Strategy
13 posts.
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Why Good Players Love the Button: In Position vs Out of Position (IP/OOP)
IP means in position and OOP means out of position — it is about who speaks first between you and your opponent. This post covers why acting later means seeing one more piece of information, how to tell in a second whether you are IP or OOP, the three most common match-ups, and why the button is the most profitable seat at the table.
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Why Beginners Lose at Poker: No Sense of Position and Range
The most common beginner leak is not misplaying one particular hand, it is wanting to see every hand from every seat. Using one hand of A6o, this post shows why a bad seat calls for a stronger hand, then brings in ranges: the opening ranges of the five positions differ by a factor of four, and a range chart is the best place for a beginner to start.
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What a 4-Bet Is in Texas Hold'em: Do You Need AA or KK to 4-Bet?
A 4-bet is a relatively rare action, and most players only ever make one holding AA, KK, QQ or AK. Those are strong hands — but once an opponent has read the pattern, that range saves him a great deal of money.
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What Fold to 3-Bet Is in Texas Hold'em: The 65% Ceiling Measures Your Opening Range, Not Your Nerve
Fold to 3-bet is how often you fold after opening and facing a re-raise, with a target of 65% or below and anything past 70% flagged as a serious leak. The reason it runs high is rarely timidity — play RushCraft's default practice ranges and it lands around 85%, and the problem happened back at the open. This post covers how the denominator works, where the 69% arithmetic behind the line comes from, how wide the continuing range has to be, what call 3-bet tells you, and why it is the slowest-converging number in the series.
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The Complete Guide to Preflop Play in Texas Hold'em: Position, Ranges, Six Spots and Seven Numbers
Preflop is the one street every hand passes through, and the only one where the spots repeat often enough to be systematised. This post is the map for every preflop post on the site: the three questions to answer before you press a button, position and ranges, which button each of the six spots calls for, the three sizings you need and the seven numbers to check yourself against, with every stop linking to its own post.
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What a Cold Call Is in Texas Hold'em: The One Number With a Ceiling and No Floor, 5% or Below
A cold call is when you call a raise having put no money in yourself this round, and the target is 5% or below. It is the only statistic on the site with no lower bound — calling has never been an action worth a frequency. This post covers what it costs you (a capped range, the players it invites in behind you, a price 50% worse than the big blind's), the five conditions that decide whether this particular hand is a call, and why 50 opportunities are only enough to catch the outrageous.
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How to Play Pocket Aces After the Flop: Low Boards, Wet Boards, and When to Keep the Pot Small
Preflop, aces are the best hand there is. Once the flop lands, that stops being automatic. Three textures: how to give an opponent a reason to pay you on a dry low board, how to charge draws on wet and monotone boards, and which flops call for deliberately keeping the pot small enough to afford.
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How to Play Pocket Aces: Why You Should Not Just Shove
The first instinct with pocket aces is to move all in, and that is exactly how the most profitable hand in poker turns into one of the least profitable. Three preflop questions: why shoving costs you money, how to play aces at a table where nobody 3-bets and everybody calls, and whether to 3-bet or trap when someone opens in front of you.
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What a 3-Bet Is in Texas Hold'em: The 8-12% Target Band Averages Six Different Spots
3-bet is how often you re-raise when facing exactly one raise, with a target band of 8-12%. But that single number averages away six completely different spots — against an UTG open the value hands worth re-raising are only the top 1.7%; against a button open they are 5.3%. This post covers how the denominator works, what too low and too high each cost you, why 70% is the line on your opponent's fold-to-3-bet, and how large a sample it takes before the number counts.
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What ATS Is in Texas Hold'em: Reading Your Steal Frequency, Three Positions and Three Targets
ATS is how often you raise first in from the CO, the button or the small blind when nobody has entered the pot. At six-max the blinds take about 25bb out of you every 100 hands, and stealing is the main channel for winning it back. This post covers how the denominator works, the target band for each of the three seats, what too low and too high each mean, how to respond to an opponent's ATS, and how large a sample it takes before the number counts.
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What VPIP Is in Texas Hold'em: It Only Becomes a Player Read Next to PFR
VPIP is how often you voluntarily put money in before the flop, and it measures how wide your range is; PFR measures how aggressive it is. What is actually useful is the gap between them. With reference values for every seat at a six-max table, three opponent profiles and what to do about each, and how many hands it takes before the number means anything at all.
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How to Work Out Pot Odds in Texas Hold'em: Skip the Equity, Just Ask How Often You Have to Win
You are on a flush draw and your opponent bets half the pot — call or fold? Pot ÷ bet + 2 gives you how often you need to win, and comparing that with how often your draw hits settles it. Includes a threshold table for the common bet sizes and hit frequencies for six common draws.
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Texas Hold'em Position Guide: Seat Order, IP/OOP, and How to Choose Your Hands
A complete introduction to position in Texas Hold'em. Three posts explain how the seats are ordered, what separates being in position from being out of position, and how position decides which hands you should play; then six short posts introduce each seat in turn: UTG, MP, CO, BTN, SB and BB.