Partypoker is really good at catering poker games for beginners and new players alike, so the field tends to be softer than on other poker sites. If you are interested in free poker tournaments. Poker for a living: Cash Games. Online cash games are still a good way to go for anyone looking to make decent profit playing poker, but these aren’t what they used to be some years ago. Nowadays, it is much harder to find good games, especially as you move through the limits.

1. How To Get Really Good At Online Poker Vegas World
2. How To Get Better At Online Poker
3. How To Get Really Good At Online Poker Real Money

Everyday players are sitting down at the tables and consistently making fundamental mistakes because of lack of knowledge, misinformation or failing to maintain focus.

Even just a small strategical adjustment in poker can potentially save you a huge amount in the long run.

In this article we will point out some of the best live and online poker tournament strategy tips you can use to improve your game as quickly as possible.

Tip 1: Play The Right Starting Hands

Whether it be lack of patience, or an unfamiliarity with opening ranges, many tournament poker players still open too wide. This is especially true when it comes to early and middle position opens, where there are still many opponents left to act behind who can be dealt a strong hand.

The problem is when called, wide openers are often at a range disadvantage. Often being dominated by their opponents, they are vulnerable to 3 bets since they frequently won't have a holding strong enough to continue under pressure.

Furthermore, although opening a hand like 7 ♠ 5♠ might at times not be a terrible strategy from early or middle position, speculative hands like suited connectors and gappers, as well as small pairs, work best with deep stacks behind.

These speculative hand types infrequently connect strongly with the flop, so those times they do you want to have deep stakes behind to have the potential to win a huge pot. Modern day tournament structures often only see deep stack play occur during the first few levels of play. This leads us into the next tournament poker tip, being stack size aware.

Learn which hands to open raise in MTT's - Watch lesson 6.1 from the Road to Success MTT Course. A power-packed 50 minute video below, just use one of the button options to unlock it and get instant access.

Tip 2: Be Stack Size Aware

Effective stack size plays a critical role in a tournament players success.

Having a deep stack, and therefore expanding an opening range to include a lot of speculative suited hands and small pairs is a tournament strategy that is going to be punished if a number of short stacks are yet to act behind. This most notably occurs in turbo tournaments where the average stack size is quite short.

Short stacks will be in push-or-fold mode. Being short, they don't have time to wait and will be looking to take any opportunity they can to move all-in. This high rate of all-ins will leave wide openers frequently being forced to relinquish their hands, without even having the opportunity to try to hit a nice flop. Problematic hands often include; J8s , KTo and weak Ax hands.

It's not just short-stacks that can cause a problem, aggressive players will be looking to attack wide-openers. This is especially true when a player opens with a vulnerable M8-M14 (20bb-35bb) stack. 3 bets get good leverage against this stack size, since continuing in the pot represents committing a significant portion of a players stack.

Wide openers would be wise not to commit a large percentage of their stack with marginal holdings, and so will be forced to fold, or face being in a high-risk situation. Staying aware of your own stacks utility, as well as anticipating how opponents will utilize their stacks, is an important tournament poker tip to keep in mind.

POKER TIP: If you are currently using BB to calculate stack size, here's a look at why using 'M' is a better MTT strategy.

Tip 3: Be Careful Overplaying In The Early Stages

As a stack gets deeper, the less willing a competent player will be to put their entire stack at risk since they have more to lose. It's rare to see good players all-in during the early stages of a tournament with hands like AKo or JJ preflop.

Smart players recognize that their counterparts aren't going to be risking their entire stack with weaker hands like AQo . Therefore, even a strong hand like AK could be at a significant equity disadvantage facing a deep stacked opponents all-in range. Could you fold QQ here?

Rather than putting in an extra raise, often times just calling with even very strong hands in the early stage of a poker tournament has great benefits.

• Allows your opponents to continue with hands they were folding to a re-raise that you have crushed.
• Disguises the strength of your hand and keeps you unpredictable.
• Prevents you from getting all-in facing a super strong range where often times you're crushed.

