Developed for inexperienced players who are serious about their game, this chip set strikes with a wealth of supplies. It includes 500 casino-sized chips of four colors for different value holders, 2 standard decks of cards and poker buttons for an ultimate Texas Hold’em experience.
Basic Strategy: Tips : Position : Starting Hands : Bluffing : Betting : Money Management
So this is where it all begins, a fantastic journey that is going to teach you the bread and butter strategy that you are going to need to beat friends, family and complete strangers at the poker table to help you pad your bankroll on a regular basis.
I could delve right into a strategy article here, but I am going to whet your appetite a little with a few core Texas Hold'em tips to get the ball rolling. This way we can set some basic (but easy to follow) groundwork, and then build on it as we go along. No problemo...
1] Stick to playing good cards.
As much as you might like to think that being a good poker player is playing any two cards and making money with them, it really isn't. If you are playing bad cards, you are playing bad cards... there is no two ways about it, no matter how many fancy plays you think you know.
As a potential winning poker player, you need to come to terms with the fact that you have to throw away the majority of the hands you are dealt. The ability to play the good cards and throw away the bad ones is the foundation of every winning poker player. You might see pro players on TV playing useless hands, but these shows do not truly reflect how these pros play normally (if they want to win money), so don't get sidetracked.
Have a read over the article on starting hand strategy for more information.
2] Always think about your position.
Your position at the table can have a huge influence of the outcome of a hand. You will really be amazed at how much power you have when you are acting after your opponents rather than before. The longer you play poker, the more you will start to realize how almost every play you make will be influenced by your position at the table.
You see that white dealer button on the table? Make sure you get used to keeping track of it, because playing in position (when you are acting after your opponents) more often than you play out of position will have a dramatic effect on the number of pots that you drag home.
Hands in Texas Hold'em can be won on position alone. Honestly, position is awesome.
3] Don't get addicted to bluffing.
Yes, bluffing can win you a few extra pots, but it is not the heart of winning poker strategy. First of all you need to work out how to play a hand properly, and then you can start thinking about adding extra elements to your game like the bluff. The chances are that if you are a new player, you are bluffing far too often and losing money because of it.
It is an awesome feeling to pull off a successful bluff, but as you start out learning the game and trying to make money from it, the bluff is something that is best set to the side for the time being. If a prime opportunity to bluff jumps right out at you, then by all means do what you need to take the pot. But in general, the bluff is something that should be used sparingly and only in the right situations when you are confident that it is going to work.
It's better to save your money and check, rather than lose a lot by attempting to bluff. Read up on the bluffing tips article to help you pick the right spots.
4] Learn a little bit of the maths.
No, please, don't run. The math in poker isn't that hard at all. Okay, it might take 5 or 10 minutes to get your head around some of it, but it is incredibly handy and will help you to make the most profitable decisions possible at every opportunity and earn you a lot of money. Now that's enough to get anyone wanting to learn some math!
Your first stop should be the playing flush and straight draws article, which will cover basic maths and pot odds. You don't have to read it just yet, but keep it in mind for a little further down the road.
5] Think about everything that is taking place at the poker table.
A thinking poker player is a winning poker player. The problem with poker is that if you win, it doesn't necessarily mean that you made the right play. Similarly, if you lose, it does not mean that you made the wrong play. This can make it tricky to figure out what is wrong and right when it comes to playing a good poker game, but only if you let it.
Whenever you make a decision, think about why you are doing what you are doing and what you expect to accomplish by doing this. Similarly, think about why your opponents are making the moves they make and why they could be making them. This is a great way to develop your mind and help to start seeing poker from all the angles, which is key to developing a winning poker game.
Texas Hold'em tips overview.
Okay, that's pretty much everything I wanted to say. I'm not going to drag this out for any longer, but I just want to say that if you can follow these Texas Hold'em tips closely and build upon them with the information on this site, you will eventually become a consistent winner in the game of no limit Texas Hold'em. Cool or what?
Oh, and also. Don't forget to play within your limits and exercise good money management. Otherwise you are doomed to failure, no matter how well you can play. Seriously.
Go back to the sublime Texas Hold'em guide.
How Much More Money Could
You Be Winning?
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Poker is one of the greatest games on earth. The combination of skill and luck, the psychological element, and the fact you can make money from it all help with its popularity. But in order for you to make money from poker, you need to learn how to win at poker, which is actually easier than some would suggest.
