The Secret To Beating Online Poker 2.0

Online poker is returning to the United States soon with the blessing of the government of the state of Nevada. I’m personally excited about this because online poker offers the opportunity to win more money faster than live poker does.

I know many live poker players who say that you can’t win at online poker. They say that it’s hard to win when you can’t look your opponents in the eye. They even sometimes claim that online poker is full of cheaters.

Don’t believe it. Online poker has always been, and will be in this new form, very beatable. You just have to know the secret.

So what’s the secret? It’s learning to turn all the shortcuts the regular players use against them.

Identifying Shortcuts

Virtually all regular poker players have pet thought processes or betting lines that they use to make decisions. “I don’t like to go broke with one pair,” a player might think, “So if I have one pair I will either check it to get to showdown cheaply or I’ll bet it planning to fold to a raise.”

This is not an entirely imprudent thought process. Often going broke with one pair is a bad idea, and two easy ways to avoid doing so are to check for pot control or to bet/fold. Nevertheless, the rule “don’t go broke with top pair” is a shortcut.

Going broke with top pair is bad only if your opponents will reliably have better hands when they try to get all-in with you. If a nitty player raises you all-in on the river and all you have is one pair, by all means fold and don’t think twice.
But if you happen to be up against an opponent who bluffs very frequently for all his chips, then you’d be a fool not to go broke with top pair.

Learning which shortcuts require exceptions and when to switch things up is the art of making adjustments. Regular online players at the smaller stakes are not great at making adjustments. They tend to stick to their rules and shortcuts, and they don’t pick up quickly when their rules might be failing them.

The secret to beating online poker – and it will be so in the new online poker 2.0 as well – is to identify the shortcuts your opponents take, reverse the assumptions, and act accordingly.

Reversing The Assumptions

Let’s return to the player who won’t go broke with top pair. How can you tell if someone relies on this shortcut?

First, you watch. Do you see this player playing lots of big pots? Or is nearly every pot this player plays either over by the turn or checked down to showdown?
Many tight players will rarely play big pots, and when you do see them in a big pot, you can reliably predict a big hand from them. If you see a player playing tight and avoiding big pots, there’s an excellent chance he’s using some form of the rule, “Don’t go broke with top pair,” as he makes decisions.

The assumption behind the rule, “Don’t go broke with top pair,” is that most opponents who try to play a big pot will have top pair beaten.

This assumption will hold true against many players, but it should be wrong against you! You must turn this assumption on its head. If your opponent bets, and you think there’s a good chance he’s betting top pair, raise your worse hands and just call with your better ones.

It’s very unlikely the player will soul read your bluffs. Instead, he’ll make the same assumption he plays every hand with, that top pair is no good when you want to play for stacks, and he’ll fold.

Whenever you can reliably identify the assumptions your opponents are using as they play, you have an enormous advantage. You can play your hands so that your opponent is nearly always wrong about what you have.

When you play online, you can’t look into your opponents’ eyes and see if they are feeling comfortable or nervous. But you can outthink them. You can know that your opponent will be looking to bet top pair, but fold it before playing for stacks. And you can also know that your opponent will tend to have top pair more often on some boards and in some scenarios than in others. Combine the two ideas, and you can make your opponents fold when they’re likely to have top pair. That’s an edge, and finding edges like these are how you win at online poker.

Get Into Your Opponents’ Heads

Once you have the fundamentals down, no-limit hold’em is about getting inside your opponents’ heads. Regular players approach the game with a general strategy, a set of bread-and-butter plays that they go back to repeatedly, and a relatively fixed thought process.

Play each hand using these three steps:

Figure out the range of hands your opponent will most likely have.

Based on the most likely hands within the range and your opponent’s action, and using your understanding of your opponent’s overall strategy, try to figure out what your opponent is trying to accomplish in this hand.

Identify ways to thwart your opponent’s plan.

Here is a quick example. You have a tight player who plays few hands preflop and rarely gets all-in postflop. He raises, you call. The flop comes. He bets, you call. The turn comes. He checks.

First, figure out your opponent’s range. He’ll start with strong starting hands, and he may bet most of those hands on the flop, so he’s got big Broadway cards, pocket pairs, and maybe some suited aces and suited connectors.

Second, based on his action and what you know of his strategy, deduce what your opponent is trying to accomplish. He plays tight and doesn’t like to get all-in without very strong hands. He tries to get value for his good hands, and he tries to avoid putting his money in bad. He’s checked the turn. This action is inconsistent with trying to get money in and consistent with trying to avoid getting all-in. Therefore, far more likely than not, this player is simply trying to avoid playing a big pot.

Third, you thwart the plan. Force your opponent to play a big pot. Bet the turn and, if called, follow through on the river.

Your opponent assumes you called the flop with a decent hand, and he also assumes that when you bet the turn and river you must be very strong to do so. You can turn both of these assumptions on their heads by taking this line with many of your busted hands.

If you want to win at online poker 2.0, the recipe is simple. Identify the shortcuts your opponents take. Identify their assumptions and reverse them. And get into your opponents heads in each hand to figure out what they’re trying to accomplish. Then thwart it. Do these things well, and you will find online poker to be even more profitable than your local live game. ♠

Ed’s newest book, Playing The Player: Moving Beyond ABC Poker To Dominate Your Opponents, is on sale at notedpokerauthority.com. Find Ed on Facebook at facebook.com/edmillerauthor and on Twitter @EdMillerPoker.