How To Be Good At Online Poker
How To Play Poker Tips Select the right game for your skill level and pocket: Don't jump into a game with higher stakes just because you just won an easier one.It's better to be the best player at an easier table than the loser at the harder one. As the beginner further transitions to playing online poker, other upgrades can be of assistance towards to goal of maximizing one's profits online. A large, high resolution monitor can reduce. Tip 10: Develop A Good 3betting Strategy. Whilst 3 betting aggressively is a strategy many players employ, especially in online poker circles, failure to apply optimal 3 betting strategies has certainly led to a lot of spewy poker. Simply attacking opponents who are suspected of opening wide doesn't cut it in the modern poker world.
You’re 23 years old, and you’ve been playing poker for small stakes since you were in your teens. You’ve played home games with your dad, you’ve played with your buddies at the lake house in the summer, and you’ve gotten in a few hours at the local casino.
You love playing poker, but you don’t take it too seriously.
But for some reason, the last time you played, you thought—maybe I could get good at this. Maybe I could play in some big tournaments—maybe even the World Series of Poker.
If that describes you, this advice on how to become a better poker player is aimed at you:
1- Understand How Hard It Is to Make a Living Playing Poker
It’s easy to start having visions of sugar plums dancing in your head when you start thinking about making a living as a poker player. After all, you’re winning on a regular basis now, right?
Think again.
Poker, especially Texas holdem, is not just a game of skill. It’s not chess.
It’s also a game of chance.
In the long run, yeah, the most skilled players win money.
But in the short run, some players just get luck—even if they’re lousy.
I’m not saying you’re a lousy player. You might be pretty good.
But I do know that most beginning poker players overestimate their skill level. They read a book or 2, play a few hands online, and soon they start thinking they’re the next Daniel Negreanu or Doyle Brunson.
How To Become Good At Online Poker
To be a pro player, you not only need to be a long-term winner, but you need to be profitable enough to also pay your bills. This means lots of study and lots of practice. It also means lots of record-keeping.
I read somewhere that at least one online poker room tracked how many of its players showed a profit over a 12-month period.
What percentage would you think to show a net profit after 12 months of play?
My guess would have been 20%.
I’d have been dead-wrong, too.
And of those players, some of them were surely only barely on the profitable side. You can’t be “barely profitable” and make a living at poker.
Of course, earning a living playing poker isn’t the end-all, be-all goal for becoming a better poker player.
Your goals are as individual as you are. Maybe you just want to improve your chances of coming home a winner after a weekend at the cardroom. Maybe you just want a shot at the big money in the World Series of Poker.
Heck, maybe you just want to slow down the bleeding.
No matter what your goal, improving your skill level will help you achieve it. The rest of this post offers specific advice for how to do just that.
2- Read at Least One Good Poker Book to Start With
You’re probably not as well-educated about poker as you think. If you’ve never read a single book on poker, you should start with 2 books:
The first is The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky. It covers most of the fundamentals of strategy that everyone should understand—outs, pot odds, position, bluffing, tightness, and aggression. No matter what game you specialize in, this should be on your nightstand.
Then you should read a book about whatever specific kind of poker you play the most. Limit holdem is a different game than no limit holdem. Tournament holdem is different from ring game holdem. Your choice of book should account for that.
If you play small stakes, limit holdem, you should read Small Stakes Holdem by Ed Miller. This is a great starting point for a poker hobby, too—if you don’t know what game you want to specialize in, this might be a good place to start.
If you play limit holdem for higher stakes, Holdem Poker for Advanced Players, by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth is a good place to start.
If you specialize in no limit holdem, the Doyle Brunson section on no limit in Super/System is excellent. Ed Miller also has a book about no limit holdem worth your time. It’s called No Limit Holdem: Theory and Practice.
If you specialize in tournaments, Tournament Poker for Advanced Players is a must-read. Harrington on Holdem is also essential reading.
You can find good poker books from Two Plus Two Publishing on almost any variety of poker game, but more obscure games might require some searching for a different publisher with more diverse titles.
3- Start Paying More Attention at the Tables
One of the biggest leaks in my game, when I got started, was not paying enough attention at the table. In fact, if I weren’t involved in a hand, I just watched television or chatted with the other players.
Truth be told, that’s still a big leak in my game.
If you can pick up ANYTHING at all about your opponents’ tendencies, it can help you get a few more percentage points of expected value on a future hand.
At the very least, you should know which players at the table are bluffers, which ones are loose, which players are tight, and which players are aggressive. Then behave accordingly.
I was in a game in Vegas with a player from Dallas who was nicknamed Rock. (I think his real name was “Raq” or something like that.) At any rate, I knew he was a tight-aggressive player.
We were playing no limit in Vegas, and he fired off a raise from early position. I have AK offsuit, so I re-raised. When it got back to him, he went all-in.
I should have folded. I knew him well enough to know that he had at least a pair of kings in the hole.
I called, though, and of course, he had pocket aces and took down the pot at the showdown.
That’s not an example of paying attention versus not paying attention, but it’s a good example of how understanding the other players’ tendencies should inform your playing decisions. If you don’t pay attention, you won’t know what the other players’ tendencies are.
4- Tighten Up Your Game and Become More Aggressive
Any beginner article about poker strategy is going to explain the difference between tight and loose players. It will also explain the difference between passivity and aggression.
