Poker Texas Holdem Strategy

  1. Tips For Texas Hold'em Poker
  2. Texas Holdem Poker Strategy And Odds
  3. Poker Texas Holdem Tips Reddit
  4. Best Texas Hold Em Strategies
  5. Texas Hold Ums Strategies


Welcome to our fully dedicated Texas Hold’em strategy section! This expansive collection of guides was put together by several highly-successful, past and present, professional poker players. Not only have these players been crushing the games for years, but they have extensive experience teaching and instructing students of all levels professionally. Their wealth of knowledge coupled with their experience in teaching makes for a real treat for you.

Normally, you’d have to pay for this kind of specific and valuable information. We’re offering it to you completely free of charge. The information is broken up into different sections based on skill level and specifically what you might be looking for. If you’re completely brand new to the game and don’t even know how to play, that’s ok! Take a minute and check out our complete Texas Hold’em guide. You can always come back and join us here when you’re ready to rock and roll.

For those of you that are ready, let’s dive into the strategy. If you are a newer player or not sure where the leaks in your game are, we recommend starting at the top of the guide and working your way through the entire thing. Just because something is labeled beginner or fundamental does not mean that it does not have some advanced strategy content sprinkled in. Texas Hold’em is a game that requires strong fundamentals if you have any dreams of ever being the best.

If you’re looking for specific information, we’ve added some convenient links here to the specific sections below. Click on the section you are looking for, and you will be taken to the information dedicated to that topic.

Let’s get the cards in the air and start learning how to crush Texas Hold’em.

The majority of winning players do not include limping in their preflop poker strategy; unsurprisingly the majority of losing players think limping is the go-to strategy. Limping isn’t an effective approach as the small, ‘insignificant' losses add up quickly. See our Texas Holdem strategy guide for more information on limping. Texas Hold’em Poker Strategy: 5 Rules to Live by Poker strategy is everything. Anyone who says otherwise is kidding themselves. Yet, it’s unbelievable how many poker players ante up for a war of attrition against seasoned poker veterans without any strategy in mind.

Things You Must Know First

Regardless of your skill level, there are a few things that you must know before you get started building or retooling your Texas Hold’em poker game. In fact, the more skilled you are, the more important some of these tips are going to be to get the most out of your experience learning with us. Remember, we are not here to make you feel silly or look down on you. We are here to help you improve your game as much as possible.

Check Your Ego, Cash Your Checks

If you think you are the best and refuse to acknowledge that you can learn more and improve, you are doomed never to become a better player. Even the best players in the world admit that they need to be learning and growing their game constantly. They won’t refuse to listen to advice or suggestions because they think someone is a worse player than them. They will use their judgment on whether or not advice is important, but they are always open to improving.

You need to be the same way. Put your ego down at the door and open yourself up to changing your game. There is nothing wrong with admitting that you were doing something wrong or that there is a better way to do it. It does not make you any less of a poker player. What will make you seem like less of a poker player is if you start to struggle to beat the game because of your stubbornness.

Tips For Texas Hold'em Poker

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel Overnight

This is the most important tip from this entire strategy guide. Whenever you go to change your game, you don’t want to try and do it all overnight. If you start adjusting a million things at once, your game is going to fall apart completely. Take one area of your game and work on improving it first. Once it gets better, move on to another area.

Imagine if you were working on a car and you adjusted every single part of the engine all at once. The chances that everything would work correctly would be so minimal. In fact, you’d probably break parts that were working just fine because you were trying to change too much. This is the same with your poker game. Start small and slowly rework everything. You’ll see better results, and you’ll know what is working and what is not. If you change everything and start losing, you’ll never know which things worked and which did not.

Take your time. Poker is not going anywhere. It’s as simple as that.

Fundamental Strategy

We’re about to put the “fun” in fundamentals. Sorry for the cheesy intro. In all seriousness, we are about to have some fun building or solidifying the foundation of your Texas Hold’em game. If you’ve been playing for a while and are ready to skip this section, please wait. From our extensive experience instructing, we’ve found that almost every player except for the elite has some sort of leak in their fundamentals.