Tip 4: Continuation Bet Aggressively But Not Always

Players have learnt the value of c-betting, but it's a strategy that is often misapplied. Being the preflop aggressor shouldn't lead to a mandatory c-bet and double barrels.

This is especially true in multi-way pots yet players continue to make fruitless c-bets with weak holdings into multiple opponents.

Even in heads-up situations, key factors to consider include;

• How does the flop texture interact with players ranges?
• Who has the strongest range?
• Who has nut advantage (the biggest share of super strong hands)?
• How passive or aggressive is the opponent we're facing?
• How does the stack size/SPR allow us to operate on the flop and future streets?

The following hand illustrates the effect nut advantage can have on profitable continuation betting and how it applies to this tournament poker tip:

Tip 5: Be ICM Aware

The Independent Chip Model or ICM, is a great model players use to make more profitable decisions when deep in a tournament and especially at a final table.

Unlike in cash games, chip values fluctuate depending on the stage of the tournament and the competing opponents stack sizes. At it's most extreme, ICM strategy can make A♠A♣: an easy fold preflop.

Imagine a situation in a satellite where 9 players get a World Series of Poker entry and there's 10 remaining. The action folds around to a player with 100,000 in tournament chips who moves all in from the small blind. You're sitting in the big blind with A♠A♣: and also 100,000 in chips. You look around and see a few opponents with only 1000 chips left, which is the size of the current big blind. Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon.

Obviously one of these short stacks is likely to bust very soon. Moreover the chance that they collectively out survive your 100,000 stack is extremely remote. You'd likely be a 99% chance to get a WSOP entry, so why would you call with your A♠A♣ and risk busting next around 20% of the time?

Aside from calling too wide in spots when the most profitable strategy is to proceed tightly, the opposite can also be true when it comes to pressuring your opponents. ICM allows players when they have the opportunity to assert pressure on there opponents stacks, to go ahead and do so liberally, since thinking opponents counter-strategy is to play a tight range of hands.

Here's an example of how drastically a hand range can change when the opportunity to assert pressure at a final table exists. 5 of the 6 remaining players at the Pokerstars Sunday Millions have 15bb's, whilst the UTG player has a short 2bb stack. Since the 15bb stacks wants to avoid busting out next and missing out on a large pay jump before the immanent bust out of the 2bb stack, the small blind can adjust their all-in range. Instead of the profitably 57% all-in range in normal play, they can move all-in with 100% of hands to apply pressure on the big blind.

Whilst the big blind should adjust their calling range from the regular 36% to just 10% of hands to account for the ICM effect in play.

The PokerNerve Road to Success course teaches players how to master ICM situations, which is key to tournament poker success since ICM comes into play as the prizes become significant. If there was only one tournament poker tip that you take away from this article, it's that you need to know ICM!

Tip 6: Bet The Appropriate Size

Strong players are capitalizing on their opponents tendencies to bet too big or too small in a number of different situations. With some similar considerations to that of continuation betting, when selecting a bet size important aspects include;

• Which player's range does the board texture favor?
• Who has the greatest nut saturation?
• How does SPR influence our betting strategy

There are many great articles online about bet sizing. You should be sure to check out ThePokerBank's and the Pokerology's to learn more about this tournament tip.

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Tip 7: Take Equity Realization Into Account

Possibly due to the popularity growth of Twitch, many poker players approach to big blind play has evolved. The current trend is to defend the big blind with virtually any 2 cards, as some top pros elect to do, and the justification for this is taking advantage of the excellent pot odds being offered.

While the inclusion of antes combined with commonly seeing a small open raise size does offer the big blind generous pot odds, this has led to a fundamental flaw in the way many players approach big blind play in poker tournaments. The key concept overlooked, is equity realization.

Equity realization reflects a players ability to take a certain hand, and win their share of the pot, frequently enough, to make it profitable in the long-term. Although some top pros have the ability to win their equity share of the pot even out of position, less skilled players rarely do. This leads to a large chip loss in the long run.

