No Poker laws are universally followed - there are many local customs and preferences - but the Poker laws on this site embrace the latest customs of the most expert games and are recommended for adoption. It is a tradition of Poker. They say Texas Hold'em takes five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master and it's. Poker is incredibly popular around the world. The statistics are staggering and to give you some insight into just how many people play poker, according to the World Poker Tour (or WPT), the premier brand in televised poker games, from online poker alone there are more than 60 million poker.

I help you categorize your opponents into their respective player types based on stats and tendencies. I also give some easy-to-use exploits against each.

Listen to this podcast episode #289:

You MUST Understand Player Types

“The money available to a player winning long term comes from other players’ willingness to put money into the pot with bad hands that a perfect player would not play.”

– Ed Miller in his incredible book, The Course

This is exactly why we must understand player types and assign each of our opponents to one of them.

When you’re profiling your opponents, you’re looking for weaknesses. When you see those weaknesses, you know exactly how to play against them to earn their chips. You can also selectively target the weakest players who are most likely to give you their chips.

“Attack weakness, avoid strength.”

– Ed Miller in his incredible book, The Course

You’re looking to play more hands versus weak players and avoid hands versus strong players. Battling good players can kill your profits. We’re all playing this game, at least in part, to make money. Since it’s easier to make money versus the weak, that is who you MUST go after. The key to going after them is to understand and spot each of the weak players around the table.

You must become an active observer when you’re not involved in the hand:

• If a player just open-raised from the Hijack, and it’s the first hand he’s played in 3 orbits, he’s likely a tight player who only plays the best hands.
• Maybe another player makes her 4^th limp in a row… she’s likely a Fish.
• Now a different player 3bets then triple-barrels down the streets with J8s after flopping TP. Wow! You found a loose and aggressive player.

Because you’re paying attention, you’re able to categorize each of these players and now you can use some basic exploits against each.

The 4 Common Poker Player Types

We use two different tendencies to put players into one of the 4 player types.

Tight versus Loose

A tight player plays few hands (VPIP < 20%), and a loose player plays a lot of hands (VPIP > 20%). 20% VPIP is just the cutoff percentage. Of course, players can be ultra-tight at 5% or ultra-loose at 95%.

Passive versus Aggressive

A passive player doesn’t raise preflop that often (PFR < 15%) and an aggressive player raises a lot (PFR > 15%). Again, 15% is just the cutoff with the ultra-passive player having a PFR of 1% and the mega-aggressive player at 45%.

Loose-Passive

LOOSE = Plays lots of hands; PASSIVE = prefer making checks and call; they love to see flops; they stay in way too long with weak hands and draws; #1 targets at the table; if they raise post-flop, WATCH OUT!

AKA: Fish or Calling Stations

Common VPIP/PFR Stats: 22/6, 28/5, 45/9 (Mention video in show notes detailing VPIP & PFR)

Color Coding: Green

Characteristic #1: Passively plays very wide & weak ranges. Not positionally aware.

Exploit: Play ranges that dominate theirs and isolate them (as limpers or in the blinds) whenever +EV.

Characteristics #2: Generally losing players.

Exploit: Target them and play as many hands as possible in +EV spots!

Loose-Aggressive

LOOSE = Plays lots of hands, AGGRESSIVE = prefers bets and raises; can be a high variance loser; they use the power of position yet they might not be that positionally aware when it comes to starting hands; capable of spewing chips in bad bluffing spots.

AKA: LAG, Donk or Maniac

Common VPIP/PFR Stats: 24/18, 36/24, 55/35

Color Coding: Orange

Characteristic #1: Too much aggression with weak ranges. Open-raises, iso-raises and calls too much preflop.

Exploit: Play with hands at the top of their range, and strive for IP play.

Characteristic #2: Constantly applies pressure.

Exploit: ALWAYS gauge how well the board interacts with their range. Be willing to call wider with 2nd and 3rd pair when they can be bluffing worse.

Tight-Passive

TIGHT = Plays mostly strong hands, PASSIVE = prefer checks and calls (but sometimes they’re aggressive with few calling hands); quick to fold post-flop; beware their bets and raises.

AKA: TP, Rock or Nit

Common VPIP/PFR Stats: 11/9, 11/2, 7/3

Color Coding: Red

Characteristic #1: Strong hand selection & positionally aware. Folds too often preflop and raises only strong hands.

Exploit: Play a wider but still strong range when IP. Call their raises with hands that play well post-flop and can crack big hands (good playability).

Characteristic #2: Doesn’t often fold to 3bets and 3bet = the nuts.

Exploit: 3bet and 4bet with the best hands to get value from his tight range.

Tight-Aggressive

TIGHT = Plays mostly strong hands, AGGRESSIVE = prefers bets and raises; can be winning regs; multi-tabler; quick to fold most marginal spots post-flop and when OOP.

AKA: TAG, ABC or Reg

Common VPIP/PFR Stats: 12/10, 18/13

Color Coding: Yellow

Characteristic #1: Plays multiple-tables, so they’re selective, patient and they choose the best starting hands (small & value intensive range).

