Betting Strategy For Online Poker

Winning real money playing online poker doesn't just happen by luck alone. Once you've mastered the fundamentals of poker, it's important to continue building upon your skills to bring your best strategies to the table. Stay ahead of your competition and read on to learn new online poker tips and strategies. Poker Strategy for Beginners on How to C-Bet and What C-Betting is Continuation Betting, commonly referred to as C-Bet or C-Betting, is when a player shows aggression pre-flop with a raise.

888 Poker - $88 FREE + 100% Up to $400

888Poker is the second largest poker site online with a great reputation among poker players around the world. Superb poker client, large MTT´s and great action on the poker cash-game tables. 888Poker is also partner with WSOP, thus a great place for qualifying yourself to Las Vegas.

BetOnline Poker - 100% Up To $1,000

BetOnline Poker is one of the most popular poker sites online and welcomes US Poker Players. Dating back to 2004, it has been a trusted choice for poker players for over 15+ years. All new customers are welcomed with a up to $1,000 welcome bonus!

PartyPoker - $30 FREE + 40% Cashback

PartyPoker is one of the largest and first online poker sites. PartyPoker is the home for great cash-game and tournaments.

Know the Game You're Playing Inside and Out

Needless to say, poker has many variants, each of which has its own unique characteristics and game play mechanisms. If you want to employ strategy to win, you need to develop and implement strategies for the dynamics of specific games. The strategies that will work best in hold'em poker won't translate to the more traditionally popular game of seven-card stud. To become successful as a poker player, you need to have good strategies for every game you play on any kind of regular basis.

Though it's certainly a good idea to be a versatile poker player, you should start out by focusing on one or two common variations of the game. For most players, Texas hold'em will be the preferred game, so it's a good place to start. This variant of poker is also relatively simple, a fact which makes it an ideal place for new poker players to focus their strategy learning efforts. As your playing develops, though, you may well find that you'd like to start getting into other variations on the game for variety or because you find them more exciting to play.

Learn to Take Position into Consideration

Betting Strategy For Online Poker Games

Your position in a hand of poker is extremely important in determining how you should play the hand and how likely you are to win. As a rule, the dealer button is the strongest position on the table at any given time, and the small blind is the weakest. The relative advantage of positions is a result of the order in which the players in those positions take action, with positions becoming progressively stronger the later in the round of betting they are made to act. If you want to implement poker strategy into your playing successfully, you need to know the strategies that will work best for each position. Although you'll win more hands in the dealer position than any other, you can definitely use good strategy to improve your odds of winning, regardless of where you find yourself in a given hand.

Don't Be Afraid to Play a Conservative Game

Mitigating risk is an important component of successful poker playing. If you have a seemingly weak hand prior to the flop, you shouldn't feel bad about folding so as to avoid losing money senselessly on the hand. Playing conservatively may seem to cut you out of some potential winnings, but the truth is that players who are willing to play very tight games often end up winning much more than those who play every hand to its logical conclusion. Knowing when to fold is one of the most critical skills in poker, and it is one that can help keep your losses to a minimum when the cards simply aren't dealt in your favor.

Become an Expert in Probability

At its heart, poker is a game governed entirely by mathematical principles. Because you know the number of cards in a standard poker deck, the number of suits and the number of cards of each suit, you have all the information necessary to calculate the probability of various combinations of cards being drawn. Taking into account the cards in your own hand and the cards that have been overturned on the table, you can use quick mathematical calculations as a major component of your poker strategy to decide whether or not someone else is likely to have a better hand than your own.

Mathematics doesn't come easily to everyone. However, it is a skill that can be practiced and refined like any other. With time, you'll find that you're able to quickly and easily work out the probability of any card or combination of cards appearing in another player's hand. This skill is invaluable, since it allows you to play poker mathematically and determine when you are most likely to win compared to other players. Once you develop this skill, you'll find it much easier to consistently win money on the poker table.

Pay Attention to What the Other Players Are Doing

In the age of online poker, the old trick of watching other players' body language and general reactions to the state of the game is irrelevant for all but a handful of casino and tournament players who still participate in live games. However, paying attention to what other players are doing on the table is just as relevant in online poker as it is in a real-world game. Watching the bets, calls and checks of other players can help you determine how strong their hands are at any given point.