It is quite difficult to realize of your equity when out of position, with no initiative and a weak range. This means them glorious odds you are being offered aren't quite as good as you think!

The following article explains this crucial tournament poker tip in more detail; Equity Realization.

Tip 8: Don't Miss Double And Triple Barrel Opportunities

'One and done' is the plight of many aspiring tournament poker players. Everyday at the tables I see players missing profitable opportunities to double, or even triple barrel. Understanding what turn and river cards are advantageous to a players range, along with opponent tendencies, are crucial parts of a winning barreling formula.

The most common scenario at the table, is a heads-up pot where the big blind calls an open-raise. And this happens to be a great spot to barrel. Big blind defenders have a wide range, and it's important to pressure this wide range, especially on only partially connected board textures with one or multiple high cards.

RedChipPoker has a great article on spotting profitable double barrel opportunities which you can read here: THE +EV DOUBLE BARREL GUIDE

Tip 9: Check-Raise More Flops

How To Get Really Good At Online Poker Vegas World

The biggest difference between the current tournament population, and the future generation, will likely be their approach to check-raising the flop. This opportunity typically occurs in a heads-up pot, after defending the big blind verse an opponents raise.

Currently, MTT players only check-raise the flop in this situation around 7-8% of the time, when closer to 20% is a more optimal strategy. On certain flop textures, check-raising close to 25% of the time is an extremely profitable strategy. And if players are getting out of line with their c-bets, then check-raising at an even higher frequency could be a profitable exploit.

By giving up too easily on a wide range of board textures, or taking a more passive approach and simply calling, c-betting can be done with reckless abandon. However, by selecting a nice mix of check-raising hands, combining some strong hands with some good semi-bluffing candidates, a check-raiser can become tricky to play against and exploit the average players tendency to over c-bet.

POKER TIP: Applied correctly and check-raising becomes a super powerful weapon in your arsenal leading to more profitable poker results. But also think beyond the flop, there's plenty of check-raising opportunities you may be missing. This video demonstrates an interesting turn check-raise situation.

We discuss check raising strategy in more detail in our post over on unfeltedpoker.com.

Tip 10: Develop A Good 3betting Strategy

Whilst 3 betting aggressively is a strategy many players employ, especially in online poker circles, failure to apply optimal 3 betting strategies has certainly led to a lot of spewy poker. Simply attacking opponents who are suspected of opening wide doesn't cut it in the modern poker world.

Players have learnt to deal with 3 bets more profitably, by mixing in some calls with timely 4 bets. Moreover, the role stack size plays when it comes to 3 betting it still largely misunderstood by much of the poker community.

Sure there are certain stack sizes where 3 bets gain a lot of leverage, but how about the role blockers play? And when is 9♦7♦ a better 3 bet candidate than K♦T♠ ? These are just some of the considerations when it comes to a profitable 3 betting strategy. See how to design strong 3betting ranges in this article by Donkr.

Bonus Poker Strategy Tip: Avoid and Deal with Downswings

As a poker player you want to earn your money as easily and as stress-free as possible right? Well, understanding ROI, variance and bankroll management can help (see TopPokerValue's article on bankroll management).

All poker players at some point experience downswings. In some cases, this can affect their play, volume or state of mind.

You'll be miserable, hating poker, playing less and earning less per tournament as your play will suffer.

Along with finding ways that work for you to keep a positive mindset, taking pro-active steps can help keep you confident by knowing you are dealing with the situation like a professional whilst at the same time taking positive action to get back on track and winning.

What is ROI and variance?

Every tournament you enter has an EV associated with it. So if you enter a $10 tourney, as a good player maybe you have a 30% ROI, so you make $3. So it doesn't matter whether you brick that tourney or win it for $5000, you make $3 in the long run.

Now, of course, you don't make $3 each time. 80-85% of the time you lose that $10, some percentage of the time you win a little bit, and some very small percentage of the time you win a lot. How small those ‘small percentages’ are primarily depends on not only your skill edge, but also the field size which is an extremely important concept that is often ignored.

