Online Poker Strategy Guide: 6 Top Online Poker Tips

Give yourself the best chance to win at Poker by reading our 6 top tips. Can you afford not to learn these different strategies before playing at The Clubhouse Casino?

You don’t need an online poker strategy to have fun at Clubhouse Casino, but it can certainly help. As anyone with any experience of online casino gaming will tell you, nothing is guaranteed. You can get tips from the best poker strategy sites and confidently place a bet assuming you’re going to win every time, but that’s not reality.

The best online poker strategy tips can help you maximise your potential. What they can’t do, however, is guarantee you a profit every time you play. This is because variants such as Caribbean Stud or Deuces Wild video poker are casino games just like roulette and blackjack.

This means you’re playing against the house and, we’re sorry to say, at a slight statistical disadvantage. Don’t worry though, because the house edge (a casino’s advantage) is calculated over 100,000+ hands. In other words, it doesn’t mean you’ll lose every hand.

In fact, results can vary. You can go on a winning run for five years or you could be up and down over the course of a week. The unpredictability of casino games is what makes them exciting. It also means you’re never completely out of the race.

That’s why certain poker betting strategy tips can be useful. Again, you don’t have to learn poker strategy to play our games but having a plan can help you improve your potential. For example, if you don’t know the hand rankings in poker, how are you ever going to make the right decisions?

This simple poker strategy is just one way you can give yourself the best chance of beating the dealer. So, if you’re ready to take on our dealers in a battle of decisions and timing, scroll down for our comprehensive online poker strategy guide.

Online Poker Strategy Tip #1: Know the Rules

Before you can even think about intermediate poker strategy or advanced poker strategy, you need to master the basics. The most important of all the basics are the rules. If you don’t know how to play, you’ll probably never win.

You can read our guide to live poker to get an overview of the games you can play at Clubhouse Casino. This will give you a solid foundation, but don’t stop there. Load up the game you’re interested in and tap the information button.

This will call up a boxout that gives you a complete breakdown of the rules, the hand rankings, the betting limit and any special quirks of the game. Once you’ve done that, play the free demo game if that’s possible. Alternatively watch a live poker game from the side lines for a few rounds to get a feel for how things run.

Online Poker Strategy Tip #2: Know the Rankings

In the same way you need to know the rules, you can’t play live poker online without knowing the hand rankings. The aim of all online casino poker games is to make a ranked poker hand.

Some games require you to make a hand strong enough to beat the dealer. Some require you to make a hand strong enough to be ranked on the prize board, and other games, such as Bet on Poker, require you to back the winning hand.

Whatever the specific structure, the overall aim is to play for a ranked hand. Therefore, another simple poker strategy you need to master before you play is to learn the rankings. Fortunately, they’re easy to learn. In fact, you can refer to this guide and the table below whenever you need to refresh your mind:

 HandExample
StrongestRoyal Flush 10s, Js, Qs, Ks, As (all the same suit)
 Straight Flush Five cards of the same suit in consecutive order e.g. 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s
 Four of a Kind Four matching cards e.g. Qc, Qd, Qs, Qh
 Full House Three of a kind + a pair e.g. As, Ah, Ad, 2s, 2c
 Flush Any five cards of the same suit e.g. 2d, 5d, Jd, Kd, 3d
 Straight Five cards in consecutive order e.g. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
 Three of a Kind Three matching cards Js, Jd, Jh, X, X
 Two Pair A pair + a pair e.g. 3d, 3s, 9d, 9s, X
 Pair Two matching cards e.g. 3d, 3h, X, X, X
WeakestHigh Card No other ranked hand, so your highest card is used

Online Poker Strategy Tip #3: Know the Payouts

Knowing the hands you can make is important but knowing which one to shoot for in any given situation requires you to consider two things: the payouts and the odds. We’ll explain the odds in the section below. Before that, you need to understand the concept of value.

Each hand you aim for has a certain amount of value. For example, a royal flush has the best payout because it’s the hardest hand to hit. Because of this, you need to evaluate all the potential hands you can make with your starting cards and aim for the one offering the most value.