Exploit: Play strong hands against them, but speculative hands can crack their strong ranges.

Characteristic #2: Quick to fold weaker pairs and draws because they see little value in these hands.

Exploit: Bet and raise to earn post-flop pots, make sure your size hits their “pain threshold” so often at 2/3 pot or more.

Here’s my challenge to you for this episode: While you’re playing your next session, set a timer to go off every 10 minutes. When it does, pick a table and think about each player there and describe all you know about them – player types, weaknesses, how to exploit, etc. This will train you to profile your opponents and it’s a great way to test that you’re paying attention.

Now it’s your turn to take action and Scooby-dooby-doo something positive for your poker game.

Support the Show

Tunisianking, Dayne Dice, Nathan Yamuder, Richard Cheason and Rosemont Tony picked up PokerTracker 4 (get it here to support the show), the best poker tracking software. I love it and use it everyday! In appreciation, I sent each of them a copy of my Smart HUD for PT4. With an ever-growing database of hands to study and all the helpful features, PT4 is the go-to software for serious poker players.

Mark Fleming, Lois Thomas, Stephan Eck, Murry T., Massimo Gramegna, Stephen Diesner and Ole Engkrok bought the Smart HUD with a 1.5 hour webinar for PokerTracker 4. It’s the best online poker HUD in the business with every critical stat in the HUD and the 7 custom popups. This is what every online player needs to maximally exploit opponents.

How Many Forms Of Poker Are There

The Poker Study Boot Camp Course was purchased by some seriously kaizen-minded poker peeps: Ram, Zeljko Arnautovic, Drew Dumpert, and Triumphnk. Thank you all so much. You’ve got your work cut out for you with this 29-day course, so good luck!

• Smart Poker Study Audiobook Excerpts - March 4, 2021
• I Am Your Poker Coach - February 16, 2021
• Counting Outs and Making Profitable Calls - February 4, 2021

As one of the oldest and most popular card games in the world, poker comes in a wide variety of different play-styles, rules, and payout ratios. Most people have heard of Texas Hold’em, as this tends to be the type most often found at both land-based and online casinos.

The most popular poker game of them all, Texas Hold’em poker is a great way for. The winner of each hand wins however many chips have gone into the pot and players are eliminated after they have lost all of their chips. The goal is to be the last remaining player or in other words to win all the chips on the table. There are several different types of tournaments with each one having a slightly different set of rules.

But poker is a diverse game that invites players of all playing styles, and learning the variants of the classic game is specially popular among those that are looking for something fresh and exciting to enjoy to add to their daily Beteasy NZ gaming sessions.

How Many Kinds Of Poker Are There

1. Texas Hold’em

The most popular variant of poker in the world, Texas Hold’em is a stable of just about every casino out there. The game is most often played at a six or nine handed table, although this can depend on the rules of the casino or poker hall. It’s also among the easiest types of poker on the market, and a live game can usually be found with ease online.

Omaha

Omaha is very similar to Texas Hold’em with a few key differences, and is the second most popular variant of the game online, favoured by players that prefer their games that generate plenty of actions. Omaha comes in two main variations: Omaha High and Omaha Hi-Lo. Newcomers will want to learn the High version before moving onto the Hi-Lo as the former tends to be much easier to learn.

Seven Card Stud

Before Texas Hold’em took the throne as king of poker, Seven Card Stud was the most widely played version among professionals. It’s often considered a more advanced variant of the game, as there is a lot more information to work with, and many argue that it requires much more skill and strategy in order to win, rather than leaving it all up to chance. Seven Card Stud can be harder to learn, and it may be a bit more difficult to find it online, but it remains a solid choice for anyone searching for a more advanced version of poker that boasts plenty of challenge.

Razz

While not nearly as popular as the other entries here, Razz is still played by plenty of players around the world. It can be confusing at first because it’s a low ball game, meaning that the player will want to try and get the lowest value hand possible rather than the highest. Apart from that, it’s incredibly easy to learn and should provide countless hours of entertaining gameplay.

Five Card Draw

Five Card Draw is arguably the simplest version of poker around, which is why it’s often the variant that new players learn the first. It’s a common game to find being played at home or at community centres, and due to its ease of learning, it’s the recommended version to seek out when learning to play for the first time.

How Many Types Of Poker Are There

How Many Different Types Of Hands Are There In Poker

Mixed Game Formats

These are tournaments and events offered by casinos where the different variants of poker are used at once, and will be rotated every few hands.

Remember when you first learned how to play no-limit hold'em? What were the very first examples of strategy you learned?

After learning the rules and order of play, probably one of the first elements of the game you learned had to do with starting hand values. You learned how..

• , , , and were best,
• , , , were pretty good,
• , , were sometimes playable,
• and , , and similar hands were junk.

From there you probably learned about the importance of position, bet sizing and pot odds, and other ideas related to postflop strategy. While you may have had help learning these concepts — from other players, by reading books and articles, or by watching instructional videos or televised poker — you probably picked up a lot of these things just by playing the game, using trial-and-error to appreciate how they work.

