However even reading advice from strong players is no guarantee that it will work for you because styles that suit one person may be totally unsuitable for someone else. Therefore in this article then I am not going to suggest an “optimal” style for playing poker but what I believe is an “ideal” style for many players who are new to the game. Actually even very experienced players would do well to follow what I am about to say here. This is because having more experience can be double edged as it can lead to over confidence.

Becoming a successful poker player is not a simple process, if it were then all that a person would need to do would be to get a good coach and then learn from them and simply copy what they do. Being a successful poker player often requires a long learning curve and there is in my opinion a mean average amount of time that a player achieves true expertise. I believe that this is a lot longer than many people realise and many successful players of today are not true experts in my opinion. This is never more highlighted by previously successful players who I have personally been aware of now being forced out of the game.

In my opinion there is too much complexity in the game and when things become complex then the correct way forward is no longer clear. There is a huge misconception that for something to work in a field that is highly complex then the system has to be complex as well. This isn’t the case and it has proven to be so in other areas like financial trading for example. There have been traders who have made millions through simple but fiendishly successful systems.

So I believe in simplicity these days because the simpler the system then the less chance there is of it breaking down under pressure. But when I say that a system is simple then in no way do I mean that you could pass this on in a few easy steps. If I had to teach my system to someone new then in no way could I teach it in a short time frame despite me still calling it “simple”. I think that a better word or phrase to explain what I am talking about here is “uncomplicated”.

However with online poker and casino poker then this is not the case. This is to do with the rake which means that when you play online that the game is actually a negative sum game and not a zero sum one. In the previous example then the two winning players would still have won $2110 between them. But over the space of several hours the card room may have taken $200 in rake or more. So the sum total of the losers is not $2110 but $2310.

So when players lose money then not all of this money goes to the winners and money is slowly drained out of the game and goes to the poker site and the network. In fact if the game went on long enough with no new players then one of two things would happen. One player would end up winning all of the available money on the table minus whatever the casino took in rake or the casino would take everything if the game went on for long enough.

This negative sum effect is seen in other areas like buying stocks and shares and also buying property. The costs involved in both of these areas means that the sum total of the winners or the people who make money is not offset by the people who have lost or spent money. These are negative sum environments and they have a huge effect on the ability to be able to make money. To make money in any negative sum game then you need to be mindful of your overheads. But the effect of money being dragged out of the game in this way never to be replaced has a profound effect on everyone who plays poker.

However it has the biggest effect on the losing players and the average players. These are the players who are most vulnerable to rake because losing players in zero sum games will lose more and average players who may be slight winners in zero sum home games could be breaking even or losing money long term. In fact even slight winners can be reduced to break even or losing players because of the negative sum nature of the game. So the bottom line here is that you need to be a better poker player on average than you need to be if the game were a zero sum game. This is not always the case of course because a zero sum home game against very good players would not be a good game to sit in while a negative sum game could in fact be very good if the players were weak enough.

However there are many situations that would be tougher in limit than no-limit but I think that it is fairly straight forward to say that no-limit places certain demands onto a player that limit does not. But the sheer fact of the matter that limit hold’em is a solved game at the higher levels means that making money at those levels is now very tough. This is now drifting down into the middle stakes levels where the players at $20-$40 through $50-$100 are very strong.

The knock on effect of this if we go further down the pecking order is that players at levels like $3-$6 through $10-$20 can now be good also. So it doesn’t leave an awful lot left for players at this form of poker to be honest. But for me this is where limit hold’em is tougher to beat now than no-limit and this makes the game perhaps the ultimate Holy Grail of poker in many ways. This same level of solving has now transferred to NLHE and the high-stakes action isn’t as great as what it has been in recent years and the good years may be few and far between for people who have been used to making seven figure wins.

There were some big name casualties in the nosebleed games in 2010 and if these providers dry up then it may just signal the end of the nosebleeds in online poker. But in limit hold’em then you must play post flop poker and play post flop poker constantly. The nature of the game dictates that you will see flops, turns, rivers and showdowns in far greater frequency. A poor player in limit will suffer death by a thousand cuts unlike in no-limit. Of course the limit games are better from a business proposition for the poker sites because they produce more rake. Quite often in no limit hold’em then a pre-flop raise will take the pot down or a pre-flop re-raise. So players often never go beyond the pre-flop betting round.

