The Best Online Poker Strategy for Beginners, Intermediates, and Pros

The right online poker strategy can help you become a winning player. Even though there’s an element of luck in poker, the best players always win in the long run.

I can’t turn you into a winning player overnight, but I can give you an overview of what I’ve learned over the last 15+ years.

It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie or a grinder looking to move up in stakes. My poker strategy tips have got you covered, so let’s get into it.

The Best Online Poker Strategies Explained

There are some online poker strategy concepts that carry over from casino gaming, such as expected value and bankroll management. I’ll talk about those later.

Before that, let’s outline the differences between Texas Hold ’em et al. and the types of poker you play at the top US online casinos.

For the purposes of this online poker strategy guide, I’m going to use the terms “traditional” and “table games.”

Traditional poker variants include games such as Texas Hold ’em and Omaha. Table games are things like Caribbean Stud and Three Card Poker.

Now that’s clear, here’s how I define the two:

• Traditional poker is played against other people, not against a casino dealer. That means there’s no house edge. Instead, you need to use math, logic, and psychology to win pots by any means necessary.

• Poker table games are played against a casino dealer, much like blackjack. The house has an edge (i.e., an advantage), and your job is to play the cards you’re dealt according to strict rules.

Traditional Poker vs. Casino Table Games

Picking apart my two definitions, the fundamental difference between traditional poker and casino table games is the way you win. In all instances, you’re trying to make the best poker hand from the cards you’ve been dealt.

However, in traditional poker, you can win pots without having to show your cards (aka going to a showdown). You do this by betting in such a way that everyone else folds. When that happens, you win without showing your hand.

You can’t do this in casino poker games such as Caribbean Stud. Either you fold or you play until the end, at which point your cards are compared to the dealer's. In casino poker, there isn’t much you can do with weak hands. In traditional poker, there is.

That’s where basic poker strategy comes in. Knowing how to act and react can help you win pots with weak cards. It can also help you make the correct decisions when faced with a bet, and it can help you win the most money possible with the best hand.

Online Poker Strategy Tiers: Beginner to Advanced

That’s the setup. It took a bit longer than I’d like, but it’s necessary because, without understanding the different ways you can play, you won’t use the correct poker strategy online.

There are dozens of different poker strategies you can use. There are strategies that work better in cash games than tournaments and vice versa. There are poker strategies for beginners and moves that are more effective against skilled players.

It’s tough to cover everything, so I’ve picked three fundamental concepts that I believe all poker players should know. Each concept is important. However, if you’re beyond the basics, it might be best to skip straight to the intermediate and advanced poker strategy sections.

1. Online Poker Basic Strategy: Hand Selection and Position

Something I’ve seen newbies get wrong consistently over the years is playing too many hands. I once heard a British poker icon, Barny Boatman, say that a hand isn’t worth playing if it’s not good enough to raise.

Like all poker strategy concepts, there are exceptions to this rule. But, in general, if you aren’t prepared to raise, you shouldn’t call. Taking this a step further, I see too many beginners play hands out of position.

I’ll talk about ranges in the next section. The important principle to understand is that you should play more hands in position than out of position. In fact, you should only play very strong starting hands out of position.

Play Your Position in Poker

What do I mean by position? It’s your proximity to the button. The button is the ultimate position in games such as Hold ’em and Omaha because you get to act last after the flop. Going last gives you more information because everyone else has acted before you.

Therefore, the closer you are to the button, the better your position in the hand is. Conversely, acting first is a disadvantage because you don’t know what everyone else is going to do. Because of this, you should only play very strong hands out of position.

For example, if you’re playing Texas Hold ’em, I recommend playing pocket aces, pocket kings, pocket queens, and A-K out of position if you’re a beginner. Fold everything else.

When you’re in position, the general idea is that your range should start to include more hands (i.e., get wider) as you get closer to the button. This is a very basic poker strategy, but it’s the foundation on which complex ideas are built. So, if you can master these basics, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a winning player.

2. Intermediate Online Poker Strategy: Ranges and Balance

Intermediate poker strategy is all about refining the basics. So, instead of thinking that you need to play more hands in position than out of position, you should be thinking about which actual hands you’re playing.

This brings in the concept of ranges. A range of hands is all the possible hands you could play in a given scenario. For example, if you’re on the button in a six-handed Hold ’em cash game, your range could include the following hands:

• All pocket pairs

• A-2 to A-K

• K-10 to K-Q

• J-10 and Q-J

• 8-7 to 9-10 suited

That’s a fairly standard range, but don’t assume you can follow my recommendation blindly. Context matters. For example, your range on the button in a cash game might be different from your range in the late stages of a tournament.

Similarly, you might have raised three of the last four hands. In this situation, people are going to play back at you more often because they think you’re bluffing. Because of that, you may need to remove some of the weaker hands from the range.

Find the Balance

In addition to adjusting your range based on a game’s dynamics, you need to be balanced. Let’s say you used my recommended range 100% of the time, irrespective of context. Smart players will gradually work out the hands you’re raising with and react accordingly.

That’s why you need to mix things up. You need to put in some weaker hands from time to time. You need to fold certain hands sometimes and raise them at other times. Doing this makes it harder for people to get a read because you don’t do the same thing all the time. In other words, you’ve got a balanced range.

Get these things right, and you’ll be a tough player to play against. Moreover, you’ll become better at judging other people’s ranges. When you’re good at that, you can pick off people’s bluffs, fold when you’re behind, and extract maximum value with your best hands.