Your goal is to become a tight aggressive player.
If you’re still new to the game, you’re probably not playing tight enough or aggressive enough.
Luckily, those tendencies are easy to fix:
Just fold more often.
When you do play in a hand, bet or raise. If you never called a bet again—just raised—you’d probably still be able to profit as a poker player.
Most new poker players learn to fold early in the hand really fast.
It takes them longer to learn how to fold on the later rounds. Once they get involved in a pot, they like to see it through to the end.
5- Change Your Mindset
If you want to improve your poker game, you probably need to change your mindset. Many beginner poker players are gamblers. They want to get in there and win pots.
That’s the wrong mindset if you want to win.
If you want to improve your poker game, change your mindset to that of someone who’s happy to wait patiently for profitable opportunities.
Don’t just exercise this new mindset at the poker table, either. Think about this mindset and commitment the next time you want to place a single-number bet at the roulette table, or the next time you want to bet the hard eight in craps.
You also need to stop worrying about whether you win or lose money on a single, specific hand. Bad beats are an inevitable part of the game. If they weren’t, you wouldn’t have any profitable opportunities.
You make your money in poker from other players’ mistakes. When they make a bad decision and win money, the game has just given them positive reinforcement for their mistakes. In the long run, this will make you more profitable.
6- Start Hosting a Game at Your House
Few things are more enjoyable in life than hosting a home poker game. If you’re committed to being the best player in your home game, you can see profits from that which will be far superior to what you’ll see at the casino.
Players are more likely to play drunk at your home game. There’s no rake to cut into your potential profits. People are more relaxed and willing to play dumb games that are easier for you to adjust to.
If you’re not sure how to host your own home poker game, you can find plenty of reasonably comprehensive guides to doing so on the web. You can also read Poker Night by John Vorhaus, which is one of the more entertaining guides to home poker available.
If you’re serious about being profitable, don’t waste a fortune on snacks and drinks. But spend enough money on snacks and drinks that people enjoy your game and are willing to come back for more action next week.
Just like the car salesman who wants to sell you 10 cars over the next 20 years, you want to win $20 or $50 from your opponents 50 weeks out of the year—not $100 or $200 once a year.
Part of keeping those players coming back is playing the part of good host.
7- Start Writing About the Game
To write clearly about a subject, you first need to be able to think clearly about a subject. This is as true of poker as it is of any other endeavor. This doesn’t mean you need to write a book, though.
Writing about poker can be as simple as keeping a poker diary or a poker journal. You should be keeping careful records of your wins and losses anyway because that’s how you keep score in poker.
But writing little letters to yourself about how you’re doing can help you improve in ways that you can’t imagine.
The act of writing stimulates thought and ideas. If you want to improve at poker, you have to think about the game. There’s no way to get around it.
But you don’t want just to sit and daydream, either.
Journaling is only one option, though. You could also start writing and publishing a blog about your experiences playing poker. This can help you make money by selling advertising on the internet, too. If your blog becomes popular, you should start seeing people comment there, also.
This makes every blog post you write a conversation started.
Getting into meaningful discussions about the game will improve your understanding of it, too.
You might even try participating in some poker forums, while you’re at it.
And if you want to write a book someday, well, that’s a great idea, too.
8- Get a Mentor
The smartest thing I ever did in my business life was to find a mentor. I’ve had several, of course, but I had one formal mentorship where I paid my writing and gambling webmaster mentor 10% of my earnings for a few years while he taught me the business.
This was a win for both of us. He told me what to do and what mistakes to avoid. I sent him money that he didn’t have to work hard for. We both enjoyed the relationship, and we remain good friends.
I don’t take my poker game as seriously as I took building my business, but if I did, I’d find a mentor or coach who’d achieved what I wanted to accomplish as a poker player.
Finding a role model who can point out potential mistakes along the path toward achieving your goals is a good idea no matter what you’re trying to accomplish.
It can really shorten your learning curve, too.
9- Play With a Buddy
I sort of had a poker mentor for a while, but he was really just a college buddy who had started playing. He took the game more seriously than I did, and we had a lot of fun playing in the games in the underground cardrooms in Dallas. He went on to play professionally for several years, although I think he has a “real job” again now.
Okay, I have to make an admission. I Googled my old buddy and found his LinkedIn profile, and I guess he’s still playing poker professionally and has been for 15+ years. I guess those good times in Dallas were a while back now.
The advantages of having a buddy to play with are varied. It gives you someone to discuss the game with. It also provides you with company, which can lead to you spending more time at the tables. If he’s a good friend, he can provide encouragement and helpful advice.
I learned a lot from my experiences playing with my best poker buddy, but I’ve had several other poker buddies through the years. I learned something different from each of them.
10- Learn Some of the Math Behind the Game
Most people hate math. I hate to break it to you, but you can’t become an elite poker player without at least some familiarity with the math behind the game.
I think you might have an easier time with this kind of math than algebra or geometry because of its practical application.
Taking your poker game to the next level inevitably means taking your mastery of the math to the next level, too.
Conclusion
You can become a better poker player. That might not involve becoming a profitable poker player, but even if it means having more fun while losing less money, it’s a worthwhile goal.
What tips and advice can you offer someone who wants to become a better poker player?