Texas Holdem Online Poker

If you've followed me to this point, you'll be able to play Hold'em in your own home game. At first it might seem hard, but after less than an hour of playing Hold'em, you'll have the basics down.

How much should you play for? In $l-$2-limit Hold'em, the big winner for the night might win $100. (Notice that this figure is 50 times the largest bet allowed in the game; expressing expectations in terms of x number of big bets per session or per hour is pretty common in poker.) But $20 to $40 wins (just 10 to 20 big bets) will be far more common. Wins equivalent to more than 50 big bets do happen, but they are very rare, and you could play a long time without seeing one and a much longer time without experiencing one yourself! If you've understood what I've been saying about predicting wins and losses in terms of number of big bets won, you can probably figure out that in a $2-$4 game you can expect the big winner to win around $200, but that more commonly you will see a lot of $40 to $80 wins and losses at this limit (again, 10 to 20 big bets).

So what limit should your poker game be? You'll have to answer this for yourself. You can play with a limit of 25 cents and 50 cents if you're a poor college student and take $5-$ 10 swings on average. If you're an investment banker, perhaps you would enjoy playing with a limit of $300-$600, with average swings hitting $6,000 to $12,000 and the big winner sometimes winning $60,000! If your group normally takes swings of about $20, then I would suggest that you play at that level (75 cents and $1.50) for Hold'em. Remember that the stakes can be changed very easily just by changing the size of the blinds. Note that if your group really plays Hold'em poorly, then the swings will be about twice as high. Speaking of playing Hold'em poorly brings me to the next section.

• Pot-limit Hold (0)
• No-limit Texas Hold (0)
• Two Important Aspects Of Hold (0)