This is by no means an insult to your game, but is just us being realistic. We highly recommend that everyone at least read through this section once. If you are brand new and know that you have some fundamental leaks, then we recommend spending some time in this section before you look to move on to the more advanced stuff. The information will always be here, and the games aren’t going anywhere anytime soon so take your time and do this right! It will pay off in the long run.

Beginner’s Tips

This is the number one starting point where anyone on their poker journey should begin. We’ve collected a massive number of tips to help new (and rusty) poker players get into the action. Have a tournament or a game coming up soon and need to get up to speed quickly? Not sure where else to start? You’re in the right place.

The best part of these beginner tips is that they aren’t as obnoxiously generalized as some beginner’s tips lists are. While we do talk some general theory and strategy, we also give you some actionable steps that you can take immediately to improve your game.

Texas Holdem Poker Strategy And Odds

Factors Affecting Starting Hand Requirements

Texas Hold’em hands start with pre-flop action. This is your first and arguably biggest decision that you’ll make in the hand. If you have a firm grasp on which hands you should play from what positions, you’re going to set yourself up for success. If you don’t, though, you may be starting yourself down a dark road where you’re destined to lose a lot of chips or money.

Have a chart that you follow? If you follow the same starting hand requirements for every position every time, then you definitely want to read this guide. There are A LOT of different factors that go into what hands you should and should not be playing. We cover all of this and more in the guide below.

Trouble Hands Strategy

Trouble hands are probably the number one profit killer for poker players. These are hands that look great, they feel great, and they make you think they’re great. However, they’re hands that are easily dominated and can get you in a lot of trouble. They have a fantastic knack for giving you the second-best hand which is about the worst position you can be in with poker. We break these hands down and how to protect yourself from falling victim to their beautiful trap.

Bluffing Strategy

Bluffing…everyone’s favorite thing to do that they typically do the worst. Bluffing is an important part of no-limit Texas Hold’em and is integral to your success as a player. Does this mean you should be bluffing a ton? It does not. The biggest problems that people have with bluffing are that they do it too often and they do it at times that don’t make sense. Bluffing is all about telling a story that makes sense in a situation where it is profitable. We’ll walk you through every aspect of bluffing and turn you into a “professional bluffer” if there even is such a thing.

Pre-Flop Raise Sizing

One of the quickest ways to identify a bad player is by looking at their pre-flop raising sizes. Believe it or not, mistakes here can give away an enormous amount of information about your hand. As we already mentioned, mistakes pre-flop can set you up for failure on the rest of the hand no matter how well you play. This does not exclude pre-flop raise sizing. Learn the dos and the don’ts to help set yourself up for success.

Tournament Specific Strategy

If you’re playing Texas Hold’em tournaments the same way that you’re playing cash games, you’re going to have a bad time. While the game that you’re playing is exactly the same, the nuances in the formatting and the end goal of each make the strategic implications lightyears different. In the guides below, we walk you through the important strategies needed to crush tournaments and the specific strategies needed for each tournament type.

Differences from Cash Games

As we mentioned briefly above, tournaments are WAY different than cash games. Your goal is to outlast the rest of the field, not just win some chips. The blinds don’t stay the same, and the conditions of the game are always changing. Because of this, you have to be prepared to adapt appropriately or else you will get swallowed up by your opponents.

Understanding Blind Structures

A lot of players don’t realize that the structure of the blinds and antes plays a huge role in how you approach a tournament. As all structures aren’t created equally, all tournament strategy plans should not be created equally. We will walk you through how to interpret a blind structure, how to understand it properly, and most importantly how to alter your strategy accordingly. You’d be amazed at how many players struggle with this.

Deep Stack/ Early Stages Tournament Play

The early stages of a Texas Hold’em tournament play way different than any other part of the tournament. You have more chips, lower blinds, and a lot more reckless players and fish still left in the field. The value of certain cards and hands increase while the value of others decreases during this stage. It’s important to understand what you need to change to succeed through the early stages. If you never make it out of the early stages of a tournament, you’re never going to make any money.

