What is your favorite card game? Let me guess. Poker? If you could combine all of the fun of a game of poker with the unbelievable odds of winning a game of poker, wouldn’t you? Think about it, if you could learn to play the game, with all of the knowledge of a game of poker, you could probably win at poker plenty of times. Now does that sound like a problem?
Have you ever sat and played a game of poker and felt miserable because you knew you were going to get called by the other guy with the great hand? To add insult to injury, you probably thought that the game was rigged. But if you could actually learn to play poker, you would feel a lot more confident in your game.
Just learning poker is a lot of work. You need to analyze what cards you have and what cards your opponents have. You need to be able to determine, with reasonable certainty, whether you have a better hand than your opponent. It takes a lot of time and effort to learn how to play poker.
But you can learn how to win at poker, step-by-step, by making a few changes in your thinking. Here are four of the easiest ways to win at poker.
- Don’t be afraid to bluff. If you think your hand is really good, and that the bluff you just performed was really effective, you can play a little longer. There are more tables at casinos, and there are more players, so you will have a harder time keeping your deception under cover. But, the uncomfortable feeling of having to bluff so often, combined with the desire to Survival, can cause you to play too long and gamble too much.
- Stop playing when you have nothing. Poker, even in its most simplistic form, is based on math. If you have nothing, you have nothing. It doesn’t matter if you have a great hand or a terrible one, if you don’t have anything you probably shouldn’t be playing.
As simple as it may sound, to many people, bluffing is the single most important aspect of poker. If you can’t bluff, you are crippled, at least in the beginning, and you will have trouble succeeding in the middle and later stages. Bluffing, more than any other skill, can tip the game to your favor, as well asyour luck.
- Know your position. Many poker players, particularly those playing at multiple tables, don’t know what their position (how close to the dealer button they are) is. Certain things to remember: your strategy will change in specific situations, specific cards have different strength at specific times, and your position can named old makers some disadvantages-card counters have the disadvantage that the player directly to their left may be under the gun (MPO500).
- Fold a lot! Familiarize yourself with the feel of the game, when you are in the late position and you are last to act. When you are in the late position, you have more information than players in the early position, and you can play a wider variety of hands.
- Know your opponents. You will need to spend some time during a game reading your opponents, to determine their general nature and playing styles. Are they tight aggressive, loose passive, watchdogs, or don’t care what they click on, they will play against anything 50/50 at least 95% of the time. If you can identify your opponents by their hand selection and playing styles, you can play differently according to them. One of the most important factors to start building a mindset for your game is to pay attention to the other players at the table. Be aware of which players like to raise, which players like to bluff, who uses a push offer, who likes to play efficiently tight, etc. There are too many books and articles about how to play poker, but only a handful of very valuable information. Spend some time watching, learning, and playing your opponents. If you can identify what they are doing, you know exactly how much or little your hand is worth when you get involved in a pot.