3. Advanced Poker Strategy: Game Theory vs. Exploitative Play

The final online poker strategy concept worth discussing takes us into the realms of mathematics. Specifically, game theory. I could write multiple articles on game theory and the different ways it can be used in poker.

For the purposes of this poker strategy guide, I’ll give you a general overview of how it works. Game theory optimal player (aka GTO poker strategy) is the quest to be unexploitable. Essentially, if you’re in a pot, you’re either value betting or bluffing.

Unexploitable Frequencies

GTO poker players think in frequencies. For example, GTO poker strategy might advocate raising A-K for the third position 80% of the time and folding 20% of the time. These frequencies, in theory, yield a positive long-term result.

In technical terms, GTO optimal moves are +EV, which means they have a positive expected value. How do you calculate these frequencies? The simple answer is you don’t.

Instead, we rely on computers to do the math for us. They tell us what to do. They even produce charts like the one shown below.

Situation: A Texas Hold ’em cash game. You are the first player to act (under the gun), and you’ve got 100 big blinds.

You should raise all of the hands shown in green when you're the first player to act in a cash game and have 100 big blinds. The frequency you raise each hand depends on how much of the box is filled in green. For example, if the entire box is filled with green, you should raise 100% of the time. If half of the box is filled with green, raise that hand approximately 50% of the time. For clarity, hands marked with an “O” are offsuit, while hands marked with an “S” are suited.

In reality, humans can’t play every hand optimally because we don’t have the computing power. Therefore, the aim is to play as close to GTO as possible.

The majority of high-level poker pros use GTO solvers to review hands they’ve played.  They do this because, over time, you start to remember common spots and the GTO optimal moves.

Exploit Advanced Poker Strategy

GTO online poker strategy is great, but it’s not the only way. Some high-level pros, such as Charlie Carrol, prefer to play exploitatively.

This advanced poker strategy relies on finding weaknesses in opponents. You don’t follow predefined frequencies and moves. Instead, you react to situations and exploit your opponent's tendencies.

This strategy is much more rooted in hand reading, timing, table dynamics, and psychology. Some would argue it’s less effective in the long run. However, players like Phil Ivey have traditionally used an exploitative strategy, and they’ve done pretty well over the years.  

Five Poker Tips and Tricks

What online poker strategy tips and tricks can we take from the concepts I outlined in the previous section? Based on my 15+ years of playing poker, I think the most important strategy concepts can be boiled down to these five fundamentals:

1. Position Over Everything

The more hands you play in position, the easier it will be to get reads on opponents and make them react in the way you want.

2. Dynamics Matter

No online poker strategy should be used 100% of the time. Think about the tendencies of your opponents, your own tendencies, people’s perceptions of you, and the type of game you’re playing.

3. Ranges Not Hands

Don’t try to put your opponents on a single hand. This is a basic poker strategy mistake that beginners make too often.

Think about the range of hands someone could have and gradually narrow it down as you get more information. Once you’ve done that, think about how your hand compares to that range and whether you need to fold, bet for value, bluff, or call.

4. Be Adaptable

Switch up your play. If you sit down and use a tight poker strategy to start with, loosen up for a while before switching back. This makes you less predictable and harder to play against.

5. Don’t Ignore the Numbers

Learn the basic math of poker. By this, I mean learn the rule of 4 and 2 for counting your outs. Put simply, you start by counting all the cards left in the deck that can make a hand you’re chasing. For example, if you’ve got two suited cards and there are two of the same suit on the flop, there are nine cards that will make your flush.

Once you’ve counted your outs, multiply that number by four if you’re on the flop, or by two if you’re on the turn. This gives you the approximate percentage chance you’ll hit one of the cards you need to make the hands you’ve been chasing. Ideally, you want the chances of hitting your hand to be high when you’re facing a bet.

Be a Master of Everything

Ultimately, I think the middle ground between GTO and exploitative poker strategy is the best approach. People may disagree, but mixing math and psychology is, for me, the essence of poker.

Top Online Poker Games to Play

Poker is divided into two main categories: cash games and tournaments. The former run continuously and have blinds that never increase. The latter have set start times and stop when someone has all the chips in play. In tournaments, players are out when they lose their chips, and the blinds increase at pre-set intervals.

In addition to the division between cash games and tournaments, poker is played in different ways. These different ways are known as variants, and some involve community cards that everyone can use. Other variants don’t have community cards, which means you need to make ranked hands from your own set of cards.

The most popular types of poker online are shown in the table below.

Responsible Gambling

Poker, like any form of gambling, is full of uncertainties. Even if you’re the best player in the world and understand advanced poker strategy, you can still lose. That’s because you’re rarely going to have 100% equity in a hand.

Because of this, you need to gamble responsibly. When it comes to poker strategy online, bankroll management is a fundamental skill.

As a rule, you should have at least 100 buy-ins for the cash games you want to play. So, if you play $1/$2 No Limit Hold ’em online, the maximum buy-in is $200. You need at least $20,000 to play these games.

For online poker tournaments, you should have at least 150 buy-ins and, preferably, more than 200. So, if you want to enter $5 tournaments on a regular basis, you need between $750 and $1,000.

Combine these rules with our responsible gambling tips, and you’ll give yourself the best shot at getting through bad patches. Players who can weather the storm and come out the other side often win in the long run.

If you or someone you know is struggling, you can always reach out to the nationally available help channels.

• The National Council on Problem Gambling

• Gamblers Anonymous

• Gam-Anon.org

• GamTalk.org