Medium Stack/Middle Stages Tournament Play

As you now know how to work through the deeper stack stages of a tournament, you need to shift your focus to eh medium stack/middle stages of the tournament. As stack sizes shrink, your strategy is going to need to change. Things that you could do during the deep stack phases are no longer viable. Hands that were more valuable during the deep stack stage start to become less valuable. Hands that were less valuable start to grow in value.

While each stage of the tournament is important, this could arguably be one of the most important to get good at. Mistakes in this stage can be costlier and ruin your chances of making the money. Never fear, though, we will teach you everything that you need to know.

Short Stack Tournament Play

Being on the short stack is not somewhere we ever want to find ourselves in a Texas Hold’em poker tournament, but it inevitably will happen more often than you’d like. While you don’t have a lot of wiggle room to make moves, there are a lot of strategies that you can employ to steal chips, get that double up, and get yourself back into contention for the win. Playing the short stack is much more complicated than most players are aware of.

Bubble Play

The bubble of a Texas Hold’em poker tournament is either an exciting time or a terrifying time depending on what kind of player you are. For some, it’s a time that they can beat up on scared players who are trying their hardest to squeak into the money. Those players that are terrified of not making the cash despise the bubble time. We’re going to teach you which of these players you need to be, how to prepare yourself mentally to do that, and then how to strategically pick up a lot of chips to win the tournament. A lot of professional poker players would argue that a tournament is often won on the bubble and not so much at the final table.

The Art of the Deal

Sometimes in tournaments, you are presented with the opportunity to make a deal to end the tournament early. Players will negotiate how much each player will earn and if they want to continue playing for any portion of the prize pool. This happens when a tournament is top heavy or there is a steep increase in prize money.

For example, if first place is $1,000,000 and 2nd place is $500,000, the final two players might not want to play heads-up for half a million bucks. Instead, they might agree to each take $700,000 and play for the last $100,000 and the trophy. This is called making a deal. Making a deal requires some skills and finesse to make sure you get the best deal and don’t screw yourself out of some serious cash.

Selling Action

What you may or may not know is that a large percentage of the time poker players do not have 100% of their action during a tournament. What does that mean? It means that a lot of times they have not paid their full buy-in themselves. Someone else or several other people have invested money into that player with hopes of a return.

Selling action is a great way to get into bigger tournaments that you might not otherwise have been able to. It’s also a great way to cut down on risk. It does have its drawbacks as well that you need to be aware of.

Types of Tournaments

As there is a multitude of different types of no-limit Texas Hold’em tournaments, there is also a multitude of different ways that you will want to approach these events. You aren’t going to want to play a freezeout the same way that you are playing a satellite tournament. While some of the strategies will bleed over for each format, there are things that will be independent for each style.

In the guides below, we walk you through what each type of tournament is as well as what specific strategies you need to use to dominate that format.

Cash Game Specific Strategy

At this point, it should be very clear to you that cash games and tournaments are lightyears different in a lot of ways. Not only are they formatted differently, but the strategies used to beat each are different. In the guides below, we’ll walk you through the specific things you need to know to beat no limit Texas Hold’em cash games.

Game Selection

One of the most overlooked strategies for Texas Hold’em cash games comes before you even sit down at a table. Game selection is the process of choosing which game you’re going to play. While this has some to do with which stakes you’ll play, it has more to do with picking a table within those stakes. Finding games that are easier to beat can be the make or break to your poker session. We will walk you through all the nuts and bolts of selecting the most profitable game to play.

Tracking and Analyzing Sessions/Software

Cash games are all about finding small edges and hammering them home. As the conditions you play in stay relatively the same (blinds/table size/etc.), a small leak can turn into a big one when it happens over thousands and thousands of hands. If you’re playing multiple tables at once, these leaks will compound and could have an even bigger effect on your end of the session bottom line.

This makes it that much more important to track your sessions, track your play, and use the tools available to analyze this information to make improvements to your game. We’re going to show you the right (and wrong) ways to track your data, the best ways to analyze it, and the tools and software available to help you do all of this more efficiently.

