Poker Strategy!
Tips on how to Win!
So. You've come looking for poker strategy. This is definitely the right place. Online poker is not an easy game to play, despite what you might think. Since you're sitting at a computer, and not at the table with the other players, you won't have the advantage of interpreting their body language (or "tells"), and that is one of the things that the masters of the game have studied for years to get where they are today. However, there are certain tried and true poker strategies that you can make use of whether you're playing online poker or in a live game. Here's a little list I whipped up that should give you the foundations of a good poker strategy:
- First of all, you want to make sure you don't play too many hands. By this I mean that you should fold more often than you might feel like. The pros always say "You gotta play tight", which means you must develop strict discipline an patience. You might be surprised at how many hands you'd be advised to throw away, but how do you think they got to be the pros? And the more players there are, the less chance you have of holding the winning hand, so relax, and enjoy the ride, but don't stand up on this coaster!
- If you're looking to make a bunch of money at this game, a reliable poker strategy is to find the games where the other players are not as good as you. Don't look so shocked, and remove the word guilt from your vocabulary. Replace it with guile; that's how the masters do it. When you watch a big tournament on TV, you may notice that the only thing that makes one person win and another lose is …luck. The luck of the draw is the main factor in a game where the players are basically equal, especially in online poker.
- If you want to get anywhere with basic poker strategy, you must take the time to understand odds and expectation. In poker, these numbers aren't as straight forward as in some other games at the casino, so you may have to spend a bit to quality time with the stats until they come naturally to you. You won't have time to think and consult charts in a real game, so do your learning first, win later.
- Bluffing usually takes a front seat when anyone's talking about poker strategy. It's not as important as you might think. It may be fun to fool the other players from time to time, but you shouldn't get carried away with it. Remember the little boy who cried wolf… It's actually a better idea to let the pot odds give you your bluffing cues. But don't forget that as part of your poker strategy, you might want to keep in your back pocket the occasional "discovered bluff" to use on a hand with a smaller pot. That's like a bluff of a bluff. If the other players get the idea that you are a bluffer, they may tend to stay in the game when you really DO have a good hand.
- And speaking of pot odds, you should know that they're just another way of determining expectation. You have to compare the size of the pot with how much you'd have to put in if you want to stay in the hand. Basically, when the card odds are better than the pot odds, that's the hand you should stay in. Suppose the pot has $500 in it and you have to put in $50 to keep playing. That's 10-1 pot odds. If you only have a 25-1 chance of getting an inside straight, that's when you fold. If your hand is better than the 10-1 pot odds, that's when you call.
Hopefully this little list of poker strategy helpers will be enough to get you going. Don't forget that winning is ultimately up to you, so you have to keep your head about you, and not forget some of the most basic rules. Those are the poker strategies that will serve you best in a tight spot. And above all, relax and have fun; that's what playing poker is all about!
