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From the first time you sit down at an online poker table, your opponents will be sizing you up. They will analyze your moves, your bets, and look for your tells. If you want to have any sustained success playing online poker, you must learn how to avoid giving off these signals. To do this, you must cloak your thoughts and disguise your activities. You must also learn how to force other players to do what you want them to do, even when they think they have the best hand. Make other players out-think themselves by staying unpredictable yourself. There are five key strategies that you should use at the poker table every time you play poker online.

The first is to vary your bets. Most players follow the same betting patterns over and over again. To be unpredictable, you must vary your betting and raising patters as much as possible. Imagine you are sitting at a table where a player gets stuck in the same betting behaviour. Let’s say he is dealt a large pocket pair and he leads with a large bet - exactly as he did in the past. Now you have a great read on him. This kind of read can easily prevent you from losing a stack of your chips.

Second is to keep players out of hands. The real mark of a great poker player is the ability to win lots of small pots with their aggressive play. Forcing players out of small pots also makes sure that your opponents will see fewer of your cards. Every time your opponents see your cards, you will become a little bit more predictable. It is key that you play very aggressively to keep your cards unknown.

Thirdly, you should be sure to shift gears now and then. If you watch poker games closely, the successful players will always be the ones who switch their style from aggressive to tight throughout the game. When you are at a table, it is important that you mix up your style for a given hand and then switch your overall playing habits between loose and tight and back again.

Fourth suggestion is to use “in the dark” plays as a great way to confuse your opponents. When you play in the dark, it is very hard for your opponents to get a good read on you. When you make a move in the dark, your opponents will start to rethink their moves. Remember, a player’s first instincts are usually right (as are yours), so you want to make your competition second-guess their instincts.

Lastly, never show your cards. There are a lot of players who like to reveal their cards when they pull off a good bluff, trying to satisfy their own ego. If you’re playing texas hold ‘em to feel better about yourself, then go ahead and show your cards. But if you’re playing poker because you love the game and want to win, then don’t show your cards. When you do, players will start to understand how you behave when you bluff. No matter how hard you try, you will inevitably develop identifiable playing patterns.

The key thing to remember is not to become predictable. But, at the same time, watch your opponents for their own habits. Knowing theirs and hiding your own will help you become a better poker player.

The dealer position (known as the “button”) is the best place to sit at the poker table. Because, when you’re on the button, you get to act last after the flop, which gives you the chance to see what your opponents do first. This lets you get a read on your opponents at the table so you can decide who has a strong hand, who has a weak hand, who’s bluffing, and so on.

Late position is always preferable over early position for the reason above - since you get to see what your opponents do first before it’s your turn. Of course, being on the button is better than just plain late position, because the button guarantees that you will be the last to act post-flop. Once you understand table positions and the enormous implications, you can begin improving your positioning and setting yourself up for more pots each game. This technique is called stealing the button.

Stealing the button is creating late position for yourself when you’re not on the button - but getting all the benefits as if you were on the button. The dealer position is powerful because you are last to act post-flop. Ssecond last to act isn’t nearly as good, especially when there only three or four players to a flop at an 10-player table. A good strategy is to make a reasonable pre-flop raise when you’re in a late position, trying to force the player on the button to fold. If it works, you will be last to act after the flop - just like if you actually were on the button.

Let’s say you’re sitting two seats to the right of the button at a 10-player table. where the game is $1-2 no limit Hold ‘Em. Two players limp-in and you look at your cards and see you are holding J-9 of clubs. (The great thing about one gapper hands like this is that they’re a hidden hand, and when they hit, your opponents never see it coming.) You decide to play your J-9, but remember, there are two players behind you that will act post-flop if they both call the blinds. Now, it is your job to make sure they don’t limp in - so crank up the pressure!

So, make them think about it, make it $15 to play (nothing major, after all, you don’t have a monster of a hand) because you want to force the two players to your left to fold, which will happen most of the time. Be warned, though, they won’t always fold because sometimes they’ll have a big hand themselves, but odds are they will fold. The result is that now you have the button - not exactly, but all the advantages the button brings.

Sure enough, the two players to your left fold and the big blind is the only caller. The flop comes out 10h-8d-Ks. No flush possibilities for you here, but you’ve just flopped an open-ended straight draw just the type of flop you wanted. Now the big blind must act first - and this is where your positioning is so important. Not only do you get to see what he does first, but you have control over the situation. Since you made the pre-flop raise, he will likely check the flop to you, which gives you the chance to play aggressively and take this pot.

Sure enough, he checks, so you throw out a $30 semi-bluff. This is a bet you should make even without the open-ended straight because you made the pre-flop raise. Your opponent mucks it and you rake the chips, leaving the table wondering what you had. That’s how to steal the button and gain control of the table by improving your positioning.

We can break it down into five simple steps. First and most important, you need a playable hand. If you’re going to bluff, make it a semi-bluff by raising with a hand that has a chance to hit - something like semi-connectors. You shouldn’t raise with 9-5 offsuit or other weak hands that is more of an ego raise than a logical play. Remember, the key is to gain that extra bit of control and power by acting last after the flop.

