Tighten up
Poker can be played in many different styles. There are loose players who play and bet lots of hands, and there are tight players who fold frequently. Most poker online pundits agree that a tight aggressive style is usually a winning one.
How do you figure out how tight is right? First consider the percentage of hands you play pre-flop. You should also monitor how often you play the flop too. This is easy to do online since most rooms let you track your hand histories.
The experts typically recommend that only about 15 percent of pocket cards should be played pre-flop. And of those, about 50 percent should be folded once the flop comes out. Sticking to these percentages is considered a tight style of online poker play.
Some champs, like Phil Helmuth, advise players, especially less seasoned ones, to just stick with the top ten starting hands, which is only 6 percent of the total 169 possible hands that can be dealt, and fold everything else. If you broaden it to 15 percent, then you’ll have about 25 starters that are playable.
One simple rule some players use is to play hands that would be good as blackjack hands – those that add up to 21 or close to it.
Learning to play a tight aggressive game will win you more at the casino online in the long run.
