Because I play NL Texas Hold’em poker in a very aggressive pro-active way, I am constantly betting and raising whenever I am in the pot. Betting and raising does something very important….it puts people to having to make decisions and sometimes they are very tough decisions. Whenever they make a wrong decision and fold the best hand then I gain and the way that I play, I am constantly giving them the opportunity to make mistakes.

When you bet with a semi-bluff hand like a flush draw for instance, you can win one of many ways.

1. You bet the flop and they fold……..you win
2. You bet the flop and get called and bet the turn and they fold……..you win
3. You bet the flop, get called, bet turn, get called, bet river and they fold………….you win
4. You bet the flop, they call and you make your hand on the turn…………you win
5. You bet the flop, get called, bet the turn and get called and make the hand on the river……..you win

Your opponent needs to have a hand to withstand this type of pressure or be so weak that they simply pay off with weak hands. Obviously against this type of opponent, you adjust and simply value bet them whenever you have a hand. The bottom line is that being aggressive in poker even without made hands gets you by far the better of it.

But the fact is that I don’t even need to have a made hand in order for me to raise. Let us say that I raise with an 8-7 of spades and both the blinds call. The flop comes Kd-6s-5s giving me a straight flush draw. The small blind bets about three quarters of the pot and the big blind folds. I am greater than even money to make a draw as big as this with two cards to come and I would ideally like to see both the turn and river card if need me.

Depending on the circumstances, I will move ALL-IN here. The big difference here is that firstly I will almost certainly have the best hand should I make it and I am raising here and NOT calling which is highly significant. In a £5-£10 game with £90 in the pot on the flop and my opponent firing £70 into the pot, there is £160 just waiting to be picked up here just by being aggressive against the RIGHT person and this is a sound online poker strategy.

When faced with this kind of heat, many poker players will fold their hand. This is even the case if they have a hand as strong as top pair with a hand like KJ on this flop. All of the conventional book players and the players who pride themselves in being able to fold a good hand are easy meat for me in situations like this and they are basically asking me to take their money off them and in these situations against weak tight players then I very often do.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson