In poker, to stop winning is to lose. It is seen very clearly in rookies who hit a monster on the flop that will win in 95% of the cases, but scare the opponent with a big bet and lose everything (a monster is a set, a full house, a straight, a flush or even a four of a kind). And, more, when we know that the rival is not going to beat us. These cases can be great when the opponent has tied something, and we already had a good part of the monster in our hand, well hidden. (Example: We have a pair of 3s and the rival AK. The flop comes out 3K7). In this case, we can only wait for him to give us his chips without ruffling our hair.
However, it will not always be so pretty, and we will have to develop strategies to win in poker to expand our chip base. If we can count cards and we suspect that the opponent does not have such a good hand and there are clues to our monster (there are three diamonds on the table), we must play it skillfully. The best strategy here unfortunately is to check and wait for your opponent to bluff, betting heads only on the river.
On the other hand, playing against a monster is impossible. No matter how much we have promised you strategies to fight against them, no matter how bad the rival is and how good we are. If he has a big hand, he’ll beat us. Peeeeero… we can prevent him from having it. As? If we have initiative, we should bet heavily on flops with two cards of the same suit, or with two consecutive cards. If they ask us for a free letter, we will not give it.
Check-raise: a double-edged sword
The check raise is the online poker strategy to kill aggressive players, looking to show weakness and then hunt down unsuspecting prey. In this sense, it would be similar to the check-call, but when we don’t have a monster, just a hand with which we will go ahead of our opponent. In short, we are looking to replace a value bet that our opponent might not call with a check-raise. We will look for his bluff having shown weakness with the check.
The risk of this bet is that the rival, with a flush or straight draw, ends up seeing free cards with which he will destroy us. The check-raise works perfectly against aggressive players, who frequently try to steal pots.
These poker strategies are not foolproof and may well not work. Even advanced players can fail, as these strategies are designed to counteract each other, and even if you apply one, you don’t know which one the opponent will apply. The other players play too! The truth is that learning to control them will maximize your chances of success in the long run. For this, you need practice, and taking into account that for the practice to be optimal you must play poker with real money, the welcome bonuses can be your saliaries.
