If there’s one thing that poker players hate doing, it would have to be folding. Especially the new players that come from a lifestyle where they’re used to being large and in charge, so to speak. When you’re used to making all of the decisions, that pride and tough spirit can translate over into your poker game. Remember that your overall mood affects your poker game a lot more than you might think. If you’re not careful, you’ll end up pushing in when you really should have folded, which means that you’re not going to play your best game. Staying in the game as long as possible is really the ultimate goal in poker — especially if we’re talking tournaments of any kind. We’re partially to Sit-n-Go’s (SnGs) ourselves, but any tournament needs to be taken this seriously.

Even when it’s just you at a regular table where you can buy in over and over again, you still want to make sure that you’re folding at the proper times. Simply put, you’re going to want to fold when you know that you don’t have a good hand. Knowing your starting hands is a good thing, but there are some hands that are just universally known as terrible. For example, there’s our favorite, the 7-2 off-suit (72o). It’s a terrible set of hole cards because the chances of a straight aren’t really there, and because the cards aren’t suited they can’t contribute to a flush.

The more you learn about the worst hands, the more automatic your game will become. You won’t even think about hitting a lucky break and catching 7 – 7 – 2 on the flop, or anything else that would give you a big push to try to jump in and claim the pot. It’s smarter to fold, but it can really prick at your spirit to fold. Trust us — we’ve been there, and we have learned it really doesn’t have to be this way.

The smart poker paler sets his ego at the door. Sure, you can turn on the WSOP and find cocky players doing things in a big way, but they are light-years ahead of you right now. To get where they’re at, you’re going to need to want to be there. You’re going to need to be patient. And that means you’re going to need to make sure that you’re folding your hands — not your spirit!

If you want to be a great poker player, you gotta have dreams.
If you want to be a great poker player, you gotta have goals.

We’re not trying to be contradictory on purpose, but a lot of people will not understand that there is actually truth is both statements. Sure, you need to have the dream of being a better poker player than where you are because you really don’t want to end up not being able to get anything accomplished in the grand scheme of things.

Yet there is a point where dreams have to give way to reality. It’s okay to have dreams, but you’re going to need to build realistic poker goals in order to get there. For example, sure, you might want to become a professional poker player, but playing an hour a week isn’t going to really get you there. It’s nice if you really want to just break away from the stress and strain of the day, but you will definitely want to do more than that. You’re going to want to make sure that you actually read into the theories of poker.

You want to talk with people that are willing to teach you more about poker as an experience and not just a theory. Poker is a game of skill, but it’s something that you do — not just read about. If all you’re going to do is read, you’re not going to be able to reach your goals at all.

Tracking your goal is just as important as setting one. You will want to have a few statistics about your gameplay and also look for the things that you’re doing wrong. You might find that you’re going all in too much and busting out too early, or that you’re not folding bad hands often enough.

These are two mistakes that a lot of newcomers make, but they’re actually pretty easy to fix. You don’t want to feel like it’s impossible to do anything just because you’re making mistakes — that’s part of the fun of growing into a better poker player.

You’ll look back on the poker player you used to be and smile, because you will have definitely come a long way. The time is definitely want to give yourself real poker goals and not just dreams — you’ll thank yourself down the road!

It’s every poker player’s most pleasurable time — trying to figure out whether to call, fold, or raise back after someone has raised pre-flop. Generally speaking, the most obvious realization here is that you need to assume that they have something. Sure, they might be bluffing you, but would you really want to base everything on that assumption and then be proved wrong? That’s what we thought. Instead of trying to worry about whether or not someone is bluffing, you need to just assume that they actually do have something.

It’s hard to give specific examples, so we’ll go ahead and just kick off with the fundamentals:

Re-raise when you actually have something to re-raise with. If you take nothing else from this article, take that piece of advice with you. Take comfort in the knowledge that you don’t always have to answer every raise that comes along. It’s perfectly okay to fold. In fact, it’s smarter to fold than know that you’re going in counting on luck rather than skill. That’s a weak thing to do and you’re not going to be a weak poker player. It’s just not meant to be.

Re-raise when you know that the action of re-raising is going to make them back down and re-consider. This is because a lot of people do bluff and if you know that you have a strong hand, they will too. Image is a big thing in the world of poker. It’s not set in stone that if you raise back they will back down. They might push in just to see what you’ll do. Look for the other player to do a lot of checking rather than continuing to bet — this is also a sign that they might not have as good of a hand as they thought they did starting out. That’s the trouble with raising before the flop — things can turn completely the other way without too much effort.

