No poker game involves reading opponents as much as No-Limit Hold’em does.  In fact, pretty much every successful No-Limit player is excellent at being able to read their opponents and make the necessary adjustments to keep pace with the table.  And keeping pace with everyone else is imperative if you are going to be unpredictable on the felt.  Here are some tips for how you can switch up your playing style in order to keep the other players guessing.

Avoid Constant Aggression

Most successful No-Limit Hold’em players employ pretty aggressive style of play.  But the problem with some aggressive players is that they maintain this aggression throughout every playing session and never switch their play up.

When this happens, there are some players who will catch on and call anything just to resist these aggressive charges.  So you’ve got to be able to perceive when others are willing to push you to the showdown and switch up your play.

Switching your Play

When you think the table is ready to call all of your semi-bluffs and second-rate hands then you’ll want to switch to a tighter playing style.  This means only playing your strong hands because it will catch a lot of other players in traps.  They’ll think you’re still playing overly aggressive and will try to challenge you which will only allow you to make even more money off of them.

Stay ahead of the Game

You can only fool other players so long with the tight play before they’ll catch on to that as well.  So in order to stay ahead of the curve, you’ll eventually have to switch back again to playing more aggressive.  Making these switches is all about noticing how the table perceives you at any given moment and changing your game accordingly.

People talk about position on the poker table all of the time such as early, middle, and late positions. One position on the poker table that rarely gets discussed is the small blind, which leads to a lot of poor play from this spot – especially when making calls.  Fortunately, you don’t have to fall into the trap of making bad plays from the small blind since this can easily be overcome by using a little strategy.

Making the Call

It’s tough to lay down your cards when a pot is full of limpers and you only need to call half a bet to stay in the hand.  In fact, many people almost always make this call no matter what cards they are holding.  However, a big problem arises when you start calling half bets with such a wide range of hands.  Just because the call is only half a bet doesn’t mean you should throw away chips with 2-7.

And even if you do make the call then it’s always possible that the big blind could raise which makes this a really bad bet when you’re playing out of position the rest of the hand.  If you do call then make sure that you actually have a chance to hit a big hand in a multi-way pot.

Hand Range

It is tough to really create a good range of cards to call with in the small blind.  Obviously with a half bet call you can use a little wider range than normal.  But you don’t want to be making calls with 10c-3c just because there is a possible flush opportunity available.

Suited connectors are always gold in this position (especially in multi-way pots), any hand with an ace will do, and regular connectors are also good to make calls with from the small blind.  As long as you’ve got something which could turn into a solid drawing hand then you should use it.