For example, let’s say you have three cards of the same suit and a pair. You need to think about whether it’s worth holding the pair and trying for hands such as two pairs and three of a kind. Or should you hold three cards of the same suit and try for a flush.

You can look at the payout potential of these hands to help guide your decision. Flushes are worth more but harder to hit. What’s more, with a pair, you’ve already got a prize so you’re just trying to win a better one. This is why knowing the payouts should be part of your online poker strategy.

Online Poker Strategy Tip #4: Know the Maths

You can also use maths in conjunction with payout potential to assess which hands you should chase. Basically, each possible outcome has a probability. For example, if you’ve got four cards of the same suit and the game you’re playing uses 6 decks, we know the following:

  • There are 13 cards of the same suit in each deck
  • There are 6 decks in play, which means there are (13 X 6) 78 cards of the same suit at the start of a game
  • 4 of the 78 cards on display, which means there are 74 left undealt
  • There are 6 decks of 52 cards in the game, which means there are 312 cards
  • 5 of the 312 cards have been dealt, which means 307 are undealt
  • 74 of the 307 cards you can hit will give you a flush – 74/307 X 100 = 24%

Based on the maths, you have a 24% of hitting your flush in this hand. As you can see, understanding the numbers involved in casino poker is important.

In fact, you can take things further and look at the probability of your hand beating the dealer’s hand based on what you’ve got vs. the card/s they’re showing. You can find all sorts of poker odds calculators online for the types of drawing calculation we’ve shown, as well as hand match-ups.

Online Poker Strategy Tip #5: Know When to Hold and When to Fold

All online poker strategy tips are ultimately driving towards answering one question: should you hold or fold? There are some games where holding and folding isn’t necessary. For example, in video poker, you’re not playing against a dealer. Therefore, you just need to know which hands to aim for.

However, in online casino poker games where you have to make an ante bet then decide whether to play or fold, you need a basic strategy. Using payouts and the maths of poker is important. However, it’s also useful to have some rules of thumb as a starting point.

With this in mind, the best poker strategy sites recommend you hold and fold in the following situations when you’re playing Caribbean Stud:

  • Play if you have a pair or better
  • Fold if your hand doesn’t contain an ace and a king

There are times when these rules don’t apply. They may also be modified depending on a game’s rules. However, in general, these should be the requirements you use when it comes to holding and folding.

Online Poker Strategy Tip #6: Know Your Bets

Money management is an important part of any online or live poker strategy. It doesn’t matter if you’re playing 3-card Stud or you need a 5 card poker strategy, the importance of sizing your bets correctly can’t be understated.

Put simply, you should never bet more than you can afford. Specifically, the amount you take into any online poker game should be a small percentage of your bankroll. This percentage can vary depending on how risk-averse you are.

However, as a general rule, you shouldn’t have more than 1%-5% of your bankroll on the line in any given session. So, let’s say you’ve got €1,000 set aside to play casino games. This should be money you can afford to lose if everything went wrong (we’re not saying you will lose).

You’ve read about spin poker strategy, as well as other poker game strategy, and you decide to play. You choose Caribbean Stud. Based on our bankroll rules, you should take no more than €50 to the table. Doing this will prevent you from losing too much if things go wrong.

In terms of when to stop playing, everyone’s online poker cash game strategy can vary. We believe it’s best to be conservative, so stopping when you win or lose 50% of your starting stake is a good rule of thumb. You may want to adjust this based on your own circumstances, but also keep in mind that you shouldn’t bet more than you can afford. Moreover, it’s never a good idea to chase losses.

Play Poker at The Clubhouse Casino

With the strategies and tips we’ve laid out above, our online poker tips strategy guide should have everything you need to get started. As you can see, there are no magic tricks or special moves you can make to overcome the uncertainty of casino gaming. What you can do though is play sensibly, know the moves you can make and think logically.

Do this and you’ll have the best chance of getting maximum value from our casino poker games. With that being said, the only thing left to do now is put on your best poker face, join Clubhouse Casino and ante up via your computer or mobile.