Crush Your Competition with These 15 Proven Poker Tips

06 Mar 2025

Intermediate

This material is for medium-skilled players

You know very well that understanding your opponent is much more important than the cards you were dealt and which came to the board. The opponent's characteristics have always been, are and will be in first place if we play with a person, not a bot.

Today we will give you 16 useful tips on playing online poker from the Smart Poker Study YouTube channel. They will help you play your opponent even more effectively, get even better information about his game and build the most competent exploit in the game with him. And as a result, your financial indicators will also improve.

• Even when you are not directly involved in the hand.

After all, when we are already involved in the hand, we do not need reminders from the outside (or from the inside?) that we should pay attention to every detail in the opponent's behavior during the hand: from the action and his size on the preflop to the action on the river. - Since our personal money is at stake, our attention itself follows the opponent.

But when we are not playing, we are mostly indifferent to what is happening at the table. However, during this time, a lot of action also happens, which can also tell us certain information about the game of the opponent/opponents. He/they can play this way not only with their current opponent, but also by default.

Ideally, you would watch your opponent while playing a minimum of tables, that is, one and only one. If multi-tabling is a top priority no matter what, then a good alternative to one table would be to find this particular opponent at another table and watch him there as well. On small fields and/or in those rooms where the nicknames of opponents are visible right before you sit down at the table, this is not difficult at all.

The main thing is that you do not have anything that will distract you much: no YouTube, no social networks, no background video or podcast -

You are not a computer processor that can perform many tasks at the same time without losing quality, but a living person who is «allowed» by nature to do only one thing well at a time. If poker is your priority during a session (and in life in general), then take the trouble to allocate as much «hardware power» to it as possible.

Once you have thrown away your cards, continue to watch what is happening. Put yourself in the shoes of the opponent you are watching and ask yourself questions like, «What would I do if he were to make this move?»

Simple example

You folded  against an open-raise from early position, and the player in the small blind decides to call. BB folds. On a random flop, SB checks as usual, and the open-raiser checks back.

• What can you already assume from this short story?

First: SB is most likely a fish or a weak tight indistinct player who wants to collect a combination - he feels sorry to fold what he was dealt, but he is not ready to 3-bet it either. So he wants to see the flop first.

Second: The open-raiser in early position did not make a «standard» continuation bet, which is usually made with a decent range. => So, he either has a weak hand (in his opinion), or one way or another decides to transfer the fight to the turn and river, and now he is saving money. - This is the most likely option, which happens more often than others when the preflop aggressor checks back in position.

• How would you play on the turn if you were in the SB's place?

Let's skip the preflop stage - we are talking about the turn. => I would probably start attacking the opponent's weak range here and would often take the pot either right on the turn or with a second barrel on the river.

Assign colors of tags for different types of players according to their tendencies in advance in the poker room settings.

For preliminary tags like «Probably Reg» / «Probably Fish» you can additionally select 2 colors, because usually the color range in notes is quite wide. In addition, it makes sense to tag both regs and fish by their subclasses: nit / tight-passive reg / tight-aggressive reg / loose-passive reg / loose-aggressive reg / such-and-such semi-reg and so on according to your list and desire.

And the fish itself should be immediately recognized either by its inclinations (passive phone / aggressive folder, etc.), or by its approximate lose rate, because playing with a fish-overfolder, who drains only -20 bb/100, does not compare with playing against an answering machine or a maniac who would drain -150 bb/100. Playing with the first does not even beat off the rake, and playing with the second client is the key to a super-plus win rate.

• Is someone constantly buying in to 100bb and/or acting like a typical reg? - Mark them as a reg,
• Someone bought in for only 30bb out of 100bb available for buy-in? - Mark them as a fish,
• Someone 3-bet and showed  at showdown - Mark him as LAG,
• Buyed in with a crooked stack of 57bb? - Mark of a fish again ...

