8 Advance Texas Hold’em Techniques (Episode 1)! Increase Your Win Rate Like The Pros!

I believe you all have some basic understanding of Texas Hold’em after you’ve read through the article 5 Starting Techniques of Texas Hold’em. So we can move on to learning some advanced concepts. The biggest difference between starting and advanced techniques is in the relative understanding between the hand and the board. One can only acquire these concepts step by step.

Some of you may already have a hard time learning the 5 starting techniques already. To you, playing hold’em may seem like a tough task. There’s indeed no easy win in poker games, but as long as you put your head down and keep working on your games, I assure you you will find the beauty of the game and gain profit at the end. We will introduce some advanced skills. You may compare these skills with the starting one once you have read through it. Then you will understand this game fully.

Texas Hold’em Advanced Technique 1: Starting from the ground!

The first key of Hold’em is about the mutual relationship between hand selection and board cards. Since we are newbies to the game so we may not know how to bluff, so we should join the game with a better-starting hand.

In Hold’em, the position that has to place initial blinds are small blind and big blind. So other positions may decide if they want to be part of the game or not pre-flop. Since we might need to lose more blinds if we choose to see the flop often, we may learn from the experienced players and avoid going to the flop often. Only play when your starting hands are as strong as the following recommendation:

1. 100% recommendation: Aces, Kings, Queens, AK(suited), AQ(suited).
2. 95% recommendation: Jacks, 10s, AJ(suited), A10(suited), AK(unsuited), AQ(unsuited), KQ(suited)
3. 80% recommendation: 9s, QJ(suited), KJ(suited）, K10(suited)。
4. 70% recommendation: A8s(suited), KQ(unsuited), 8s, Q10(suited), A9(suited), A10(suited), AJ(unsuited), J10 (suited).

Texas Hold’em Advanced Technique 2: Reply with silence!

The second technique is to remain steady. We often get excited when we’ve got a powerful hand in the game, but if you show your excitement in the game, then everyone knows what you are holding. If the board doesn’t connect with Aces or high cards, then you might still lose to other less starting hands.

So I think you all know what I meant. Maintaining a poker face while playing is crucial. Don’t speak too much and don’t make too many facial expressions. Just calmly process every procedure during the game. Doing so then the pot may get bigger and there’s a bigger chance for you to win the pot. We often see the pros play with the same face the entire game because they know even a slight change may become a tell to their opponents and they may utilize it to the opponent's benefit.

Texas Hold’em Advanced Technique 3: Fold and wait for better ones!

Some are confused about the timing to fold. First of all, there’s no fixed answer to it. It varies between the game and the players we are playing against. So we need to tell the timing between it to increase our win rate.

Here are a few key concepts for you all. We’ve come up with three different categories with a hand. They are: less than 10s, no pairs, unsuited. The first scenario is all three of them, then we’d probably fold this hand 90% of the time. The second scenario is less than 10, no pairs, suited. We fold it 70% of the time. The third scenario is less than 10, a pair, unsuited. We’d fold it 40% of the time.

These three different scenarios are what the players may have a hard time dealing with. It’s tough to play initially and yet if the board connects it while we’ve already folded it, we may regret that we didn’t choose to play. So we need to know the correct timing to invest in it and we also need to know when to let go of it. As long as we play the correct hands in the correct position, we will be able to have a high win rate.

Texas Hold’em Advanced Technique 4: Pair with the board!

The fourth technique is about pairs. Most of the time, what players need to have to win the pot is a pair. It may seem hard to believe since pairs are the second weakest hand in Hold’em, only stronger than the high cards. The reason that pairs win the pot easily is that people tend to bluff a lot with their hands in the game.

To be frank, no one can win the pot by luck for a long time. So if we don’t know the right timing to bluff, then it’s hard for us to grow our stake size steadily. Yet, other players may have better bluffing skills than you. So it all ends up that all you need is a pair to win the pot.

Another side note of this technique is that we should give up if we don’t have the top pair once we are in the flop. Say we hold Qs and the flop comes A, K, 6. If we choose to play along, other members may beat us by holding an Ace or a K in their hand. So we should be folding by then, knowing we are beaten, and don’t lose more than we need.

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Conclusion

That’s all for today, we will be sharing more in the next episode. I strongly suggest you read the 4 techniques we introduce today over and over again. It helps with your game a lot. Tunned in for our next episode if you want to know what’s the remaining 4 techniques. I will see you next time.