Learning how to win at Texas hold’em can be broken down into four categories. (It can probably be broken down into many more, but for the sake of simplicity we’ve opted for four.) Those categories are:
- Learn the basics
- Learn advanced concepts
- Apply your new skills
- Continue the learning process
Learn the Basics
It should go without saying that in order to discover how to win in poker, you need to learn the basics of the game. When I first started playing poker, I didn’t know anything about the game, even including what hands beat what. You’d be surprised at how many people sit in a real money game and expect to win at Texas Holdem poker without even a clear understanding of the rules and other basics.
Those basics not only include knowing the poker hand rankings so you know what beats what, but also the various positions at the poker table and how they affect your strategy, pot odds and implied pot odds, and the importance of following solid bankroll management rules. Once armed with this information, you’re ready to add a few more strings to your bow and move one step closer to discovering how to be a winning player.
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Learn Advanced Concepts
The next stage in your quest to win at poker every time is to learn some of the more advanced concepts. Fill your mind by studying such aspects of the game as three- and four-betting, as well as how to play against the various different player types — e.g., tight-aggressive, loose-aggressive, and loose-passive — because each opponent type needs to be approached with a different strategy.
One advanced concept became public knowledge in the mid-1990s when David Sklansky penned The Theory of Poker. It is in this book that you will find Sklansky’s thoughts on what he calls “The Fundamental Theorem of Poker,” which reads:
“Every time you play a hand differently from the way you would have played it if you could see all your opponents’ cards, they gain; and every time you play your hand the same way you would have played it if you could see all their cards, they lose. Conversely, every time opponents play their hands differently from the way they would have if they could see all your cards, you gain; and every time they play their hands the same way they would have played if they could see all your cards, you lose.”
This text may seem long winded, but the idea being expressed is quite simple. What the theorem is essentially saying is that the correct decision to make in any given poker situation is one that has the largest expected value, or “EV” as it is commonly abbreviated. If you were able to see your opponents’ cards, you would be able to calculate the mathematically correct decision and would win at poker every time!
Obviously, it is not possible to calculate the correct decision to mathematical certainty as poker is a game played with incomplete information. But you can use all of the available information presented to you to make a decision that would yield long-term positive results — decisions that are +EV.
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Apply Your Skills
While it is practically impossible to learn how to win at poker every time in a monetary sense, due to the luck factor, by making decisions that are +EV you actually are winning every time you play poker, at least in the long term.
As a simplified example, imagine you are heads-up with an opponent in a hand where the board reads . You hold and your opponent has accidently revealed , so you know that you need to complete your flush to win the hand. There is $100 in the pot and for some reason you opponent decides to only bet $20. In this situation you should snap-call, because even if the river is not a spade you actually gain in the long run.
Why is this the case? Because the pot odds you’re receiving are 5-to-1 (calling $20 to win $100) yet your chance of hitting your flush with one card to come is about 4.1-to-1. As the pot odds are greater than the odds of hitting the hand, you actually make money in the long run even if your flush misses! That is to say, if you faced the same choice many, many times and always chose correctly, you do stand to come out ahead thanks to your consistently “+EV” decisions. And that folks, is how to win at poker every time!
Of course, the game is more complex than that overly simply example suggests. But in essence the idea still holds. The key to how to win at poker is to make more +EV decisions that –EV ones, and then play enough for the math to make the results run true. Sadly, this can take longer than you could imagine, but it does happen eventually!
Continue the Learning Process
It may seem to an outsider that the best poker players have discovered the secret of how to win at poker every time, yet this simply isn’t true. What is true is those at the top of the pile are extremely skilled poker players, but they are also some of the hardest working people in the industry, constantly working on their game and trying to improve.
Texas Holdem Poker Deluxe Vip
One way to improve your own game vastly and increase your chances of learning to win at Texas Hold’em is to play around with different scenarios to see what the mathematically correct decision would be. Load up the PokerNews Odds Calculator and look at how much equity your hand has on different boards and against different possible hands for your opponents. There are other tools out there that allow you to see how your exact hand fares against a possible range of hands, too.
Knowing this information and being able to draw upon it while in the heat of a hand could be the difference between winning or losing at poker or losing. Always look to extract as much value as mathematically possible, if you want always to win at poker.
This article was originally published on Jan. 15, 2016. Last update: Jun. 8, 2019.
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cash game strategytournament strategyTexas hold’emno-limit hold’embeginner strategy