Along the way, many players indirectly begin to understand and appreciate differences between flop types. In fact, going back to that first lesson about starting hand values, players begin to realize that how a hand is affected by the flop has a lot to do with it being better or worse to play in the first place.

Latest slot machine jackpots. Hands like pocket aces and ace-king are good preflop, but tend to remain good after the flop, too. Those in-between hands like jack-ten suited can be good to play because of how flops improve their prospects. Meanwhile a junk hand like jack-deuce is unlikely to be helped by most flops, making it a poor starting hand.

The better no-limit hold'em players are able to think beyond how flops help or hurt their own hands. They also recognize how flops may or may not have helped their opponents, and play accordingly. Those who have gained more experience and advanced understanding of the game are able to recognize instinctively what are 'good' or 'bad' flops for everyone involved in the hand, often doing so in part by recognizing how flops fit certain categories of flop types.

Common flop types include:

• 'high' flops containing two or three high cards ( or higher)
• 'low' flops with two or three low cards ( or lower)
• 'wet' flops with coordinated cards providing flush and/or straight draws (or made flushes or straights)
• 'dry' flops with uncoordinated cards providing no draws

'High' and 'low' flops are easy enough for players to recognize. So are 'wet' and 'dry' flops, although they might deserve a quick explanation.

A flop like would be considered 'wet' because of the way the three cards provide both a flush draw (to players holding two clubs in their hands), many different straight draws, and the possibility of a made straight. Any flop with two cards of the same suit and/or two cards of consecutive rank could be considered somewhat 'wet.'

Meanwhile a flop like is 'dry' because it offers very little as far as draws are concerned — nothing but 'backdoor' draws, really, that need both the turn and river to be completed. 'Dry' flops are usually also 'rainbow' flops (with three different suits), ruling out flush draws.

Note how a 'high' or 'low' flop can either be 'wet' or 'dry' depending both on the suits and how close the rankings of the cards are.

Good players are able to draw lines between preflop action and the likelihood of these different types of flops improving players' hands.

A player showing strength preflop by raising from early position or three-betting is more likely to have a big pair or high cards than someone playing passively before the flop by calling others' raises. Thus a 'high' and 'dry' flop like is more apt to fit the preflop raiser/reraiser's range of hands, while a 'low' and 'wet' flop like is likely more favorable to the passive player calling a raise from the blinds.

How Many Different Kinds Of Poker Are There

Being able to make this step — to recognize how preflop actions begin to suggest certain hands and then connect those actions to different flop types — goes a long way toward helping players improve their postflop decision-making.

There's another way of categorizing flops that some find helpful, one having to do with the amount of expected action a flop is likely to encourage. Ed Miller has written about this approach, using the terms 'dynamic' and 'static' to describe the different flop types.

A 'dynamic' flop, explains Miller, is one that doesn't necessarily swing the advantage permanently in any player's direction, often leading to further play on the turn and/or river. Such flops are sometimes referred to as 'action flops,' given how they keep more players interested in continuing to battle for pots.

Meanwhile a 'static' flop immediately swings the advantage to one player, discouraging others from going further with the hand. In the latter case, the player with the better hand on the flop will often look to earn value while those who missed the flop will usually look to minimize losses, thus leading to less postflop action.

Miller spells out this concept in his book The Course, explaining 'that static flops are ones where hand rankings — yours and your opponents' — are unlikely to change much on the turn and river,' while 'dynamic flops are ones where hand rankings are likely to change significantly on the turn or river.'

To give examples of each, 'static' flops like or are ones that tend to ensure one player not only has the best hand on the flop, but that hand will continue to remain best on future streets. Having a king in your hand when the flop comes likely puts you ahead on the flop, and there are relatively few turn cards that will change that.

Meanwhile 'dynamic' flops like or might immediately improve a player's hand, but they also are flops for which many different turn cards can change things dramatically. You aren't necessarily too comfortable when flopping top pair of tens when the board is , given how others with draws or overcards are going to continue to be interested going forward, and have good prospects for improving to hands that will beat yours.

As Miller points out, 'high' and 'dry' flops tend to be more 'static,' although not always. Meanwhile 'low' and 'wet' flops are often more 'dynamic,' but there are many exceptions there, too. The important point is not necessarily to be clever about categorizing flops, but to understand how best to proceed when faced with these different flop types.

For example, Miller notes how having position postflop is an even greater advantage when the flop is 'dynamic.' If you're out of position and the flop comes , you might not want to continuation bet if you were the preflop raiser, or if you weren't and you're drawing, you might want to play passive initially (check-calling) to avoid getting bet out of the hand. By contrast, 'static' flops are safer, relatively speaking, for continuation bettors or for those looking to steal pots postflop with bluffs.

For more on Miller's 'dynamic' versus 'static' distinction, see his article 'A Quick Way to Think About Flop Texture.'

Figuring out how to connect players' preflop actions to different flops and deduce correctly whether or not flops are favorable to them is a much more complicated lesson to learn than was the earlier one regarding starting hand selection. But it's well worth the effort. Thinking in terms of different flop types or categories can be helpful as an initial step toward becoming more intelligent with postflop play.

How Many Kinds Of Poker Are There

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