A BEGINNER’S GUIDE – POKER TIPS & STRATEGIES
These tips are intended for the novice poker player and apply generally to any of the poker variants.
Wait for a good starting hand
Most hands are simply not good hands so be patient and wait for a good one before you throw money into the pot. Playing too many hands is probably the single worst and most common mistake made by beginner poker players. Try to remember that playing more hands doesn’t mean winning more hands so you should be selective about the hands that your play.
Play aggressively
Once you finally get that good hand that you have waited for, play it aggressively (which is not the same as loosely). This means that that you shouldn’t be too timid but should raise or re-raise rather than always checking and finding yourself having to call someone else. And when you bet, you should bet more than the token minimum allowable bet.
Study the other players
Paying attention to your opponents is one of the best things you can do in a game of poker (once you’ve mastered how to pay attention to your own cards!). Since you’re not sitting at the poker table to observe the reactions and body language of the other players, you will have to rely on other tell tale signs to judge your opponents such as betting patterns, reaction time, speed of play and fold and flop percentages. Playing online makes it very easy to call up the statistics of other players.
Pick your game
Select the table that matches your skill and bankroll. If the limit tables that you usually play are full, don’t play at a higher limit game that you cannot afford. As the stakes rise, so too does the skill level of the players around that table.
Practice
Above all … practice! Practice! Practice! Learning to play poker well is a process and takes time and plenty of practice.
