Tom McEvoy's Beat Texas Holdem

I just recently was given “Beat Texas Hold’em” by Tom McEvoy and Shane Smith. Part 4 of this book is titled, “Online Hold’em; The Pajama Game.” One of the chapters within this section is called, “Tom’s Top 10 Winning Tips”. A lot of this information you may have heard before, but I feel some people might get some use out of it. I read this portion, and I will paraphrase the sections for you.


Concentrate on strong starting hands and your position at the table.

Playing strong hands allows you to limit tough decisions, and gain overall advantages in showdown value. By playing strong starting hands you can often have post-flop advantage that allows you to continue betting or calling on future streets. Position is the key in NLHE poker, and you will hear that it is your most advantageous strategy when playing postflop. Allowing the ability to see all action prior to you making one restricts potential unwanted raises, and a better situational understanding on the value of continuation betting.

Aviod playing too loose online.

Lower limit players tend to play a lot of hands. Combating this is often done by playing tighter postflop than you’re opponents. This loose strategy will often win you a lot of small pots, but lose big ones. In the lower limits often the saying, “Tight is Right” will benefit you the most, since players hands ranges are usually pretty weak postflop.



Practice reading the flop.

Reading, knowing, and using the boards texture is a big gun in the arsenal of poker. If you are holding AA and the flop comes out 910J with two diamonds often you are what we like to say, “Barley ahead or far behind.” Also knowing that an opponent may fold a mid pair or even two pair on boards like this should allow you to make post flop bets based on the player’s actions. Online there are options to have the cards come out in a 4 color deck. This helps to distinguish spades from clubs mainly, but essentially it color codes the suits. Knowing the best possible hand quickly is often tough for most players at the start, but the more hands you play the better it becomes.

Adjust to the speed of the game

There are many different aspects that make up the speed of the game. Blind structure, betting patterns, and payout structures greatly weigh on the speed of players play, and how they will approach it. Blinds online can increase from every 2 minutes to every 12 minutes on average. There are longer blind structures but in most non-deepstack tournaments you will be playing blinds seem to fall in this window. If Blinds are increasing every two minutes you should be playing aggressively, as comparative to 12 minutes where you should be playing tight. If players are betting aggressively or shoving all in this can dramatically change the speed of the game. You may be able to limp in middle position with KJ in your house game, but not here. I will see people bet 20x the BB with little to nothing. Make sure that you are not getting pushed around, or betting too little if opponents are willing to play for 6BB what they would for 3BB. Payout structures often determine how players will play later in tournaments. A winner take all tournament will be played aggressively, where as when 50% of the field gets played you can assume that there is going to be a bubble of tight play around 70% of the field remaining.


Take notes while you are playing.

Taking good notes is a great tool for the online player. Things that are helpful are often players betting patterns, players win record, average buy in, potential information said in chat, players reasoning, starting hand range, preflop raise amounts, post flop betting strategies, players devotion to the game, and any reads on the player you can make. Sites like sharkscope.com, and onlinepokerrankings.com give a nice depiction on a players Return on Investment (ROI%), Average buy in, Win/Loss record, and Consistency. Where as to gain other information you can either review the hand histories available, or learn something through talking with him in chat.

Look for tells.

Player tells are a lot harder to confirm online than live. So obtaining one is a lot harder, but also a lot more valuable. People talk about people who click, “The fold to any bet” button as being a profitable tell. I disagree all you are really going to get a blind round or two at most from that, though it is a tell. I prefer to look at hand histories people have betting tendencies that are prevalent over any decent amount of data sets. One thing that I have found is that if someone 3bets their strong hands preflop they will almost always fold to a raise preflop if they have limped out of position. If they do call often you can bet them out of the pot on the flop or turn, for some decent value. Another is that people are more willing to 3bet light on the Button or Cut Off positions than anywhere else often re-raising will get them to fold preflop.


Play small tournaments first.

Playing at a lower level allows you to risk less to gauge where you should be at amongst buy-in levels. Working your way up is often the safest route when trying to establish your bankroll at a specific game. I wouldn’t advise putting more than 10% of your poker bankroll into one session at any time.

Schedule your tournament play.

Scheduling is often the best way to bring organization to a large amount of games throughout the day. If you open a Microsoft Spreadsheet, you can type in the games you want to play for the day so that you don’t forget. This also helps you to remember any specific tournament you may win a ticket that does not start until a later date. Keeping these records will most importantly keep you from missing games. I know I have at least missed 20 games, and I do keep a schedule. I don’t recommend registering for tournaments in the future until you are sure you are going to be able to play them. Waiting 1 hour before the game starts to register should help you to remove some of those missed game errors.

Don’t play to escape something else.

Playing stressed out, or in anticipation of something else will cause a lack of involvement in the game at hand. When playing poker you are in a mental battle of wit, so make sure you are able to be focused on the game at hand. Often people will be watching T.V., doing laundry, or even writing emails. This allows players to gain a natural advantage when playing you because you don’t have any recollection of the hands that have played out. Often the little things you miss will be the deciding factor in your payout.


Don’t deposit more money than you can afford to lose.

Bankroll management is the key to long term success in playing poker. Make sure to diversify your poker bankroll to take hits, and keep yourself from playing over your head at any one specific place. This is a game of skill but there is a lot of gambling involved so make sure that you are not gambling your rent. There is plenty of small buy in tournaments that you can play online, so there is no need to stress yourself out by playing higher limits than what is comfortable.