Free US Poker

As you begin the process of playing more and more tables in online poker then you will at some stage need to play tighter with regards to how many hands you will be playing. In games like low-stakes no limit Texas Holdem ring games then playing very tight will be profitable for numerous reasons. Firstly the proportion of the pot that you will need to pay with regards to the rake will be higher. If rakes are capped at say $3 then the higher limit games will have a very high percentage of the average pot size go in as rake free money.

What this means is that you could take two different players who each play in a game where the average amount of rake played is $2.50 per pot. But if both players play in games where the $3 maximum is reached at pots of $60 and Player A has an average pot size of $70 while Player B plays in games with an average pot size of $600 then Player B is getting an extra $540 of money into the pot that is not raked while Player A is only getting a mere $10.

What this means of course is that micro-stakes and low-stakes players are penalised the most when it comes to poker sites and casinos raking games. What this also means is that a player needs to do two things and the fist one is to avail themselves of the best rakeback and bonus deals that are out there and the second tactic is to play tighter in lower stakes games than higher stakes games.

It may seem counter intuitive to play tighter against weaker players as you want to see more pots against them. However in the online low-stakes no-limit Holdem poker environment then the average stack size is smaller than it is in a live game and you may even have several minimum stackers who are active on your table at the same time. This hugely offsets your advantage of skill (taking for granted that you have it to begin with) when buying in for the full stack is useless against nearly half of the field.

So tight play when you are multi-tabling is important for numerous reasons! Many players only play about 10-13% of their total hands when they multi-table because they don’t want to end up paying huge amounts of rake and also because seeing too many flops at the same time can get you into an awful lot of trouble if you are playing quite a few tables.

If you happen to be playing on tables where the action is quite loose and the minimum stackers are constantly shoving on you when you try to steal then you may find that your profit potential in these games is very low and trying to play “poker” in these games can often be a big mistake. It took me a long time to work this out when I tried my Vulture system last year but it was a lesson that I learned well.