The different types of game you can play will dictate different ways of betting. When you sign up for online poker you will have the option of playing 3 different kinds of game. You can play a poker cash game, a Sit ‘N’ Go tournament or a guaranteed prize tournament. The reason that your poker strategies should change for each of these is mainly because with a poker cash game you can always come back in when you lose what’s in front of you. This means that it is much harder to push players off hands with very aggressive bets. There is much more calling and more hands are played down to the river.
In tournaments, play tends to be much tighter, one mistake will see you finished in a tournament and your chances of getting paid out for your efforts destroyed. This means that a good bluff at the right time is much more likely to be effective at pushing an opponent out of a hand. In a Sit ‘N’ Go tournament you will have a lot less chips in front of you than in a guaranteed prize money tournament so there tends to be more bluff and aggression, especially as the blinds get ever higher.
So for poker cash game strategy make sure that you bear in mind that you are unlikely to successfully push every other player off their hand. This means that actions tend to be exaggerated; a bluff is often an all-in play which will really put you on the spot. The position you are in becomes very important in order to play with the utmost information and to be able to maximize the impact of your moves.
In a guaranteed tournament everyone starts off equal and cannot (usually) just go all in on a whim hoping that everyone will fold. This creates an atmosphere that makes play much tighter and bluffs are usually lower. A great tactic in a big tournament is to be very passive for the first 45 minutes to an hour. During this time loads of players will over reach and get knocked out of the tournament. Usually there are a lot of players who don’t really know what they are doing and make wild raises and bluff constantly. Playing massively means that when you do have a good hand the chances are that you will be able to cash in on one of the crazy all ins who are pushing in big with nothing.
