Texas Hold'em strategy

Starting hands and pot odds only go so far when playing Hold'em. While these perceptions are of high importance at beating the bad players, you generally have to add a few more tricks to your repertoire in order to beat out the better players.

Hard limit games are very challenging and it can be hard to beat tough competition. However, you can raise your chances for winning if you do certain things to give yourself that extra edge.

An important factor is relative hand strength and odds. If you have KQ and a skilled player raises in front of you, it's likely that you are beat. But at the same time, KQ is a playable hand in the right circumstances.

It is desirable to have hands that you will be able to dominate in the pot so you can beat them later on. If you are in the middle or early positions, you will have to call with this hand and move a dominated hand along.

Other plays with certain hand strength would be coming in with suited connectors, or small pairs, in order to provoke others to come in with you. But if you have a mid pair and some guy at the table raises in front of you, you need to consider re-raising in order to cut him off.

Now, imagine you have 99 and you place him on Ax. You currently have odds on him and want the pot to be you against him.

When playing a flush or straight draw, it is generally uncomplicated with bad players, but is usually mercurial with good players. If you are heads up at the flop, you should for sure semi-bluff at the pot and pray to take it down.

Moreover, if its heads up and another player bets at you, you ought to think about raising in order to either intimidate the other player into backing down or to save yourself half a bet.

In the event that he has a top pair and is just calling if you pass on the turn, you can be more sure and earn yourself a free card. You will have seen the turn/river for just 2 small bets instead of 1 small bet and a big one.

An Ace and a suited low kicker is one of the most frequently misplayed hands when it comes to limit poker. In fact, this is a much better no limit hand because of its likelihood of beating another player when you hit a flush.

People tend to go in with this hand and frequently though it is usually dominated, and it's rare to hit a flush.

People generally like to stuff the pot with AA or KK, but it is more advisable to try to play these hands a bit differently against the better players. You should try to re-raise with KK because you want to charge someone for looking for an A.

It is probably best in this case to flat call with AA unless there are a number of runners and you want to avoid too many from entering the pot.

However, if you're in late position or the blinds and there is a raise, it will wind up a flat call. It is expected to be a heads up between the players and the raisers, it will likely have about an 80% advantage. Now you should call his flop bet and then raise him on the turn.

Through this method, you can make a significantly larger amount of money than if you just knocked him preflop.

When playing a tight game, the players tend to get scared at a re-raise preflop because this usually means QQ or better. Therefore, it is often best to re-raise with just a average hand preflop if you’re sure that this will improve the chances of a flop bluff.

After playing with the same people for awhile, you will learn to tailor your AA line of attack and play that hard preflop in order to re-raise.

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