Advice - Omaha and Texas Holdem

Poker Advice, Holdem and Omaha games

How doese one go about winning in online poker?

Whether you're playing online poker just for the fun of it or you are serious about making some cash, the question soon arrives: How dose one go about winning in online poker? After all it is more fun to win than to lose. With a few creative searches in the Amazon store you will find lots of books about this subject. This is not the place for repeating stuff you can find elsewhere. Instead the following advice will help you become a solid player when using PokerSniffer or OmahaSniffer at the online tables.

Wax on wax off
When it comes to poker, there is no 'wax on wax off' (Karate-Kit), you learn by doing it. Sometimes it is correct to fold strong hands, and sometime it is correct to move all in with trash. It all depends on the current situation and game type. If there actually did exist a perfect way of playing poker, there would be little money involved in the game. When you win, it is most likely because someone else at the table makes mistakes, else you winnings would be pure luck. If everybody at the table has the same set of skills, the only big winner would be the poker site, who collects the rake. But as you properly know, online poker tables contain a lot of pure skilled players. You profit will always come from exploit the bad players. First step on the winning path is to play good staring hands.

Starting hands in Texas Holdem
Since the information is limited in the preflop play, the best advice is to always only play the Sklansky group 1 to 8 starting hands. PokerSniffer will automatically display the group when you get your hole cards. If a hand is not in any group in can be considered as trash and you should always have a good reason for playing a trash hand.

Group 1: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AKs
Group 2: TT, AQs, AJs, KQs, AK
Group 3: 99, JTs, QJs, KJs, ATs, AQ
Group 4: T9s, KQ, 88, QTs, 98s, J9s, AJ, KTs
Group 5: 77, 87s, Q9s, T8s, KJ, QJ, JT, 76s, 97s, AXs, 65s
Group 6: 66, AT, 55, 86s, KT, QT, 54s, K9s, J8s, 75s
Group 7: 44, J9, T9, 33, 98, 64s, 22, KXs, T7s, Q8s, 53s, 43s
Group 8: 96s, 85s, J7s, 74s, A9, Q9, J8, T8, 42s, 32s, 87, 76, 65, 54, K9

You must stick to only play Group 1 to 2 in early position, add Group 3 and 4 in middle position. If the action is not too wild, you can add Group 5 to 8 in late position, since you will have position over you opponents when the flop comes. Playing like this will let you see the flop about 18%-25% of the time, not much. But as you will find in the poker books: tight is right. In addition to the hand group, PokerSniffer displays the Expected Value (EV) as well. This value refers to the expected worth of that hand played over time. If the EV is negative you should consider folding unless the circumstances are correct.

Starting hands in Omaha games
OmahaSniffer calculates the Hutchison points of your starting hand. The purpose of these points is to give a simple evaluating of the starting hand. Hands with more points are likely to win more often compared with hands with fewer points.

Depending on the points, OmahaSniffer will show the strength of you hand as: Weak, Premium or Strong. The case above is for Omaha High/Low, with 35 points you should properly bet/raise since your hand is strong. Omaha preflop points are important, but Omaha is largly a post flop game, so if you can see a cheap flop, go ahead and do so.

Post flop, please give me a full house!
Most of the time you will miss the flop, and if you do hit something strong, you must proceed aggressively. It is not difficult to win if you hit a hand like trips, straight and so on. Here it is most likely best to value bet all you can. However, many times you will hit a draw, which you may correctly or incorrectly decide to continue with. The strength of the draw is determined by the number of outs. PokerSniffer calculates your outs:

The number of outs is a critical factor in the decision about how to continue in the hand. If you have less than 6 outs it is best to get out in most cases. If you have 10 outs and above it is most likely correct to stay in the hand, especially in limit games. But, to help you further, PokerSniffer displays your current win percent as well. This shows the percent chance you have of winning the hand at showdown. The win percent will increase if you have many outs. In the case above this will be your win percent at showdown against 3 opponents.

Sometimes, if you have nothing (high card only), but you have a lot of outs, the win percent may actually be so big that it would be correct to lead out with a bet. This will maximizing you chance of getting people to fold and maybe win the pot right there. Else it will properly make them scared of attaching you later in the hand if you do not improve your draw (the free card play). If you get raised big in this spot, you have an easy fold.

Your Improvements
Both sniffers display the percent chance of improving your hand on the next card to fall (on the flop/turn). This feature is particularly useful in Omaha games since you have 6 combinations of two hole cards, and 1 combination may be a draw to the nuts or close to it. The improvement bars gives you a clear picture of the situation. Below is show the situation from PokerSniffer (Holdem) where you have an open ended straight draw (8 outs) including the chance of hitting a singe pair on the next card.

This information indicates what kind of poker hands you draw are most likely to hit. In this case you have ~17% chance of making a straight assuming that the cards which completes the straight are still in the deck.

Play for the pot
Many new players fail to pay enough intention about the size of the pot. They are more concerned with the strength of their hand. This is a mistake. You play to win the pot no matter what. If the pot is 10$ and PokerSniffer shows your win percent to be ~15%, it would be a mistake to call a bet of 2$. And here we ignore the fact that you may get re-raised making the situation even worse. But if your win percent is above 50% it would be correct to call a bet of 5$. You will notice that playing against 5 to 9 opponents will give you a low win percent unless your hand is very strong. Always take a close look at the win percent before making the next move. A winning strategy is also determined by your skills of leaving a hand and not losing a lot of money. A typical example is that you get JJ against 2 tight opponents with a flop of A-K-5, this is a spot where you can easily lose at showdown.

What dose my opponents have?
If you are good at hand reading your opponents, this will surly be profitable in the long run. Actually, if you knew you opponent's hands you would be able to make 100% correct decisions in all situations. Fortunately this is not the case, but there is light at the end of the tunnel. PokerSniffer calculates a graph of the likely poker hands the current table cards can create, the distribution:

At first glance, this may not seems like the most powerful information, but in some spots it is actually helpful. When the river card is dealt, the winner has already been found, and the distribution shows the most likely rang of the winning hand. With this distribution you can always see what kind of hands are possible, and it will in most cases indicate what kind of hands you opponents have. You can place the mouse over the distributation label to get at tooltip of likely holdings according to the group interval you have selected.

To simplify this tooltip, the one pair and high card poker hands are omitted.

Good luck
Poker is a game of both luck and skill in the short run. However, in the long run it is only a game of skill. The solid player will win in the long run. But how long is this long run? For many players we are talking about years. That is, you can easily have 3 months of pure losing, and win it all back in 1 week. Or you can lose in 1 week what you have built up during the last 3 months. When the year is over, take a close look at your bankroll to see if the result is acceptable.

As in any other game, sports and so on - if you have the right equipment and your opponents dose NOT, you have an edge. PokerSniffer and OmahaSniffer can give you that edge in online poker. It can not make you a winning player (no poker calculator can) but it can help you make correct decisions. As always, good luck.