Advanced Strategy Concepts

If you’ve jumped straight to this section, we highly recommend that you go back and at least read through the earlier sections once. Properly understanding these sections depends on you having a firm grasp of the concepts we have already gone over. The worst that happens is you solidify your fundamentals and are that much more technically sound. Don’t worry, we will wait for you.

Now that we’re all on the same page, let’s jump into our more advanced concepts. The titles of some of these sections may seem less advanced to you, but that’s ok. Part of taking your game to the next level is knowing the advanced sides of the easy concepts. We hope you enjoy what we have put together for you here. This is the gold pot of this guide, and our Texas Hold’em guides.

Establishing Ranges

If you’ve never heard the term range before, we have a lot to go over which should be exciting to you. Poker is not ever about putting your opponent on an exact hand. If you have the ability to do this successfully, you’re probably already the best in the world. We can tell you, though, that’s probably not the case. Texas Hold’em poker is about putting your opponents on potential ranges of hands that they might have based on information you’ve taken from the hand and from history.

We’ll talk about how to build these ranges, how to apply those built ranges to your strategy and talk about how those ranges fit with your own ranges. It may seem confusing at first, but it will take your Texas Hold’em poker game to the next level. You want to know what the elite players are thinking about? This is what you’ve been looking for.

Continuation Betting

In the early days of poker, the continuation bet was the secret sauce. All you had to do was raise pre-flop and then blindly bet 100% of flops, and you would win in the long run. Unfortunately, those days are behind us. We will talk about why that used to work, why it doesn’t, work anymore, and what you should change about your game to effectively use continuation bets to turn a profit. This is one of those sections that surprises people that it’s more in-depth than they thought it could be.

Floating

If you think this has something to do with laying on top of the water, you’ve got a lot to learn. Even if you do know what floating is in regard to Texas Hold’em, you probably still do have a lot to learn. Floating is an advanced concept that was developed to combat the continuation bet. We’ll break it down for you and let you know the best ways and places to employ it for maximum efficiency.

Pre-flop Raising vs. Limping

This is one of those topics that might seem pretty self-explanatory, but we see players screwing this one up all the time. While there are no hard and fast rules on the topic, there are some things that you need to be aware of. How you choose to implement them into your strategy will be up to you. Whether you use a strategy or not, it is important that you know them in case it is something that your opponent is choosing to do.

3 & 4-Betting

3-betting is a concept that most players know they should be utilizing, but few do enough. Out of the ones that are utilizing it, a large number of them are using it incorrectly. On top of all of that, we see a lot of players reacting incorrectly to other player’s 3-bets. If there’s a top list of sections that we highly recommend you read in this strategy guide, this section would be on that list. Do yourself a solid and take a few minutes to go through the information we have put together for you.

While 4-betting is slightly less important depending on the stakes you are playing at, we still wanted to cover it. 4-bets can be important to protect your opening ranges and also as a nice combat to a player who is 3-betting incorrectly. If you’re confused, that’s ok. We will take you through every aspect of 4-bets and how to use them properly. We’ll also touch on how to react to 4-bets.

As a bonus, we will also touch very briefly on 5-bets for those of you that are clinically insane and like to light money on fire. There’s nothing like a cold 5-bet to get the juices running in the morning.

Live Poker Specific Strategy

Live Texas Hold’em and online Texas Hold’em are essentially the same game, yet there are some strategic differences that you need to be aware of. In the guides below, we’ll walk you through a few of the things you need to be aware of to crush live poker in a brick and mortar setting. This includes home games as well as playing in any casino poker room in the world.

Reads and Tells

One of the big advantages for most players playing live is that they can see their opponent’s faces. This allows a trained eye to catch tells and reads about what a person might be holding. We did say that this was an advantage for most players, but we specifically did not say all. One of the more important aspects of reads and tells is making sure that you are not giving off your own. Your opponents may not be great players, but you don’t want to give them a leg up on you by wearing your cards across your forehead.

