Online Poker Strategy by AVP Resident Pro Benton Blakeman

By AVP Pro Benton Blakeman

Today, all of the social media sites have been filled with the news about the first entirely legal online poker hand being played for real money this morning. Given that exciting development, it just seemed appropriate that today's strategy article should be about online poker. Are you ready?

Today I'd like to talk about several key points that I think are paramount in making the transition from live poker to online poker. While on the surface the games seem the same, many of the winning strategies in live poker simply do not transition over well to the virtual felt.

1) No Chopping — Many live players have become accustomed to chopping the blinds when no one voluntarily enters the pot. This seems like a simple concept; the small blind and big blind take their money back and simply move on to the next hand. On the virtual felt, this will no longer be an option. Players must learn to play well in blind-vs.-blind situations and find profit when this happens.

From the small blind, I would advocate a raise-or-fold strategy. If it's good enough to limp in, then it's good enough to raise. A raise of 3-3.5X the big blind is normal and should be enough to get the big blind to fold all of their marginal and trash hands, giving us the one-big-blind profit. Another added benefit to this is that online sites often have a "no flop, no drop" rake structure, so ending the hand preflop avoids the rake.

From the big blind, I would advocate three-betting often when the small blind raises, rather than calling. If your hand is good enough to call, it's likely good enough to three-bet with. The small blind likely will be raising a wide range of their hands and will have to fold to a three-bet from the big blind for fear of playing a bloated pot out of position.

2) Understanding Stack-to-Pot Ratio — This theorem translates to both live and online poker, but I think it is more important when playing online. Stack-to-pot ratio is simply a ratio placed on the difference between your chip stack in relation to the pot. For example, with $100 in the pot and $100 left in your stack, you have a 1:1 SPR (stack-to-pot ratio).

Because of the nature of online poker, players tend to be much shorter-stacked than in live cash games. The normal maximum buy-in online is 100 big blinds worth of chips. The minimum can often be as small as 20 big blinds. In live cash games, the stacks are often much deeper, as much as 500 or more big blinds, and minimum buy-ins tend to be 40 big blinds.

With shallower stacks, players need to be aware that limping in or calling small raises and trying to flop hands and get paid is not a viable strategy online. The stacks simply aren't deep enough to make this profitable. Players should be aggressively driving the action by being the initial raiser, three-betting preflop, and continuation-betting more often. Players who employ a strategy similar to this will realize a consistent profit by winning a lot of small pots relative to the players who constantly call bets and raises in an effort to make a big hand in hopes of winning a big pot. The bottom line is that aggression pays dividends in shallower-stacked online games.

3) Bet sizing — One of the great things about online poker is that each player’s chip count is prominently displayed in front of their avatar. This gives good players every chance possible to make perfectly sized bets and maximize profit. Not only is each player’s chip stack prominently displayed, but so is the size of the pot in the middle of the table.

Being able to quickly do math can help generate maximum profits. Looking at a hand example may help to illustrate this point. Let’s use a $1-$2 no-limit hold’em game as an example. Player A raises preflop to $7 with A-K and gets called by the button and the big blind. The pot is $22, and the flop comes A-9-4 with two clubs. All of the players started with $200 and have $193 remaining in their stacks. After the big blind checks, Player A leads for $18 and gets called in both spots. The pot is now $76. The turn is another 4. The big blind checks, and the action is on Player A. Knowing stack sizes makes it very easy to set up a river shove in this hand, in an attempt to stack a hand like A-Q. With $175 left in his stack, Player A can bet around $50. Assuming he gets one call from a player for whom he assigns a hand like A-Q or A-J, he leaves himself $125 left to shove into a pot of $176. This is a perfectly reasonable shove and should get called a good percentage of the time.

If this were a live cash game and Player A was unsure of stack sizes, it may play out totally differently. The betting could have gone like this: he bets $15 on the flop, $40 on the turn, and $90 on the river. While this may seem like a small difference, Player A actually misses out on more than $50 in value. Over the long run, this $50 adds up to a huge amount, and can vastly lower Player A's hourly rate.

The dollar amounts clearly displayed on the screen are a huge benefit to thinking players. Use them wisely, and add that extra profit to your bottom line!

These are a few helpful hints to get started playing online. They have worked wonders for me in the past over several million hands of online play. In the future, I hope to elaborate on other online strategies, as well as other factors to consider when playing online. As always, please feel free to leave your comments or your own suggestions about online play in this article’s thread in the AVP forums. Good luck to everyone, both at your local casinos and now on the virtual felt!

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