This can be accentuated by players coming from tournament poker where the stack sizes often dictate that the best play is often to go all in with a shove. So it is certainly not conclusive which is the tougher game as I have known many players who played successfully at no-limit who failed to make money at limit!

Our hero was in the cut-off seat and the big blind and two other limpers called the raise. There was $27.50 in the pot and four players, the flop came 10s-8c-4s and it was checked around to our hero who bet $24. It should be mentioned here that all of the players apart from the big blind had stacks of between $80 and $140. The big blind was sitting with only $50.

Our hero was a regular at this level and had $111 in his stack. His bet was called by one limper so the pot now stood at $75.50 and the turn card was the Ac and the limper checked again. Our hero bet $40 and the limper called again. This put $155.50 into the pot and now our hero only had around $51 left and his opponent had slightly more. So this is a pot commitment stage and any river bet is bound to get called.

The river card was the 2h making a final board of 10s-8c-4s-Ac-2h…..the limper shoved all-in for their remaining stack and after some deliberation, our hero called and was shown the 8d-8h. I see these types of hands all the time where players give too much action to flopped sets. The pot had already been escalated pre-flop and three players calling the pre-flop raise already brought up pot commitment issues.

But when a betting sequence like this ends up with a big flop bet getting called then too many players seem to put their opponents on drawing hands and stick to that hypotheses. Its possible that someone could have called $24 on the flop with a draw and it was a multi-way pot after all. But when our hero made a $40 turn bet that was also called then the chances of his opponent having a draw were seriously diminished.

You cannot put your opponent on a made set after the flop bet was called. Draws and hands like 9-9, 10-8s and possibly Q-Q could be out there as well as the sets of course. But the turn bet eliminates the draws as few players would call down to that extent with a drawing hand. The only hands that could have realistically called the turn bet were hands that were beating our hero.

So he should have at the very least saved his final $51 despite the pot odds that he was getting. His opponents range of hands against this betting sequence screamed just one word…..set!

But you also have to remember how many players were in the hand originally. The pre-flop raise was called by three players. So this means that the chances of at least someone connecting with the board dramatically increases.

No-limit hold‘em is a treacherous game to play for many people simply because they pay off too much post flop with hands that they shouldn’t. They win a series of small uncontested pots and then hand it all back and then some in some escalated pot. All forms of poker test a player in some way, limit tests your ability to be able to take beat after beat, Omaha tests your technical capability like no other form of poker and hold ‘em……that tests your decision making ability and your level of pot control.

Let us look at playing Texas Hold’em at level 1 first and foremost which is sort of like the micro-levels. You may not get to be very rich at this level but that is also offset by the ease at which you can beat the level. All you have to do is become a level 2 player to get an edge on level 1 and possibly level 3 if you take into account the effect of the rake.

Now let us look at what happens when you move up to level 2. At Texas Hold em games and especially in a limit format where the rake is very high in games like six max, being a level 3 player may now not be enough and you may find yourself recycling money so you may need to be a level 4 player to make decent money. The problem is that your opponents will be better as well.

Let us look at the other extreme for a minute and look at level 10 players. These are the very best in the world at what they do, at games like limit hold’em they may have technically perfect games. There is no level 11 and so playing them is futile. Even trying to play level 9 may be pointless as you are basically hoping that someone at level 8 or below will drop in and those types of players will get exposed very rapidly.

At level 7 then you have something of a problem because to beat that level may mean being better than a level 8 player and becoming a level 9 player which essentially would put you into a very elite minority of online poker players. Do you have the time to dedicate yourself to becoming a level 9 player and stay there? Most people do not and so this makes playing level 7 which is probably the middle limits very tough indeed and each time you move up a level then your opponent’s abilities and skill increase also.

So it is clear that the ability to make more at higher levels is evident but this is offset by having the lack of opportunities to make that money. So it seems obvious to me that you need to start aiming lower down the poker ladder if you want to have a successful career based on realistic chances rather than pie in the sky hopes and aspirations. Beating level 4 by being a level 6 player is far better than trying to beat level 8 by being a level 9 or 10 player.

But imagine how much easier life gets if you are a level 8 player but choose to multi-table at level 4! You have the ability to totally crush this level and your earnings in hold’em can be as good as higher level players simply because you can multi-table easier.