5 Things to Work on in Poker for 2021

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Looking forward to 2021, many of us are hopeful that life will return back to normal. Hopefully, we will be emerging from the pandemic and will be able to return to our normal lives in poker and beyond.

Looking ahead to next year, you can start planning now on areas of your poker game you can improve. Here are some ways you can improve your poker game in 2021.

Improve Your Six-Max Play

Short-handed NL Hold’em games are becoming more prevalent in both live and online casinos. More casinos and more online poker rooms are hosting six-max poker tournaments and cash games than ever. If your primary focus is still on full-ring or eight-handed poker, then you need to work more on your short-handed skills.

If you play poker tournaments, we recommend that you start by playing six-max sit and gos. This will help you work on your short-handed final table skills. You can then move on to multi-table tournaments. For cash games, we recommend moving down a couple of levels in stakes as you work on your six-max skills.

Spend More Time Studying

It is getting increasingly difficult to improve your poker game by only playing. Most poker players must spend time learning the game through study. There are various ways you can do this. You can read some poker strategy books or you can sign up for poker training courses.

Poker training courses are becoming less expensive than in years past as multiple companies compete for your business. You can often find awesome deals on quality training courses if you do a little digging.

Work On Your Three and Four-Betting Skills

Long gone are the days where three and four bets mean aces or kings. Now there are players that will three and four-bet with a wide variety of hands. If you’re stuck in the old school way of thinking about three and four-betting, then you have fallen behind.

Spend some time learning more about three and four-betting and how you can incorporate it into your game. There are training courses out there that can help you with this skill. It is a great way to move your game up to the next level.

Learn Other Forms of Poker

If you are only playing NL Hold’em or PL Omaha, consider expanding your poker repertoire to include other poker games. You don’t have to go drastic and jump from Hold’em to Razz, but you can pick up similar games. For example, if you play Hold’em, pick up Omaha or NL 2-7 Draw.

If you’re ready to jump into the mixed games realm, we recommend that you take things slow and learn one game at a time. At some point, put some time and study into your Stud variants as they are cornerstones of mixed games.

Work on Your Betting Patterns

If you play online poker, you know there are few physical tells from players. However, there are plenty of tells you can pick up through betting patterns. As such, you need to work on your personal betting patterns to keep your opponents guessing.

Players often get too predictable in their betting and you know what range of hands they are playing by how they are betting. If you always continuation bet and only bet later streets when you have a hand, players will pick up on that. Mix up your play so that it is less predictable.

Don’t be afraid to work on false betting pattern tells as well. There are times you can set up players by making the same moves over and over. Once it is clear players have a read on your play, use that against them to improve your earnings.