Bitcoin Poker Strategy
The game of poker – particularly Texas Hold’em – requires a great deal of skill for a player to become a consistent winner. While there is no denying that luck plays a critical role, a player who adopts that right strategy can find themselves beating their opponents more often than not. Choosing the right strategy is paramount to being a successful poker player and winning large sums of bitcoin. In fact, poker strategy is so important that hundreds of books have been written on the subject.
“Ace-king is a fine hand. Ace-queen is a little weaker, but still good. With ace-jack, you’re already sliding rapidly down a slippery slope. With ace-ten, you’ve slid down the slope, fallen off the cliff, and lie in wreckage at the bottom with hands like ace-five and ace-six.”
– Dan Harrington, Harrington on Hold ’em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit
Tight Aggressive
A tight aggressive play style is one that is suitable to the vast majority of adept players. A tight aggressive player or “Rock” would play an extremely limited set of hands pre-flop and will be ultra conscious of their positioning.
In a 9 seated table, a tight aggressive player’s hand range would look something like this:
Under The Gun
AQ+, TT+
On the Button
AT+, TJs+, 55+
A tight aggressive player would rarely 3-bet pre-flop and would opt to fold rather than call out of position.
Loose Aggressive
A loose aggressive play style is one that – on its own – can be extremely costly. However, many Bitcoin players choose to mix a loose aggressive strategy with a tight aggressive one so as to avoid falling into a predictable “Rock” pattern.
With loose aggression, picking the right timing and understanding the table is absolutely paramount. This can be aided through the use of poker tracking software.
In a 9 seated table, a loose aggressive player’s hand range would look something like this:
Under The Gun
TJ+, 78s+, 88+
Button
23s+, A2+, 22+
Note that with loose aggressive play, hand selection is often not bound by a strict range. The same hand under the gun may be raised in one instance and folded in another depending on the table composition.
Tournament vs Cash Game Strategy
In cash games or “ring games”, the blinds remain the same and players can add chips to their stack at their own discretion. This means that cash game strategy in Bitcoin and traditional poker stays relatively consistent.
In tournament games (multi-table and sit-n-go), a player’s strategy will evolve as the game progresses. For this reason, tournament poker is a lot more complex and players must adjust to other play styles, chip stacks and tournament phase. For example, near “the bubble” of a tournament (the finishing place before players are “in the money”), players will often tighten up. This is often a great opportunity for a loose aggressive player to pick up blinds or bet harder during the flop, turn and river.
The key thing to any Bitcoin poker strategy is to remain aggressive and enter each hand with a vague plan of how you will respond to possible bets and checks. Questions to ask yourself include:
- Does my flop bet get enough value from drawing hands?
- Is there any value in betting the river instead of checking?
- Is my bet only being called by better hands?
- If I 3-bet pre-flop should I be prepared to go all in?
- Is this bet inflating the pot and making the flop, turn or river potentially more costly?
Bad Beat Bitcoin Jackpots
Our review of bitcoin pokers would be far from complete if we fail to include bad beat bitcoin jackpots. These are not available on every poker room but a handful of providers like SWC Poker offer them.
The jackpot is available on select Hold’em tables and to get an opportunity to win, you need to meet certain conditions. For instance, you need to have lost with Aces full of Kings (or a better loss).
The initial jackpot had a seed of 100,000 chips. At the moment, it has 402,631 chips and counting.
Over 18 only. Terms & Conditions apply.