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When a desperate player in a poker tournament even a free online poker one doesn’t get A-A or K-K they tend to go all-in with Ace-something.  Many will move all in with A-K, A-Q, and even A-4.

At worst, if someone with A-4 is called by the medium Pair, there is still one overcard. With A-K you can be called by Ace-lower and still be a significant favorite.

So players running out of chips have a tendency to wait for Ace-something before they move all-in. While the Ace element gives them assurance, the likelihood is that someone will call them with Ace-higher and make them a significant underdog. Furthermore, if the purpose is to move all-in, why not try the same move with King-something (preferably suited)?

The trend for tournament players today has changed slightly in favor of moving all-in with King-something, like K-Q, K-J, K-10 (of course, the applications here apply also to A-K) and even K-x suited. Other players will also call with a smaller pocket Pair, and so A-x has the same probability of winning as K-x against a smaller Pair if both cards are overcards.

And K-x has an additional advantage. While a hand like A-5 is a significant underdog against A-J, K-Q or K-5 is just a slight underdog.

Approximately, it is a 13 to 7 underdog, but compare this to A-5 which is a 15 to 5 (or 3-1) underdog. What you want to fetch with K-x is its live card value.

With the A-5, you have to hit the Five if you want to pair and take the lead. With K-5, you can have both King and Five pairing.

If you extend your all-in hand range to include K-x, you may have to move all-in more than usual. Because many players will fold to an all-in (including marginal high A-x such as A-10 or A-9) other players at the table will receive a more aggressive impression of your play.

You can also steal the blinds more frequently. The all-in itself (and not really the cards used to move all-in) is a sign of strength; it is the same with A-x or K-x.

So why not try out the King High approach on the free poker games tables first, get used to it and then apply in more risky poker games later.

The Straight Flush draw is probably one of the rarest draws in Hold’Em, free online poker or otherwise. You have, say, 8d-7d and the Flop comes 5d-6d-K. Anyone who holds A-K has the best hand, but is not the favorite.

Assuming your opponent’s hand doesn’t improve beyond three of a kind later, you are the slight favorite to win the pot (54 to 46). If your opponent holds no Diamonds, you still have 15 more outs to complete a Straight or Flush (9 Diamonds, 4 Fours and 4 Nines, and minus 2 to avoid overcounting the 4d and the 9d which will give you the unlikely Straight Flush) and this converts to a 54% chance of completing your hand.

There are many ways to play this hand, and many analyses possible. Let’s look at some strong options.

1. You can engage your opponent in an all-in match-up. Because the odds in favor of you completing a made hand is 54 to 46, almost the same as Q-Q beating A-K, here is a question you want to ask yourself if you are going to move all-in or put your opponent all-in: Am I willing to do the same with a small Pair if I know my opponent will call with two overcards?

If the answer is Yes, you can proceed. Otherwise, there are much more palatable options for you. The point is that this is one of the possible ways. If you get called, treat it as Q-Q against A-K. If your opponent folds, then it is okay; you have won the pot. However, instead of ending the hand abruptly, you may want to keep your opponent hanging in order to obtain maximum value, so there are other ways.

2. You can play this like playing an Straight or a Flush draw. If my opponent plays weakly, then I play this weakly too, or bet instead. I can decide to build to pot by betting strongly (but not largely yet). If you hit the Straight or the Flush, then proceed with the usual way of slow-playing or value-betting.

The only worry is that a higher Flush is possible for your opponent, but pay it off. Now, if your opponent plays strongly, you can always revert to #1. If your opponent has the Set, you are still 54 to 46.

3. You can also afford to call big bets more than you will call big bets if you have only a Straight or a Flush draw. Whatever bet your opponent throws is callable, because any bet will give you pot odds. Ideally, you should be the one doing the betting (or raising), but in case you want to slow-play, and hope that you hit and trap your opponent later, you can do this too.

4. Finally, there is the option of not playing it at all. Consider; say you are both on the top 20% in chips in a tournament (e.g. in a tournament with 50 players left, both of you are in the top 10). Now your opponent suddenly moves all-in, you have to consider: You haven’t made anything yet. Top pair can still be the favorite. Your opponent may also have the Set. Now because your stack is comfortable, fold and wait for a less risky spot.

I hope this was interesting, certainly it should show you that in any give poker game situation there are options to consider based on the cards you have, the game stage, opposition and known and estimated risk to name but a few. If you’re new to this way of thinking then by far the best way to get ahead is to practice a LOT on free online poker games such as NoPayPOKER.com and sites and ONLY when you are winning consistently move up to real money stakes.

Many players, especially us free online poker game players shy away from the “technical” side of the game, the working out of odds and such. After all it involves the dreaded “M” word (math).

Unfortunately the fact is that to succeed in poker this is a key part of the game that you must master, especially if you have any aspirations to play live money games.

The main problem for many free poker and money players is that it’s so damn complicated.  For example:

Suppose you have 8-7 and the Flop comes 5-6-A. You want to calculate the probability that you will hit your Straight later.

If you use a rigorous mathematical solution, you will come up with this:

The cards which will help you are the Four and the Nine. There are eight of them still remaining in the deck. The probability of your hitting them later is P + (1-P)Q, where P is the probability of hitting your hand on the Turn, and Q is the probability you will hit on the river. It is P + (1-P)Q because (1-P)Q is the probability that you will hit on the river if you don’t complete your hand on the Turn.

Now here are the values for P and Q.

• P = 8 cards still on the deck to help you divided by 52-5 = 47 remaining cards = 8/47.
• Q = 8 cards still on the deck to help you, because you didn’t complete on the Turn divided by 52-6 (because there are six cards already out, your hole cards and the Board) = 8/46.

The overall answer is 8/47 + (1 – 8/47)(8/46) = 0.170 + (0.829)(0.174) = 0.170 + 0.144 = 0.314 = 31%. You have a 31% chance of hitting your Straight later.

Ouch, that’s fun and beyond a lot of us! However, in a table you usually do not have a calculator (and even if you do you still need to know what to input into it .

And many poker players just know the outs, but not so much of basic probability theory. How is this? An out by the way is any unseen card that, if drawn, will improve your hand win chances. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_(poker) for a full discussion on outs.

An more basic, easy way to work out odds
Let us try an approximation formula:

• Why not try just to divide 8 by 50, because 47 is close to 50, and get 0.16?
• Double it again and you get 0.32.
• It is a reliable estimate.
• After all, poker players, in games, do not need exact solutions; they need only a hint as to where they are standing.
• In this case “about 32%” is a good enough answer.

So, during the Flop, here is the approximation:

• Get the number of your outs, then multiply it by 4, then affix a percent sign.
• That is a reliable approximation percentage of your hitting the hand.
• During the Turn, if you still have outs, multiply it by 2, then affix a percent sign.
• Preflop, when you decide to push all-in, you usually do not do these stuff because you will rely mainly on hand strength.

To practice your odds calculations there can be no better place than the free poker games on NoPayPOKER.com, at least here you can get it wrong and not lose money as a result! Of course there are odds calculators of allsorts about that can help and do the real complex stuff but these won’t ever help you if you want to play live so it’s best to learn it for yourself if you have any ambition to move beyond free online poker games and win proper money.

What we mean by ‘bullet’ in this context is not an Ace (as pocket Aces are commonly called ‘bullets’). By ‘bullet’ here we mean a bet, which is usually a bluff made in your on of offline cash or free poker online game

- By ‘first bullet’ we mean continuation bet.

- By ‘second bullet’ we mean a bet on the Turn like continuation bet.

- And by ‘third bullet’ we mean a bluff at the river.

Why do we continue to fire bullets even if we don’t have the best hand?

That’s precisely the reason. We bluff at the pot because we have nothing.

Suppose you have A-8 in a Flop of K-K-5 (no Flushes possible), we fire a continuation bet at the Flop and hope that our opponent believes we have the King and they fold. If they raise, well, it’s the end of the hand for us.

But the Flop above is a difficult board to raise with nothing. You can assume that a raiser will have a King, and usually many players who do not have it fold after someone else bets. That first bettor should be you, not anyone else.

If someone calls on the Flop above, it’s the end of the hand for us, too. If they have the Five, they have the best hand, and even if we pair one of our hole cards, there is still the lingering possibility that the caller has a King and is slow-playing it, so we slow down. The first bullet is enough.

Now, here is a situation where we can fire a second bullet.

Suppose we have 7-6 and the Flop comes 8-5-K. You are first to act so you bet. Here, you still do not have a hand, but if your opponents fold, the pot is yours.

However, if there is a caller, and the Turn does not complete your Straight, (say 8-5-K-J) you can still fire a second bullet. Your opponent may have a King, but he may also have a mere Eight, and when the second overcard popped out, he may be feeling a bit uncertain already.

Maybe he thinks you are betting because you have a King (which you don’t have) and you continued betting to show that amid the Jack, you feel undaunted.

If you can make your opponent fold then good. However, we want to hit our Straight. If we hit our Straight, and fire a third bullet, our opponent has no clue that the last card helped us immensely!

He may interpret it as a bluff again and call. If he folds, then it’s just what we expect if he was hanging on with a weak hand. But he may have also called because he had the King all along and is now beat.

However, suppose we do not hit the Straight. We fired two bullets. Shall we fire a third?

Say the river came 8-5-K-J-7. The third card made possible a potential Straight. That is one of the reasons to bluff. Make it larger – make it look authentic.

Finally, suppose the Board did not help us fully, like in a Board of J-3-7-9-2 and we have A-10.

We fired two bullets (with the pure intention of making the opponents fold) already. Shall we fire a third?

If we had A-7 in this example, we can just check-check and hope that out pair of Sevens are good in a small-pot showdown. However, if we have A-10, we should bet again.

That is the only way to win the pot. That is one of the best ways to maintain an aggressive game throughout. And, that is one of the best ways to spare us the embarassment of checking Ace high and forcing to reveal it first.

So, hope this was useful and that it helps you get that extra edge in your next game be it a free online poker tournament or live big money event.

Calling is one of the most underestimated and incorrectly executed moves in both free online poker and cash Texas Hold em poker games. It is such that players who always call are disparaged as ‘calling stations’; however, it is not because they always call that they easily spill their chips to other players. It is because they call for the wrong reasons.

In this free poker games article, we’ll show you by way of example how to use calling in poker correctly.

Are there indeed right reasons for calling?
A right reason for calling, an aggressive player might note, is also a right reason for betting instead.

- For example, if you have A-K in a board of 10-3-K-7-8, if you are first to act, you bet; you do not check and call.

- You value-bet. However, if you are not first to act, what do you do if someone bets?

- Will you raise? Now, right reasons for betting are not-so-right reasons for raising. You don’t raise, but you don’t fold, too, because you still have a hand.

The rule now, for the above hand, is:

- If you are first to act, you bet.

-If you are not first to act, and someone bets, call an amount less than or equal to the amount you intend to bet if you are the first to act.

- If the amount is greater, you fold. This rule applies only if you have a hand.

- If you don’t have a hand, like just Ace-high, you bet, but you fold to a bet.

- Don’t call with Ace-high (unless out of curiosity).

Let us try another hand.

You have 8-7 in a Flop of K-6-9. You can check-call, but you can also bet. Now, betting is considered the better option, because you can make your opponent fold; after all, your hand is incomplete.

- If you check-call, however (or call a bet), you might send a message to your opponent that you are on a draw, and your opponent may continue bullying you later.

- Nevertheless, you want to complete a powerful hand, so you call.

- Just make sure you have the pot odds to call, however.

- If your opponent continues bullying you when you complete the Straight, you can raise.

Now, in another hand, you have A-6 in a Flop of 9-6-2.

- Because the flop comes small cards, anyone with big cards will fold to a bet.

- You can bet your Sixes. And you can also call with it, especially if your opponent decided to end the hand right there with A-Q.

- You can call, and later, if your opponent continues hammering you with small bets, you can call each small bet, because your odds are still sufficient.

- What’s more, you can pair your kicker or your Six if you call.

Lastly, if you have Q-Q in a Flop of Q-10-10, you have your opponent dead.

If your opponent bets, and you raise, it is more likely that your opponent will fold than not.

- This is because although your opponent might have A-Q, it is not likely because you know there are three Queens already out.

- Also an extra Ten is less likely for the same reason.

