Crush Live Poker – Beat Your Friends In The Home Games and Casinos!

The differences between live poker and playing poker online are so vast that sometimes it could look like a different game. If you have experience playing on the internet but want to get some live action, you will have to adjust your strategy if you want to see good results.

This article will show you the basic principles of low-level live games in casinos and poker home games with your friends. These two formats have many similarities and are an excellent place to start if you want to learn how to crush live poker.

Live Poker Games Are Way Looser

One of the most significant differences between Texas Holdem games online and live is that the latter are much looser. You will see high VPIP, people limping, calling raises preflop, and chasing draws postflop at a much higher rate.

One of the reasons is that you can play up to 100-150 hands per hour on a single table online. If you launch 6 of them, you can be playing 700-800 hands per hour.

In comparison, this number is about 30 or so in live games. People are simply unwilling to spend most of the time just folding and waiting for a good opportunity to play.

When it becomes way too boring, people make bad decisions only because they desire more action. This gives you the opportunity to crush live poker games without doing much yourself. Therefore, I recommend you make some of the following adjustments.

Live Poker Tip #1. Adjust Your Ranges

You should certainly adjust your ranges in poker home games and any live games, for that matter. There are a couple of ways to do so, and you can improve your results almost immediately.

To start, you should play more hands. Of course, you should not go too far with this. But a proper adjustment would be to see more flops with speculative hands like suited A-highs, suited connectors, or gapers from late position.

You will often have the chance to do so cheaply and against multiple opponents. As a result, when you hit big, you will usually get a good reward and will take down the big pot. For starters, grab our poker cheat sheets.

Live Poker Tip #2: Do Not Be a Limper

A limper, in poker, is a player who chooses to call rather than raise when he is the first to enter the pot or even when he joins the action by calling when there is a limp before him.

Should you call the big blind before the flop rather than raise, you could be described as ‘limping in.'

When you begin playing live poker, one of your first discovery will be the frequency in which players limp.

However, that doesn’t mean that you should also do it. This strategy is highly inadvisable because it is weak and reduces your chances of winning since you have no fold equity preflop.

Your opponents will be quick to notice open limping and will exploit the opportunity to win, so never rely on this play.

That being said, it is vital to know how to play against limpers. The best you can do is try to isolate them using bigger sizes.

Since most limp players are not that great at poker, you can get away with big bets, and they will pay way too much to see the flop, which will help you increase your win rate with premium holdings.

Live Poker Tip #3: Become Aggressive Against Weaker Players

The general advice in poker that every player will come across at some point is to ‘be more aggressive.'

Raising and betting are good examples of actions that inform an aggressive type of play while checking and calling from a passive approach.

To become an aggressive player, you should practice raising whenever a chance presents itself instead of calling with all of your draws and folding when you miss.

This means that you do not need to wait for a good hand to win pots because you can also win with lesser hands.

Aggression helps your live poker game in many ways, the most important of which is learning when to attack the pre-flop limpers.

You can estimate how good or experienced a poker player is based on their aggression. So, if you wish to punish your opponents, always practice aggressive poker play.

Live Poker Tip #4: Play a Faster Game

There are many trends in live poker, most of which come and go. One that may never go away, yet, is excessive tanking and slow roll in poker.

Playing a fast poker game is not merely a matter of common decency; it also contributes to improving the game experience and even your win rate.

If the game runs faster, you will be able to play more hands in the same timeframe, which means more money. So do not take longer than necessary to plan your move and play your turn.

Tanking is a common practice that experienced players sometimes use to frustrate and wear out others. However, it is highly inadvisable to use fake tanking moves in your game.

This, of course, is unless it is to balance out your move response time or mislead the table.

Live Poker Tip #5: Make a Habit of Announcing Your Actions

When you wish to raise, make your intentions clear to the table by shouting it out. Announcing your actions is a good habit and will prevent you from accidentally string betting.

Should you throw in a large denomination chip but fail to announce a raise, the dealer will take it as a call, and that can cost you a huge pot.

Verbal declarations are a core part of live poker, so it is better to be safe than sorry in your first live game.

https://giphy.com/embed/ienanC5mDJ2l7cYyNz

Every decision you make that informs your move should reach the dealer. After all, the dealer is the choreographer that determines the speed and direction of the game.