Online Poker Specific Strategy

Just as there are strategies specific to playing live, there are strategies specific to online Texas Hold’em. A lot of people think that online poker is just clicking buttons. While they are somewhat correct, there is a lot of strategy that is different than playing in a brick and mortar setting. We will break everything down for you to help you be the best internet poker wizard there ever was.

Reads and Tells

There are reads and tells on the internet? Believe it or not, there actually are. While these sometimes can’t be trusted with as high of reliability as the live poker ones, they’re still valuable to know. Let us show you the parts of online poker that only the most brilliant and OCD of minds can see.

Putting It All Together

If you’ve made it this far and have not gone crazy from information overload, congrats! We’ve just unloaded years and years of knowledge on you in a very short time. Hopefully, you’ve learned a lot and have already started implementing these changes into your game. If there are sections you are unclear on, take some more time and go through them again. We don’t expect you to have picked up everything the first time through.

Remember, Texas Hold’em poker is a game that is learned quickly but takes a lifetime to master. There’s no reason to rush things and get ahead of yourself. Take your time and make small changes, so you don’t throw your whole game out of whack. The sky is the limit for you, and with hard work implementing what we taught you here today, you’re going to be crushing the world soon.

When someone pictures the origins of poker, images of dusty saloons and shady gamblers with 6-shooters likely comes to mind. I have been playing Texas Hold’em professionally now for over 10 years and have often wondered who invented this crazy game. Since I have a degree in history, I only thought it proper to do some research and find out all that I can about where poker originated.

Who invented Texas Hold’em? While there is some dispute as to who invented Texas Hold’em, a Texas road gambler named T. “Blondie” Forbes is now widely credited as having created the game its current form sometime in the 1920s. The state of Texas officially recognizes Robstown, TX as the place Hold’em was first played.

While Hold’em is not the most popular poker game in the world, it wasn’t always that way. In fact, it has only recently gained widespread popularity. Let’s explore the history of poker and how it became what it is today.

A brief history of poker

The path to modern day poker is long and winding, and ultimtely, not completely clear. Even so, there is still enough empiricle evidence to make logical assumptions about how we go to where we are now.

However, before we can discuss the origins of poker, first we need to talk about the instruments of poker; playing cards.

The Origin of Playing Cards

Playing cards have remained mostly unchanged over the past 300 years. However, it took hundreds of years of experimentation to get to this point. The road is long and winding and definitely not linear.

Who Invented Playing Cards?

By the 9th century AD, it is clear that the Chinese were playing cards. Now, their decks of playing cards were nothing like we have now. In fact, they more closely resembled dominos.

The biggest contribution the Chinese made toward the evolution of poker is in their advent of having four “suits” which were called coins, myriads, strings of coins, and tens of myriads. Each card had a number from either 2-9 or 1-9.

While we don’t know exactly how the games were played back then, it is clear that some of these ideas influenced later generations of card decks.

500 Years Later, Decks of Cards Appear in Europe

Sometime in the 1300s, a 52-card deck appears in Europe that is called the “Mamluk” deck. It had four suits and typically had the names of famous military officers of the time.

The importance of the Mamluk playing cards is not so much their design but the fact that they had 52 cards. It appears that influence was not lost on early card makers of the time.

The Usage of Playing Cards Spreads like Wildfire

By 1500, the use of playing cards was widespread. Every European region had put their own spin on the 52 card design.

Four Suits to Rule Them All

It was during this widespread expansion of card games that the modern suits came to pass. It seems each region had its own take on the design but it was the French who settled in on the now ubiquitous Diamonds, Clubs, Hearts, and Spades.

The first appearance of the modern suits was in 1480. The exactly person who first coined this design is lost to history.

A Divergence of Designs

Texas

By the 16th century, “court” cards were in vogue and still persist to this day. The presence of royalty in the design became standard with there being slightly different designs present depending on where the cards were made.

In England, they had a particular look made by the manufacturing center of Rouen. France became known for adopting a Parisian design. Historical and mythological heroes were used as models for both versions.

In the end, it’s the Parisian design that won out and became most often used in modern times.

