5 top cash game poker tips for beginners

People often ask me how I started playing poker, and how quickly it will be before they can start raking in the dollars playing poker online. The truth is, first you have to master the microlimits, which can also be pretty frustrating due to the sheer number of bad beats you will face. Most players who are serious about poker will beat these limits pretty quickly, and pretty easily and can move up to the higher games available. In this article I will discuss common errors that new players make when starting to play online poker, and the quick tips you can employ to avoid being the fish at the table!

Play Tight – This is the #1 thing most amateurs don’t do!
At the microstakes (up to $10 buyin cash games) we find only beginner players who are largely clueless and every now and then a more experienced player who went busto. Beginner players are often players who want to see many flops, playing as many hands as possible, and basically have a good time, in fact, some do not even expect to make money, they are just playing for fun. These type of players are often passive (rarely raising, and mainly just call) and only focus on their own cards. Other beginner players raise with everything and play over-aggressive, these are always pretty easy to spot, and they rarely last long! Purely by playing fewer hands than your opponents you are already playing better than they do, because, on average, you have a better hand when you do decide to play. A basic rule of thumb is that you should be playing about 1 in 5 of the hands you are dealt, representing the top 20% of starting hands.

Another reason for only playing good/premium hands, is that is just makes playing postflop soo much easier. You will find yourself in fewer troublesome spots. For example, if you play a marginal hand like K5, and the flop comes KJT, you are put in a troublesome spot, because your opponent(s), can have better Kings, e.g. K9, or even 2 pair combos like JT, KJ, etc. Therefore when your opponent bets on this flop, you are playing guessing games as to whether you are ahead or not. If however, you played KJ instead, you can be pretty sure you have the best hand and can try to build as big a pot as possible. Especially if your opponents are playing marginal hands like K5, J7.

Never limp, always raise (or call)
Beginner players often tend to limp preflop, this is the #1 way I can identify a bad player at my table, and I will go out of my way to play pots with what I percieve to be a weaker player. Limping means that you get involved in an un-raised pot by calling one big blind (BB). It seems logical to do this because if you miss the flop, it only cost you 1BB. That is irrational. It is better to raise. You are playing very tight and will only play good hands, therefore, by raising you (often) avoid seeing a flop against 4-5 opponents. You don’t want this to happen because your hand becomes more vulnerable the more players you are facing, i.e. KJ will has a 50% chance versus one opponent who holds Q9. However, if a third player limps in with 67, and another with 33, you now have about 25% chance to win the pot. In short, getting the pot HU (heads up), is a profitable play if you are only playing premium hands.
What hand rankings make you money over time?
Top pair/top kicker
One of the hands that occurs most often is a hand in which you hit top pair and have the best kicker and you pick up the pot. Be aware, however, that if the pot ends up getting big and there is a lot of action, your top pair might not be the best hand. An example is AQ on a flop of Q58.

Two pair
You can often win big pots if you flop 2 pair and villain hits top pair, especially on microlimits. One note of caution, bottom 2 pair can easily be couterfeited, so try to build a big pot early on.

Sets
A pocket pair of 2’s might not look too spectacular before the flop, but these low pairs are very profitable hands. Not necessarily as a pair itself, but if you flop a set (three of a kind). The odds of flopping a set or better with a pocket pair are 11,75%, or about 1 in 8 times. When you do hit your set, you will end up winning most or even all of your opponent’s stacks, so bet accordingly, do not ’slow play’ it! You have a massive hand, so you should try to build a massive pot.
Rockets (AA) and cowboys (KK)
Many beginning players tend to slow play their monster hands, especially pocket aces, often because they don’t want everybody to fold. This is a very bad idea, one concept to drill into your heads is to build a big pot with a big hand. So simple – yet amateurs often try to get tricky. It is very important to raise and even reraise these hands. With a high pair, the last thing you want is to end up in a multiway pot with 4 players, because its more likely someone will outflop you. With aces and kings you want to get all your money into the pot as fast as possible. You are an 80% favourite against any other pocket pair before the flop. Therefore, if a player raises before the flop, you should almost always reraise this player. And never ever ever ever fold KK preflop. Yes sometimes the player will have AA, but plenty of other times he will have QQ, AK, and even bluffs. Also, if you manage to get a lot of money into the pot preflop it will make it very difficult for our opponent to fold after the flop as he has already put a great deal of his stack in the pot. This is good news for us.