Speak up loud enough to be heard by the dealer and other players. If playing in a noisy room where other games are going on in other tables, consider playing in the combined voices of players, riffling of the chips, and playing music.

Live Poker Tip #6: Be Very Aggressive In Late Positions

We already touched that you should be attacking weaker players when they are limping or show weakness in their game, but you need to tune it up even more when you are in the button or cutoff.

Players almost never aggressively 3-bet in live games, so you can exploit it by opening more hands in later positions.

This way, you will be able to play the rest of the hand, act last, and see what other players do before making your decision, which is extremely valuable against recreational players. They are likely to make a ton of fundamental mistakes and will literally give you money.

Playing too passively on the button and not taking advantage of the position is one of the most common poker mistakes and likely one of the most costly, so try to avoid it.

Every good poker player was a first-time player in a live poker game at one point, so don’t be too hard on yourself, and don’t overthink everything that's happening at the table.

If you are at this point, you should not feel intimidated by other players' looks or strategies. And if you want to go even further, take a look at the best poker tips for beginners and make your first trip to the live game as profitable as it can be.

Live Poker Tip #7: Counter Weak Players

In online poker, you usually fight for the tiny margins. Punishing small mistakes is the way to go, as most players avoid crazy moves like calling an all-in with ATo preflop or pushing all of their chips in the middle with a top pair and a weak kicker on the flop.

You will be surprised how often that happens in live games, especially if they are home poker games.

This is why you should try to capitalize on such plays. Do not overthink by trying to get only a little value now and aim big. Chances are, someone will pay you off with a weak hand. However, you should observe your opponents carefully so that you can identify such players without using poker tools and software that are available online.

Adjust Your Betting Size

Another substantial change would be to play your stronger hands more aggressively, especially preflop and on the flop. People are more than willing to call hefty raises, so you should protect hands like strong pocket pairs or AK, for example.

The same goes for the flop. If you have a made hand and there are some possible draws, do not be afraid to bet big. Many people will chase their draws despite the bad odds, and you will get tons of value in the long run.

crush live poker home games and have fun

Look For Obvious Tells

Another advantage of live poker is that you can see your opponents' faces and body language. Often, people are unable to control their emotions and will have many poker tells that reveal a lot. Follow the other players at the table carefully, and you may notice something useful. If you do, it is easy to get the job done later on.

According to most studies of poker psychology, untrained people follow certain patterns. For example, they act strong when they have a weak hand and vice versa.

Always keep that in mind, as it's true more often than you think. However, you should not concentrate on just one tell and should look for at least a few signs that could help you make the decision.

Of course, the key here is inexperienced and untrained opponents. If you are facing someone decent, they probably will not be doing the same.

Finally, you should always be careful yourself. Try to control your emotions, voice, and gestures so you do not give away any tells. Also, avoid any sort of angle shooting because it can easily break the game, and everything you notice will have no value.

Learn To Count Stacks, Pots, And Bets

If you mostly play online, you are used to precisely seeing the stack sizes, the pot, and the bets at any given moment. The poker rooms do that for you, and it is very convenient.

However, this is not the case when you play home poker games. You should try to create a habit of staying aware of this information at any given moment. Knowing how many chips you can take and how much you have is crucial for things like pot odds and implied odds and for making the right decisions.

In the beginning, it could be quite hard, and you will often miss the count, so train with a poker odds calculator before you play. If you put enough effort into it, it should come naturally at some point.

This is an enormous advantage, as most players do not care too much about that, especially in home games. This disciplined approach will also be helpful when you play in casinos and will help you crush live poker games much easier.

Crushing Live Poker Games

Obviously, reading a single article will not be enough to make you an instant winner in live poker and home games. However, the tips mentioned here are probably the way to go if you want to improve your strategy and start crushing live poker games at some point.

Read and reread them carefully and put the necessary effort to turn the theoretical advice into actions on the table. On top of that, you can find many more of the best poker tips and continue improving further your cash game and poker MTT strategies.

You will be surprised how easy live poker and home games can be when you master these simple rules. The players there are weaker and careless compared to the online world, where most people have a decent idea of what they are doing. Once you adjust, you could genuinely make tons of money from live and home poker games.