Many players think that since loose players call with a very wide range of hands that the best strategy is to play only strong hands and only bet for value. This will certainly be profitable, but playing tight and fit or fold against very loose players is not the most profitable strategy.

Not all loose passive players are the same!

First of all, it is important to note that not all loose passive players are the same. A smart poker player will pay attention to how each one plays instead of lumping all loose passive players in the same group. Some are very loose preflop, but very tight after the flop. Some may limp a lot preflop, but fold to isolation raises. Others might minraise all their premium hands before the flop, creating an excellent opportunity to call with speculative hands looking to outflop them.

Playing against loose passive players preflop…

Regardless, playing against loose passive players preflop will be roughly the same. Players with position on a loose passive player need to be straight up abusing them. Raising when they limp and 3-betting if they raise (and their range isn’t just premium hands) is the bulk of the preflop strategy. Do this incessantly and with a very wide range. Don’t be afraid to include hands like 46s and K9o. You will be able to play more hands with a very bad player, to the detriment of other winning players at the table. Loose passive players will rarely play back, and when they do, it will usually be in a poorly thought out way that is easily exploitable. The only situation where backing off from the hyper-aggression might be necessary is if a thinking regular begins to 3 and 4 bet your isolation raises.

Playing against loose passive players postflop…

The postflop play is what makes or breaks this strategy. The reason that it is profitable to raise and reraise with a hand range that is very weak is because of your superior postflop skills. By default, most players will check to the raiser after the flop. A player with a very wide range of hands is going to be unable to continue on the flop more than half the time. This makes a 2/3 pot continuation bet very profitable. To show an immediate profit with a 2/3 pot sized bet, your opponent only needs to fold more than 40% of the time. This neglects the fact that your hand might improve on later streets and that you will have position for the rest of the hand, which raises your expected value.

If you run into a player who is extremely loose postflop and regularly floats hands like king high, some adjustments need to be made, but it is just as easy to take his money. First, you should make a slight preflop adjustment in favor of playing high card hands even if they are disconnected and unsuited. These hands will fare better against someone who goes to showdown with weak one pair hands than low suited and connected cards. Secondly, you should pretty much be only betting for value. Most people intuitively figure this out, but fail to understand how wide of a range value can include. A player who regularly calls with bottom pairs, gutshots and bare overcards makes hands like middle pair with no kicker an easy value bet.

Playing like this is going to have more variance than just playing your top 25% of hands against a loose passive player, but should greatly improve the speed at which you win their money. Seek out tables where you can have position on these players and be free from aggression behind you. Avoid very aggressive regulars and shortstacks to your left. If you can find a table with one or two loose passive fish to your immediate right and two nitty and robotic regulars to your left, you have hit the jackpot.

Mark David, the author of this article, is a professional online poker player of over three years. The cornerstone of his website is a poker guide for beginners. His website includes lots of other beginner oriented strategy content and can be visited at http://www.onlinepokerforbeginners.com

Which pokerroom offers the most fish on the cashgame tables?

IperpokerClub is the largest italian focused online poker room and has been around for some years now. Of course there are sites that are better designed & sites that offer rakeback & bonuses. But those sites are full of sharks. Since Iperpoker doesn´t offer any rakeback or bonuses, but focuses there marketing efforts on mainly fishy countries like italy you will find almost only juicy tables on iperpoker. I promise you , you won´t find a software that has more fish on it. Ensure yourself, download their poker client now and check out their player / flop % rates.

Room	Network	US Players	Fish Factor	Bonus	Overall
Full Tilt	Independent		47%	$600	95%
Cake Poker	Cake		65%	$600	92%
Party Poker	Independent		74%	$500	88%
NoiQ Poker	Entraction		50%	€5000	85%

Type of Poker Being Played

The first part is self explanatory and will tell you what type of poker you will be playing. This will enable you to quickly find a Five card stud or a texas holdem game depending which type you prefer to play. This is then usually followed by the limits. These too are pretty self explanatory in that a no-limit game there is no limits to the bet size, a limit game means there is a limit put on how much you can bet and raise and finally pot limit where your limited to the size of the pot. The no-limit games will run a lot quicker with many people being able to go “all-in” and when they lose go out. The latter two will take a lot longer as players cant lose their chips as quickly.

Types of Poker Tournaments

Once you have figured out what kind of game you want you will usually be faced with one more choice and that’s the type of tournament. With the first part being easy to work through as you know what you wish to play, the last part can confuse players as there are so many different poker tournaments to choose from.

Freezeout Tournaments: This is the most basic type there is. You all start with the same stack and once its gone, so are you.

