Five Simple Tips to Increase Your Poker Win Rate

20 Mar 2025

Intermediate

This material is for medium-skilled players

Poker can feel like a very difficult game or an expensive hobby at times. However, there are 5 very easy ways to make the game much more profitable and easier. If you start systematically applying the tips I will give you here, you will significantly improve your financial results and emotions from the game.

As in any other activity, in poker there are those actions that help us win, and those that only hinder us from winning and greatly complicate the gameplay.

• The red line throughout the article will be the idea of ​​​​cutting off everything unnecessary - everything that is ballast and pulls us to the bottom.

Article for online micro-limit players and low limits offline. Further - in the words of an active offline player at stakes of $5 / $10 and $10 / $25 and coach Joel Wald from the PTO Poker channel.

Many players are used to desperately protecting their vulnerable made hands when there are plenty of possible draws threatening them. This looks especially strange in multi-way pots.

For example, in a four-way pot the flop comes , and the player has . Almost every first player in this situation will think that since several players have draws, he needs to potbet immediately or even bet more than the pot.

• But this approach to betting will kill your win rate in the long run, because it is very easy for opponents to play you perfectly.

When your c-bet size screams that you have a hand no weaker than top pair with a high kicker, it will be very easy for the regular field to fold all mid-top pairs and worse hands, and continue only with two pairs+ and the strongest draws, which now have a coin flip against your actual TPTK. Even many fish will understand what they are dealing with. It is very difficult to make +EV when you are playing against hands with equal or greater equity than your current hand. It turns out that an excessively large size turns out to be more expensive.

Protecting a specific made and vulnerable hand is secondary. I recommend betting a small size here, trying to still get something from the crowd, because they will really call with a bunch of worse hands. If they raise or check-raise, you will calmly get rid of your TPTK in a multi-way pot - now you will have no remorse, because it is clear that even maniacs do not bluff with a (check-)raise into several players (well, maybe very rarely). What can we say about more adequate opponents.

If your usual strategy in multi-way pots on wet flops involves only two actions: either big continuation bets or checks, then it has (at least) two big flaws:

• By checking you don’t get value from worse hands, and you don’t prevent really bad hands from running you over,
• And by betting too big you basically isolate yourself from weaker hands that could pay, and more than one street.

A few words about knocking out really bad hands with a small continuation bet

OESD opponents on the  flop have 8 dirty outs (and 6 of them are clean), but with FD on the flop in a multi-way pot, many players will decide not to continue with a losing draw, because hitting a straight may not only be useless, but can also take away the player's entire stack, because the flush will be higher than the straight anyway. Some fish also know this and decide to fold. The same applies to middle and lower pairs of opponents who have 5 outs against you - even for a small bet on such a flop into several players, most will not continue with pairs worse than the top pair. The same words about gutshots, which have 4 outs, and even those may not help.

There you will be able to play your conditional TPTK much more effectively, which now stands more confidently against the only remaining range. If the card on the turn is blank, then you can start to collect in earnest.

Therefore, as I already mentioned, if it is impossible to protect yourself from a ton of possible draws from your opponents, you should throw special hopes off your hand and play it more «safely». When a fairly blank card comes out on the turn, you can start to collect with a more solid sizing. A non-blank card comes out - you check-call / check-back and will make a decision on the river. But often TPTK will be worthy of another call, if the board has not worsened completely, and the opponent is at least remotely familiar with aggression.

This tip is more for live poker players, but it can be useful for some online players too: for example, the auto-rebuy has failed / you are playing at an excessively high limit (not according to your bankroll) / you are playing according to the strategy of medium (or short) stacks / this is a tournament.

One way or another, your stack has shortened, let's say to 50bb. Many players would prefer to simply play it like roulette: all or nothing - a quick doubling without the hassle or an equally quick relief from suffering.

• But this is a very big mental leak that flies into serious losses.

Let's imagine a hypothetical player at the limit of $5/$10 (buy-in up to 100bb is $1,000). His average win rate is $25/hour. Let's say his stack has dropped to 50 bb, which is worth $500. - Five hundred dollars! - When a player decides to quickly play push-fold with such a stack, he risks 500 / 25 = 20 hours of his work. - For the sake of some adventure without a clear advantage in the chances of winning.

If a player is prone to such behavior, then he should urgently think about his prospects in the cash game. The blinds are not growing, there is no particular threat in waiting for a top starter and winning 5-10-...-50 blinds with him, even at the cost of several BBs until he is dealt this hand.

