Each time it is your turn to act you have options. Sometimes you must decide whether to check or bet. The rest of the time you must decide whether to fold, call or raise. And if you do bet or raise, you must decide how much you will bet or how much you will raise by.
Your overall strategy is basically straightforward: Roughly speaking, when you have the best hand, you need to try to make as much money out of your opponents as possible. When you don't have the winning hand, you need to try to lose as little as possible. Being able to do this, of course, depends largely on your ability to correctly judge when you do or do not have the best hand.
Is my hand any good?
The key to answering this question in that you must look at your cards in relation to what is on the board. For example, suppose you start with the following hole cards: Qª Q§ You have a good hand. It is unlikely that anyone else has a better hand than you at this point.
Q¨ You hand has improved. You now have a set of Queens. However, if someone has JT (Jack-Ten) in their hand, they will have a straight and they will be beating you. Also, if someone has two diamonds, they will have a flush and will also be beating you. And now the river: 3¨
Now anyone with even a single diamond has a flush and even a player with JT or 45 has a straight and is beating you. Of course a set of queens is usually a good hand. You will nearly always win when you have one. However, with a board like this, you can easily be beaten and you may well have to fold your hand if anyone makes a substantial bet. So you must be careful in Hold 'Em - it is not possible to say that a set, a straight or a flush is always a good hand. It crucially depends on what is on the board.
The Nuts
A key tip when playing Hold 'Em is always to be aware of what the nuts are. This may sound like gibberish, but let me explain!
"The nuts" refers to the best possible hand at any particular time.
You need to think to yourself: "If I could have any two cards I like in my hand, what two cards would I want?" In this case, the best two cards you could have would be an Ace and a Queen (of any suit). This would give you an ace-high straight. You would have the best possible hand ("the nuts") and it would be impossible for anyone to beat you (although they might have AQ like you!). Often no-one will have the actual nuts, but you need to know what is possible and thinking of what the nuts are gives you a starting point for assessing how good your own hand is.
Of course, you will often find it difficult to decide whether or not you do have the best hand. You need to be able to "read" what your opponents have, based on all the clues they are giving you. This is something that will largely come from experience, although helpful tips can be found elsewhere on this website.
To fold, check, call, bet or raise....
You need to know a basic, sound strategy in order to get started and this is what follows.
Most of the time, you will not have the best hand. and will have to fold. Don't just call bets when you have a poor hand, hoping for a miracle. Save your money for when you do have a good hand. Sometimes you can stay in a hand for free just by checking and you should of course do this, rather than folding, if you can.
If you do believe you have the best hand, you are likely to want to bet or raise. The main point of betting is simply to get more money into a pot that you believe you are likely to win. You usually hope that someone will call, thus providing more money for you to win, although sometimes you will be happy for everyone to fold so that you can win the pot there and then.
Often a player will bet and whilst you don't have the best hand at the time, you have a chance of getting the best hand when more cards are dealt. (i.e. you hope to "draw" the best hand). In this case you may decide to call so long as it is not too expensive to do so. Clearly if you only have to call a small bet to potentially win a large pot, it migh be worth doing so. If, however, you would have to call a large bet to win a relatively small pot, it might well be better to fold.
The other reason for calling, especially on the end, is because you think you may well have the best hand, but you're not too confident about it so you don't want to raise.
So how much should you bet? In a No-Limit Hold 'Em game, you are free to bet as much as you like at any time (up to the amount you have on the table at the time), so you need to decide just how much to bet.
Imagine you have the best hand after the river card is dealt. You obviously want to bet and you want people to call you. So really it's a question of how much you can get away with. If you bet too much, everyone may fold, and you don't want that! You might get the most money by making a large bet and getting a single caller. Sometimes you can make more money by making a small bet and getting several callers. Usually, you won't know for sure that you have the best hand. If you bet, you want to be called by a worse hand - so, unless you are bluffing, you don't want to be making a bet that is so big that you will only get called if someone has a better thand than you do.
When you bet before the river, it is usually when you believe you have the best hand but other people will have a chance to outdraw you and beat you if they can see more cards. You can't stop them seeing more cards if they are determined to do so, but by betting enough you can make it expensive for them to see those cards. If they fold, you win the hand there and then. If they call, they will be doing so at unfavourable odds. They probably won't make their draw and you will make money out of them in the long-run. Be aware that if you don't bet enough, you may get several callers and the more people that call you, the more chance there is that someone will outdraw you.
Occasionally you will have a monster hand that is so good that there is almost no chance anyone can outdraw you. You want to get as much money as possible into the pot, but don't bet too much or everyone will fold.
So that basically is it! As you become a more advanced player, you will find many other reasons to bet or call. For example, you bet as a bluff or you may call when you are trying to disguise a great hand, but mostly your reasons for folding, checking, calling or betting will be as outlined above.
So let me summarise what I've said here: Although this does somewhat over-simplify things, your task at each stage of a poker hand is to work out if you have the best hand and are likely to win the hand. If you think you are going to win the hand, you then have to try and get as much money as possible out of your opponents and at the same time make it expensive for people to outdraw you - this usually involves betting or raising. If you don't think you will win the hand, you have to try and lose as little as possible - this usually involves folding your cards. If you think you have a good chance to make the best hand you may decide to call a bet and stay in the hand so long as it is not too expensive to do so.
