Texas Holdem Advanced Strategy

Most Texas holdem books and strategy web sites are filled
with general advice aimed at beginning and intermediate players.
If you think about this it makes sense, because over 90% of the
population of poker players fit into one of these categories.

It’s also much easier to offer advice to the larger group
because most of the players are so far from playing correctly
that you can help them get huge increases in their results if
you can get them to adjust their game in a few simple ways.

When you start looking for advanced Texas holdem strategy
advice you can’t find much, and what you do find rarely goes
beyond the things being taught to low limit players.

The bottom line is that advanced Texas holdem strategy is
hard to teach and it’s hard to learn. Most players can’t handle
the concepts needed to excel at the top levels of play and will
never dedicate enough time and work to getting to a place where
they can.

The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky is one of the most
important poker books that have ever been written. But if you
read it before you’re ready it may hurt you as much as help you.
I know this because I read it early in my poker career and it
didn’t help me at all. I went back a year later and read it
again and it was like a light bulb suddenly came on. I wasn’t
ready for the lessons the first time.

What you need to understand about the advice on this page is
that you may not be ready to fully utilize it in your play right
now. If you’re not, don’t feel bad or be ashamed. Simply come
back and read it again in a couple months and a couple months
after that until it starts sinking in.

And even the few that do reach a point where they can
completely grasp the lessons needed for advanced play have a
hard time finding someone to teach them. They usually have to
learn by trial and error at the tables. This can be costly, but
it helps reinforce the lessons as you learn them.

So if it’s so hard to learn these advanced strategies and so
few players need them, why would we dedicate an entire page to
them? Because in the quest to have the best Texas holdem
resource available if we didn’t have advice for advanced players
the quest would fall short.

We also are firm believers in providing as much solid
information as possible and letting the players figure out what
they can use and what they should wait on. If you can pick up
something in these advanced strategies to improve your game by
1% it can mean thousands and thousands of extra dollars to you
over the course of your poker career.

Psychology

At the simplest level of play Texas holdem is about math. You
use a deck of 52 playing cards and a set hierarchy of hand
values so you can determine hand probabilities and odds in any
situation. You don’t have complete information because you don’t
know what cards your opponents hold, but you can even use
mathematical equations to consider what you don’t know and still
come up with the best play from a mathematical standpoint in
every situation.

You can even use math to determine the best way to play a
hand before you even get your cards.

As you get more information you use the new information to
determine the new best way to play the hand.

If you get your cards and look down to see pocket aces,
instead of folding being the most profitable way to play, you
need to raise in order to make the most money.

Any player without a learning disability who’s willing to put
in the time and effort can learn how to play Texas holdem at a
respectable level. You can learn how to determine the best plays
and if you work long enough and hard enough you can start
winning more than you lose at the Texas holdem tables.

This isn’t a guess or sales pitch. Plenty of players have
proven this is possible, and you can do what it takes to be a
winning player too. But if you’re not to this point yet you need
to start on some of our other strategy pages and come back to
this one later.

So why would we start a section about psychology with a math
lesson? The last time we checked math and psychology aren’t very
closely related.

You have to combine superior skill with the mathematical side
of the game with an advanced ability to think about the game and
your opponents at a deeper level than you’ve ever done before.

Have you ever heard that you need to play the players instead
of the cards or in addition to the cards?

This is what we mean about Texas holdem psychology. You have
to start playing the game beyond the basic levels. To do this
you have to consider not only how you think about the game but
how your opponents think and play and how everything that
happens changes the way they play and react.

Playing Texas Holdem Like a Chess Match

If you hope to be a good chess player you have to be able to
consider the current situation, how every possible move will
change the possible future outcomes, and how things can change
how your opponent will react.

New players concentrate on the current move possibilities but
rarely think about the entire game, or even their next move.

As most player’s game improves they start considering how one
move might set up the next move or two, but thinking beyond one
or two moves deep is rare.

But the most advanced Texas holdem players think about every
decision and consider how it can alter and set up future
situations.

This sounds simple, but unless you consider how every action
is going to set up the end of the hand you’ll frequently find
that another player was able to manipulate the hand and pot size
to fit their long term goals, not yours.