Poker

Why Are There 52 Cards in a Deck?

As with just about anything in the world, humans appear to have based the decks of cards to be symbolic of their experience in the world. It is assumed that the 52 cards represent the 52 weeks of the year and the 13 cards of each suit represent the lunar calendar.

When Was Poker Invented?

It is not possible to give an exact date as to when poker was invented. I guess it depends on how you define the word.

If poker means betting on a hand of cards and sometimes bluffing, then poker existed long before it was called poker. There were bluffing games, called “Poque”, being played by at least the mid 15th century with early forms of playing cards.

Where Poker Originated

It is likely that the birthplace of poker in its current form was New Orleans, Louisiana during the 16th century. Poque, the French bluffing game, had been imported by then and was being played in the area. The majority of games being played during the period included 5 cards and a 52-card deck..

Why Is It Called Poker?

Eventually, the games evolved and the name somehow got changed to “Poker”. It is probably just a regional variation on the pronunciation of “Poque.”

Poker in America

Apparently, riverboats played a part in the spread of the game. By 1850, the Flush had been added by this time and there was a new class of folks called Riverboat Gamblers, who traveled around making a living off the game.

There were numerous saloons, gambling houses, and even “casino” riverboats, although they weren’t called that at the time, up and down the Mississippi river.

The Rise of the Hustler

During the mid 19th century the gold rush was on. People were moving west and, invariably, new classes of rich folk were being created almost on a monthly basis. For recreation, these people had but a few choices at the time.

Due to the proliferation of saloons, it is only natural that the nouveau riche would come in contact with card games. This literally created a golden opportunity for a new class of card sharks to evolve in order to feed off this new found wealth.

The Role of the American Civil War

During the war between the North and South, soldiers nationwide were playing poker for recreation. It was likely during this time that the “Straight” was added and the game of “Stud” was invented. 5 card stud was the typical game of choice during the time.

Through the comradery of the soldiers and the rapid movement of people all over the country, it is easy to see how poker could coalesce into a common form during this time.

Soldiers might be stationed in South Carolina one day and Pennsylvania the next. Wherever they went, it only makes sense that they would want to stick to a common form of the game for simplicity sake.

The Modern Game Arrives

Just after the Civil War, it is clear that all modern elements of the game were present. The hand rankings were established, virtually everyone used a 52-card deck, and the modern form of 5 card draw and stud were being played all over the United States.

While poker was popular, no one could anticipate the growth in popularity of the game during and after the 1880’s. The explosion in popularity among all classes of people coincided with one interesting new invention: the humble poker chip.

The Role of Poker Chips

Perhaps nothing more influenced the evolution of poker than the invention of poker chips. Before chips were produced, players used any number of small objects to bet with. Anything from small pieces of gold and silver to paper money were used in the games.

The standardization of poker currency that chips brought into the mix was a huge game-changer. It didn’t really change the way the game was played, it just made things so much easier to manage.

“Casinos” Flourish

While they were not yet called casinos, gambling establishments were cropping up seemingly everywhere in the form of the saloon. Due to the advent of poker chips, players could “buy in” for a certain amount and be given chips to gamble with.

By 1906 the first official “casino” had opened in Las Vegas on Fremont Street. Even so, this was a dark period for the business. There had been a backlash against common vices, including drinking and gambling, at this time. The same forces that eventually led to prohibition also caused a ban in poker around this time.

Legalization

In 1931, Nevada fully legalized gambling. However, this did not happen in other places around the country. Most other poker establishments around the country remained underground. Even so, poker began the slow growth toward where it is today.

The Boom

It was not until 1977 when legalization happened in Atlantic City that the true poker boom began. It began a chain of events where poker became legal around the country and the emergence of Tribal Casinos happened.

Today, the American gaming industry brings in well over 100 billion dollars a year.

When Was Texas Hold’Em Invented?

The concept of “community cards” did not emerge in poker until the 1920s. It is believed that a road gambler called T. “Blondie” Forbes invented the game of Texas Hold’em during this time. In fact, he was credited with its invention when he was inducted into the poker hall of fame in 1980.