Be aware, though, that bluffing is also not limited to the real world. Online poker players can and do still raise when they have weak hands in order to convince their competitors that they are playing with very strong hands. The best way to counter this situation is to use mathematics to determine the probability that the player who is raising has a much stronger hand than your own. Though you will still have to ultimately decide whether to remain in the hand, assessing the likelihood of a player who is raising having a better hand than yours is a good way to navigate a situation in which that player might be bluffing.

Always Think Strategically and Avoid Fallacious Reasoning

In games of chance, even the most rational and reasonable individuals can become prone to irrational thinking. More than anything else, employing poker strategy successfully is about keeping your mind on what you're doing and making every decision in a rational and logical way. If you don't consider every move you make, you can end up missing out on winnings you could have otherwise had or losing money you didn't need to.

The most common form irrational thinking to avoid in the game of poker is the so-called gambler's fallacy, or the line of thinking that past hands during the same session of play have a bearing on the outcome of the current hand. Though it can often feel like luck is for or against you on a given night, the truth is that each hand of poker is its own independent set of circumstances. If you can avoid falling into such irrational ways of thinking and keep your head about you, you'll have a much easier time becoming a strategically driven poker player.

Use Available Poker Data to Your Advantage

One of the beauties of the poker world today is the fact that there are practically endless amounts of data from millions of games readily available to players online. This kind of hand data can help you to consider how various poker strategies would work in sample hands without actually needing to risk money by implementing them in a game. Poker data from major games can also help you understand how experts play the game, which in turn will help you develop as a player. Combing through data may seem a long way from the excitement of the poker table, but it will help you win more when you actually sit down to play a game.

Understand That You Will Fail Sometimes

No matter how good a player may be, everyone loses sometimes in the game of poker. If you're just starting out and haven't really begun learning advanced poker strategy yet, you will likely fail many times as you learn the game and begin to implement strategy into your playing. Even though losing in poker can be costly and frustrating, don't let it get to you. As with anything else, failing is an essential step to learning in poker. Through your initial failures and losses, you will learn what works and what doesn't and become a better player in the process.

Learning poker strategy is a process that will take work, effort and time. In fact, the best poker players never stop learning and improving their personal skills. The good news is that any player, regardless of experience, can begin learning the basics of poker strategy in order to improve his or her playing. If you are a complete beginner, developing an understanding of poker strategy now can cut your learning curve and help you hit the ground running. If you're an intermediate player who is looking to become more successful, strategy can be the key to increasing your winnings.

One of my favorite of the casino-game/poker-hybrids is Let It Ride. Strategy for the game is simple, and a look at Let It Ride odds is easy, fun, and interesting.

Let It Ride is popular because of the potentially big payoffs. Shuffle Master invented Let It Ride in 1993 as a strategy for selling more automatic card shuffling machines.

You don't have to beat the dealer or the other gamblers at the table, either. You just want to get a winning hand – which, in the case of Let It Ride, is any poker hand consisting of a pair of 10s or better.

You get 3 cards, and the table also includes 2 community cards. The house edge for the game is around 3.5%.

In this post, I'll go into more detail about the house edge for Let It Ride, explain how to play, and offer some strategy tips.

How to Play Let It Ride Poker

You play Let It Ride at a casino table where you sit across from the dealer or you can play at real money online casinos. You share the table with as many as 6 other players. The dealer uses a single, standard 52-card deck which is shuffled by one of Shuffle Master's automatic shuffling machines.

In front of you, on the felt of the table, are 3 betting areas:

• $
• 2
• 1

Don't be scared off by the 3 betting circles. Let It Ride isn't complicated at all.

You start by putting a bet in each of the 3 circles.

You're usually going to face a minimum bet of $5 at a Let It Ride table, and all 3 of your bets must be the same size. After placing your bet, you get 3 cards, face-down. The dealer also puts 2 cards face-down in the middle of the table.

You'll use the 3 cards in your hand along with the 2 community cards to make your final hand. You get paid off by the poker hand value of your final hand.

