Most cash game poker players spend their time playing play No Limit Texas Hold’em. If you want to play No Limit Hold’em, you need to first establish a bankroll before you can even sit down and play the game. Once you have a bankroll that is large enough to play at the stakes you want, you can sit down at the table and start playing.
When you initially sit down at a cash table you need to observe the other poker players and determine their playing styles and table images as you will need to adjust your play based on how you expect them to play and react to every situation.
Typically the most effective strategy when you first sit down and join a cash table is to take the conservative approach and exploitative line of folding against unknown players. That is until you know exactly how they play; you can exploit them and take them to the bank.
Once you find out who is tight and who is a loose maniac in the cash game you’re playing, you can begin gauging the players you want to play against. This vital information will tell you how you should play against them in the most optimal ways, including how light you can stack off versus different fish.
Generally speaking, when playing in no limit hold’em cash games your hand selection in early position needs to be very tight and you should only play the top hands. For instance, a range such as (AA-TT, AK-AJ, KQ) is always playable. However, since position is very important in cash games, if there has not been a raise before you, you can definitely open a wider range of hands.
Although it seems like you can be getting implied odds because fish don’t like to fold pairs, you shouldn’t be risking your chips on marginal holdings and drawing hands when you’re not getting the right price. By playing tight you can really capitalize on your strong hands and since the majority of players in low limit games aren’t consciously keeping note of how you’re playing, you will still get paid off big time even if you’ve been playing tight for the last hour!
With that being said, playing tight doesn’t mean always folding pre-flop and post-flop. Before the flop there will be many scenarios where you can call with speculative hands to flop big and win a big pot. After the flop if you play fit or fold poker, you will face the problem of not having a paired hand around 2/3 of the time on the flop, which is a losing proposition if you were to fold every time you didn’t have a hand.
When bluffing and mixing up your play it is important that you play the player. For example, if you were going for a continuation bet bluff when you’ve completely whiffed with KQ and the flop comes down T-6-3, it would make little sense c-betting here if your opponent has shown a tendency to always call cbets.
For the most part you need to learn how to be disciplined and stick to your overall strategy of playing tight and being patient when the cards aren’t going your way, because when you try to buy pots you’re only going to get yourself in a sticky situation. If you don’t have patience at the poker table then it will be impossible to play at a winning level.