Regular stats have certain limits that they fit into when a player shows a stable profit in the game. Higher VPIP - a looser player, lower - a tighter one. Higher PFR - with a large number of hands, he is aggressive preflop. The AF (aggression factor) indicator for profitable and at the same time strong players also rarely exceeds 4. The greater the difference between VPIP and PFR, the more fishy and calling the player will be (but not necessarily losing on the usual field). 18/15 and AF 1-2 - usually this will be a nit, and not a TAG at all. And so on.

If VPIP exceeds 35%, then often such a player is already either a half-fish or a full-fledged fish. The higher the VPIP, the fishier the opponent.

The second least demanding parameter for the sample is PFR, which requires many more hands. And postflop statistics for turn-river often require thousands of hands. Therefore, if you see someone with 26/4 stats and 3-bet 3% for only 20 hands, do not rush to mark him as a tight fish - he could simply be in a card-dead period. It is better to mark with «preliminary» colors first, and after 50 or 100 hands, start marking thoroughly.

If someone limped in the very first hand, mark him as a fish. However, remember about the sample of hands - if after 20-30 hands his stats change to TAG ones, then he is probably a TAG. - The limp of which could have happened for any reason, except for his possible incompetence.

The vast majority of those who will read this are online players. Accordingly, you probably have a tracker, and with it a HUD, which displays information about players in the form of numbers that display the percentage frequencies of their actions. For example, the number 66 in the cell with the Flop CBet parameter indicates that the player makes a continuation bet on the flop on average 66% of the time (remember the sample). So,

After all, in the heat of the game and anger at specific opponents or in a state of excessive relaxation, we often do not look at our HUD: either laziness, or forgetting, or not believing it, or considering it irrelevant when the opponent is playing against us personally, and so on.

The numbers in the HUD tell you about the opponent's tendencies in various situations. When you know them, you can estimate in advance how the opponent will probably play against such and such a line in such and such a spot. => Accordingly, you decide how it will be more profitable for you to play.

A simple example of using HUD on the preflop

You see a player with VPIP 71%, who limped again. You were dealt A8s. - What next? How to think about it?

Most likely, he is a fish who limps, like the rest of the fish. With similar goals and for similar reasons. If you isolate him, then most likely this fish will call you with a ton of hands weaker than yours. => It is profitable for you to make this isolation and deal with him on the postflop, because he plays worse than you. => This means that you will win this pot more often both by knocking the opponent out of the hand and by going to showdown with a better kicker / having made the best hand. If you play in position, then you will have more ways to outplay the fish or play as carefully as possible.

• And in general, the position will bring you additional profit.

If you have JJ instead of A8s, you definitely isolate the fish and go to the flop. Let's say JJ is still an overpair, and you know that the fish plays fair (by his cards) on the flop. => So, you should boldly bet for value and watch how he calls with a bunch of weak hands in an already dominated range. If he calls - great, because at least he paid you off the flop. If he folds - so be it. You tried to collect value and played the best way. The rest is out of your control and don't worry about it.

I recommend that you have some space on hand where you will write down your opponent's tendencies. This can be a journal on the screen, a document, a paper notepad on the table, etc.

Start with the player immediately to your right. Use his HUD stats, his history with him, his hands at showdowns, your current notes in the poker room, etc. - everything you know about the opponent. And then - how you will exploit him based on this information. Find his most noticeable weaknesses and write them down where you have planned.

Let's say you know that on the turn against continuation bets the opponent plays very honestly. This means that the opponent's toughest leak is his huge overfold on the second barrel, which I write down. And then his exploit is second barrel as bluff (as often as possible).

Find leaks and pick 2-3 exploits for the first opponent. Then take on the one sitting in front of the already sorted one and so on until the end - the one who is immediately to your left. You should also be able to exploit out of position.

• This way, in a few minutes you will have a great plan for zeroing out your opponents.

This is the main poker question during the hand itself. We always ask ourselves this question when we are involved in the hand and on all streets of the game.

To answer it as correctly as possible, you need to collect as much information as possible. An accurate answer to the question, - «What is the opponent playing this way with?» - will help you read the strength of his hand or range as best as possible. And with time, the best exploits will come.