The first step is to look at your cards. At this point, you can decide whether to keep the bet you put in the circle labeled '1' or not. If you don't like your 3 cards, you indicate this to the dealer by scraping the table gently with your cards so that the dealer will return your bet to you.

On the other hand, if you like your cards, you set them down behind the chips in that circle. Once you and the other players have decided whether to get their bet back or 'let it ride,' the dealer turns over one of the community cards. At this point, you get to make the same decision about the bet in circle 2.

Your decision on that bet is a completely separate decision, by the way. It doesn't matter what you did with bet 1; you can do whatever you want with bet 2.

You are, of course, stuck with the bet in the $ circle. The dealer reveals the final card and pays off based on the poker hand ranking of your hand based on the pay table for the game. That's posted on the felt at the table, too.

The Standard Let It Ride Pay Table

Here's what the pay table for Let It Ride usually looks like:

• Royal flush – 1000 to 1
• Straight flush – 200 to 1
• 4 of a kind – 50 to 1
• Full house – 11 to 1
• Flush – 8 to 1
• Straight – 5 to 1
• 3 of a kind – 3 to 1
• 2 pairs – 2 to 1
• A pair of 10s or better – even money

It's unusual to find a different pay table for Let It Ride because it's a proprietary game with rules specified by the owner of the game's intellectual property.

You will find online, though, barely-disguised variations of the game, like 'Let ‘em Ride.'

Even those knockoff games usually have the same payouts. They're taking advantage of the fact that you can't copyright the rules of a game, just the way they're worded. You also can't use their name. I'd argue that 'Let ‘Em Ride' is similar enough to 'Let It Ride' that they'd have a strong trademark infringement case.

But guess what, the casinos offering the knockoff games are usually located offshore, and they're often run anonymously. Good luck suing a company running an offshore casino on the internet.

The Let It Ride Side Bet Bonus Game

Most casinos offering Let It Ride offer it in a version that comes along with an optional side bet of $1. Such games offer huge payouts on the best paying hands, but the house edge for the side bet is high compared to the house edge for the standard game.

Here's a typical bonus pay table, although the bonus pay table often varies from casino to casino:

• Royal flush – 20,000 to 1
• Straight flush – 2000 to 1
• 4 of a kind – 400 to 1
• Full house – 200 to 1
• Flush – 50 to 1
• Straight – 25 to 1
• 3 of a kind – 5 to 1

You don't get any kind of bonus payout for 2 pair or a pair.

The house edge for the main game is 3.5%, but for the bonus game, it's over 25%. Don't take the side bet.

Even though it seems cheap for just $1 per bet, the house edge ensures that the casino will walk away with a lot of your money if you keep placing this bet.

Appropriate Let It Ride Strategy and How It Affects the Odds

I mentioned already that the house edge for Let It Ride is 3.5%. This assumes that you're playing with an appropriate strategy.

Luckily, the strategy isn't that hard to implement.

For Bet #1, Here's What You Should Do:

Let it ride if any of the following apply:

• You have a winning hand already
• You have 3 cards to a straight flush (unless those cards are 4 or less)
• You have 3 cards to a straight flush with a gap (but only if you have a card of 10 or higher)
• You have 3 cards to a straight flush with 2 gaps (but only if you have 2 cards of 10 or higher)

BetOnline Poker - 100% Up To $1,000

BetOnline Poker is one of the most popular poker sites online and welcomes US Poker Players. Dating back to 2004, it has been a trusted choice for poker players for over 15+ years. All new customers are welcomed with a up to $1,000 welcome bonus!

PartyPoker - $30 FREE + 40% Cashback

PartyPoker is one of the largest and first online poker sites. PartyPoker is the home for great cash-game and tournaments.

Know the Game You're Playing Inside and Out

Needless to say, poker has many variants, each of which has its own unique characteristics and game play mechanisms. If you want to employ strategy to win, you need to develop and implement strategies for the dynamics of specific games. The strategies that will work best in hold'em poker won't translate to the more traditionally popular game of seven-card stud. To become successful as a poker player, you need to have good strategies for every game you play on any kind of regular basis.

