How To Play No Limit Texas Hold Em

So, let's have a look at maybe a few finer points of No Limit Texas Hold 'Em which is the most popular poker variant on the planet, played with millions of people around the world both online and in live venues like here at the International. So let's have a look - a few situations when it comes to No Limit Hold 'Em. I've got three hands here just to try and highlight the real interesting ways that certain hands can be played.

Now, obviously, these hands would be face down, but let's look at the third best possible hand you can be dealt in Texas Hold 'Em, a pair of queens. So, the blinds here are at 15,000 and 30,000, small and big blind. The dealer button's here with some random hand which is not dealt out.

And first to speak is the pocket queens. Now, a couple of ways you could play this. You could just flat call.

When I say flat call, you just basically match the big blind bet which is 30,000 and hope that someone behind thinks that you're not that strong by early calling, and then say, "Right, well, okay, I'm going to raise to try and eliminate this particular hand because I know he's not that strong," because you've feigned weakness. Or another school of thought is that you now want to overplay the hand and not just only raise, like make it 30 plus 30 to 60, you actually move all your chips in, this case is, what? 200 odd thousand, so you've made a massive over bet, again appearing like you don't really want any action with your hand because usually when people overplay their hand, it's usually a sign of weakness again. And in poker, you want to try and give away as little information as possible, especially in No Limit Hold 'Em because the game's got to such a level where people go on even the smallest piece of information, whether it be betting patterns, whether it be even personal mannerisms, the way people look, hold their hand over their face, look around, talk to each other, all these things can be picked up on.

So, it really depends on what your particular table image is. If you're deemed to be quite an aggressive player and you're, again, moving your chips in, someone's not going to give you credit for a pair of queens, where if you're quite a tight player, which means you get involved in very few pots, then moving all in is probably a bad play because you're playing against how you normally play. It's always good to give away false information to your other players, to try and play opposite to how they would think you would play.

So let's look here. Say the pocket queens do move in, now a couple of tough decisions for the small and big blind. Ace jack when he's moved in, it's a lot of chips, he's going to be covering what you've got, you'd probably fold ace jack here.

Pocket tens, again, it's a tough hand to play. Very likely they're going to either have a hand that's beating you, like pocket queens, or a hand that you're going to be flipping. When I say flipping, I mean, you're going to have like two over cards against pocket tens, which means once you've run the five cards on the flop, 50% of the time, the tens are going to win, 50% of the time, the two over cards are going to win.

But in this case, you're a big underdog with the tens over pocket queens. So in summary, try and be aggressive. Try and play your hands in a very strong manner.

Don't give any, try not to give any tells and weaknesses away. But also try and play tricky sometimes. Try and play against how other people see you at the table.

And that you'll not only maximize the way that you play your hands but you'll also maximize on hands that the other players play as well. So, there's some basics for you on Texas No Limit Hold 'Em. .