POKER TIPS & STRATEGY

5 Things You Should NOT Do in Live Poker Games

By Tadas Peckaitis
December 21, 2017

Online poker is very different from the games you can find in local casinos or in home games with your friends. With that in mind, to crush live poker games you need to adjust your strategy and take a different approach versus what you do online. You can quickly improve your live poker game by avoiding some common pitfalls. In this article, I’ll be going over five of them.

1. Do not get distracted while playing

Many players love to read something on their phones, listen to music or even watch a movie while playing. However, doing those sorts of things practically guarantees that you will be missing out on lots of valuable information (unless you’re actively using your device to take poker notes).

distractions

If you turn your attention from the game to your mobile phone or tablet, you will likely not see how your opponents are playing or what kind of mistakes they keep making repeatedly. On top of that, you will probably miss the size of the pot or even stacks in play, which will complicate your decision making.

Moreover, seeing a showdown while you are not in the hand can give you plenty of information about your opponents and help you understand how they play. Therefore, players who observe all the action are usually ones who take it down at the end of the day.

2. Do not play the same range of hands

In most cases, live poker games are much looser compared to online, and you should take advantage of that. Therefore, trying to balance your ranges and sticking with the same holdings as online does not make much sense while playing in a casino or even in your home games.

Your ultimate goal should be to play more speculative hands, which could flop huge and win large pots at the end. Obviously, you will need advanced poker training to build a complete winning strategy. But to start, you can play more suited connectors, gappers, Ax hands, and small pocket pairs, which will help you win big pots when you improve.

Especially when in any of the late positions, you will have many chances to see cheap flops in live games, so take advantage of that and put your opponents to the test.

3. Do not overthink bet sizing

Your bet sizing should be very straightforward in live poker games. Many players do not see sizes in relation to the pot, so you can easily get away with value betting big when you have a hand. This is especially the case if there are any possible draws on the board, as your opponents will not be looking to lay down their hands and will chase those draws even without getting right odds. Thus, it is your job to choose big sizing and make them pay for their mistakes.

 

On the other hand, bluffing with smaller sizing can often mean that you’ll get almost the same amount of folds from your opponents (compared to bigger bets), so this could be another reasonable adjustment. Obviously, these strategies work best against recreational players, and you should not end up using them versus regulars in your game.

4. Do not overplay your weak hands

Overplaying weak hands is one of the biggest mistakes in live games. As I mentioned before, players tend to play quite loose, so you should not be surprised to see a hand such as 54o at showdown, something you would not need to take into consideration while playing online.

weak hands

Therefore, when your opponent starts raising you out of nowhere, he could have more strong hands such as random two pairs, and you need to consider those. Often, if you face a raise and hold only a pair, folding is a standard play if you are not playing against ultra-aggressive opponents.

Learning to lay down those medium strength holdings can turn you into a winning player faster than anything else.

5. Do not leave poker tells behind

Poker tells can give you a lot of information in any live game, but if you are playing with your friends, it could become a gold mine. In most home games, you will be facing same players over and over again, so you have opportunity to build some serious stacks if you’ve got good reads on them.

This is a topic that many books have been written about, so it’s impossible and perhaps unnecessary to try and cover everything here. However, as a rule of thumb, many weak players act strong when they are weak and vice versa, which could translate into many different tells.

Therefore, make sure to observe how your opponents play and reacts at the table. If you are lucky enough to notice something more than once, this could indicate a tell, which will help you make lots of money.

0

LIKE THIS STORY?
GET OUR BEST ONES IN YOUR INBOX EACH MONTH!

Sign up
Tadas Peckaitis poker author
Written By.

Tadas Peckaitis

Tadas Peckaitis is a professional poker player, author of the free poker book “Play ‘A’ game and be the boss at your poker table”, and poker coach at mypokercoaching.com. He is also a big fan of personal effectiveness and always trying to do more. Tadas shares his knowledge about both of these topics with his […]

Comments

0 Comments

The focus is very important in any games, so as much as possible avoid being distracted. You want to know how your opponent play right?

Join The Discussion

Latest Post

Tags

Pokercoaching All Access

The Travel Shark

WPTGlobal Welcome Offer

Don’t miss our top stories, exclusive offers and giveaways!