4 Ways to Improve Your Online Poker Win Rate
Texas Hold’em is quite rightly touted as “a hard way to make an easy living”. Unlike simpler variants, it takes a wide array of skills to become a master. This can seem daunting to beginners and even intermediates who just want to win without fuss. Fortunately, there are some shortcuts an enthusiast can take to helping achieve a better win rate, or at least losing less. We will detail four such tips in this post.
1] Selection Charts
The first step to improving your win rate is accessing selection charts that help you understand the right hands to play. There are countless combinations of poker hands to start with and each one’s profitability changes based on the position on the table. So, in addition to understanding poker hand rankings, you must keep a reference sheet nearby of what hands to play. Most coaching sites will offer this freely so reach out to sites like Texas Hold’em Questions, Upswing or Jonathan Little and they can help you.
2] Software
The online poker environment has become quite automated. Most sites allow customised buttons so you don’t even need to manually enter your bet size. This is just the tip of the iceberg though, there are numerous poker software providers around that can help you improve. There are sites offering assistance in key areas like pot odds or your tournament equity. More importantly, there are sites that allow you a heads-up display, featuring key stats on your opponents. They can be purchased on a monthly or annual basis and is usually easy to use. If you are not familiar with the main software for poker, just search them up and you’ll see the best ones on the first few pages of Google.
3] Tighten up from The Blinds
Even the most experienced of players could benefit from this tip. In cash games, it’s a universal truth that the positions you will lose the most from is the blinds. This is obviously due to the fact you post small and big blind antes. However, it is also because you will have to play the entire hand out of position. This is in no way desirable in Texas Hold’em where position is power. Shamefully, even winning players fall victim to believing they can play average quality hands from out of position and worse, when they are the passive caller before the flop. To avoid these issues, we recommend you play very solid from the blinds and respect position. This is our advice whether you’re playing a weekly freeroll or the WSOP.
4] Play on Smaller Sites
Whilst the major sites have the best prize pools, highest traffic and snazzy software, they can also be the breeding ground for grinders. To ensure you are maintaining a good win rate, we suggest trying to play on smaller sites. You will find the competition level much lower with a high view flop percentage and far more overplaying. The smaller sites are the ones that tend to offer poker as a secondary function to their main activity e.g. bookies. They cater to people who want to bet on football, horses, etc. As such, they will be clueless on what percentage of hands to play, how to size their bets and what to do on later streets. These sites are perfect for those of you who don’t care about the software and only focused on winning the max you can.
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