Variance is a factor of two things:

1) Your edge

2) The field size

Example 1)

You play the Hot $55 which has $30K guaranteed, every day for a year on Pokerstars. It has 1600 runners and you have a 5% ROI, because turbo ROIs are small. Your average yearly profit is $605 however you will lose money on the year 55% of the time.

Example 2)

You play a $20 tourney with $3K guaranteed on a softer site every day for a year. It has 200 runners and you have a 30% ROI, because it's a normal speed tourney and you’re against an easier field. Your average yearly profit is $2400 and in this case you lose money only 12% of the time.

A lot of people would look at those two tournaments and make a decision based on the buy-in and 1st place prize money as to which was better to play, and it would be grossly wrong. Once you accept all the above, you realise that the 'up top' number is largely meaningless.

Yes, on the same site bigger fields may mean a lot of fish have registered to play, but you'll find a lot of small field, soft, non-peak hour tournaments have a great pro-to-fish ratio and hence are great value. Of course once you consider other sites that have smaller fields, you'll often find they are a better choice than what might be running on Pokerstars.

So what can you do?

When players start losing money and along with that, confidence, not only does their game deteriorate but they often compound that problem by failing to make rational decisions. Often losing players, or players on a downswing, go 'bink chasing' and decide to take a shot to win all their money back in one tourney. Or load up some quick $82 hyper-turbos to try to turn it all around quickly.

People get overly fixated on what's 'up top' and wanting to score big in one tournament. That’s a sure-fire strategy to fuel a down swing. If your house got knocked down would you try to slap it back up in a week? Take that opportunity to rebuild a better, stronger house.

Make sure you're adding in some study and keep focused (see Sky's Matsuhashi How To Study Poker series), and stay fresh and positive as you approach each session. Be smart and get back into profit quicker instead of enduring a 6-12 month variance rollercoaster!

Closing Words On Tournament Poker Tips

Poker is a multi-faceted game which makes it fun but challenging. Challenge yourself to factor in the relevant concepts, and make more profitable decisions. Tighten up from the big blind, and in general around the table. This tip often quickly improves a new players results, or those that have a got a little sloppy with their play.

Calculate stack size using 'M'. Always be aware of your own, and your opponents stack sizes so you don't get yourself caught in awkward situations. One awkward situation that often comes up is when you hold an overpair to the board and an opponent puts the heat on you. Don't be afraid to make big lay downs to preserve your stack, especially in the early levels.

Be aware of your cbetting frequency. There's no need to waste tournament poker chips cbetting every time, especially when the pot is multi-way. Pick your spots to make profitable plays. Remember when it comes to the final table, regularly profitable playing ranges might alter due to the payouts. ICM is the key when it comes to those final big decisions.

Another key to success is knowing when to fire multiple bullets at your opponents. Barreling, especially against a wide big blind range can really help increase your non-showdown winnings. Finding ways to accumulate chips without always having the best hand is what top players do. This is why check-raising and having a good 3 betting strategy is so important. Correct use of these strategical concepts and the other tips outlines will get you winning more at the tables.

Now that you've acquired some great holdem tournament strategy tips to help you achieve MTT success, go out there an implement them!

One of the quickest way to improve your poker game is to take on a poker coaching, a course or join a poker training site; if that is something that interests you be sure to check out the PokerNerve road to Success Course for some advanced poker tournament strategy or you can check out HowToPlayPokerInfo's guide on poker training & poker courses to find the right option for you.

Any other poker tournament strategy tips? Leave them below in the comments, we would love to hear them!

First, the results. Since the World Series of Poker last year, I've played 174 hours of poker. I play limit hold'em, with almost all of my play at the $10/20 or $15/30 level. In that time I've made $7594, which is $43.70 per hour.

I say that I'm a semi-professional, because obviously 5 hours of 'work' per week isn't really playing at a professional level. Statistically speaking, it's also somewhat possible that I've just gotten lucky over this time. Considering my level of understanding of the game, including knowing what I don't know, honest evaluation of the competition, and a general comfort level with the game, I can objectively say that I don't think luck plays a large part in my results.