Second, you want to force out the player on the button (and possibly the player to his right). The whole point of stealing the button is to actually steal it! If you only make a small raise that doesn’t scare anyone, you’re done. If you’re one seat to the right of the button, you want to raise enough to force the player on the button out. If you’re TWO seats to the right, then you’ve got to force out both players to your left. One of the secrets to this process is to pay attention to the pre-flop betting patterns of your opponents to the left. If you’re sitting on the right of a tight player who only sees flops when he’s got pocket pairs, then you can steal the button quite often. On the other hand, if you’re to the right of a rather loose player, you won’t be able to steal the button nearly as much.

Third, after the flop, your opponents should usually check to you - but if someone bets into you, beware. That’s a big red flag. Most players will check into you since you raised pre-flop, and when players check into, you that gives you the power to either bet and try to steal the pot right there or get a free turn card by also checking. Normally a bet is recommended, but you could check to mix it up once in a while, or if you’re getting short-stacked.

Fourth - don’t get pot-committed. Remember, stealing the button is a simple technique that improves your position and sets you up to have a better chance of winning the hand. Don’t get stupid or stubborn and bet any amount in hopes of bluffing out someone with a real hand. You have to have a playable hand to steal the button in the first place. Never bet so much that it’s painful to fold your cards after the flop.

Lastly, you don’t always need to raise to steal the button. Often the blinds will be high enough that simply calling the big blind will get you the button (this is especially true when you’re to the right of a tight player). Also, someone in front of you might raise the pot enough that all you have to do is call the raise to get the button.

You should try to steal the button when you sense weakness and want to steal the pot on a bluff or hidden hand; or when you have a good hand that you want to play post-flop.

On the other hand, you should not try to steal the button when you have a poor hand and you sense someone else has a strong hand; or if you think someone to your left will call a raise no matter what.

The most important lesson you can take away from this is to realize that winning poker all depends on the little things. Stealing the button is just one technique for setting yourself up for better positioning, it is not a major game changing strategy that will double your poker profits or anything. But, when you combine it with all the other little things - such as establishing table image, throwing out feeler bets, representing the flop at the right times, buying free cards, picking up betting patterns, spotting tells and more - that is when you will become a better poker player. And if you are lucky, you will see your poker profits go up.

Have you ever faced a situation in a tournament or ring game where you needed just one more to complete a monster hand? Have you played a nut flush draw or open-ended strait draw only to watch your hand go to the gutter? Would you like to know some time-tested methods that will allow you to complete those winning hands more often? And how to suck the most money out of your opponents when you catch those cards?

If you’ve ever invested any serious money into a pot, when a draw busts, it feels like you just got kicked right in the goolies. However, what separates a good poker player from players who think it is luck is the fact that when they make money, they cash out. And when they don’t get the cards, they get out of the hand before losing a lot of chips.

To get a good idea of the chances of catching a good draw, you need to know the odds of getting the make card. A make card is a card that completes a hand. For example, if you had 7, 8, 10, J - the make card would be a 9. If you flop an open-ended straight draw, there are 8 cards in the deck that can give you your straight. An inside strait draw has only four make cards and a flush draw can be completed with 9 different cards in the deck. This means that you can invest more money into open-ended straight draws and flush draws than you can inside straight draws.

For whatever reason, there are a lot of players who chase inside straight draws and end up wasting their chips in the process. Remember, when you are on a straight or a flush draw, odds are that you will NOT complete it - so don’t invest too many chips on the outside chance that you’ll get lucky.

Let’s say that you flop a nut-flush draw and the action checks around to you. At this point, you don’t know what anyone has. Some players would make a strong bet in this situation to buy the pot. This is a bad idea because when you are in this position, you need to see more cards in order to know you have a hand worth betting on. If you make a strong bet, you may find out the hard way that one or more other players were slow-playing their cards.

Now, a player with a solid hand makes a considerable raise over your bet. Everyone else folds, but you decide to see another card with your flush draw. The turn doesn’t help out at all. Now, your opponent makes an even larger bet than before. You can either fold and cut your losses or call the big bet with the roughly 20% chance you will catch a card. If you call and the river still doesn’t complete your hand, you are faced with the same situation. Some players will make huge bets and raises to try to buy their way out of a busted draw. This can work, but often your opponents will not be scared out by a large bet on the river unless you have been playing aggressively the entire hand.

Now, look back at your option to check before the turn card. If you checked, you get to see the turn for free. You put no money in the pot, and you discover that the turn wasn’t going to help. This time when your opponent makes a big bet after the turn, you see that the odds of catching a make card don’t merit a call, so you fold the hand without losing many chips. The difference between checking and betting before the flop means the difference between getting out of a bad situation without losing many chips, or getting pot-committed and going home early. Any time that you are looking for another card to complete your hand, you should always be looking for cheap cards.