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Featured Poker Article
Play Poker Secrets to Success If you're going to play poker, and who isn?t these days, you might as well play it well. Poker is a lot more fun when you.re winning. Now even the best poker players don.t win every time they sit down at the felt. You can.t win them all, but you can win a lot of them. Here are a few little hints to get you started playing poker to win. The most important thing to know about poker is that there is no substitute for experience. No matter how many books you read or poker shows you watch, your most important lessons will be learned right there at the poker table. You don?t have to risk a lot of money at first. Many online poker sites offer games with limits as low as $.25 and $.50. Keep in mind though that the higher the limits, the better the quality of play you are likely to encounter. While experience is the best teacher, there are a number of quality books on the market that will help improve your poker play. David Sklansky's Theory of Poker is a great starting point. It will introduce you to basic concepts such as pot odds and relative hand strengths that will tell you what hands to keep putting money in the pot with and when. The two Super/System books compiled by Doyle Brunson provide an informative overview of the various poker games you are likely to encounter. If Hold`em tournaments are your thing, Dan Harrington's two 'Harrington on Hold`em' volumes are the best around. The Harrington books get into some advanced concepts though, so you should have a decent grasp of the fundamentals before you tackle them. If you can't wait to get into action, there are a few key things you should keep in mind. Poker players are typically grouped along two dimensions: Tight to Loose and Passive to Aggressive. The looser a player is, the more hands he or she is likely to play. Passive players do a lot more flat calling, and aggressive players are usually the ones betting. The best way to play is with a tight-aggressive style. This means that you don't play that many hands, but when you do play a hand, you play it very strongly, with betting that puts pressure on your opponents to fold. It sounds easy enough, and most players will tell you they are tight aggressive, but it's harder than it seems. A good tight player is probably only going to play around two out of every ten hands (this is in a cash game, in tournament play, rising blinds will force you to loosen up your standards as you go along). That doesn't sound like too much fun. You didn't come to watch, you came to play, right? But good hands don't come around that often, and when you get involved in a pot, you?d like to have a better hand than your opponent. If he's playing a lot more hands than you are, odds are you will have a better starting hand most of the time. The bottom line is that the most important skill for you as a starting poker player, more than the ability to bluff or read tells or anything like that, is patience. If you can wait for a good hand, and if you have the discipline to fold that hand when it?s clear that someone has you beat, you'll have a big advantage over your novice opponents. So if you?re only playing 20 percent of the hands, what should you be doing the other 80 percent of the time, watching football? Absolutely not! Watch your opponents. Just because you're not in the hand doesn't mean you're out of the game. Watch the players who are in the hand. It's a great opportunity because they aren't likely to be paying too much attention to you and you can get a more honest read on them. Observe their betting patterns. If you're lucky enough to see their cards at the end, try to remember how they played the hand so that when you are in against them, you may get some clues as to what they're holding. If this seems somewhat boring to you, make a game of it. Try to guess as the hand goes along what all the players involved have. Adjust your prediction based on the play of the hand. It's quite rewarding to see someone turn over his hand on the river and find he had exactly what you calculated he would. Finally, you'll be doing yourself a favor if you keep track of your wins and losses. At some point, you'll have a feel for when you're at the top of your game, and when a game is good or bad for you to continue playing in. Until then, establishing a set amount that you will allow yourself to win or lose will help you to remain disciplined and stay within your bankroll, which will make poker a generally more fun and rewarding experience.
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Best Winning Poker Tips Volume One The first in our series of Step by Step Poker Expert Guides. We take you from beginner through advanced player levels in an easy series of learning steps which will make you a better poker player and help you walk away from the table with MORE MONEY IN YOUR POCKET! |