Rebuys: Within the first hour of this tournament you are able to re-purchase your starting stack, this means you will have to pay the original stake you paid at the start for your extra chips.

Freeroll Poker Tournaments: as this suggests these are free to enter and there will usually be a cash prize for the highest place players, this is a great way for you to get some tournament practice without using your own cash.

Qualifier Satellites: These typically have no cash prize at the end, instead players are able to play for tickets into a higher stake tournament or a seat at a large cash tournament. We had a winner of the World Series Of Poker Tournament a few years ago that actually got there through satellites online.

Super Satellites: These usually hold huge fields of up to 10,000 players all gunning for the top 50 places. The prize is usually a ticket into that weeks big money guaranteed tournament.

Guaranteed Tournaments: This will usually be a very large buy in tournament that no matter how many players enter they will guarantee a huge amount of money for the top players.

Turbo Poker Tournaments: Fast furious action as all the players are put on a timer and you usually have anywhere between 15 and 30 seconds to react to each play. Excellent when you have not got 6 hours free to finish a normal speed tournament.

Super Turbo Tournaments: Just like Turbo but much, much quicker.

Hyper Turbo Tournaments: Not for the faint hearted and much depends on luck, players start with small chip stacks and you will get two options all-in or fold.

SNG´s (Sit and Go): Very popular amongst the online community. Basically if it’s a 90 player SNG then you join the players waiting and as soon as 90 players are ready the tournament will begin.

Headsup Freezeout: These versions are usually played over a number of rounds to determine a winner. You play 1 versus 1 until last man standing.

Deep Stack Tournaments: You will generally start the game with a very large amount of chips. The blinds are usually a lot slower too making for a longer game with a lot of skill.

Big Ante/ Anteup Tournaments: You will begin each hand having to pay an ante, this makes for some very large pots.

Mixed Game: Only really found online a mixed game will have you play a different type of poker each hand, so you could be playing Omaha one round then 5 card stud the next. Only players that have good knowledge of all the ways to play poker should attempt this.

Pro Bounty Knockout: Most sites will have their own resident poker pro, in these tournaments should you knock one of them out then you will collect a cash reward.

Shootout Tournaments: These play out like 1 table games and the top 2 or 3 will go through to the next round until you end up with the final table. In some tournaments it will only be the player that wins the table that goes through.

Private Tournaments: These will have been set up by organisations and will need a password or an invite to enter. Most sites will let you set up your own tournaments.

With so many different poker tournaments to choose from there will be something that suits every ones needs. You will now be able to look at the list of tournaments and find the games you want to play.

Which Is The Best Poker Room to play tournament poker?

You can’t really go wrong with any of the rooms that are listed below. Simply chose a room that appeals to you the most. There are a lot of good poker rooms around but there are two poker rooms for me that stand out above the rest.

Pokerstars is the largest online poker room and has been for a few years now. This is my first choice for playing online because the traffic is huge, the software is fast and smooth and the rewards can be just as good as rakeback if you play enough. If you want to play big poker tournaments Pokerstars is the place to go!

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Room	Network	US Players	Fish Factor	Bonus	Overall
Pokerstars	Independent		45%	$600	97%
Full Tilt	Independent		47%	$600	95%
Cake Poker	Cake		65%	$600	92%
Ultimate Bet	Cereus		72%	$1100	89%
Party Poker	Independent		74%	$500	88%
PKR	Independent Network		86%	$800	87%
NoiQ Poker	Entraction		50%	€5000	85%
Players Only	Merge Gaming		79%	$650	85%
Absolute Poker	Cereus		72%	$500	84%
Titan Poker	Ipoker Network		41%	$500	82%

Upcoming Poker Tournaments

In the following table you are able to find a list of all the upcoming poker tournaments. Most of them offer you guaranteed value which means that there is nothing less then the guaranteed prizepool to win!

People flock from all over the world to get a piece of the action and it attracts the very best players. With Poker websites contributing in bundles by offering their players great free rolls to get into the biggest live competitions the numbers have escalated out of control.

The difference between tournament Poker and cashgames

There is a huge difference between a normal cash game and a Poker Tournament. Just because you are great at the cash game does not mean by any length that you will automatically do well in tournament poker.

The first thing you will find is on a cash game your blinds will not change allowing you the luxury of playing blinds that suit you, in tournament poker your blinds will increase, usually every 10 or 15 minutes. This means that in the cash game you can sit and wait for the cards you like to play without losing too much to the blinds, in tournament play you must be more aggressive in order to “keep up” with the increasing blind amounts.

The other big difference is the amount of opponents, in a cash game that can be any where from 1, in a head to head, to 9, which is the standard for normal tables.

