Cash games are the pinnacle to making consistent money in poker. Tournaments may offer the opportunity for a big win, but they are going to deliver paydays on very rare occasions. With cash games, however, you can walk home a winner on a weekly basis – $10k minimum on an annual basis. With this in mind, it would be an understatement to say that winning at cash games is a long term and challenging process.

There is a very fine art to beating ring games, and there are virtually infinite topics and strategy concepts that will allow you to build upon your game, we will teach you the important ones on this page.

Poker tournament tips is, apparently, a pretty common search term on Google. I assume the searchers are looking for a quick checklist to go over before playing a tournament, and not advice on how much to tip the dealers after a big win. Poker is not a walk in the park, even at the lowest limits. Many great players struggled for a long time to find success at the micro stakes before moving up. However, there are proven strategies for achieving big time success in these games, and which can help you move up to higher limits where you can start making real money in poker.

Poker strategy is a very complex topic. You will never be able to aptly apply the strategy of a heads up player to that of a full ring player. Likewise, general concepts will vary from stake to stake. You are going to run into almost limitless pools of terrible players in the micro stakes limits, but difficult to snag once you encounter the mid stakes tables. Cash games provide an opportunity for unlimited growth.

The Must Know Topical Articles

Whereas limit specific or situational strategy articles tend to hone in on more specific areas of the game, these topical articles can be utilized by most anyone. Theory is the bare framework that will allow you to form and shape your end game playing style. Without some theory and firm understanding of how the game works at its core, it would be all but impossible to effectively implement any sort of strategy.

3 Best Poker Tips from a Cash Game Session with Doug Polk There’s something to learn from every video in the Upswing Lab. The same is true for the following Doug Polk Play & Explain session, in which he battled across 4 tables at mid-stakes on America’s Card Room.

Have you ever been sitting in late position and wondered what you were going to do with your suited connectors? Maybe you were dealt a pocket pair and are unsure how to react to an early position raise. While these are largely very situational and particular spots, there is a broader theory that will always encompass them. There is certain ways to play these hands, sure, but do you truly understand why they are best played that way? For example, seeing the difference between a limped multi-way pot and a raised multi-way pot is one way to quickly analyze ever changing variables at your table. Many players play their hands and give little thought to the reasoning behind it. It is the players who think critically, however, who tend to be the biggest winners.

Game and Limit Specific Articles

Games and limits are both important in cash games. You are going to inevitably run into different opponents in the small stakes than you are going to find in the high stakes. In addition to this, 6-max games are going to play very differently than their full ring counterparts. There are only a handful of common variations in cash games, though, which makes them fairly easy to adapt to. In tournaments and sit and gos, there are seemingly endless choices when it comes to the games that you can play. With enough practice and experience, a solid cash game player could hop from a heads up small stakes game to a 6-max mid stakes table. It might require a significant amount of practice and experience, but it can certainly be done. The ability to learn each type of game is something that separates sit and gos and tournaments from cash games.

Ten Player Ring Strategy
–Full Ring Small Stakes Strategy
–Ring Low Stakes Hand Selection

There are three different limits that the vast majority of cash game players will be involved in. These three brackets include the micro stakes, small stakes, and mid stakes. After the mid stakes comes high stakes games, but only the true elite of poker ever make it to that level. If you reach the high stakes games, the odds are that you don’t need anyone to teach you how to win. While you are in the micro stakes through mid stakes, however, there will be a lot of hurdles to leap. The approaches and strategies that you see implemented from level to level will certainly change, which forces you to make adaptations of your own. Beating any limit of cash games is a challenge, so it is always in your best interest to take one step at a time.

Situational Strategy Articles

Situation strategy is most relevant in cash games. There are infinite situations and spots that will call for very specific strategy. For example, take 3-bet sizing in late position against an aggressive player. This is a situation where you would need some exact skills and experience to be able to play your hand correctly. Cash games, by nature, allow for a lot of creativity and abstract play. This is what helps to separate the winners from the losers. With that said, there are some very common tricky spots where the majority of players just don’t know what to do. This section of articles will best aid your game when you use it to help fine tune the smaller dimensions of your complete cash game strategy.

Many people struggle to break through in a big way in small stakes cash games. Perhaps they squeak by with break-even results or they even become minor winners. But most people want to win big. Indeed, for many that is the primary reason for playing the game.

