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How You Win at Online NL Hold'em

There is really only one reason that good players can make money playing NL Holdem cash games. It's because inferior opponents are willing to lose their chip stack while holding only one pair. This is affectionately referred to by the pros as donking off your stack. Usually it's a very good pair that seems worth the play, such as an overpair or top pair with the best kicker. You aren't one of those players, are you?

Professionals know not to lose all their chips with just one pair, no matter how great that pair seems. The exception might be when you are holding aces and you are against a weak player with a board like K742 on the Turn - then it might be worth calling an all-in raise. Then again, it might not! You want to be the player with 77 against pocket aces in this example, assuming it wasn't expensive to see the flop. It's a good policy to just never put your stack in there with only one pair, even aces on this board.

If you already have more than half your stack in there on the turn, it's going to be difficult to get away from and you probably should call the raise. This shows why you need to keep the pot size small when holding one pair after the flop. If you put in a nice sized preflop raise and then bet 20% of your stack on the flop and get a call, you are treading on dangerous ground if you bet again. Conventional logic says to bet about half of your remaining chips if your are making pot sized bets, and somebody with two pair or a set is about to pick you off. It might be better to check and see what they do.

A better way to avoid this problem is to bet smaller. Forget pot-sized bets. Bet 60-75% of the pot size as your standard bet. This lets you steal pots cheaply, as nobody can read the strength of your hand by the size of your bet. They will be more likely to put in a big raise against you with top-pair big-kicker, and when you call they are in trouble. You'll likely get the rest of their chips on the next betting round.

You want exposure to more players, not less. The more players you encounter the more chances you'll have to find the poor players who will lose their stacks with one pair. For that reason I recommend playing full 9-handed tables, not the smaller 6-handed games. Just play solid poker, get the weaker players to donk their stack off to you, and play a break-even game the rest of the time. That's winning poker.

Note: This advice is for cash games, not tournaments