Anyway, I say all that to let you judge for yourself my playing level, rather than having to take my word for it. Real professionals might disagree with some of my advice, but I'm offering it because I think that it's difficult to find the correct path towards becoming a winning poker player, and I've now discovered one such path.

Subjectively, it feels awesome to be good at poker. When I go to Vegas every month, I assume that I'm going to leave with a profit of some sort, and am playing to figure out exactly how much it will be. In the same way a programmer takes for granted that he can build a simple web app, I've come to take it for granted that if I need money for something, I can just play poker. That's part of why I don't play more, actually-- it feels like pulling money out of the ATM that I'm not immediately going to spend. Proficient poker playing actually feels like a low-grade superpower.

So today I want to share some parts of this journey. This post isn't about how to play poker, but rather how to learn to play poker. Despite tons of good resources and information out there, I found it difficult to know exactly how to tackle the problem of 'getting good at poker'.

Hold'Em is a beautifully complex and satisfying game. I'd play it even if money wasn't on the line. Playing for money makes it a pure game which ensures that everyone is playing at the best of their ability. The only real 'move' you have is to add money to the pot. No hitting, standing, or swapping out cards. Yet behind this simplicity are layers of math, psychology, and logic, all woven together.

How hard is it to get good at poker? Not very. I started out playing $3/6. When I moved up to $6/12, I was terrified that everyone was going to be really good. They were horrible. I stuck around at $6/12 for a while, and then, hands trembling, moved up to $15/30. I was sure that everyone was amazing there. A few people were good, but most were pretty bad. After a few months of play, I was usually the best or second best player at the table. I recently took a shot at $20/40 and played two different games. At one game I figured I was fourth or fifth best out of ten, and at the other I thought I was one of the top two.

Unfortunately, you can't just be in the top half to make money at poker. Because of the house taking money, you have to be one of the top three or so to win overall. Because everyone else is playing casually and without discipline, it just doesn't take too much to get to the top three.

Before you ever start playing, you need to memorize starting hands. Start with Winning Low Limit Hold'Em by Lee Jones. It's not perfect, and you'll end up diverging from his recommendations eventually, but by simply following his chart, you'll have an enormous advantage over the other players at the lower limits.

Buy a copy of Turbo Texas Hold'Em from Wilson Software. The interface is hilarious and it only runs on PCs on 32bit operating systems (or in VMware), but it's the best poker simulation you can find. Go through meticulously and make all of the settings as hard as possible, including having the AI learn your style. Turn off the animations and sounds to speed up play.

Turbo Texas Hold'Em is amazing because it's fast. You can play fifteen hundred hands per hour. For reference, that's fifty hours of live poker. The AI isn't exactly like real life players, but it's close enough and the difficulty roughly matches to a $15/30 game.

Once you've memorized the starting hands, start playing a couple hours of TTH per day, just guessing what to do after following the starting hand chart. This gives you some context for the game that will increase your comprehension when you read.

After a couple thousand hands or so, read the rest of 'Winning Low Limit Hold'Em'. Keep playing Turbo Texas Hold'Em, but also start playing real life casino games. Start with a $3/6 or $4/8 game, which are low enough to be cheap, but not so low that it's a complete freakshow.

At these low limits, the rake is proportionally so high that the games are virtually unbeatable. Even a firehouse can't fill a bucket with a giant hole in the bottom of it. There's just too much money being pulled off the table. So you don't have to wait until you're beating $4/8 to move up in ranks-- just wait until you are choosing your starting hands with no thought, aren't playing hands you shouldn't play, and feel like your post-flop play is one of the best two or three at the table. Complete comprehension and implementation of Winning Low Limit Hold'Em should get you there.

It's important to be aggressive in moving up in limits, even if you're scared. The buy in for $6/12 is $200, which is a small price to pay for a test to see if you're ready to move up or not. Don't make your decision based on whether you win at the new level or not, but on how the game felt after a couple hours of play. If you felt like people were running circles around you, and you didn't understand what the better players were doing, don't move up. If you think you're in the top half of the players, do move up. You need better competition to progress, and sometimes you have to pay for it in the form of losing a small amount of money to the rake.