The key to accomplishing that goal is to learn how to exploit the small edges most other people do not know about or do not apply often enough. In this article I am going to discuss five simple strategy tips that will help increase your profit margins in low stakes cash games.

1. Steal the Blinds

Most people think they do a good job of stealing the blinds, but many still pass up a lot of golden opportunities to do so. It is simply a fact that the button and the cutoff will be by far the most profitable seats for you at the poker table. Why on earth, then, would you not exploit the heck out of this when it is folded to you in these positions?

In my opinion, you can easily get away with stealing the blinds with 30% or even 40% of your hands in your typically passive low stakes cash games, live or online. Most opponents will simply let you take it down, only three-betting you if they happen to have a strong hand. Or even better, they will flat your steal attempt from out of position and then you can take down an even bigger pot with a simple continuation bet on the flop and/or turn.

The bottom line is that stealing the blinds is a highly effective way to increase your profit in small stakes cash games. Make sure that you are raising with anything that is even remotely playable.

2. Double-Barrel

Another effective strategy in passive low stakes cash games is to continuation bet the flop and then follow it up again on the turn. This is also referred to as a “double-barrel.”

The reason why this strategy is so effective is because many people at these stakes play no-limit cash games as if they were fixed-limit games. That is, they will call you on the flop but if you can follow it up on the turn with another bet, then they will assume that you are serious and let you have the pot.

This is a very effective strategy to use in particular against weak-tight opponents who won’t call you down with weak pairs or draws. Some players will even fold a small overpair if you continue to apply the pressure like this! Target these players more often by making another continuation bet on the turn.

3. Three-Bet Light

One of my favorite strategies against these same weak-tight opponents is to three-bet them light before the flop. By three-bet light I mean rereaise their open raise with a bunch of hands that aren’t quite premium — e.g., suited connectors, suited aces, and small pairs. I never do it with total junk. I always want to have some equity.

I will also do it more often when I am in position. This allows me to control the pace of the hand should they decide to call. This also allows me to get more value bets in if I manage to hit the board or to bluff if I feel like they aren’t confident about their hand.

4. Bluff the River

Once again the target here are the weak-tight opponents you see everywhere these days in small stakes cash games, especially online. Many of the players in this category do not like to go to showdown without a strong hand.

If you’re online and using a HUD, the WTSD% or “Went to Showdown” stat is crucial here. If an opponent is in the low 20s or less, then that is exactly the kind of player I want to be bluffing against more on the river.

It is important not to do it every time, though, and it is also important to make sure that your line makes some sense before firing that river bluff. By this I mean that given your previous actions in the hand, you want to find spots in which you could easily show up with several good made hands as well.

The river is often a spot where there is some big value to be made. Don’t just give up on the pot if you are against one of these nitty types who you think might fold. If you know that you cannot win at showdown, then sometimes you have very little to lose and everything to gain by making a bet.

5. Raise With Your Draws

One final way to open up your game and exploit the tendencies of weak opponents in particular is to play your draws fast. I mean significant draws such open-ended straight draws (8 outs), flush draws (9 outs), and everything better.

You already have plenty of equity with these hands, so it is a great strategy to play them like they are the nuts a little more often. One of my favorite ways to do this is simply to raise the flop and then bet any turn. This line puts a tremendous amount of pressure on opponents and really forces them to have a real hand in order to continue.

Once again, I will be targeting the weak-tight players with this play, a consideration that goes for pretty much every other strategy discussed in this article as well. There are still plenty of calling stations at the lower stakes and it is not a good idea to start bluffing up a storm against them.

Final Thoughts

The difference between the biggest winners and everybody else at any limit often boils down to how effectively the winning players exploit the smaller edges. And really what this means is taking down the smaller pots over which nobody else truly wants to fight.

Most players know how to play pocket aces before the flop or how to proceed after flopping a set. And everybody gets dealt these big hands in equal frequencies in the long run.

What the biggest winners do better than everybody else is win more than their fair share of the pots with their mediocre or even total junk hands. They do this by applying pressure in some of the key spots listed in this article.

Nathan “BlackRain79” Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books, Crushing the Microstakes and Modern Small Stakes. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.

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Estrategia Poker Cash 6 Max

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