- Your opponent may have K-J or A-K (for a useless Straight draw) or a Flush completer.

Give your opponents opportunities to complete their hands so that you can solicit more action from them. If your opponent completes the Straight or the Flush later, then you have the upper hand. So just call, and call, until everyone escalates.

This also applies if you think your opponent has the spare Queen or Ten. You can let your opponent just bet and bet until the river, where he thinks you are calling because you just had a Queen or a small Pair, so at the river you can move your chips in.

These are some situations where calling is reasonable.

Now, what is incorrect with calling stations’ calling beliefs?

- First: they call even with the pot odds against their favor. They usually chase inside Straight draws and they lose their chips in the long run when they keep doing so.

- Second: they call big bets with modest, but marginal, hands even if they know they are beat. In a flop of 9-6-2 above, A-6 may call, but only if your opponents’ bets are small. But in front of a large bet, fold A-6 because you may not win against 9-x if you can’t pair your kicker or turn Trips.

Calling stations are the ones always calling with small pocket Pairs in the presence of overcards.

- Third: they usually believe that every player is bluffing so they are always tempted to call even with Ace-high. In other words, they call a bluff or something that looks like a bluff.

I hope this gave you some good insight into the use of calling in poker. Try to recognise situations where the call can be a useful tool and don’t get caught in the calling station mentality as that way lies poor play and no money!

As ever practice makes perfect so get on back to that NoPayPOKER free online poker game and play with real focus on what you’re doing and you’ll do great!

Position is your seat in on the free online poker tales at NopayPOKER (or indeed of course any poker tables free poker or otherwise) relative to other players.

It is your position which will indicate when you will act in a poker hand.

In a full ring game (9-12 players), in any given round of betting:

(1) Early position consists of the first three or four players to act.

(2) Middle position consists of the next player after early position to the player before late position.

(3) Late position consists of the last three or four players to act. Preflop, the dealer, the small blind, and the big blind are last to act, in that order.

Postflop, the small blind and the big blind are first to act, and the dealer is last to act.

Why does position matter?
Why do most players prefer playing most hands in late position? Briefly, it is because you are given more information in late position.

If you are in late position, the actions of the players in early position are added information to you. But the player in early position do not have the benefit of information derived from your actions.

This is why most players (especially good players) do not like giving up their button (dealer button) unless they have absolute trash. They call a small raise with any decent hand like 9-7 or A-5 (but not extraordinarily big raises, of course).

In a nine-handed game, suppose you have Q-J, a marginal hand, under the gun (the first person to act preflop). Will you raise? There are still eight players after you to act, and there will be a higher chance that they will have better hands than you. (A-x will have you beat). So fold.

In middle position, you may call one raise, or you can raise; you are indifferent.

From the button, you raise if no one has acted before you (you can steal the blinds this way), or call if someone raised small (because you have position).

From the blinds, you call (because it is discounted) but you have to be careful with postflop play because you are out of position postflop. Or you can even reraise a raise if you feel the raiser was weak (raising with junk is prevalent in good players in late position who want to steal the blinds habitually).

Position also matters when playing with players with a fixed style.
- It is desirable to act before a rock so you can bluff him more easily.
- It is preferable to act after a loose-aggressive chip sprinkler so you can raise him if you hit the Flop hard or if you have A-A, then expect a rereaise and then you can move all-in.
- Against a calling station, it doesn’t matter where you sit – just bet if you have a hand and then expect a call.

As for the really good players, your ideal position should be outside the poker table! Don’t tangle with them. If you can’t avoid it, then play in an unpredictable fashion, and take advantage of the times you are acting after him.

This point moves us away from table position in to a more strategic level so I won’t expand on it here except to say, choose your games wisely and don’t play above your skill level except when deliberately practising with money you have set aside to lose or better still on free poker games tables such as the NoPayPOKER ones.

See the free online poker skills series from D M Vadnais for much more depth on the areas such as choosing your battles and climbing skill levels. If you are a beginner start with the 101 course and if ready to move on check out Building a Bankroll which aims to propel to to advanced intermediate level (where you will start to win a lot of money should you wish)

A turbo tournament is a cash or free online poker games tournament where the blinds increase exceptionally rapidly. Suppose, in an ordinary poker tournament, blinds increase every 12-15 minutes. In a turbo tournament, the blinds increase every, say, 3-5 minutes. Time will come where everyone will be just from five to ten big blinds.