You defended the BB with  against a tight opener on the BU. You got lucky and the flop immediately brought a flush. You check as usual (with the plan to check-raise his c-bet from a strong range), but he bets very small.

• Question: «What is he doing this with?»

It could be one , , which is trying to bluff you. It could also be a hand like top pair, which doesn't want to inflate the pot too much on a flop that was so good for you and which just wants to see where it is now. It could also be a made hand weaker than TP, as well as complete trash, betting here out of habit. - Until you «ask your opponent to clarify», you won't understand this.

So, check-raise with a flush for thick value, as you planned. In addition, he is quite vulnerable to the fourth , and the repetition of any of the cards can scare both of you away from the action. The opponent bet-calls you on the flop . - To what hands can you now specify his range?

This may be another made flush, with which the opponent slowplays you. But given the insignificant probability that both players flopped a flush (namely, 0.84% ​​x 0.84% ​​= 0.7%), then most likely, the opponent has one or one good pair, with which he is not ready to give up the hand so easily.

On a non-spade turn, you c-bet for big, and the opponent calls again. - What does he do this with? - Most likely, this is a pair that also has a high flush draw, such as, say, top pair with a kicker  or, less often, with a kicker . The kicker  will be even less common, because a reasonable opponent will already put you on several flushes, and since the largest share of them are suited aces, he will not want to intentionally get «coolered» more often than is acceptable. So the opponent will most likely chase the fourth  when he himself has the 1st or 2nd kicker to the flush.

• But still, more often these will be made hands in the range from top pair with a good kicker to a low set.

Having thought through this situation, you gradually come to an approximate composition of his range and choose the best action (on a non-spade river, this will be the third thick value bet). Understanding the opponent's range, you extract either maximum profit from your game with him, or limit yourself to only minimal losses.

So, you've played a week's distance. Now it's time to look at who you play against most often.

I have a journal on opponents, where all their noticeable weak points are written down and how to punish opponents for them.
I track various exploits by player types and do what I already said. Again, I write exploits against a specific opponent in CAPS so that I don't have to read the small print during the hand (the journal is deployed in the background), but so that these words immediately catch my eye.

• It works great - I immediately know in detail what to do with such and such an opponent.

The cool thing is that exploits against some obvious bias in the game will work against any opponent who has this bias.

For example, large value bets will work well against all types of fish-callers (and regular fish), and in general, players with excess showdown (WTSD) will also pay off value bets well.

For example, in the journal in the picture above, I broke down the weaknesses and exploits - by opponent types. In fact, I'm just listing the leaks I found and the ways to use them most profitably. You can keep this journal for years, adding new leaks and exploits, and editing outdated information as needed. When you meet a typical target client, boom, you have a complete diagram of their exploit.

Once you create such a journal and get into the habit of keeping it, your further journey into the world of poker will be much easier and more enjoyable.

• By the way, there can be more than one exploit per leak. And vice versa.

It may not be clear to many, but at the poker table someone is always targeting someone. In other words, they are hunting for someone specific. When you open-raise, you want to take away the blinds and reduce the number of opponents. If you 3-bet, the target here is the open-raiser. When you squeeze - two piles of dead money from the open-raiser and the cold-caller. And when you 4-bet - both the one who was the 3-bettor and the one who just opened ...

Similarly, on the postflop - whoever is your opponent is the target during active action: if you c-bet, the target is the caller, if you donk-bet - it is the aggressor. And you don't have to base your bets/calls/donks/raises and folds solely on the strength of your hand.

Example in a hand

You are on the BU with . Pay attention to the tendencies of your opponents in the blinds and ask yourself a number of questions. Even before it is your turn to act.

Although someone will mostly call, but still:

• How likely is it that someone will 3-bet?
• What will you do after this 3-bet?
• If you do get called, what are the caller's postflop properties?
• What will you do postflop to win the hand without a great hand that rarely hits Q4s?

