat boxes and the following list covers off the most popular ones.
- lol Laughing out loud
- :) smiling face
- :( frown
- nh nice hand
- vnh very nice hand
- n1 nice One
- wp well played
- np nice play
- tx or ty Thankyou
- tyvm Thank you very much
- woohoo A celebration
- zzzz Going to sleep from slow play
- brb be right back
- loo Going to the loo - sometimes used instead of brb
- otp On the phone - explanation of why sitting out
- n riv Nice river - used to congratulate a player that pulled a card on the river
- omg Oh my God - sometimes used by a player that lost to an opponent with the n.riv and had a lot of money in the pot
- gl Good luck
- arg an indication of frustration
- Ace High A hand with an ace but no pair
- Acting First The player that has to bet or check first - sitting in seat number 3
- All-in A player that bets the last amount of chips he has or is disconnected from the server while playing a hand
- Backdoor A draw that requires the turn and the river card to make your hand. For example you have 1 club, there are 2 clubs on the flop and you need the turn and the river card to be clubs to make a backdoor flush.
- Bad Beat A hand that loses to an opponent who gets very lucky. Made even worse if an opponent played the hand badly and should not have been in the pot in the first place. Good players tend to get more than a few bad beats when playing beginner players which can be very frustrating and expensive.
- Best of It A game or a bet where you have a positive expectation of winning money. For example you get pot odds of 5-1 on a 3-1 bet.
- Board The community cards that are shared on the table
- Button Also known as the dealer and the last player to receive their cards. They are also the last player to bet on each betting round which gives the player a considerable advantage.
- Check Declining to bet but remaining in the hand
- Check-raise The act of checking and then raising after an opponent bets. A ploy more often used during internet play than offline play.
- Come over the top The act of re-raising an opponent that has already raised that round of betting. A very aggressive play usually demonstrating a very strong hand.
- Cut-off The player that acts just before the dealer or button
- Drawing Dead Drawing with no chance of having the winning hand even if you draw the card you are after. For example drawing a Ten to make a 6-7-8-9-T straight when an opponent already has a flush
- Early Position The first three seats to the left of the blinds and the players that have to bet first.
- Favourite The hand that has the best chance of winning. This is not necessarily the player with the best hand at a given point in the round. For example a player with JJ may have the best hand pre-flop but is not necessarily the favourite to win the hand depending on the hands that opponents are holding.
- First in The first player to commit money to the pot.
- Fish A poor player who usually loses money. Generally refers to players who draw to weak hands and play many poor starting hands.
- Flop The first three cards placed onto the board
- Fold Giving up a hand rather than betting or calling a bet.
- Free Card A card that you can see without calling a bet (for instance if everyone checks).
- Gut Shot A draw to an inside straight, ie only one card will give you the straight. For example you have T-9 and the board is 7-6-2 you would have a Gut Shot draw at an 8
- Heads Up A pot contested against a single opponent
- High Cards Generally referring to any card 9 or higher
- Implied Odds The relationship between the current size of the pot and the bets you expect to win to your current bet.
- Kicker The other card in your hand that has not matched the board
- Late Position The last two positions also known as the cut-off and the button
- Limp in The act of just calling the bet pre-flop
- Loose A player who plays many hands. Loose players often try and bluff and call all the way to the river. A game is loose if a lot of players regularly see the flop.
- Maniac A super aggressive player who is constantly raising the pot and playing most of his hands. A Maniac can make it very expensive to play your hands but offers considerable opportunities to relieve them of their chips.
- Middle Position In a ten handed game seats six, seven and eight.
- Nuts Holding the best possible hand on any given round of betting. For example the nut flush is the player with the Ace of that suit.
- Open ended straight A straight that can be made at either end of the straight. For example 6-7-8-9 can be made with a 5 or a T
- Outs The number of cards that will improve your hand, preferably to a winning hand rather than drawing dead.
- Overcard A card or two in your hand that is higher than the cards on the board. For example you hold A-K with a flop Q-7-2 with AK being two overcards that you can then draw to to try and have top pair.