Though it's certainly a good idea to be a versatile poker player, you should start out by focusing on one or two common variations of the game. For most players, Texas hold'em will be the preferred game, so it's a good place to start. This variant of poker is also relatively simple, a fact which makes it an ideal place for new poker players to focus their strategy learning efforts. As your playing develops, though, you may well find that you'd like to start getting into other variations on the game for variety or because you find them more exciting to play.

Learn to Take Position into Consideration

Betting Strategy For Online Poker Games

Your position in a hand of poker is extremely important in determining how you should play the hand and how likely you are to win. As a rule, the dealer button is the strongest position on the table at any given time, and the small blind is the weakest. The relative advantage of positions is a result of the order in which the players in those positions take action, with positions becoming progressively stronger the later in the round of betting they are made to act. If you want to implement poker strategy into your playing successfully, you need to know the strategies that will work best for each position. Although you'll win more hands in the dealer position than any other, you can definitely use good strategy to improve your odds of winning, regardless of where you find yourself in a given hand.

Don't Be Afraid to Play a Conservative Game

Mitigating risk is an important component of successful poker playing. If you have a seemingly weak hand prior to the flop, you shouldn't feel bad about folding so as to avoid losing money senselessly on the hand. Playing conservatively may seem to cut you out of some potential winnings, but the truth is that players who are willing to play very tight games often end up winning much more than those who play every hand to its logical conclusion. Knowing when to fold is one of the most critical skills in poker, and it is one that can help keep your losses to a minimum when the cards simply aren't dealt in your favor.

Become an Expert in Probability

At its heart, poker is a game governed entirely by mathematical principles. Because you know the number of cards in a standard poker deck, the number of suits and the number of cards of each suit, you have all the information necessary to calculate the probability of various combinations of cards being drawn. Taking into account the cards in your own hand and the cards that have been overturned on the table, you can use quick mathematical calculations as a major component of your poker strategy to decide whether or not someone else is likely to have a better hand than your own.

Mathematics doesn't come easily to everyone. However, it is a skill that can be practiced and refined like any other. With time, you'll find that you're able to quickly and easily work out the probability of any card or combination of cards appearing in another player's hand. This skill is invaluable, since it allows you to play poker mathematically and determine when you are most likely to win compared to other players. Once you develop this skill, you'll find it much easier to consistently win money on the poker table.

Pay Attention to What the Other Players Are Doing

In the age of online poker, the old trick of watching other players' body language and general reactions to the state of the game is irrelevant for all but a handful of casino and tournament players who still participate in live games. However, paying attention to what other players are doing on the table is just as relevant in online poker as it is in a real-world game. Watching the bets, calls and checks of other players can help you determine how strong their hands are at any given point.

Be aware, though, that bluffing is also not limited to the real world. Online poker players can and do still raise when they have weak hands in order to convince their competitors that they are playing with very strong hands. The best way to counter this situation is to use mathematics to determine the probability that the player who is raising has a much stronger hand than your own. Though you will still have to ultimately decide whether to remain in the hand, assessing the likelihood of a player who is raising having a better hand than yours is a good way to navigate a situation in which that player might be bluffing.

Always Think Strategically and Avoid Fallacious Reasoning

In games of chance, even the most rational and reasonable individuals can become prone to irrational thinking. More than anything else, employing poker strategy successfully is about keeping your mind on what you're doing and making every decision in a rational and logical way. If you don't consider every move you make, you can end up missing out on winnings you could have otherwise had or losing money you didn't need to.

The most common form irrational thinking to avoid in the game of poker is the so-called gambler's fallacy, or the line of thinking that past hands during the same session of play have a bearing on the outcome of the current hand. Though it can often feel like luck is for or against you on a given night, the truth is that each hand of poker is its own independent set of circumstances. If you can avoid falling into such irrational ways of thinking and keep your head about you, you'll have a much easier time becoming a strategically driven poker player.

Use Available Poker Data to Your Advantage

One of the beauties of the poker world today is the fact that there are practically endless amounts of data from millions of games readily available to players online. This kind of hand data can help you to consider how various poker strategies would work in sample hands without actually needing to risk money by implementing them in a game. Poker data from major games can also help you understand how experts play the game, which in turn will help you develop as a player. Combing through data may seem a long way from the excitement of the poker table, but it will help you win more when you actually sit down to play a game.