Another example is how you play certain hands against
opponents who’re good enough to track your play. If you always
check to them on the river when you miss your draw they’ll learn
this is how you play and use it against you. They’ll start
betting on the river after you check even if they don’t have a
strong hand because you check every time you’re weak.

But you can also build this belief in this opponent and then
use it against them. Once they believe they know how you play
the river you can start betting sometimes when you miss your
draw, because they’ll fold good but not great hands because they
think you won’t bet without a good hand.

Take a few minutes and think of some of the situations where
thinking and planning like this can come into play.

When you start considering all of the possible applications
at the holdem tables you can start seeing why you need to start
thinking about poker like a chess game.

It’s Not a Single Session, But It Is

Most poker players think about each time they sit down to
play Texas holdem as a single session. If they play for three
hours and then go do something else they had a single session.
This isn’t the way advanced Texas holdem players view the game.

Advanced players understand that you’re in the middle of one
lifelong Texas holdem game that doesn’t end until you die. It
doesn’t matter if you play six hours a day for eighteen straight
days, or sixteen hours a day for three days in a row, it’s all
just a small part of your single long session.

If you want to play at an advanced level you need to
constantly be concentrating on making the best possible plays
and putting yourself in the best possible situations to win the
most money. Of course this involves doing everything you can to
win during the current playing time, but your short term results
don’t mean anything as long as you’re making the best plays.

If you get all in with ace king against ace queen and your
opponent hits a queen and you lose a big pot it can make your
balance for the day negative, but it has nothing to do with your
long term profitability. You know that if you can get in that
situation often it leads directly to profit.

Your expected value in any situation is the average amount
you win or lose if you can play the exact same situation
hundreds of times. At the most basic level, being a long term
winner at the Texas holdem tables is simply about putting
yourself in more positive expected value situations than
negative ones.

What most players call luck is just short term variance and
if you’re in a situation where your expected value is $10 every
time you play the situation, if you do it 100 times you’ll win
$1,000. Sometimes you’ll lose and sometimes you’ll win more or
less than $10, but in the long run the expected value always end
up where it’s supposed to.

So remember that being an advanced Texas holdem winner isn’t
about the short session, but about the life long session. Then
concentrate on setting up and exploiting positive expectation
situations as often as possible.

Big Hand Poker

Some players seem to win a lot of pots and others can sit
back and only win a few pots per day, but still show a long term
profit. How can they still turn a profit when they only win a
few hands in comparison to other players?

This is a perfect situation to illustrate the big pot way to
long term profit. Even if you folded every blind for the entire
six hour stint and were able to break even on the few smaller
pots you play, you still have the chance to win big. Folding all
of your blinds costs $600, so you have to win enough to overcome
this. Let’s look at three big hand possibilities.

Even if you only split the first pot, stacked a short stack
of $800 on the second hand won $400 on the third hand your
profit for the day is $600. That’s $100 an hour and all you had
to do was break even on small hands and win a couple big hands.

And the up side is huge. What if you won the freeroll for
$2,000 and won $2,000 on the second hand and won $1,000 on the
third hand? All of these are possible with average stack sizes
of $2,000. Now you won $4,400 for the day, or over $700 per
hour.

What about if you had terrible luck on the smaller pots and
only was able to win one big pot? Let’s say you lost your $600
in blinds and another $1,000 on small pots. But you still were
able to double up, winning $2,000 on a single big pot. You still
make $400 for the six hours.

Of course it sounds simple enough for anyone to do it when
it’s spelled out like this, but don’t you think it’s realistic
that you can find a single big hand to win in a six hour playing
stint?

You just saw how you can still make good money playing Texas
holdem by only winning one or two big pots a day, so why aren’t
you playing in a manner that gives you the best chance to win?
Why are you playing so many marginal hands?

Win the War, Forget the Battles

This goes hand in hand with the last section, but it’s so
important if you truly want to learn advanced strategies that it
needs to be covered in more depth or at least in a different
way.

This doesn’t change anything that we discussed in the single
session section. You still have to consistently put yourself in
positive expectation situations but too many players focus on
winning hands instead of money.

If you ask them what they want to do they always state they
want to win money, but their actions at the table suggest
they’re more interested in winning hands than money.

Of course you have to win some hands to win money, but would
you rather win 10 hands worth $100 each or one hand worth
$1,200?