Flush draws in multiway pots
A nice nut-flush draw (Ace-high flush draw) can cost you a lot of money if you are sitting HU, as you will often not get the right odds to call, and generally calling down draws is a losing play. In a multiway pot however, you can profitably call if two other opponents have already called in front of you. Against 1 villain you would be paying $0.10 for a pot of $0.22, while against 3 villains you pay $0.10 for a pot of $0.52, you see the difference. Remember to not to pay too much money for your flush draws just to see if it hits on the river. And when you do hit, don’t slow play, bet and hope our opponents get curious, or have smaller flushes.

What hands cost you money?
Top pair/ weak kicker
With a hand like A3 you will often get into trouble when you flop an ace but no flush draw. Ie. AT9. You do have top pair, but on microlimits, almost every ace gets played, and every ace out there beats your kicker, for example is someone has A8, you are crushed. If you get a lot of betting action then the chance is high that you are way behind in the hand, and conversely if you don’t get any action that you win little anyway.
Middle pair
If you have to call a bet on the flop and the turn from one villain and all you have is 2nd pair, then chances are you’re beat. Eg, we hold JT and the Flop is KT6 and the Turn is a 2. What hands beat you? Always ask yourself this when calling with a marginal hand. In the case above, any hand with a K in it beats you, plus bigger Tens, e.g. AT QT . Avoid making these marginal calls as much as possible. There are plenty of more profitable spots to be in.

Position
Position is vitally important when playing poker. In one position you might raise a hand that you would fold in another position. The best position is on the dealer button, as you get to make the last decision postflop and know how the players in front of you have acted. On the button you can also often steal the blinds, which over 100s of hands is very profitable. The small blind is the worst position postflop because you are always first to act. Here are the names of the different positions, listed from worst to best position:

1. Small Blind (SB)
2. Big Blind (BB)
3. Under The Gun (UTG)
4. Hijack (UTG + 1)
5. Cut Off (CO)
6. Button (BTN)

The better your position, the more hands you should be playing.

Opening range
Here you find a list of all the hands that you can play on microlimits in my opinion. Of course these hands are not set in stone and can vary depending on the players on your table. This range is somewhat tight and you will be playing about 16% of your hands.

UTG: 22+, AQ+, (this does not include AJ, KQ and JQ)
UTG + 1: 22+, AJ+, QK+
CO: 22+, AT+, JQ+
Button: 22+, AT+, TJ+, 45s+

Calling range
You can pretty much use the same range to when you call raises if you have position, but always focus on the player who raised. If this is a very tight player you should probably fold hands like AT-AJ, TJ-JQ and 45s-89s. Try to see who is playing bad starting cards, and play the pots with those guys. If an opponent has been identified as playing only the best starting hands, only call their raises with the strongest of hands that you are dealt, hands like AK.
SB and BB
It is very tempting to see flops when in the small or big blind as you have already invested money into the pot. This is a big leak, a very big leak. Being out of position, its very difficult to play hands profitably, because statistically you are going to miss 1 in 3 flops (i.e. not flop a pair or better), so you are forced to give up the hand 2 out of 3 times if and when your opponent bets. This just leaks money.

Bad beats
On the microlimits you suffer the most bad beats, and that is a good sign. You get a bad beat if an opponent calls you although his chance of still winning is minimal. Bad players make a lot of suck outs, as good players tend to not put themselves in a situation where they are that far behind. Just remember 9 out of 10 times you will win the hand after your opponent mucked his cards, and you don’t really have a clue what he was holding. Often he would have been chasing a gutshot or a flush draw. And its these 9 situations where we are making our profit! Yes, we lose 1 memorable pot when our opponent gets lucky, but over time, they go bust, and we get rich!

As always, good luck at the tables

Johnny.