How Did Hold’Em Become so Popular?

A group of Texas Gamblers, including Amarillo Slim, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Moss, and Crandall Addington introduced Texas hold’em to Vegas in the 1960s.

Ultimately, an entire casino was practically founded around the game of Hold’em. The Golden Nugget hosted the first World Series of Poker in 1970, where Texas Hold’em was first played in a tournament. The next year, it became the only game played since it was seen as the perfect blend between skill and luck and known as the “thinking man’s game.”

The game slowly grew in popularity over the years until the online poker was invented. Then, the floodgates were opened.

History of Online Poker

While the first “online casino” called Planet Poker was established in 1998, it wasn’t until PartyPoker came on the scene in 2001 that things really exploded. This was the wild west of online poker with really soft games that were lucrative for any reasonably skilled poker player at the time.

The Moneymaker Effect

Then, the unthinkable happened. A “normal” guy won an $86 satellite to the World Series of Poker and went on to win the whole thing. Turning a small sum of money into 2.5 million dollars made Chris Moneymaker an overnight sensation.

Seemingly everyone in the world wanted to be the next Moneymaker. Players from all walks of life were getting into poker and signing up to play online poker. This all culminated in 2006 when Jamie Gold won the main even prize of $12,000,000.

UIGEA

Unfortunately, 2006 also saw the passage of a US law called the “unlawful internet gambling enforcement act of 2006.” What it does is outlaw banks from doing business with online casinos.

The ultimate effect of the law is immediate. The general public misinterprets the law and many think online poker is illegal. This slows down the poker boom considerably. In fact, the very next the main even top prize drops $4,000,000 as many players exodus from the game.

Even so, Pokerstars and other online poker sites continue to flourish for the next several years.

Black Friday

Just when it looked like online poker was making a comeback, with online professionals continuing to make 6 figures or better a year, the US Government once again put a damper on things.

On April 15th, 2011 a criminal case was filed against the three largest online poker companies including Pokerstars, Full Tilt Poker, and Cereus. They were accused of money laundering and trying to get around the UIGEA. This eventually led to Pokerstars pulling out of the US market and Full Tilt and Cereus going out of business.

Black Friday was a huge blow to online poker as a profession. Literally hundreds of thousands of people lost their bankrolls on Full Tilt and even more people rapidly left the game of poker for good.

Online Poker Today

While I paint a dark picture on the history of online poker, it still a wildly popular hobby that millions of people enjoy. It is estimated that around 40 million people still regularly play poker worldwide. It looks like online poker is here to stay, and just like prohibition, governments simply cannot shut down people from having fun.

Poker Texas Holdem Tips Reddit

Final Thoughts

The journey to modern day poker has been slow and winding. Ultimately, the games are all about recreation and adding enjoyment to peoples lives. If you are interested in playing poker or learning strategy, be sure to check out my comprehensive poker tutorial. Thanks for reading!

Related Questions

Best Texas Hold Em Strategies

Where did the name Texas Holdem come from? Hold’em basically refers to having to keep your initial cards throughout the hand. You cannot “draw” any more cards. It is called “Texas” Hold’em because it was invented in Texas during the 1920s.

Texas Hold Ums Strategies

Why is Texas Hold’em called the Cadillac of poker? Texas Hold’em is called the Cadillac of poker because it is the one game that finds the perfect balance between luck and skill. It is also known as the thinking man’s game since you can never see your opponents’ actual cards until the showdown. You must use logic to deduce what they hold.

Where was Texas Hold’em Invented? While we can never know for sure Robstown Texas is credited for being the birthplace of Texas Hold’em.

Atrributions:

  • Chinese Playing Cards Image: Courtesy of https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baralla_de_cartes_xinesa#/media/File:%E5%8D%81%E4%BA%94%E6%B9%96.png
  • Mamluk Cards Image: Countakeshi [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
  • Doyle Brunson Photo: Photo by flipchip / LasVegasVegas.com [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)]
  • All other photos used are in the public domain.