The magic of money
Seven Card Stud online poker is very different than Texas Hold ‘Em online poker. For one thing, there is an extra betting round, so if you go to the seventh card, you will be putting more chips into the pot. Texas Hold ‘Em poker hands use community cards that everyone sees. In Seven Card Stud, each player has cards visible to all plus pocket cards, but the visible cards are not community assets. They can only be used by the player who has them. Because there are so many visible cards in Stud – if four players remain to the end, then you see 12 cards – you can narrow the odds and outs a little better since you definitely know which cards are in play. However, since the seventh street card is face down, each player has three hold cards, so you have less information about the hidden portion of hands. It is crucial to be very observant of all the visible cards that come out and remember who folded what so you can more accurately calculate your odds and narrow your opponents hidden hand possibilities. Another strategic factor in Stud is that betting position can change with as each up turned card is dealt. You may be first to act in round one, then last to act in the next round, under the gun after that, etc. It is rare that you can plan ahead to leverage position unless there is a very strong made hand showing.
When faced with a situation where you have a large draw against a poker opponent’s represented medium to large hand, you have a few options of how to respond. With holdings such as the open ended straight or four flush, many players will try to see the turn and river as cheaply as possible so that they can then suck out and only put a lot more money in the pot if and when they make their hand.
Another type of poker player will tend towards checking and, when an opponent bets, raising in the manner of a semi bluff. This action has the bonus of representing a made hand of power strong enough to check raise, which can therein cause an opponent to lay down a hand that would have won if the draw does not come in, but is not strong enough to reraise the semi bluff.
Varying between these two modes is often good procedure, depending on what you judge to be the opponent’s hand. Are they the type who can fold in these situations? Or are they the type that will likely call down even with just top pair and weak kicker? Knowing where you’re at and who you’re up against is often just as important as the odds of making or breaking your holding. Keep this in mind when you play poker online.
A lot of online poker players in both the tournament and ring game worlds will refuse to re-buy. They’re play it and lose it kind of people, but in this article I’m going to introduce you to the concept of how becoming a rebuy “maniac” can work to your advantage when playing poker online. It all comes to table image. See if you have unlimited re-buys in say a ring game, it can be beneficial to rebuy two times before you start bringing your “A” game. Look at it like this: you start off gambling like a maniac. Getting in tons of pots, limping, becoming a calling station, by doing all this you start to make yourself look like a weak poker online player, a fish who other players are looking forward to get into hands with. Then, all of a sudden you switch modes. Not too obviously, but you switch just enough to start playing smart poker. And guess what happens because of the image you built. Even with your monster hands, you’ll start getting called all the time just because you became “that guy,” you know, that guy that likes to give away money. And this is even applicable to tournaments that give you a limited re-buy period. Begin as a gambling maniac, and re-buy, re-buy, re-buy. Of course you’ll be exposing much more of your bank roll, but you’re also giving yourself much more of a chance to loosen up a tight table, and it gives you an inherent lack of credibility, which is what you want when you start trapping with monsters. Play it right, and you’ll soon see you’re bankroll back to even, and then double, maybe triple. That is, if you can play the psychology right. Believe me, this is not a technique for weak willed or inexperienced. But if you’re up for a fun time and a hell of a challenge, you may want to consider putting this in your repertoire of playing styles and moves. Enjoy.
In poker online terminology, being ‘pot committed’ in a hand occurs when you have too much of your money already in the pot, or the odds you are getting on your money to stay in the hand are so high, making the possibility of folding not only incorrect, but a bad wager.
For instance, if you are playing in a online poker tournament where the blinds have increased so greatly that you are putting more than half of your stack in, the odds you are getting on putting the rest of your chips in the pot no matter what your hand is against any other make it wrong to fold.
Likewise, if you are playing in a poker cash game and you make a large raise or reraise which is the raised against by someone with just a little bit more money than you’ve already bet, even if you were raising with a marginal hand it would be correct to call for the odds you are getting on your money already invested vs. what you need to put in to continue.
There is a varying degree of what percentage of your poker online chips is enough to consider yourself pot committed, but by and large is pure math. Only in certain sorts of extraneous situationssuch as late in a tournament someone is already all in and your folding might severely increase the amount of money you can windoes the concept of ‘pot committed’ take on anything more than black or white.
In Omaha poker, a hand is considered double suited when there are two poker cards of one suit in the hand and two cards of another suit (for instance, two diamonds and two clubs). Being double suited in omaha poker is essentially a double odds that you will make a flush in the hand, and therefore is considered much more valuable than unsuited or single-suited Omaha hands (ie: if there are four diamonds on the board and you have one diamond in your hand, in omaha you still don’t have the flush, which is a classic newbie mistake.)
Though the value of a flush in Omaha is less than it might be in Hold em, it is still a hand that can make the nut, and is required for flush draws (as you must use two of the hole cards, it is impossible to make a flush without being suited).
In verbal descriptions of poker hands, the term double-suited is often abbreviated as ‘ds,’ so that the hand would read AA89 ds.
Some Omaha players won’t play not paired hands that aren’t double suited, while other players love just any combination of connecting cards. Either way, the addition of a double suited hand is a lucrative criteria for hands that one might be considering entering a pot with.
Playing poker en ligne in the United States has been a challenge, but I imagine it’s nothing like playing in Quebec or France. Why? Because their cards are so different! Sure, there are the usual 2’s, 3’s and 8’s, etc., but their face cards are not the same!
Kings, queens and Jacks are not recognized by French players. In fact, they’re not even translated the same way. There are no “Jacque’s” in French poker, is what I’m getting at – they’re completely different.
So, in traditional American fashion, I will not play poker in France or Montreal or Quebec if I ever visit there in the future. Instead, I will hit up the casinos, and lose my money that way. I figure if it’s just numbers I’m dealing with, I’ll have a better chance at things than if I tried to play poker and ended up playing a hand that was (in English) J-J, when I thought it was K-K!
I figure the best odds will come at Roulette. No, not the odds of winning (which are notoriously poor for Roulette no matter where you end up playing it), the odds of me understanding what my bets are going to do should I win or lose!