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July 25, 2005
The more you try to read Partypoker hands, and the closer you can come, the more successful you will be. Of course, you need to couple this detective work with taking appropriate and consistent action.
Partypoker Strategy #1- Sit and watch others bust out.
But with a draw, she would want to invite a multiway pot to get the best pot odds if she does make her hand. Using this preliminary read, you begin to build up a picture of this, and the other holdings around the table. Of course, you can be wrong (she might have decided to slow-play a set of jacks), and you need to be ready to take in contradictory information and resolve it. Your read makes an excellent beginning to your decisions regarding how (or if) to play partypoker, or whether to pay off if a draw gets there.
Acting on all of this information, you should try to build a picture. Take a five-way unraised pot. You see a flop of KhJs5s. The small blind bets and the big blind calls. If the big blind is a good partypoker player, you can pretty sure she does not have a king, but rather is on a draw. Do you see why? If she had a king, she would be very anxious to raise, and eliminate players who may have smaller pairs or gutshot draws.
Partypoker Strategy #2 - Over emphasize playing tight
You need to look at all of the showdowns, then go back and reconstruct the betting. Did this partypoker opponent three-bet pre-flop with pocket five's? Many opponents will never do it, but if this one will, you need to make a note of it. Did this opponent have a chance to raise on the turn with the nuts and not do it? You need to know who is capable of doing that. Who in your game bluffs, and who probably has not bluffed in years? Who will try to steal blinds with nothing, and who needs real values? If you bet into an ace, and your opponent has one, will he raise?
So how do you do it? Though it is well beyond the scope of this article to go into the specifics of hand reading techniques, the general concepts are well understood. First, you need to observe your opponents' tendencies. Which ones are loose and which ones are tight? Who is clever and who is clueless? Who bets draws and who only bets made hands? Does this opponent play pokerparty "by the book," or is she creative?
Pokerparty Strategy #3
Pokerparty would be an easier (if silly) game if all of the partypoker cards were dealt face up. Pros work very at trying to achieve the next best thing: figuring out their opponents' holdings based on their actions and tendencies. In reality, though it happens occasionally, most pros cannot specify a holding exactly. Putting an opponent on a range of hands, figuring the probabilities of each, and acting accordingly is normally the best one can do.
Once you get past really soft games and into middle limits, fewer partypoker players play terribly. Simply playing tight and folding hands early will not be enough to get the money. In these tougher games all successful players must become at least very good at reading hands.
Strategy #4 - Bet with both hands
Their focus is on saving bets, not on wining pots offering poor odds. Hey, if you can save 1 BB/hr, and you were breaking even before, you have achieved your goal without having to win anything new. So playing pokerparty at this level, pros respect most raises, give up big pairs they feel are beaten, give up on what might be second-best kickers early, and do not buck the odds to make draws. You can too.
If you sit around low and middle limit partypoker games and listen to the table talk, you will hear a lot of players saying things like: "I know you have me beat, but I have to call." "I had to call her, I had pocket aces." By contrast, when you listen to winning players and pros talk, the conversation centers on "How could I have gotten off that hand? I can't believe I paid him off; I must be slipping."
