Basic poker strategy
Poker strategy is an essential component of the game. To win in today’s reality, you need to always be one step ahead of your opponents and develop your instinct for situational play.
Every table is different, every game is different, and every situation is different. Therefore, the tactics and strategy for each individual poker game will be unique.
The secret to your victory lies in developing a basic strategy and then using that knowledge to adapt to the game and regularly modify your tactics. Poker strategies depend on the format of the discipline being played: cash or MTT.
But beginners are better off starting small: with the basic skills of poker. These include learning the terminology and the actions of players preflop and postflop. Topics for experienced players, in addition to strategies, include poker mathematics. The psychological aspect also plays a big role; if you fall short in this regard, you are very likely to lose in stressful situations.
Types of approaches to poker
Each tactic has its own name and characteristics. The table below lists the four main poker strategies.
Type of strategy and characteristics
Aggressive — An aggressive strategy assumes that with all the hands you enter the pot with, you will exclusively raise and 3-bet.
Passive — This tactic involves playing your range passively: limping and calling make up most of the actions in this strategy.
Loose — Loose play involves participating in most pots. A loose player’s range includes both marginal and fairly weak hands, as well as absolute nuts. This is a good strategy for those who like to enter the hand frequently.
Tight — The tactic of tight play is to play only strong starting hands. It is suitable for novice players, as it minimizes the risk of losing with weak hands.
These styles can be combined into combined tactics: tight-aggressive, loose-aggressive, tight-passive, loose-passive.
Tight-aggressive style
A set of actions that assumes that the player aggressively plays only a limited part of their range, consisting only of very strong starting hands preflop and strong combinations postflop. Beginners are advised to play according to this strategy, as it minimizes losses.
Despite the profitability of this strategy at micro limits, it has a number of drawbacks: your play and range are too obvious to knowledgeable players, you are limited in your post-flop play and, as a result, you win less than your opponents.
Key feature: weak effectiveness of the style against experienced opponents.
Loose-aggressive style
This Texas Hold’em strategy is used by the best professional poker players because it allows them to βmixβ their range and remain unreadable to their opponents. This technique is not recommended for beginners, as it requires a deep understanding of post-flop play and a thorough knowledge of poker mathematics to be fully implemented. This strategy can both increase your winnings and increase your potential financial losses. To play loose-aggressive poker, you need to keep a cool head at all times and be able to βshift gearsβ at the right moment, which is the ability to stop attacking your opponent at the right moment and not give in to tilt if your cunning moves do not have the desired effect.
Tight-passive style
A strategy that straddles the line between regular and amateur play. This poker tactic also involves playing with a limited range that includes only strong hands.
A distinctive feature of this poker tactic, compared to the tight-aggressive strategy, is very careful play even with premium hands, both preflop and postflop. The main disadvantage of this strategy is that you constantly lose money in pots where you have the strongest hand, and you will often be misled by more experienced players.
Loose-passive style
The loose-passive strategy is the game that recreational players preach: lots of preflop limps, no clear range, and no folding at all. The main tip for playing against such opponents is to never bluff against them. You just need to wait for a strong hand and collect three streets of value, after which you can collect your winnings.
Strategy and tactics for tournament players
Without the right strategy, there is not much you can do in a tournament game. Tournaments and cash games are completely different things, as MTT has its own specifics. The main feature is that your game is affected by the constant increase in blinds. Therefore, it is very important to study winning tactics and strategies with their main factors:
Choose a strategy depending on your stack
In a tournament, the number of chips often changes like a roller coaster. In one hand, you may have 50BB, in the second β 20BB, and in the third β 60BB. You need to choose a strategy and act depending on your stack.
If your stack is less than 10 big blinds, you can go all-in with any pocket pair or ace. You will need to double up immediately, and it will be pointless to fold because the blinds will eat you up.
Dispersion This factor plays a much bigger role in tournaments than in cash games. Even professional poker players can’t avoid downswings in MTTs, but that’s the nature of the discipline. You can’t win every tournament, but the main thing is to be on the plus side.
Binding to time Most often in tournaments five-minute breaks start every 55 minutes. But the rest of the time you must be in the game all the time, and you can’t leave it for too long, otherwise your stack will quickly be depleted due to blinds.