Understand That You Will Fail Sometimes

No matter how good a player may be, everyone loses sometimes in the game of poker. If you're just starting out and haven't really begun learning advanced poker strategy yet, you will likely fail many times as you learn the game and begin to implement strategy into your playing. Even though losing in poker can be costly and frustrating, don't let it get to you. As with anything else, failing is an essential step to learning in poker. Through your initial failures and losses, you will learn what works and what doesn't and become a better player in the process.

Learning poker strategy is a process that will take work, effort and time. In fact, the best poker players never stop learning and improving their personal skills. The good news is that any player, regardless of experience, can begin learning the basics of poker strategy in order to improve his or her playing. If you are a complete beginner, developing an understanding of poker strategy now can cut your learning curve and help you hit the ground running. If you're an intermediate player who is looking to become more successful, strategy can be the key to increasing your winnings.

One of my favorite of the casino-game/poker-hybrids is Let It Ride. Strategy for the game is simple, and a look at Let It Ride odds is easy, fun, and interesting.

Let It Ride is popular because of the potentially big payoffs. Shuffle Master invented Let It Ride in 1993 as a strategy for selling more automatic card shuffling machines.

You don't have to beat the dealer or the other gamblers at the table, either. You just want to get a winning hand – which, in the case of Let It Ride, is any poker hand consisting of a pair of 10s or better.

You get 3 cards, and the table also includes 2 community cards. The house edge for the game is around 3.5%.

In this post, I'll go into more detail about the house edge for Let It Ride, explain how to play, and offer some strategy tips.

How to Play Let It Ride Poker

You play Let It Ride at a casino table where you sit across from the dealer or you can play at real money online casinos. You share the table with as many as 6 other players. The dealer uses a single, standard 52-card deck which is shuffled by one of Shuffle Master's automatic shuffling machines.

In front of you, on the felt of the table, are 3 betting areas:

• $
• 2
• 1

Don't be scared off by the 3 betting circles. Let It Ride isn't complicated at all.

You start by putting a bet in each of the 3 circles.

You're usually going to face a minimum bet of $5 at a Let It Ride table, and all 3 of your bets must be the same size. After placing your bet, you get 3 cards, face-down. The dealer also puts 2 cards face-down in the middle of the table.

You'll use the 3 cards in your hand along with the 2 community cards to make your final hand. You get paid off by the poker hand value of your final hand.

The first step is to look at your cards. At this point, you can decide whether to keep the bet you put in the circle labeled '1' or not. If you don't like your 3 cards, you indicate this to the dealer by scraping the table gently with your cards so that the dealer will return your bet to you.

On the other hand, if you like your cards, you set them down behind the chips in that circle. Once you and the other players have decided whether to get their bet back or 'let it ride,' the dealer turns over one of the community cards. At this point, you get to make the same decision about the bet in circle 2.

Your decision on that bet is a completely separate decision, by the way. It doesn't matter what you did with bet 1; you can do whatever you want with bet 2.

You are, of course, stuck with the bet in the $ circle. The dealer reveals the final card and pays off based on the poker hand ranking of your hand based on the pay table for the game. That's posted on the felt at the table, too.

The Standard Let It Ride Pay Table

Here's what the pay table for Let It Ride usually looks like:

• Royal flush – 1000 to 1
• Straight flush – 200 to 1
• 4 of a kind – 50 to 1
• Full house – 11 to 1
• Flush – 8 to 1
• Straight – 5 to 1
• 3 of a kind – 3 to 1
• 2 pairs – 2 to 1
• A pair of 10s or better – even money

It's unusual to find a different pay table for Let It Ride because it's a proprietary game with rules specified by the owner of the game's intellectual property.

You will find online, though, barely-disguised variations of the game, like 'Let ‘em Ride.'

Even those knockoff games usually have the same payouts. They're taking advantage of the fact that you can't copyright the rules of a game, just the way they're worded. You also can't use their name. I'd argue that 'Let ‘Em Ride' is similar enough to 'Let It Ride' that they'd have a strong trademark infringement case.

