10 Best Poker Tips
29 June 200810 Best Poker Tips
Here are some poker tips to help improve your game. They aren’t tips on how to play specific hands, but essential tips that you will need to internalize if you want to improve your game.
1) Stay when you’re winning, leave when your losing – Avoid getting in situations where you are playing to get your money back. There are several things wrong with continuing to play at a table where you have been losing money, first you could very well be on tilt and not realize it, second, if you are losing, it might be because of bad luck. It might also be because you are playing against players more skillful than yourself. If you have been losing, and no new players sit down or old players leave, you have to consider that you are the mark at that table. Conversely, if you have been winning, you are likely on your ‘A’ game, so stick around and keep making money.
2) Observe your opponents – What you do when you aren’t in a hand can be very important to your winning. When you aren’t in a hand is the best time to watch your opponents and observe their tells. Make mental notes about who you’re playing against. Do their hands shake when they bet a big hand? Do they like to bluff and get cocky when they pull one over on someone? It is difficult to learn those things while you are in a hand, and are focused on not giving away tells and making the right moves, you need to have spotted their weaknesses ahead of time.
3) Guess your opponents hands – While you are observing your opponents, whether you are in the hand or not, you should constantly be trying to put them on hands. Would they make that play with top pair? With a flush draw? Do they have a made hand, or are they on a bluff? When you try to put players on hands, you get feedback at the end of the hand whether you were right or not. It lets you judge whether you have a good read on the player, and can be essential for you to know who you can safely bet large amounts against.
4) Change up your own style – If you see that other players are observing you, you need to shift gears and make sure you aren’t too predictable. Oftentimes you can shift gears without changing your playing style too much. Sometimes tight players will go out of their way to show a big bluff after they made it. Most opponents will only judge you on the basis of the last couple big hands you were in. Showing a big hand played contradictory to your usual style, or sitting playing tight a couple of rounds instead of ramming and jamming, can greatly throw off players reads.
5) Avoid bluffing multiple opponents – The more players you are up against, the less likely a bluff is to work. Often times, a bluff can get one player to fold, but if there are multiple players someone will eventually call and say something like “just to keep you honest.” Selective bluffing against lone opponents can be positive expected value, but against multiple opponents you should often stick to value betting.
6) Study Poker books & articles – Paying $20 for a poker book can save you a lot of money if it saves you from learning the same lesson the hard way at a poker table. Other people have taken the time to study poker for years, make mistakes, learn through trial and error, and then write it all up and print it out for you. With all the available information on poker, it is foolish to think they don’t have anything to teach you. Even if you don’t agree with everything the author has written, it can make you think what you believe the best course of action in a hand would be. Thinking it out ahead of time makes it much more likely you will make the right move at the poker table.
7) Avoid alcohol at the table – I look for tables with drunken players to play against. Players who have been drinking simply do not play as well people who are sober. They are less selective with their hands, more apt to bluff in poor spots, more likely to rebuy when they have gone broke. That is knowledge that you can use against your opponents. If you are the one drinking at the table, you opponents can use it against you.
8.) Don’t overplay marginal hands - If you have a statistical program such as poker tracker, you should check it out. Are there some seemingly strong hands that you have lost a lot of money on? Chances are, hands such as A-J, Q-J, small pocket pairs, are break even hands or small money losers. It isn’t that those hands are bad, they are above average hands, but they are easy to overplay. Marginal, middle of the road hands are often beat in any kind of big money pot. They will win a lot of small pots for you, but lose the big ones. If you get into a big pot with a marginal hand, ask yourself what your opponent could have he would be betting with. The likely answer is your outkicked or outpaired.
9) Don’t get superstitious - Try to avoid having a favorite hand, or playing against the odds because you’ve been running hot. Poker is a game of odds and of outplaying your opponents. Putting too much thought into if something is lucky or not will distract you from making the best choices for your hand.
10) Set up a poker support structure – Having friends who are interested in poker, and a spouse or girlfriend who doesn’t give you a hard time when you play, can make all the difference in the world between being a winning player or a losing player. Poker friends can help you improve your game, and keep you from turning a bad losing night into a disaster. Making sure your wife supports you is essential to ensuring your head is in the game when you play. If you haven’t taken the time to make sure the other important people in your life are on board with your poker playing, it is worth making an effort to do so.
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