Texas Hold'em
22 posts.
-
Texas Hold'em: Online vs Live, What Actually Differs
Same game, same rules, but online and live play feel nothing alike. Is it the social side, weaker opponents, or the tells you can only see in person? Six differences, one table, and the part that never changes.
-
Cash Games, Tournaments and Time-Limited Tournaments: What Changes in Taiwan
If you already play cash and MTTs, the format you will meet in Taiwan is the one you probably have not played: a tournament that ends when the clock does. What the clock changes, and what it does not.
-
Is Texas Hold'em Legal in Taiwan? No Statute Describes the Game
Tournaments are fine, cash games are not, time-limited tournaments are a grey area — that summary is wrong on the rulings. Courts decide on three facts, not on the name of the format.
-
How to Use RushCraft: What Every Screen Answers
You have downloaded it — now what. A walk through every screen in RushCraft: the question each one answers, where to open it, and what to do once you have read it.
-
Is Texas Hold'em Gambling? Start With How You Play It
Luck and variance are not the same thing as pure chance. A 60% favourite still loses five all-ins in a row; it takes thousands before the maths shows.
-
Why Texas Hold'em Is Fun, and Why Taiwan Plays It Now
Three minutes of rules, easy to start, anybody has a chance. What makes Texas Hold'em fun is that five minutes of study can beat ten years of it.
-
What a 4-Bet Is in Texas Hold'em: Do You Need AA or KK to 4-Bet?
A 4-bet is a relatively rare action, and most players only ever make one holding AA, KK, QQ or AK. Those are strong hands — but once an opponent has read the pattern, that range saves him a great deal of money.
-
What Fold to 3-Bet Is in Texas Hold'em: The 65% Ceiling Measures Your Opening Range, Not Your Nerve
Fold to 3-bet is how often you fold after opening and facing a re-raise, with a target of 65% or below and anything past 70% flagged as a serious leak. The reason it runs high is rarely timidity — play RushCraft's default practice ranges and it lands around 85%, and the problem happened back at the open. This post covers how the denominator works, where the 69% arithmetic behind the line comes from, how wide the continuing range has to be, what call 3-bet tells you, and why it is the slowest-converging number in the series.
-
The Complete Guide to Preflop Play in Texas Hold'em: Position, Ranges, Six Spots and Seven Numbers
Preflop is the one street every hand passes through, and the only one where the spots repeat often enough to be systematised. This post takes the whole thing apart: how position prices a hand, what range charts are and are not for, which button each of the six preflop spots calls for, the three sizings you need, and the seven statistics that tell you afterwards whether you got it right. The entry point for every preflop post on the site.
-
What a Cold Call Is in Texas Hold'em: The One Number With a Ceiling and No Floor, 5% or Below
A cold call is when you call a raise having put no money in yourself this round, and the target is 5% or below. It is the only statistic on the site with no lower bound — calling has never been an action worth a frequency. This post covers what it costs you (a capped range, the players it invites in behind you, a price 50% worse than the big blind's), the five conditions that decide whether this particular hand is a call, and why 50 opportunities are only enough to catch the outrageous.
-
How to Play Pocket Aces After the Flop: Low Boards, Wet Boards, and When to Keep the Pot Small
Preflop, aces are the best hand there is. Once the flop lands, that stops being automatic. Three textures: how to give an opponent a reason to pay you on a dry low board, how to charge draws on wet and monotone boards, and which flops call for deliberately keeping the pot small enough to afford.
-
How to Play Pocket Aces: Why You Should Not Just Shove
The first instinct with pocket aces is to move all in, and that is exactly how the most profitable hand in poker turns into one of the least profitable. Three preflop questions: why shoving costs you money, how to play aces at a table where nobody 3-bets and everybody calls, and whether to 3-bet or trap when someone opens in front of you.
-
What a 3-Bet Is in Texas Hold'em: The 8-12% Target Band Averages Six Different Spots
3-bet is how often you re-raise when facing exactly one raise, with a target band of 8-12%. But that single number averages away six completely different spots — against an UTG open the value hands worth re-raising are only the top 1.7%; against a button open they are 5.3%. This post covers how the denominator works, what too low and too high each cost you, why 70% is the line on your opponent's fold-to-3-bet, and how large a sample it takes before the number counts.
-
Free Texas Hold'em Preflop Range Charts: All 15 Grids, Opening and Big Blind Defence
Free 13x13 preflop range charts: opening ranges for five positions, plus the big blind's calling and 3-betting ranges against each of them — 15 grids listed in one go. Every cell is drawn from the defaults in RushCraft's preflop trainer. No signup, no email.
-
What ATS Is in Texas Hold'em: Reading Your Steal Frequency, Three Positions and Three Targets
ATS is how often you raise first in from the CO, the button or the small blind when nobody has entered the pot. At six-max the blinds take about 25bb out of you every 100 hands, and stealing is the main channel for winning it back. This post covers how the denominator works, the target band for each of the three seats, what too low and too high each mean, how to respond to an opponent's ATS, and how large a sample it takes before the number counts.
-
What VPIP Is in Texas Hold'em: It Only Becomes a Player Read Next to PFR
VPIP is how often you voluntarily put money in before the flop, and it measures how wide your range is; PFR measures how aggressive it is. What is actually useful is the gap between them. With reference values for every seat at a six-max table, three opponent profiles and what to do about each, and how many hands it takes before the number means anything at all.
-
How to Work Out Pot Odds in Texas Hold'em: Skip the Equity, Just Ask How Often You Have to Win
You are on a flush draw and your opponent bets half the pot — call or fold? Pot ÷ bet + 2 gives you how often you need to win, and comparing that with how often your draw hits settles it. Includes a threshold table for the common bet sizes and hit frequencies for six common draws.
-
The Complete Guide to Position in Texas Hold'em: Early, Middle, Late, and What IP/OOP Means
Position is two things at once — absolute position is where you are sitting (UTG/CO/BTN/blinds), relative position is IP or OOP. This post covers both: the order of action for every seat, why late position gets to play more hands, and how position decides which starting hands are worth playing at all.
-
Texas Hold'em Hand Rankings in Full: All Ten Hands, and the Five Showdowns That Cost You Money
From the royal flush down to high card — the order, the odds and real examples. The second half is the part that matters: flush against flush, how kickers are compared, whether the ace is high or low in a straight, and what to do when the board itself is the best hand. Those five are where beginners actually lose.
-
Downloading Your Natural8 Hand History: Six Steps in PokerCraft
Open PokerCraft from the Natural8 desktop client, pick a game type, set a time range, select every hand and save the file. Six steps and six screenshots, and everything you have played ends up in one file.
-
What Texas Hold'em Is: Hand Rankings, Four Streets, and Why the Blinds Exist
Using Big Two — the card game everyone in Taiwan grew up on — as the point of comparison: how Texas Hold'em ranks hands, how its four rounds of dealing and betting work, and what the small and big blind are there for in the first place.
-
A Taiwanese Software Engineer Builds an Offline Analysis Tool for Natural8 Rush & Cash: Building in Public
PT4's HUD does not work on Natural8 and the software is more complicated than I need, so I decided to write my own. This is RushCraft's first development log: the motivation, the technology choices, and the roadmap I set out with.