Once you start playing $6/12 or $8/16 or $10/20 (depending on which of these your local casino has), most players will still be horrible, but you'll run into a few people that actually have some understanding of the game. Now you can put into practice slightly more advanced tactics like hand-reading, free card plays, and certain bluffs. To learn these, read Small Stakes Hold'em by Sklansky.

The rake in these small/mid limit games is small enough that they are beatable. Keep at them until you feel like you're one of the best three players at the table, and are winning money. If you're diligent about reading the book and putting in some hours on TTH, it won't take long.

The big skill to work on in these mid stakes games is hand-reading, which isn't explicitly covered in any of the books I'm recommending. The idea is that as your opponent makes his moves, you narrow down the range of hands he could possibly have. The goal isn't to figure out the exact hand he has, but rather what his 'range' is, and how you fare against it.

For example, if an opponent in late position raises a two-tone flop, but then checks the turn, it's extremely likely that he has a flush draw. If you have a pair, you can assume that you're going to win unless he he hits his flush card.

The second part of this equation is to figure out which play will net the most money based on these assumptions. To continue the previous example, if a non flush card comes on the river, you should actually check, even though you know you're probably winning. Why? Because he might try to bluff at it and bet. If he DOES bet, you should call, but not raise. A raise will only be called by hands that beat you (like if he made a set on the river).

Once you're becoming somewhat proficient at hand reading, move up to $15/30 or $20/40. Because these games are finally getting into the realm of stakes played by professionals, you have to tread with a bit of caution. The $15/30 game I play in San Francisco has a couple pros, but no one particularly intimidating. I played a $20/40 game in Seattle that was full of horrible players that I would expect to see at the $6/12. On the other hand, the one time I played $20/40 at Bellagio, it was a tough game.

While moving up to this new limit, or even just before, read Hold'Em For Advanced Players. This book is more complex than the first two, and many of the plays it prescribes will only work against decent players. You should continue to work on hand reading and thinking very critically about how each of your possible plays will work against that range.

Make sure to track your progress as you go. I like 'Session Logger' for Android, and my friends like 'Poker Journal' for iPhone. Once you settle in to your $15/30 game, you should be able to make about $45 an hour. It's not a huge amount of money, but it's not bad, and it's a fun way to do it.

The last thing I'll mention is the importance of discipline. If I were to point out the biggest error I see opponents making, it's that they lack discipline. They want to play crappy pocket pairs early. They want to call one more street to see if they make their miracle straight. It's only a bet here and there, which seems negligible, but it adds up in the end.

When I sit down at a poker table, my goal isn't to win. It's to play correct poker. I don't try to justify any call or fold-- I just try to do what I think is best. I don't always get it right, but that attitude has helped me avoid the emotional playing that would have easily turned me into a net loser.

As for going beyond these limits, I just don't know yet. I definitely haven't fully absorbed Hold'Em for Advanced Players, but I imagine that doing so would be the first step towards moving up limits. I'm currently beating the $15/30 in San Francisco and the $10/20 at Bellagio in Las Vegas. I'm a bit intimidated by the $20/40 at Bellagio, and I don't have enough data to know whether I can beat it or not. I suspect I can't yet.

I also don't know anything about online poker. For whatever reason, it just doesn't appeal to me, and I don't play it.

As my awareness of the game grew alongside my profits, I was shocked to see just how bad most players are. They've put in the time playing, but without any real study, they're mostly reinforcing bad habits. You can do differently. With just a few months of concentrated study and play, I'm convinced that anyone can become a winning player.

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How To Get Better At Online Poker

No pickup update because, honestly, this last week has been useless. my wing and I moved to Las Vegas for at least the next few weeks to remedy the situation. the full story will come out in the next update.

How To Get Really Good At Online Poker Real Money

I think this post may not be the best edited, but it's 5:15am and I'm running out of batteries, so I've got to post it.

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