No limit Texas Holdem is the most popular form of poker and is the game which made poker mainstream, with the World Poker Tour tournaments with millions of dollars in prize money broadcast on the telle.

While it can be tempting to just shove all your chips into the pot or in the case of online poker clicking on the all in button, you want to do so with a certain degree of judgment, and this is where No Limit Holdem strategy plays a part.

The number one goal in No Limit Holdem games is to double up by winning your opponents stack. The best way to win someone else stack is to move all in when you are confident that you have the best hand. But you want to move all in with a certain degree of deceptiveness. You do this by concealing the strength of your hand.

Set mining is very profitable because when you hit a set if there are no flushes or straights on the board, you can be pretty confident that you have the best hand. So if your opponent overplays top pair and top kicker, if you put in a re-raise they will most likely go all in and you should win the hand the majority of the time.

When getting involved in a hand in No Limit Holdem, you should always consider how deep your opponent's stack is. This will help you determine whether or not you should get involved in hand with medium strength hands, such as low and middle pockets. If you are in late position and there has been a raise and two callers, if you have 4-4 if the players already in the pot have deep stacks, then calling the raise would be a good idea because if you hit your set on the flop, you will more then likely win their stack. However, if they have relatively short stacks, then calling a raise with a mediocre hand is not a very good strategy because even if you do make a good hand, you probably won't get paid off in a big way.

Now let's talk about good starting hands. A-K is still generally a good starting hand however it's not usually a good idea to risk your entire stack pre flop with A-K. Most of the time you will be up against something like Q-Q so you are in a coin flip situation and you don't have the best of it. If you are a good poker player you should be more confident playing post flop where you can be surer whether or not you are ahead. No Limit Holdem is all about post flop play, not going all in pre flop.

Hands like A-Q and K-Q are good starting hands to make an open raise or call a raised pot, and hands like A-J off suit and K-J off suit are good hands to make an open raise however you probably don't want to call an raised pot with them. This is because other players involved in the hand have already shown strength and hands like this can often get you in kicker trouble because your opponents could have hands like A-Q or K-Q. So even if you do hit your top pair you can potentially lose your entire stack due to a worse kicker.
One of the biggest mistakes I see beginners make is overplaying their A-x or A rag hands. When playing in 6-max ring games, sure you want to be aggressive and open with a raise with any A hands, however you don't want to get involved in big pots when you don't have a good kicker because more often then not you will lose a big pot. You have to realize that with A hands, if the A hits the board, you will more then likely only win a small pot because your opponent will be scared off. And in the instances where you get action, the kicker comes into play, so if you have a hand like A-5 its no good.

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