It's 2025. But many players still suffer from limps.

Over-limping can still be somehow justified when all three circumstances are combined:

• You are in late position, and there are already limps(es) before you,
• You have a speculative hand that needs a high SPR (effective stack to pot ratio) and space on the postflop,
• Plus you are playing with a bunch of fish-calling stations who do not fold to isolations at all, because they will not give up without seeing the flop.
• There are no players behind you who like to isolate the crowd with huge sizes.

But when there is at least the factor that you are sitting in early position and a bunch of players behind you, then you should not limp with anything.

The main disadvantages of limps

• We give up the weakness of our range - after all, we would raise good cards,
• We give up initiative, pressure and the control over the way the actual hand is played - not only can we not c-bet and make auto-profit, but we are also forced to call on an isolator, and then fold on the flop or on a later street in an already accelerated pot, losing even more.
• We cannot convincingly bluff, telling a convincing story, which, as a rule, begins with a strong starting hand.

In fact, limping has no advantages other than the imaginary one that we can drag our average or near-garbage hand into the hand with a low chance. Getting rid of the habit of limping is one of the easiest ways to shed excess ballast and increase your win rate.

This will make the game much more aggressive, give you a range advantage that will help you convince your opponents that you have the best hand again, and also help you really show your superiority in skill, because now you can see what, when and how your opponents are doing, while you are controlling the flow of the hand through bets and raises, and they are forced to play defensively with a limited range, so that sometimes even their specific two cards become clear.

In general, bets and raises help control the hand, and calls and check-calls - lose money. There are exceptions, but the tendency is that profitable poker is played from a large number of active actions.

Here we're talking about situations where you're in a free position (i.e. not the BB) and someone opens in front of you. Most players are better off not cold calling opens at all when they're not in the BB (or in the BU with fish in the blinds). And the worst positions to cold call are middle position (MP) and small blind (SB).

In the Middle Position (MP)

When you call in MP, you're in a sandwich: you have a strong range from the opener in front of you, and there are as many as 4 players behind you, each of whom can give you a 3-bet squeeze - not only because one of them could have been dealt top cards, but also because he saw profit in a bluff squeeze in this situation.

When a competent regular (or just a brave fish) sees someone cold-call an open-raise, it immediately tells him that the caller has a weak, limited range that will not withstand the pressure and will fold on some street. After all, if he had a set of strong hands, he would probably 3-bet the open-raiser, at the same time knocking out of the hand the rest of those who wanted to participate in it. But there was no 3-bet. So

It is better to imagine such calls as falling between a rock and a hard place.

Therefore, the most profitable and simple solution to this problem is to get rid of cold calls in the MP position, regardless of how aggressive the players are sitting behind you. Often, the easiest option of the game turns out to be the most problem-free, and therefore, loss-free.

On the Small Blind (SB)

This is the worst position at the table: in addition to the fact that you have to forcibly deprive yourself of -0.5 bb, the player also plays out of position on all the others. I often see how low-stakes players (including those with stats, like regulars) call both open-raises and 3-bets in the SB.

What's wrong with cold calls on the SB and what consequences do they lead to:

• No position on all trading rounds in general, which greatly complicates the entire game,
• A player on the BB can easily squeeze and Hero on the SB will find himself in a terrible position,
• When a player is lucky to get into a value hand (two pairs+) after a call, it will be very difficult for him to monetize it - he will have to donk / check-raise several opponents, which will definitely alert them, ultimately leaving Hero without the desired payment,
• If Hero on the SB decides to strengthen the cold-call range on the SB with premium starters, then in the formed multi-pot they sharply lose their potential - conditional  will often lose to draws and random hits into two pairs+, and even if they hold out, they will not receive the desired payment anyway - because they will have to intercept the initiative, despite the fact that 2+ other players see it ...

The CO (cut-off) is also not much better than the two above in terms of cold calls. As a result, there are only two positions at the poker table where calling open raises will be profitable:

• On the BB - because you have a big discount, and also because you close the bidding preflop, and
• On the BU - because you have absolute position on everyone on the entire postflop. But still, when there is an aggressive regular in the blinds, you should not call and invite him to squeeze you (by default). You can call when there are fish in the blinds.

On all other positions, cold calls will only cause you problems - they are like fat in a diet, which must be cut back significantly if you want to lose weight. And if you do not believe in the unprofitability of cold calls on the MP, CO and SB positions, you can check them on the tracker. - Was there a profit? - On a larger sample, it will change sign. Or you just have very easy opponents - but this can be cured by increasing the limits, where even many fish will start playing more adequately.