But guess what, the casinos offering the knockoff games are usually located offshore, and they're often run anonymously. Good luck suing a company running an offshore casino on the internet.

The Let It Ride Side Bet Bonus Game

Most casinos offering Let It Ride offer it in a version that comes along with an optional side bet of $1. Such games offer huge payouts on the best paying hands, but the house edge for the side bet is high compared to the house edge for the standard game.

Here's a typical bonus pay table, although the bonus pay table often varies from casino to casino:

• Royal flush – 20,000 to 1
• Straight flush – 2000 to 1
• 4 of a kind – 400 to 1
• Full house – 200 to 1
• Flush – 50 to 1
• Straight – 25 to 1
• 3 of a kind – 5 to 1

You don't get any kind of bonus payout for 2 pair or a pair.

The house edge for the main game is 3.5%, but for the bonus game, it's over 25%. Don't take the side bet.

Even though it seems cheap for just $1 per bet, the house edge ensures that the casino will walk away with a lot of your money if you keep placing this bet.

Appropriate Let It Ride Strategy and How It Affects the Odds

I mentioned already that the house edge for Let It Ride is 3.5%. This assumes that you're playing with an appropriate strategy.

Luckily, the strategy isn't that hard to implement.

For Bet #1, Here's What You Should Do:

Let it ride if any of the following apply:

• You have a winning hand already
• You have 3 cards to a straight flush (unless those cards are 4 or less)
• You have 3 cards to a straight flush with a gap (but only if you have a card of 10 or higher)
• You have 3 cards to a straight flush with 2 gaps (but only if you have 2 cards of 10 or higher)

For Bet #2, Here's What You Should Do:

Let it ride if:

• You have a winning hand already.
• You have 4 cards to a straight flush.
• You have 4 cards to a flush.
• You have 4 cards in an outside straight draw (but only if you have a 10 or higher)

If you have 4 cards to an outside straight, you can let it ride or pull your bet back. The house has a 0 edge in this situation, so it doesn't matter which decisions you make.

The same holds true if you have an inside straight draw made up for 4 cards higher than 10.

How Much Does It Cost per Hour to Play Let It Ride?

Let's assume you make 45 bets per hour at a game of Let It Ride. If you're betting $5 per hand (or $15 per hand, depending on your point of view), you're looking at losing about $7.88 per hour. That's not a terrible price for an hour of entertainment at the casino.

To calculate that, you just multiply the amount of action you're bringing the casino by the house edge.

As it turns out, very bad indeed. If you place that bet 45 times per hour, you'll put another $45 per hour into action, but you're expected to lose 25% of it.

This means you're looking at losing over $11 per hour on the side bet alone, doubling the cost of your time at the table. Keep in mind that you're not guaranteed this loss rate, either. That's a long-term expectation based on the math behind the game.

In the short run, you'll see variance. Sometimes you'll see big winning streaks, and other times, you'll see big losing streaks. The longer you play, though, the closer your results should get to the mathematically expected results.

Why Is the House Edge for the Side Bet in Let It Ride So High?

The main reason that the house edge for the side bet in Let It Ride is so high is because of the non-existent payouts for the 2 pairs and pairs of 10s or better.

You'll see 2 pairs about 5% of the time, and you'll see 1 pair of 10s or higher slightly more than 15% of the time. If you even offered an even money payout on those 2 hands, the house edge for the side bet would drop from 25% to just 5%.

All the hands where you get a payout are rare. You'll only see a 3 of a kind on average once an hour, and that only pays out at $5. You won't see a straight more often than once every 5 hours or so.

Poker Betting Rules

That's why the house edge is so high on the side bet in Let It Ride.

Conclusion

Let It Ride odds are easy enough to understand. You have a percentage chance of getting each hand, and the hand pays out at a specific amount. Multiply one by the other and you get the expected return for the hand. Add them up, and you get the expected return for the game. Subtract that from 100%, and you have the house edge for Let It Ride.

Let It Ride strategy isn't hard to learn, either. Mostly it has to do with focusing on getting winning hands before seeing the community cards or having strong draws to straights or flushes.

Betting Strategies Poker

Also, avoid the bonus game or side bet. The house edge is terrible.

Betting Strategy For Online Poker Tournaments