In tournament poker you can have fields of over 2000 players to compete against and this takes a long time, to get to a final table you can be looking to play around 6 hours.

Which is the best Pokerroom for Tournament Poker?

The list below is what I see as the top online poker rooms to play tournament poker. All of the rooms below have something different to offer so check them out and start playing!

Room	Network	US Players	Fish Factor	Bonus	Traffic
Unabomber Poker	Cake Network		74%	$600	56%
Pokerstars	Independent		68%	$600	85%
Full Tilt	Independent		69%	$600	78%
Party Poker	Independent		86%	$500	58%
Titan Poker	Ipoker Network		85%	$500	66%

Tips to play Tournament Poker

Click on each tip below to expand.

1 – Sign Up For Rakeback

2 – Follow the Blinds

3 – Position is the Key!

4 – Keep your Focus!

5 – Try to Survive!

6 – Gear Changing

7 – Time

8 – Table Manners

9 – Luck & Variance

10 – Review Your play

These top tips should be enough to get you well on your way to becoming successful at playing online poker tournaments. Make sure you check out our latest strategy articles too. Good luck at the tables!

What makes it effective to steal blinds?

Stealing the blinds can be an effective way of staying in the game longer than anticipated. The blinds are posted on each round and include a big blind and a small blind in conjunction with the tables limits. The whole purpose of which is to initiate the betting rounds and get chips on the table.

This means that two players at the table will have placed their chips on the table before receiving any cards. The idea behind stealing blinds is to play in such a way that you can get those two players to fold allowing you to take their chips. This can be extremely helpful to you as when the blinds come round you almost get a free go.

So how do we accomplish this? A lot depends on your position and different strategies are put in place according to where you are sat in relation to the blinds. The first thing we need is a reasonable starting hand, this ensures that if we do get called or raised we at least have a little back up plan. Once your sat with some nice cards and decide to go for the blinds we look at where we are at the table.

If you are sat in an early position e.g. just after the blinds then bet more than the minimum, & don´t steal blinds from early position too often,  if your sat in the middle positions then bet twice the minimum, if your in a late position there are two plays, as you have already seen everybody play their respective turns you may have some bets on the table, using your knowledge of the players you are playing you must work out the risk factor of trying to steal the blinds, if however the table has mainly folded then you can step in and put a nice big bet/raise, and unless the players in the blinds have managed to get good cards they will usually drop and fold.

The Idea behind stealing blinds:

The whole idea behind stealing the blinds is to strengthen your stack and to take chips out of other players stacks. This tactic is especially good when you have less chips than the two players in the blinds as they may not be too worried about dropping a few chips here and there. This tactic also helps in tournaments, as the blinds get bigger and bigger as the rounds go on, stealing them can make a huge difference to you staying in the competition long enough to get in the money, this gets even more so later on as the ante is introduced so you effectively take chips from everyone.

You should not overuse this tactic as players will wise up to what you are doing, the other reason is that occasionally you will come up against an opponent that has a top pair for his pocket cards and as you make your raise he calls you into a flop putting you on the back foot and vulnerable. As a general rule of thumb just be very selective of the blinds you try to steal.

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Be wary here is that Texas hold’em is a betting game, and good players tend to play cards that permit them to bet on their strength alone. That in general means big paint cards and aces. In that sense most of the hands you play holding lower pairs and connectors are going to be chip burners. The strategy however is to keep the pots small and get to see a affordable flop.

Players are able to make these hands profitable long-term, and that commonly means one of, or a combination of position, opponent profiling, and pot size. When you play these hands in position you are less likely to be re-raised pre-flop, granting you to see the flop for cheap. You want to be able to do this to keep your entry costs minimal, while still maintaining your win potential much higher.

You can also play these hands by virtue of opponent profiling, when you see a particular player who is prone to error after the flop. Often times their aggression factor, and the amount of chips they are willing to risk a single hand can result in a super pot by virtue of their ignorance of the flop chemistry. This happens all the time in poker, and one or two hands like this during the entire session will advance your bankroll. You just have to recognize that special point where someone is likely to make a colossal error.

Pot size can be an inducement when calling in late position a multi-way pot. When holding cards with potential against multiple opponents, you are going to have an easier conclusion after the flop as to what to do, and if you get a great draw or a set, you may be able to keep numerous players in the pot to make the pot very lucrative. You will typically make far more money playing these hands in multi-player pots, and when the flop is really effective for you, a double or triple up is not unusual.

So when playing weaker hands, you should always be looking for implied odds situations where the prospective for payout is huge, even though your hand is considered weak.