Taking into account the opponents' properties, you can plan the rest of the hand in advance:

• How will you collect value?
• How will you bluff if necessary?
• Or maybe it is better to immediately fold the hand while the pot is tiny?

The latter, for example, happens when you steal with trash from SB from a nit on BB with a fold to steal > 70%. He is sitting in position and with a clearly not so weak range. - Maybe check-fold here is the maximum +EV / breakeven-action within the flop+?

You don't have to wait for the right situation, because you can create such situations yourself. Since any action is aimed at a player, you can simply perform actions that target the exploit you want to use.

For example, you don't usually open  on middle position, but pay attention to the player in the BB position, who is likely to be the caller. Let's say you know that he is very honest on the turn, and generally overfolds to second barrels.

Dry facts say that it doesn't matter what hand we have: if the opponent seriously overfolds to the 2nd barrel, then it will still be profitable for us to increase the pot on the preflop and flop and => if he checks on the turn (and this will happen most often), => then we simply take the pot with the second barrel on the turn. And in fact, these will play out the same way as conditional .

And if both blinds fold right on the preflop, then everything is even more reliable - Hero won +1.5 bb with some «garbage» in the middle position.

Many professionals sometimes go down to limits below the working ones and start working on crazy exploits there - which are beyond the bounds of reason. For example, they play with VPIP 50, average 3-bets of 20%, without folds on the preflop/flop, after 3 barrels blindly and similar behavior. This is necessary in order to:

• «Stretch» your readiness / comfort zone and overcome fears,
• Collect statistics on such extreme exploits and draw conclusions,
• And then, repeating, gradually remove your fears in the application of these lines.

In the future, this only benefits the player.

Whether you played the last hand yourself with the opponent you were watching or it was another player, click on the replay button in the room or in the trackers and see what happened in the hand and what was shown at showdown.

Studying them both separately and as a result in the whole hand, you will begin to understand the game of your opponents much better:

• What they enter preflop with and how,
• What and how they play on the flop,
• What and how they react to counterattacks, etc.

For example, it became clear that the player entered the hand with some clearly trash hand - this is most likely a fishy player. If he was holding his trash until it opened up under strong attacks or was «executing» something deliriously, then he was already a fish twice/three times (of what type?).

And so on - as you study SD, the values ​​and habits of your opponents will become clearer to you.

I often play on Ignition Poker. 24 hours after a hand has been played, you can download it here with all players' cards fully open. By comparing, on the one hand, showdowns, your guesses, observations, and notes during the game, and on the other, the actual cards of your opponents, you can pump up your reads for a specific type of player for the future.

If you don't play on this room, and you only have a tracker to review showdowns, then when you tag «learn this lesson» / «draw conclusions», etc., then in the future, when you review these filtered hands, you will more carefully put your opponent on the range, narrowing it more accurately and confidently as the streets go by, which will gradually improve your game.

Example of analysis

Here is an example of a hand with open cards, which I mentioned above.

I am sitting in the BB position with . Here I had a great opportunity to give a positive EV and profitable at the moment open-bluff-4-bet (cold) against a 3-bet squeeze from a loose opponent.

His 3-bet squeeze size seemed to me to indicate a weak range - this squeeze size out of position at all indicates, rather, that the player wants to either seize the initiative and set his price for seeing the flop, or try to realize his meager fold equity (this will be much less common). But such a small size is almost never bet with a confident hand. But I felt his inconfidence in the hand.

• What was in the hand?
  The open-raiser bets 2.2bb, the BU calls 2.2bb (I don't know their cards at the time of the hand), and the loose-aggressive SB 3-bet-squeezes only to 7bb.

But at the moment I was not sure about the plus of the open-bluff-4-bet and folded such a hand, but marked this hand as «Learn this lesson». 24 hours later I download the hands and see how the loose-aggressive SB really 3-bet-squeezed with such a hand that would hardly hold a cold-4-bet.

This was possible because I marked this hand as worthy of special attention.

