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Being able to quickly assess a player and put them into a group will make it easier to work out how they play – and how you can beat them

Playing your hand just isn’t enough in cash games – to be a long-term winning player you need to get into your opponent’s head

Being able to play the player is the essence of winning poker. Good players win more with their good cards and lose less with their bad cards, and one of the key ways they do this is by adjusting to the players they are facing. Poker isn’t played against computer programmes with a consistent set of responses – it’s played against other people. Each of them is different, with different tendencies, moods, levels of thought and ways of reacting to your actions. To take a simple example, say a player has open-raised under the gun and you hold a pair of Tens. Are you ahead or behind the range of hands he’s holding? Against a regular aggressive player you may be clearly ahead but against a nitty super-tight player you may be getting crushed by his narrow selection of starting hands.

Most players eventually realize that it's fun and fairly easy to play at multiple online tables at one time. Early in my career, I played as many as eight games at once on a daily basis. Here are some tips and instructions for playing multiple games:

In tournaments, I play lots of hands. I'll put my money in with all kinds of connected cards, especially when in position. I might limp, I might min-raise or raise a little more than the minimum, depending on the circumstances. I'm looking to keep my table off balance so they don't know where I'm coming from.

A lot of outstanding poker players will tell you the cornerstone of pre-flop play is consistency. That approach works for many top players, but I don’t necessarily subscribe to that theory.

Particularly in short-handed play, I believe in mixing up my raise amounts. When playing at a 6-max table, sometimes I’ll min-raise, sometimes I’ll make it four times the big blind and sometimes I’ll limp. It all depends on who’s behind me and who’s already in the pot.

Although the games are technically the same in the way the cards are dealt, Limit Texas Holdem and No-Limit Texas Holdem are different games. When you are playing No-Limit Texas Holdem if you make a bad choice it can cost you all of your money.

To succeed in Pot-Limit Hold ‘em tournaments, No-Limit Hold ‘em players need to make certain adjustments to their game. Perhaps the biggest modification you need to make is to recognize the importance of being the second raiser before the flop rather than the first, a change necessitated in large part by Pot-Limit’s unique betting structure.

Fifth Street is the big decision point in Seven-Card Stud because that’s the critical juncture in the hand when you have to put in your first big bet. While it’s nice to have a made hand at this point, you don’t always need one to put in a raise on Fifth Street. If you have a big draw, that can be enough to warrant raising your opponent. Some players don’t think like this, and I believe that’s a costly mistake.

Bluffing in Limit Hold ’em is nothing like bluffing in No-Limit Hold ’em. In a Limit game, you can rarely price an opponent out of the pot if he has any kind of a made hand or draw. Sometimes you’ll try a bluff on the river because your opponent can no longer chase, but even so, his pot odds are usually so overwhelming that he’ll call with a weak hand.

In Texas Holdem poker there are many players that will try to steal the blinds on nearly every hand. It is a popular strategy from players that are sitting in late position. These players will make a larger than pot size bet in attempts to steal the small and big blinds.