Tips To Make You a Poker Beast and Make Money
Poker is not a hard game to learn. It only takes a few minutes to learn the basic rules and figure out which hands are better. The hard part is over. But it can take a lifetime to really get good at poker strategy and turn it into a way to make money.
For new players just starting out, it’s important to balance the fun and excitement of poker with the fact that if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can quickly lose a lot of money. How to get to the top of the poker world. Here are five tips to help you figure out how to play poker well.
Be Agressive
To win at poker, you have to take risks, and the only way to win big is to take big risks. Poker is a game of risk, chance, and concentration. Also, as you get better at the basics, you’ll figure out when to be more aggressive at the table.
Most of the time, many new players are just too cautious. They check to see if they should bet or raise, and they call if they should raise. When you start with a strong hand, like a high pair or A-K or A-Q, you should be more aggressive than you think. These are great starting cards, so if the table is full, try to get players with weaker hands to fold or pay more to stay in the game.
Nothing is worse than playing poker with a pair of kings and losing to someone who checked (opened) with 8-4 and hit a straight by some miracle. Make them pay to see these cards, and try to get as many people out of the pot as quickly as you can. If there are six people in a pot, your chance of winning is only 17%. Now that there are only two cards in the pot, the odds are 50/50.
Remember Human Psychology
The worst thing about playing carefully is that it makes you look like a weaker player to the other people at the table. If you rarely bet or raise, stronger players will start to put pressure on you because they know you will give in. When you make a big bet, the other players will know right away that you have a good hand, and they will all quickly fold, lowering your prize pool.
Don’t forget that playing aggressively builds big pots. If you have a good hand, the best thing to do is take as much money as you can from the table. This is also the most fun and exciting way to play poker.
Be Patient
Being aggressive doesn’t mean throwing money away on bad hands and going all-in in the hopes of getting a big card on the river. This is a sure way to cut down your stack size quickly.
One of the most basic pieces of poker advice is to fold a lot more hands than you play. Many players think that just sitting at the table while everyone else plays sounds like a terrible way to spend an evening.
Remember that the simple law of probability says that most hands dealt will lose. If you don’t have a good hand, the best thing to do is fold, and do it right away. Take the time to watch how the other people at the table play and learn from them. If you don’t have to worry about your own hand, you can pay more attention to the other people around you.
The moral of the story is to be patient and wait until the odds are in your favor. Once they are, use your aggression to go after the pot.
Keep a Sharp Eye Out
Play the player, not your cards, says an old poker saying. This is a fancy way of saying that the rules of poker depend on the situation. Most of the time, your hand is good or bad based on what the other player has. If another player has A-A, their kings will lose 82 percent of the time if they have K-K. Imagine the opposite: you have A-10 and the other person has J-J. The flop starts with 10-8-6. All of a sudden, your two 10s have only a 20% chance of winning.
How can you tell what someone else has? Players learn how to play by watching how other players do it. Suppose that you have A-A and the flop is 10-8-6. What do you think? Have you ever seen the person in front of you play strong hands passively? With your aces, you can be more careful. Have you ever seen him make big bets when “scary” cards are on the table to try to win the pot? Knowing that 10-10 is a very rare hand, you can call his bets or even raise.
Learn how to read the other players and pay attention to the “hints.” Tips don’t just include nervous habits like playing with chips or a ring like you see in movies. They also include how a person plays. If someone has been calling all night and then makes a big raise, it’s likely that they have a hand that can’t be beat.