This is a mindset that you have to develop and work on if you
want to use it to your advantage. Good poker players are
competitive and want to win everything they touch. It’s easy,
even for the best players, to get too focused on winning every
hand instead of winning the most money.

The problem with focusing on winning every hand is you start
making plays that aren’t the most profitable in the long run.
When you miss your draw instead of folding and conserving your
money for a more favorable situation you fire a bluff hoping you
can force your opponent to fold because you want to win the pot.

Chips Are Limited Resources

Blind play has been mentioned a few times, and it plays such
an important role to winning poker players that an advanced
strategy page needs to at least touch on it. Even though this
section isn’t titled with anything that looks like it has to do
with blinds, they’re a perfect example of the concept that chips
are limited resources.

Advanced holdem players understand that sometimes it isn’t
about winning chips in a hand or situation, it’s about learning
which situations require the conservation of chips so you can
use them to make more money later.

Building a big bankroll is important if you want to be able
to win as much money as possible, but everyone has some sort of
limitation to how much they can wager. Let’s look at a specific
example of how not conserving your bankroll costs you money.

You’re playing in a no limit Texas holdem game with $10 / $20
blinds and are in the small blind four times per hour. In the
eighth hour of the day’s session you get all in against a player
with a $5,000 stack and win. You only have a stack of $1,500 and
you’ve completed the blind bet half the times you’ve been in the
small blind and haven’t won a hand from that position all day.

Most of the hands have been poor or average at best, but you
think it’s only half a bet so why not gamble a little?

So if you’ve played 14 hands for an extra $10 each you have
$140 less than if you’d have folded all of them. So instead of
winning $1,500 on the all in you could have won $1,640.

$140 is less than 10% of $1,500, but it’s still a significant
amount of money. And if you only did this once a week you end up
costing yourself $7,280 a year. And if you do this four times a
week instead of once you cost yourself $29,120 a year.

This is enough money to turn some losing players into winning
ones. And this is how many players look at the small blind. They
think it’s only half a bet so why not?

This concept needs to be used in every area of your Texas
holdem game, not just in the blinds. Though you need to try to
have enough money to play in any favorable situation, you may
need to pass on a small edge to have enough money to take
advantage of a larger edge later.

If you have a situation where you’re a 52 to 48 favorite and
know that later you’ll have a situation where you’re a 60 to 40
favorite you want to be able to place money on each situation.
But if you have a limited bankroll you may have to skip the
first situation.

This discussion isn’t meant for you to put too much emphasis
on your bankroll. You want to have as big of a bankroll as
possible, but it’s almost as important to understand how to use
your bankroll as a tool and how to protect it so you have the
best chance to profit in the long run and in the maximum
possible amount.

The Best Play Isn’t Always the Best Play

After reading all of the preaching about always putting
yourself in positive expectation positions you’d think finding
contrary advice on the same page would be unlikely. But the
truth is that the answer to so many Texas holdem strategy
questions starts with it depends and this is an area where the
lines are somewhat blurred.

At the lower levels and limits where the competition isn’t
very good the best play is always the best play. What this means
is that you need to always make your playing decisions based on
what the math says is the best play.

But at the top levels of play many of your opponents also
know the best play and use this information to help them figure
out what you have based on the situation and how you play. When
this starts happening you have to occasionally make plays that
aren’t the most profitable from a pure mathematics standpoint so
you can make more money in the long run.

It’s possible we lost some of you with the last paragraph,
but remember this is an advanced strategy page so a few of the
concepts are difficult. Let’s look at it another way.

While it’s the most profitable way to play to raise from
early position with pocket aces every single time you have them
at the lower and middle limits, the way to get the most long
term profit from pocket aces in early position at the top levels
is to raise with them around 95% of the time.

The biggest problem with this is it’s a fine line between
altering your play just enough to throw off your opponents and
doing it so much that you cost yourself more money than you make
up for with the altered play.

Know Your Opponents

On the other side of the last section is you need to be the
opponent who knows how the other players play their hands and
what their playing tendencies make them do.

If you know a player always checks on the river when they
miss their flush or always raises from early position with
pocket kings and aces you know something you can us to make
money when you play against them.