There will be times where you’re going to be that person shoving in right with the raisers — and there are going to be times where you fold. Just because you fold a hand doesn’t mean that you weren’t strong enough — it means that you’re willing to use your brain to reason things out. Good luck out there!

We’ve talked a little about starting hands worth trashing — like 72o and 95o — but what about the ones that are actually worth keeping? What about the ones that you will want to use to push into pots and otherwise terrorize the other players on the poker table? There are just going to be times where you really do want to make sure that you hold on to your hand rather than just giving it up — even if someone raises the pot stakes a bit higher than what you might be used to.

Generally speaking, the following hands are definitely worth keeping:

AA, KK, QQ, JJ, TT (10-10)
99, 88, 77
AK, AQ, AJ, AT
A9, K9, Q9, J9, T9 (good chance to catch straights)
KQ, KJ, KT
QJ, Q10

You get the idea. There’s going to be a lot of opportunities to have these hands come up. Now, does that mean that you suddenly can’t play A8o? That’s not true at all. You might want to limp in with a starting hand that isn’t as good as what we’ve listed. Let the flop guide you. If you really have a two pair on the flop, why not make a small bet? It’s better to take chances sometimes that are calculated than to just push all in and let the cards go where they may. That’s a recipe for disaster.

As you might also expect, there is going to be a difference between suited and unsuited cards. Unsuited cards are going to be less favorable than suited cards, because you’re not going to have that automatic flush draw chance. Yet just because you flop a flush doesn’t mean that there isn’t someone waiting in the wings that can ultimately connect to a full house or even quads depending on how your flop came down.  Always be thinking not just about what you have, but what everyone else has as well. That’s the real key to doing well with poker.

One last point that we do have to make — just because you are going to have these starting hands memorized doesn’t mean that you get to be married to them for life. There are going to be times where you’re still going to have to fold when the flop doesn’t go your way. We would hate for you to read this guide and then think that you have to hold onto these starting hands no matter what.

So go out there and use caution — you’ll be alright in the long run!

Humans are interesting creatures. You see, we really hate mistakes in anything that we do, but making mistakes is really the key to getting better in anything. After all, if you don’t make mistakes, how can you ever grow? As much as you might want to be, you’re not perfect. You’re never going to be perfect. There’s always going to be something to learn, and that’s the wonderful part about life.

So when it comes to poker, trust and believe that you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to have to suffer mistakes in poker in order to become even better. You’re going to want to make sure that you become better than you were previously. That attitude of incremental progress is actually how things get done, all things considered. You might think that it’s a good idea to just try to stay to yourself and suffer through your mistakes alone, but why would you want to do that when the poker community online is really so massive? Indeed, you’re ogling to find poker players from all types of levels.

There will be people that know even less than you, and people that know a whole lot more than you. Your mission is going to be to join the community and talk openly about the things that you struggle with. Even when you’re not asking questions, sometimes it’s just nice to actually hear from people when it comes to your overall poker experience. Listening to real time experiences of what happens at the table can remind you of things that you’re going to want to avoid, and it’s also going to tell you about things that you might want to add to your poker play.

Of course, you’ll have to make sure that you filter things out for yourself. Not everything is going to be stuff that’s valuable to you — remember when we said that you’re going to need to challenge everything? That’s definitely the best way to go. If you have to look up something that someone else has said, and then look it up — you’re going to need to follow along with the poker jargon anyway in order to really understand what people are trying to teach you.

At the end of the day though, reaching out and openly admitting your mistakes in poker are only going to make you stronger. Keep playing your hands, keep looking into the fundamentals of poker and don’t give up — it takes time to become great, so stick with it!

For some, it might sound strange to include anything about psychology when it comes to something as logic-based as poker. However, your mood in poker affects you more than you might realize. The reality of the matter is this — if you are having a bad day, chances are good that you’re going to bring elements of that bad day into your poker game. You’re going to get upset and start making mistakes that are going to cost you. Who really wants to get into that zone and ruin their poker game?

It also depends on how you handle stress. If you’re the type of person that tends to bottle up everything inside to bad effects, then you’re going to have a hard time reigning in your poker game. Your going to take all in’s, bad calls, and re-raises personally. You’re going to get annoyed by people chatting on the side. You have to try to understand that everyone has a different purpose for playing poker — even if it’s just to have a good time and make a little money in the process.