Given these numbers, a turbo tournament is about four times as fast as a regular tournament.
So how do you incorporate this ‘four times as fast’ into your playing style? Does this playing more hands?

No. For example, if in an ordinary tournament you ‘small-ball’ – a playing style where you play more hands than your opponents, like 7-6 (even offsuit) and A-x (suited) which others feel a little woozy when holding. Then if you hit the Flop hard, you bet hard as well – because in the earlier levels the blinds are low in relation to the average stacks. 

But in a turbo tournament you can’t use this playing style. Blinds increase, but the number of hands never increase; in fact, they decrease. If you are playing, say, 60 hands in the first four levels of an ordinary tournament, in a turbo tournament you will be playing just 15-20 hands, most of them you will fold, of course.

What hands will you not fold?
- A-A, K-K, Q-Q, of course.
- In the early levels you can also experiment with connectors because your opponents might be a bit scared about losing their chips early with a, say, weak Ace or King.
- However, in the later levels, where everyone is near to blinding out, also put A-x or K-x (where x is greater than 10) and smaller pocket pairs in your arsenal.

Why? Because, simply, if you don’t play, the blinds will not just eat you – they will devour you!
If you move all-in with a wide range of hands than you are accustomed to in an ordinary tournament, then you can make the others fold.

And even with a caller, you may be on a classic coin flip if you have a pocket pair; you can be a favorite if you have A-x (x>10) and the caller is a weak Ace; and you will have two live cards with K-x and Q-x.

In the late levels the game will be mostly preflop; a series of crapshoots; so take advantage of preflop aggression.

However, you can also take advantage of postflop aggression in the late levels.
Suppose you are in the button with K-x where x is weak and the blinds call. You feel that the other two players have weak hands. Now the flop comes a bit scary (A-8-3) for example.

If you have the Eight or the Three and both your opponents check, you can bet. However, you can also bet if both of them check even if you have nothing. You have position; you are the best player to decide whether each other player has something.

Near the bubble, if you are sinking in chips, move all in with A-x, K-x or Q-x. Most of the time you will be drawing live. Others will be afraid to call you because they don’t know what you have and they will be the one sinking in chips if they call you incorrectly (or if you luck out).

If you play turbo, free poker games or for cash I hope this short advice article helps you some, if you are new to turbo poker them then I strongly suggest to practice them in free online poker games first.

What do I mean by a maniacal snow-shover? I mean someone who moves all-in every turn.  Here at NoPayPOKER because we’re running free online poker games you’ll find a lot of all-in-all-the-time players so, unless you are one of them it’s well worth taking this free poker games guide in so that you know how best to combat this type of play.

Once or twice you can meet them in short-handed Sit and Go tournaments. When the blinds are high (the average stack is just ten big blinds) they move all-in every hand and the others fold. If they succeed in consecutive turns then they can achieve a big chip advantage.

Maniacal snow-shovers are hard to beat. First, when they move all-in, because they do it so frequently, you do not know what they are holding. Sometimes it could be 7-2, sometimes 5-5, sometimes, even A-A. When you decide to call them, it’s one of these. And ‘one of these’ usually means, ‘I don’t know.’

In five-person Sit and Gos, dealing with maniacal snow-shovers is easy. When they shove all-in every hand, there are three others, one of whom may have a good hand (or excellent hand) to call with. The MSS will be eliminated if this happens. (If I have a perfect calling hand I would be the one to do it.)

Or the MSS, with some stroke of extraordinary luck, may knock out one of the other players. The other players will have a hard time dealing with the MSS who now has a pyramid of chips to throw bricks with, and I can now afford to play conservatively. I will wait until I have A-A, K-K (or even just A-K or A-Q) so I can double up through the MSS. Or I will wait until the MSS is knocked out by the other players, or until the MSS knocks out the other players, then we will be heads up with the MSS.

