When you play poker online at Party Poker, you’re going to encounter both loose opponents and tight opponents at the table and you need to be able to beat them both. You will need to use two different strategies when you’re trying to beat a loose player and a tight player so make sure that you’re able to adapt your playing style based on the style of player you’re up against.
Before you will be able to beat your opponents at the poker table you will need to be able to pick up on their playing styles. The general rule of thumb that you can use when you’re playing Holdem is that when an opponent is betting a lot they are typically loose and when a player hardly plays any hands they are tight. Once you have determined which players are loose and which players are tight at the poker table you’re playing on your can begin working on beating them.
Loose Players
When you’re playing against loose players on Everest Poker you should typically play fairly tight at the table so that you don’t invest many chips into hands you probably won’t win. You will still need to make a few calls preflop in order to make sure that you don’t seem like to tight of a player to your opponents. In order to beat a loose opponent you need to trap them and let them do the betting. Once you have a monster hand you need to disguise it as best you can so that you get paid off from the player. Generally a loose player will fire at least a couple bullets so you should be able to make a nice payday. If you’re first to act on the river then I would suggest making a bet if you have a good enough hand, but keep it small enough so that the player thinks about raising you. If not then you’ll still have a nice pot plus you won’t need to show your hand to anyone which is always a benefit.
Tight Players
Tight players are really easy to play against because they typically won’t play past the flop in many hands unless they hit a piece of the action. If they didn’t hit the flop then you can generally scare them out of the pot with any sized bet. In order to maximize your profits against tight players you need to keep the bets small so that you can extract a bit from them preflop and on the flop. Once you make it to the turn then you will want to make a big sized bet so you can take the pot down. If you get re-raised then you might be in trouble and they might have a hand. Don’t do this to often either, because often a tight poker player will pick up on these things and will re-raise you all-in with nothing if they think you’re just stealing pots from them.
You need to be able to switch your playing style all the time when you’re playing Texas Hold em and if you can’t do that then you won’t be able to win often generally. You won’t hit cards every session, but you can use simple strategies to earn pots by playing your opponents and not your cards.