Poker Strategy – 5 Tips For No Limit Cash Games

1. Practice patience

No limit cash games do not have increasing blinds like tournaments do so there's no rush to "make something happen" in cash games. You low stakes players have it the easiest because your opponents will not notice if you have to sit tight for a few orbits - they'll still call when you start betting.

Even in high stakes games you have to practice patience. You do not want to play like a rock but if there's nothing happening, you can not force it. The occasional late position blind steel is enough to keep people from thinking you're a complete rock. When you finally do hit a hand, you'll still have a good chance of getting some action.

Patience is a big problem for me in no limit cash games. If I go a few orbits without getting a strong hand, I start to get pretty antsy. I'll try to stir up some action by raising too many hands, bluffing too much and generally pissing money away.

2. Play musical chairs

Ever heard the term "table selection"? Table selection is one of the key skills that big winners use to their advantage. The term gets thrown around all the time that it looks like it has lost its meaning. I can not stress enough how important it is that you practice good table selection.

Do not become complacent sitting at the same cash game tables all night. You have hundreds of tables to choose from when playing online poker so do not let great opportunities pass you by. A little table selection can easily double the amount of money you take home every month.

3. Use aggression to your advantage

When I tell you to play aggressively, I do not mean you should play like a trigger happy maniac. In poker, aggression means raising with your strong hands and folding your weak hands. Sounds simple, right?

The problem is most poker players veer away from this strategy by simply calling with their weak hands, calling with their strong hands and only folding when their hands are hopelessly doomed.

An aggressive poker player will either raise or fold his hands. If it's not strong enough to raise, it's not strong enough to call. Sure, there are perfectly acceptable times to call in poker but for the most part you want to play a strong, aggressive game.

Aggression gets money in the pot when you have strong hands (which is how you make money) and it charges your opponents to draw against you. Aggression wins money in poker.

4. Pay attention to position

Pay attention to your position and the position of your opponents. Every single poker hand you watch or take part should be analyzed with position taken into consideration. Which hands you play and how you play those hands will always be affected by your position at the poker table.

When in early position, you need to be playing far fewer hands. When in late position, you can open up your game a bit. If you use Holdem Manager or Poker Tracker, you can look up your stats and you'll see that the vast majority of your money is won in late position. You'll also see that out of all your losses, the major of those take place in early position.

You should also pay attention to the position of your opponents. Take note of which opponents play differently in different positions. These opponents have probably read at least a little bit of basic strategy.

A preflop raise from an opponent in early position is much different than a raise from that same opponent in late position. Always note position and use it to learn as much as you can about your opponents' hands.

5. Take breaks!

Taking a break may sound counterproductive but poker is not the same as a regular job. If you do not take frequent breaks, you can easily cost yourself a lot of money. I've sometimes had to take week long breaks during particularly brutal downswings.

You should never, ever play poker when in a bad state of mind. The times you feel like you need to play poker the most are usually the worst times to play poker. If you play poker with a stressed out mindset, you're going to play horribly.

One of the worst times to play poker is when you were supposed to quit for the day but want to stick around for a little bit longer to win back any money you might have lost. Set yourself a time limit and stick to it. Trust me.

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Source by Wesley Burns