- Overpair A pocket pair that is higher than any card on the board. For instance you have Q-Q with a flop T-9-4.
- Pay him off The act of paying money to an opponent that beats you.
- Pocket Pair A pair in your hand
- Position The order in which you have to play that rounds betting
- Pot Odds The relationship between the total amount in the pot to the amount of the current bet.
- Preflop Betting that happens before the flop and after the players have received their cards in the hole or the pocket.
- Protect The act of betting or raising so that you charge your opponents to try and outdraw or beat you.
- Rags A board that has all cards lower than a 9 - ie all low cards
- Rainbow A flop that has 3 cards of 3 different suits
- Raise To increase the bet with an additional amount
- Read Determining what hands your opponent is likely to have based on the way that they are betting and the cards on the board
- Reraise To increase an opponents raise by an additional amount. Also known as coming over the top, a very aggressive play representing a very strong hand.
- River The 5th community card on the board
- Rock A player who plays very tight and rarely bluffs
- Running Pair When the turn card and the river card are a pair
- Scare Card A card that is potentially dangerous either to you or an opponent. Examples would be a club on the turn when the flop has 2 or 3 clubs already. If you have a straight you would now be worried that someone has turned a flush.
- Semi Bluff A bet or raise in which if you are called you have a chance to draw a winning card on the turn or the river which would be the best hand.
- Set Three of a kind when holding a pocket pair that matches one of the board cards.
- Shark A very good player - likes to eat all the fish
- Short Handed Refers to games where only several players are playing. Tactics in short handed games are different as the blinds are more costly to each player and the number of hands played will have to increase. Weak hands in ten play action can become strong hands in short handed games.
- Short stacked A player who does not have many chips left with which to bet
- Slowplay The act of checking or just calling a very strong hand with the intention of raising on later rounds. Has the purpose of getting more bets into the pot and pulling more players into that hand as well as disguising when the hand was made.
- Steal Raising to try and win the blinds preflop. This is often done as a bluff by the player on the button when no one else has bet in the round.
- Street A betting round such as the flop (3rd street), the turn (4th street) and the river (5th street)
- Table Image How a player is perceived to play, generally relates to whether a player plays tight or loose.
- Tell An act or gesture that might indicate how strong or weak you opponents hand is.
- Tight A player who doesn't play many hands. After the flop a tight player will rarely bluff and generally only continue to play with strong hands or strong draws. A game in tight when not many players see the flop on each hand.
- Tilt A term referring to when good players start playing recklessly, usually as a result of a few bad beats or long periods without a strong hand of favourable flop. Players are referred to be on-tilt
- Top pair A pair using one of our hole cards to match the highest card on the board.
- Trap hands Hands that are typically dominated by other hands such as KJ, KT and QT. These hands rarely win large pots and often lose large pots to hands with better kickers.
- Trips Three of a kind when one of your pocket cards matches a pair on the board.
- Turn The 4th community card on the board
- Under the gun The first player to act pre-flop
The following poker authors/books are recommended reading for anyone interested in learning more about the intricacies of playing Texas Hold'em and other Poker games, They can all be sourced at amazon.co.uk.
Beginners/Intermediates
Matthew Hilger A professional internet poker player who has made his living playing Internet Hold'em for over 4 years. His book Internet Texas Holdem is a great book for all players wanting to get a good grounding of the game and highlights many of the characteristics of internet play over offline games.
Lee Jones His book Winning Low limit holdem is a great book for beginners along the lines of Matthew Hilgers' work David Sklansky Widely recognised as the foremost authority on poker. His book, the theory of poker, is a bible for all poker players and tournament poker for advanced players is the best work we have found on the tactics and changes needed for good players to adjust to play in tournaments.
Advanced
Doyle Brunson His book Super System is a powerful work covering many variants of poker. The work on no-limit and limit Texas Hold'em is legendary, although not for the faint hearted, promoting very aggressive poker play.
Stewart Rueben The book pot limit and no limit poker is not for beginners but read along with Sklansky and Brunson is an excellent work.