Basic No Limit Cash Game Principles
No limit cash game strategy can get incredibly complex but there are a few basic principles that all winning players must learn before they can continue on to learn more advanced concepts. Some of these principles are quite basic but that doesn't make them unimportant. In fact, the most basic cash game concepts are the ones that no player, no matter how skilled, can survive without.
Starting Hands
The first thing you'll want to learn as a poker player is how to pick the right starting hands. One of the biggest mistakes new poker players make is they play too many starting hands. At the most, you should only play the top 25% of your starting hands and fold the other 75%.
When in early position, you should play even fewer starting hands because you will have to play the entire hand from early position. As the rules of the game dictate, you'll be stuck making your move first during the entire hand. In early position, I usually stick with the pairs AA-88, AK and AQ. It's a pretty tight range but it will keep you out of trouble.
In late position you can open up a little and play more starting hands. You can't go overboard, however, because weak starting hands will still get you in trouble in late position. Some of the better hands to play in late position include all the usual strong hands, small pocket pairs and suited connectors.
It can be tempting to play lots of hands because "any two can win" but the problem with weak hands is they end up costing you more money than they win for you in the long run. Not only will you have to fold these hands most of the time when the flop comes but you will also have to make more difficult decisions with weak hands.
Hands like KJ might look enticing from early position but they are easily dominated by hands like AK. If you catch a pair of kings with KJ and are up against someone with an AK, you can easily lose a good chunk of money with your hand. There's simply no upside to playing weak starting hands.
The Tight-Aggressive Style
Most new no limit players start out as Loose-Passive poker players. This means they play lots of starting hands (loose) and don't make many aggressive moves like bets and raises (passive). As a result, these players fail to protect their made hands, they pay too much for draws and they pay off other players' strong hands.
The correct winning style in poker is called the Tight-Aggressive (Tag) style. Tag poker players are highly selective in choosing their starting hands (tight) but when they do play a hand, they play it strong and aggressively (aggressive). These are the players you should emulate if you want to become a consistent winner.
Aggression wins in poker because it allows you to control the flow of the hand. When you have weak hands, you simply fold and get out of the way but when you have strong hands, you play them like you really mean business.
The aggression accomplishes two things: it gets money in the pot with your strong hands and it charges your opponents to try to draw against you. There's nothing you can do to completely stop your opponents from drawing against you but that's OK because if you charge them enough money, their chases will lead to profits for you in the long run.
The Tag style also gives you more information about the strength of your opponents' hands. When you're out there betting your hands aggressively, your opponents have to play a more straightforward game against you. They'll be more willing to fold or call with their weak hands and more likely to raise their strong hands when you are betting into them.
Position
At its most basic level, poker is a game of information. Your goal in poker is to play every hand as if you could see your opponents' hands. Position has a direct impact on the amount of information you have because the player who acts first must act with less information than the player who acts second.
Every decision you make at the poker table should take position into account. You should consider your position when selecting your starting hands, when playing your draws and even when deciding whether or not to bluff an opponent.
Late position is the ideal position to be in because you can see what your opponents do before you make your before. This is a huge information advantage and it is the reason why you can play more hands in late position than you can in early position. In early position, you need very strong starting hands to help negate that information disadvantage.
Bankroll
This is an extremely simple concept but it is also one of the most difficult to adhere to. The problem with bankroll is that people know the general rules for a no limit poker bankroll but they don't follow them.
It's important to follow certain bankroll guidelines because poker is not a guaranteed game. You'll go through random upswings and downswings throughout your career so it's important that you keep a good, healthy bankroll. No matter how good you are, you're not immune to simple variance. If you play on a short bankroll, a single mild downswing can spell disaster.
The general rule for casual players who want to avoid making any more deposits is to always keep a 20 buyin bankroll. This means that if you play $10NL, you'll want to have a $200 bankroll. If you ever dip below that 20 buyin mark, you should move down in stakes until you have built your bankroll back up to a safe level.
As you move up in stakes, you'll want to increase your bankroll requirements to 30 buyins per level. The players become increasingly skilled as you move up in stakes so you'll experience more swings.