Cash Games Strategies & Tips

The amount of money you have set aside to play online poker with is referred to as your "bankroll". You need to treat your bankroll very seriously and very carefully, always playing the right games for you at the right stake levels. You should be playing at stakes that are not so high that you are afraid to make the moves you need to make, but not so low that you play carelessly. If you're not sure, err on the side of caution and play lower stakes. You can always progress to higher stakes if you're sure that you're not being challenged enough.

Your fortunes can often change very quickly when playing cash games, there's bad luck, bad beats and lots of situations occur where even though you've played a hand perfectly and made all the right decisions, you can still be beaten. Because of all this volatility, you should never have your entire bankroll with you at one table and invested in one game.

When choosing the right stake level for your cash game, a good rule of thumb is to take about 100 times the amount of the big blind to the table with you, so for example, if you want to play at a $0.50/$1 table then you should take about $100 to the table. Remember though as mentioned above, you need the money to play the game and money in reserve in case the worst happens and you hit some bad luck. You want to be in a situation where if you get a bad beat you are then to rebuy again and have another go at it.

Watch the tables before you take a seat, a stable, passive table is much less likely to provide these bad beats than a loose aggressive and volatile table.

Be realistic about your levels of poker skill, if you think there are very good players at your table who are better than you, then don't hang around to watch them slowly drain your bankroll. The beauty of online poker is that there are loads of online poker rooms and each online poker room has loads of poker tables. If you feel you are out-skilled quickly move to another table where you feel comfortable.

Don't try to play every hand. The most popular mistake for beginner players is playing too many hands. If you play any two cards with the hopes of hitting a great flop, you will often make the second best hand. This will result in your chips wasting away as you pay for missed flop after missed flop.

Don't solely focus on your hand, take into account the actions of other players and what type of hands that their actions suggest that they may have. This may lead you to fold a strong hand if you feel that, with the community cards available and the betting behavior, a player may have an even better hand.

This may sound a little complicated but once you're thinking about what your opponent has, you should try thinking about what your opponent may think that you have. It's simply a case of putting yourself in your opponents shoes and trying to think what your actions may be telling him. This behaviour is key in the art of bluffing.

Be prepared to walk away from the table. This may sound easy to do but if you've just lost a huge pot or suffered a disgraceful bad beat then it's all too easy to get angry and go on tilt. When you are on tilt you are not going to play your best poker and getting angry at the poker table is the quickest method to lose your entire bankroll. The ideal solution is to walk away and take time out to calm down, but this is easily said than done and is a key skill to learn in poker. The fact of the matter is that at some point you are going to lose a large pot, but as long as you stay faithful to a good poker strategy, you'll soon recoup your losses.

Nobody is the a perfect poker player...nobody, and unfortunately you aren't going to become one of the poker greats just by reading the poker strategies and tips at Compare Best Poker either, regardless of how useful, insightful and great they are. In order to become a good poker player you have to continually improve your game, read as much as you can and take in as much information as is possible. This doesn't mean that you have to follow every bit of advice that is out there, because everyone has an opinion, but if you have a poker strategy that you are happy with then just keep looking at ways to supplement and improve this strategy.

Always analyse your play. Look back at important hands and consider what you did right and what you did wrong, and how it impacted upon your results. If you identify a real error in your play, you can then try to correct it before your next game.

CASH GAME RULES

Want to learn more about playing Cash Games? Click here to learn the rules of Cash Games.

Cash Games Strategies & Tips

CASH GAME RULES

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