This also includes players who are not inclined to bluff on rivers - and they are the vast majority at low limits. In such situations, you don't need to look at your opponent's hand even out of curiosity - you will almost always lose if you don't have the first nuts.

A typical hand

A tight player (typical live / low stakes online player) opens from early position with a 10% range. This could be 77+, AQo+, A5s- and a suited triangle at the top of the matrix.

You call on the BB with KQo - a completely normal move.
The flop comes . - You check as standard - a tight opponent c-bets for 2/3 of the pot - you call with TP2K. - No problem, there are no more profitable actions here. Note: when such opponents increase the c-bet size on wet boards, it usually means that they have a range of value-top (TPTK+) and strong draws. That is, they do not bet anything in this situation (for example, a hand  to knock out with a rangebet), because they do not consider this a profitable idea, and in general, such an approach is not typical for them.

The turn is a blank card for the opponent's range  (it is not typical for tight opponents to c-bet big with BDFD). - You check - the opponent double-barrels a pot-bet (100% of the pot). - Now we need to filter his range again. - It is unlikely that he will bet gutshots like this, as well as second pairs and weaker, turning them, in fact, into a bluff. Top pairs with a kicker weaker than the top one (K) are also unlikely to be there. - And we come to the conclusion that the opponent's range consists of a lot of value hands (TPTK-dopers-sets) and several high-equity draws. => You call (it is still hard to find fault here, but you can't expect anything good on many rivers).

The river is the , which completes all the draws in your opponent's range. You check, hoping for a free showdown, but your opponent goes all-in. => Whatever you feel, you should put your emotions aside and think again about what happened during the hand.

Let's analyze everything step by step again

A tight opponent opened with a range width of about 10% of the best hands.

• He bet for 2/3 on a drawy flop  and saw our check-call (we are OOP and it is more difficult for us => we have a strong range).
• He bet 100% of the pot on a blank turn . You can think different things, but he definitely saw another check-call OOP against a huge size continuation bet. => Our perceived range is similar to TPGK and top monster draws or combo draws.
• He went all-in on the river, where all conceivable draws against our hands around TPGK completed, in addition to the fact that he had dopers-sets before the river. We may have a little bit of draws, but considering that people out of position usually do not drag them against pot bets, we will have very few straights and flushes left. Can the opponent level us and push dopers / sets / straights on a 3-flush river? - It is quite possible, because he will expect that we will not believe in the opponent's hit and that we will call his push with our bluff catcher.

In short, no matter what the tight opponent shows us, our hand has 0% equity, and he has a ton of hands stronger than ours and only 3-2-0 bluff combinations from AQo or other hands.

Most will stick to their hand, consider the opponent's story to be weird on the river card and will not even admit that the opponent could simply play like this with the draw part of his range. The player may think: I have , and it is a good blocker, preventing the opponent from hitting flushes and straights, blocking flush-draws that have  and straights from the  combo. => I have to call here, otherwise anyone will crush me.

In this particular hand, the opponent already had doper sets and top draws on the flop. On the turn, their number did not decrease. And on the river, one part of the range reached the nuts, and the other was pushed by the opponent with the expectation that we would not believe it. Yes, the opponent won’t bet his  like that, but he has better hands, and he will only have a pittance of bluffs, based on the very narrow starting range and the sizes of his bets on all streets.

In such situations, no matter what the opponent is doing, there simply won't be even a remotely sufficient number of hands weaker than our bluffcatcher in his range to justify calling the opponent's push.

The total numbers and the nature of the poker graph are made up of the win rate and the lose rate - your wins and losses.

Here, once again, are 5 losing habits, getting rid of which (or minimizing them), you will be able to repeatedly cut your lose rate and, as a result, the graph will greatly increase, because it is now formed mainly due to profit:

• Big bets in multi-way pots with vulnerable made hands,
• Treating a shortened stack as some kind of ballast,
• Cold calls in open positions,
• Preflop limps,
• Calls in underbluffed spots.

You don't need to thoroughly study GTO concepts and specific frequencies to win at low limits anywhere. The main source of losses for players is the five reasons listed above, which develop from early streets to late ones due to the geometric growth of the bank, as well as multiplying by the number of spots played in the wrong key.

Although each of these reasons is unprofitable in its own way, the biggest losses are still caused by calls of big bets in heavily underbluffed spots on the river. The river is the most expensive street in the game, mistakes on which affect the win rate to a huge extent, whether you like it or not.

And that's all.