Some players never play anything worse than pocket queens
from early position, so if they enter the pot in early position
you can put them on a very narrow range of hands.

Every little thing you can learn and exploit is worth a
certain amount of profit in the long run. The more of these
small things you can exploit the more money you set yourself up
to make in the long run.

The Small Edge

This is possibly the most important advanced Texas holdem
strategy that you’ll ever learn.

The best Texas holdem players in the world understand that if
they can improve their game a fraction of a percentage it can
mean huge returns in the long run. So they constantly search for
any small edge they can possible find.

How much do you have to make a year playing Texas holdem to
make what you consider a good living from the game? Some players
would be happy making $30,000 a year playing poker, while others
think $100,000 is a good living. Others might think anything
less than a million isn’t enough.

Here’s a simple chart that shows how much a year in increased
profit a player can get for a few different increases in their
winning percentage.

	¼%	½%	¾%	1%	1 ¼%	1 ½%	1 ¾%	2%
$30,000	$75	$150	$225	$300	$375	$450	$525	$600
$100,000	$250	$500	$750	$1,000	$1,250	$1,500	$1,750	$2,000
$Million	$2,500	$5,000	$7,500	$10,000	$12,500	$15,000	$17,500	$20,000

As you can see if a player is making $30,000 a year playing
Texas holdem an increase of 1% is only $300, but even this small
amount is valuable. The same 1% increase for a million dollar a
year player is $10,000.

And the key is that these increases work much like compound
interest. If the million dollars a year player can improve their
game by 1% this year and another the next year and another 1%
the following year they not only increase it on the million
dollars, they also get the increase on the increase from the
previous year or years.

Even if you only find one extra edge and never improve on it
you can earn a great deal more over the course of your poker
playing career.

If you’re making $100,000 a year and increase your return by
2%, if you play another 40 years you’ve made an extra $80,000
over the course of your career.

A million dollar player earns an extra $800,000 over the
course of their career with the same one time 2% improvement.

Plan for Everything

The best Texas holdem players are able to visualize and plan
for almost every possible outcome of every hand they play in.
They already know how they’re going to react to a situation
before it happens.

This gives them an advantage because it gives them extra time
to determine the best play and quickly make adjustments if
something out of the ordinary happens.

When you plan everything you start working as soon as you
start looking for a table to join. You consider the current
players and what you know about them. In order to plan
everything out you need to be able to have an idea of how
certain players play in certain situations.

Of course you plan for every possible way an opponent can
play a hand, but by understanding the most likely way they react
in certain situations it helps you focus more energy on building
a profitable situation more quickly.

The two players in early position are tight and aggressive
and the two middle position players are not very good.

You receive ace queen suited and instantly start thinking
about how you’ll play it in every conceivable situation. If it
gets around to you in an un-raised pot you’ll probably raise,
and if you have to call a small to medium raise you’ll probably
do so, unless there’s a raise and a re-raise, opening the
possibility of a push behind you. You also know that an ace
queen suited plays well in a multi way pot and can play well
heads up at times, but can also be easily dominated heads up.

As each player acts you receive additional information and
adjust the possible paths the hand can take. When you see the
flop you have additional information and new decisions to make
depending on what can happen.

• What will you do if you face a raise?
• What if it’s checked to you?
• What do you know about the remaining players?

As you work through a hand you need to be prepared for any
possibility. The more you’re able to plan for the more your long
term results will improve.

Summary

Becoming a long term winner at the advanced Texas holdem
tables is more about thinking than acting. Many self-help books
suggest that you need to stop thinking about things so much and
start acting right now. But if you want to learn the best
advanced Texas holdem strategies you need to think.
If you simply study the strategy details you just finished
reading and implement one thing you learned every month for the
next year you’ll be a much better holdem player. And even if
you’re such a good player that you just picked up an extra
percentage you just saw how many thousands of dollars this can
be worth to you over the rest of your life.

You learned two simple strategies that can make a huge
difference in your long term profitability. The second was the
small extra edge and the first was the big hand theory. If you
don’t do anything else from what you learned on this page make
it a goal to find an extra 1% edge somewhere and focus on
winning one or two big hands every day instead of battling over
a bunch of small hands. These two tactics alone will advance
your play quickly.

So what are you waiting for? Take action by getting started
thinking right now.