What I’ve been saying is, play super-tight and aggressive poker. Because almost all action here takes place preflop, forget the connectors and weak Aces. Forget small pairs which may be underdogs against the K-10 or Q-9 the MSS may plunge unto you. Wait for a hand where you are at least a 70% favorite preflop (tight) , then once you get it, put your chips in the middle (aggressive).

When you are down to the final two (you and the MSS, which usually happens when you play tight and there is an MSS in play), the MSS usually is leading in chips. Heads-up, your weak Aces (A-8 below) and even K-x will be effective. Your K-x is just as powerful as A-x when the MSS decides to call you with Q-x.

You can’t afford to wait for the big hands because here, the blinds are overeating you now. Shove even with 5-4 or with 10-7. If you get called and you are the underdog, you still have two live cards. Against an MSS heads up, play like an MSS, but fold obviously weak hands. If you fold those weak hands, on average you have a better hand range than your opponent, so you have the better chance of winning even if you start with the smaller stack.

Remember, it takes time to learn how to play poker online or offline at a level above the unthinking, uneducated “chip flinging” seen at many tables.

The good news is that so many players do the maniac all in things so once you learn to play poker good you can take a lot of money from them. As ever practice makes perfect so read, understand and then practice on the free online poker sites to get it nailed.

The title is just what eveything else that will follow say. Without bad beats, no tournament, free online poker or otherwise will finish. This might seem a rather nonsensical proposition about the nature of poker tournaments, after all, preflop, isn’t it a prevalent belief that all-in players with A-K should win against callers with A-Q? And isn’t it that players who move all-in with 8-8 should win against callers with A-K? And isn’t it that players with A-A should win all the time?

Not at all. The 100% faith we have in these hands does not turn out to be 100% at all.

• First, let us make a hypothetical poker tournament where players who move all-in preflop will decide their hands preflop.
• Thus A-K is beat against 2-2, there and then preflop. A-K beats A-Q. And A-A beats everything.
• Can you see how many callers there will be?
• Callers will have to wait for premium hands before calling, and that will prolong the poker tournament.

Bad beats are some of the anomalies present in a poker tournament to shorten it.

• Going back to out 100% faith in A-K against A-Q, our faith should not be 100% at all.
• It should be 75% only, because A-K is beat by A-Q the remaining 25% of the time.
• And with so many players who move all-in with A-K, a caller with A-x should win 25% of the time.
• If 50 players in the tournament move all-in with A-K and 50 callers call with Ace-lower, isn’t it expected that 1/4 of 50, or about 13 players, should get eliminated?

On pocket pairs against A-K, it is almost a coin flip.

• It could be decided approximately by just flipping an actual coin.
• In the long run, pocket pairs win, however, because of a slight edge.
• But this does not mean that 8-8 will always win against A-K.
• If 8-8 winning against A-K is an approximately 55-to-45 (or 11-to-9) favorite, then there are almost as many players winning an all-in with a small pair against two overcards as players knocked out in the tournament in the same situation.
• The knocked out players should not fret; it’s the laws of probability that are hanging.

When a player wants to avoid bad beats, of course that player will wait for premium hands. But waiting for premium hands will considerably diminish the player’s stack because of blinding out.

That player should move all-in, at some time, or else suffer the oblivion of blinding out. But moving all-in does not guarantee a double-up; it is just a way of trying to restore your stack to a comfortable level. Bad beats must abound.

Here is a last note: Bad beats exist not only preflop, but also postflop.

• Say Player X has 8-8 and Player Y has 7-6 in a board of 5-8-4-A.
• Player X flopped a Set but Player Y hits a Straight.
• If Player Y moves all-in and X calls, then Y’s win is not assured yet.
• X can still pair the Board for a Full House or Quads.
• And if X does pair the board, we can call it a bad beat.

And it doesn’t matter what their stack sizes are. Both players may be above chip average, with Y having less chips than X. So bad beats are ways to ensure speedy tournaments by eliminating anybody, short-stack or players at the top of the pack.

I hope this was thought provoking. The underlying message being that you should not assume that certain cards will always win, that’s simply impossible. Plus bad beats really are not bad luck, it’s just that you’ve been picked out by the laws of probabiluty to have a bad day! Hopefully it was a bad day on a free online poker table rather than a car size stakes game!