In order to control gameplay, you must first learn to control yourself. Don’t take mistakes personally — work through them. Don’t allow yourself to get swept into the moment. Every play needs to be done with purpose.

So what if you really can’t handle the gameplay at the table and you know that you’re not going to be playing your best poker around? You need to get up and play poker around day. Now that might sound odd because we’re real big poker fans, but it’s true — when you know that all you have to offer is going to be subpar, then you will definitely want to make sure that you exit as gracefully as possible. Don’t try to think that you can “win it all back” when you know that you’re not in the right frame of mind. This is where your mind is going to be ripe with doubt and uncertainty, even a little fear — and those are three things that you don’t want to bring to a poker game.

Play poker when you’ve gotten enough sleep, when you’ve gotten enough food, and when you’re not too stressed to the point where you can’t leave your troubles behind. That’s the real secret behind great poker — everything else builds on that foundation!

Poker is something that everyone wants to be better at. After all, you’re going to be hard pressed to find anyone that can honestly say with a straight face that they’re happy with the state of their poker game. What you’re more likely to encounter are people that really do want to get better at playing poker by any means necessary — even if that means that they have to practically immerse themselves in the world of poker to accomplish that goal.

So if you really want to get better at poker, you’re going to need to make sure that you do one thing above all others: challenge everything.

We aren’t trying to take away from the many experts on poker, and we’re not telling you that everything that we have to share with you is meaningless. What we are saying is that you’re going to want to start thinking about the type of experience that you actually want to have. You’re going to need to start thinking about the type of player you want to become. We can give you advice on how to become that player, but you essentially need to own that advice. You need to absorb it into your very bones if you want to rise to the highest levels of playing poker. Far too often newcomers to the poker world only see the fact that there’s a lot of prize money to be won and a lot of recognition — who hasn’t heard of Doyle Brunson, Scotty Nguyen or even Phil Hellmuth? Yet these are all men that play a lot of hands of poker — millions of hands of poker, literally. If you’re not willing to put in the time to play poker, then you’re not going to really get much of anything accomplished where it counts.

Start out slow — play good poker. Read up on what that statement really means. It’s not going with your gut — it’s calculating your card and pot odds. It’s looking for outs. It’s controlling your emotions — yes, you’re going to want to raise just to irritate another player, but is that strategic? These are all things that might seem foreign to you right here, right now but we promise that we’ll explain everything to the best our ability as time goes on.

So, you really want to be a better poker player? Challenge everything — and let us help get you there!

The thrill of playing poker online can sometimes do you in before you’ve really had a chance to shine. What do we mean by that? Well, it’s simple — there’s going to be a time and a place to go all in, but when, you’re in the heat of the table, you might not realize it. You might not realize that you really do need to step back and think about your cards and the possible cards that everyone else has. You might be tempted to just go all in with someone else. When people can sense that you’re being emotional, they’re going to take advantage of you. That’s just one of the many facts that you’ll learn as your poker skills grow. You will get to a point where you have to be aware of the game play around you. This might take some time, but it’s well worth it.

You really only have three reasons to go all in:

You are convinced without a doubt that you have the best hand.

You have your image controlled to a point where you know that if you go all in, you’ll scare players out of the pot.

You know that you have a good hand and you need to quickly raise your chip count to avoid being devoured by blinds (forced bets).

Going all in is something that definitely can make your game play soar. However, if you don’t get the flop that you want, or the turn/river that you want, you’re going to be in for a rude awakening.

Consider this — if you’re unsure about the possibilities of winning the pot and you just want to intimidate the other players, you might want to think about actually doing a big raise rather than an all in proposition. Your opponent(s) reaction is going to determine what you do next.

Your opponent might raise you back, but if you truly have a good hand then you can call and let the flop do the rest. It’s important that if you still have a good hand that you raise on the flop as well. Otherwise the other players will simply assume that you don’t really have anything good.

Are there times where you might want to limp in? Sure there are — when you really do have a great hand with great potential, and you want to pull as many players into the pot as you can.

Over time, you’ll get better and better at determining when to go all in. As long as you think about it logically, you’ll cut down a lot of your risk. Start getting emotional and you won’t play poker very long, that’s for sure!