As the hand progresses, you assume that your opponent is sitting with a hand that he is not ready to play for stacks with. That is, top pair with a medium kicker or lower, or a draw hand. => He probably would not like to receive a powerful attack from me with large bet sizes. => So, I will attack him. And with large bet sizes.

• Doesn't want to get called? - Call.
• Doesn't want to get 3-bet? - 3-bet him.
• Does he want to check on the turn? - No way - load him with 3/4 of the pot.
• Doesn't want to call the third barrel with an overshove - that's exactly what you should bet.
• Wants to get to the showdown cheaply? - Deny him this pleasure.

When you 3-bet preflop with QTs in the SB and your opponent calls, then on a bunch of low flops the bulk of his range has flown above this flop in card rank. There are a lot of Ax, Kx, Qx, Jx, etc.

Question: what does your opponent want the least? - Answer: to get a big bet. => So bet it. For example, in a 3-bet pot out of position, a continuation bet larger than half the pot will look very strong and truthful. A continuation bet of 12 bb into a 20 bb pot on a low board will be just right. The opponent will probably throw away 37.5% of the range. This will already be breakeven (at least).

This is one of my favorite tips.

• Someone sees you as a nit and started stealing too much? - What doesn't he want? => Start 3-betting him more often.
• Someone isolates a fish too often? - What doesn't he want? => Start 3-betting him as a bluff. - He just wanted to play in position with a fish, not out of position under a reg.
• Someone started opening you too often? - What doesn't he want? => Move your turn/river betting range to the value part and start burying him with thin value bets. While the opponent is reflecting and not trusting himself, you will have time to win a solid number of chips from him before he switches to you.
• Has anyone started 3-betting often? - What doesn't he want? => Of course, 4-bets! - Give your opponent a hearty dose of them.

You watched your opponents, studied their game, found weaknesses and developed the best exploits, which you then wrote down in notes.

As I wrote above, in the heat of the hand, we often forget to look at the HUD or at what we wrote ourselves. So I did: I did not look / forgot / forgot and got a natural loss of the hand.

For example, I recently added to the notes of a fishy player that he cannot fold a hand with a top pair. Later, I found myself in a hand with him, where I tried to bluff him for a stack with a triple barrel. But already on the turn, based on the results of my actions and sizes, I had to convince myself that everything was over - the opponent had a top pair, which he would not fold, and that the hand was lost, and it was not worth investing another cent.

• I had to remember / know or look in the notes and see a record that he does not fold hands with a top pair. As a result, I bluffed him and got another call for the rest of the stack.

And if I had not been so lazy or just more attentive, I would have saved myself about 60% of the stack. - It's my own fault, what else can I say?

This is an axiom of poker that has been tested and proven millions of times. And you do not have to try to somehow refute it and prove that you are so strong that even without a position you can show a win rate higher than in position.

• This becomes extremely relevant against difficult, unpredictable and unpleasant opponents. This also applies to playing against objectively strong regs or those who cannot be outplayed while remaining out of position.
• Position provides an advantage in information about the opponent's last action.
• It also gives an advantage in time, because while he thinks and calculates the game in the hand, you can also come up with your own actions in response to what he might be thinking. And when it's your turn to act, you also have your own time to think. So, it's double the time to think about your actions.
• Position also gives you the opportunity for pot control, when you don't want to bet for some reason at the moment.

In general, position is the biggest fundamental advantage at the table, and actually gives you the right to the last word.

Against strong players

Try to play as many hands in position against them as possible and as few OOP as possible.

In fact, this would be the ideal option against anyone, because the EV of playing in position is always much higher than out of it, but against most opponents who are weaker than you, you can show a profit even out of position, and then you don’t have to waste time waiting for the game in position.

You don’t have to stubbornly defend the blinds against them (you are OOP) - instead, fold any hand you are not sure of and quickly switch to playing in position. Now you steal their blinds ...

Try to make as many actions as possible when you are in position: open-raise, 3-bet, 4-bet, cold-call, barreling, call-downs, etc.

• Position is the key to success. That's it, period.