Texas Hold’em Fever

Once you have mastered the basics of Texas Holdem, you may be ready to move on to some advanced topics. One area where advanced Texas Holdem strategy comes in is in short handed games. A short handed game is one which has six or fewer players at the table, as opposed to a full ring game of nine or ten players. How do you adjust your strategy for this type of game?

For one thing, you must play many more hands. The likelihood of certain holdings to be the best increases considerably in a short handed game. Often an ace high is the strongest hand dealt out, much more often than in a full game. In addition, players will be trying to steal more often, since there will be fewer players they have to get past to win the pot. For this reason you must be prepared not only to enter more pots, but to call and re-raise more often than you would in a full game. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most important concepts of Texas Holdem strategy is relationship between the odds of winning and pot odds. Term “ pot odds” refers to the ratio of the pot size to the actual size of bet, necessary for a player to stay in the pot. For instance, if you have to call $20 in order to have a chance of winning an $80 pot, not including your $20 call, your pot odds are 4 to 1. In order to have a positive expectation, your odds of winning must be bigger than pot odds. That means that if your odds of winning are 4 to 1 (20% winning chance) and if you are planning to play 5 games, then your expected return is zero – one winning to four losses.

The next concept, implied odds, is more complicated, though it is also related to pot odds. In Texas Holdem, as well as in the other poker games, the implied odds on a hand are based on the expected size of the pot in the end of a hand, not current pot size. That means that, for example, when facing an even money situation described in the previous item and holding a premium hand like a flush, a Texas Holdem pro will consider calling a bet, or even opening proceeding from their implied odds. That is true for the multi-way pots, where it is likely that one or more players will be calling all the way to showdown.