Poker Tips - Learn Poker Strategy

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Poker Tips

Welcome to our collection of Poker Tips and Strategy guides to help you to get better at Poker and become a profitable and winning poker player.

Once you understand the basic rules and how to play the poker game you have chosen then it’s time to take it to the next level and understand the fundamentals of good poker strategies.

Any card game is dependent on the draw of the cards. This is determined by the random shuffle of the cards or the electronic random shuffle generator used by online poker sites. Most uneducated players naively believe that because of this Poker is a game of luck and chance.

Well the truth is that they are wrong in that assumption – Poker is a game of Skill.

Good Poker Strategy can be simplified into 4 elements:

1. Playing good cards
2. Working out what cards your opponents are playing
3. Understanding the odds and probabilities of improving your hand / winning the hand
4. Making the right play at the right time

Playing Good Cards

The cards are dealt to you and it is totally in your control which cards you play and which cards you throw straight back into the muck.

The very first Poker Tip we offer to anybody is to understand the value of starting hands and know what you should and shouldn’t be playing. This is the absolute foundation to any good poker strategy.

If you play good hands then it will make playing the rest of the hand much more straight forward, decisions are much easier when you are in a position of strength. Playing mediocre or weak starting hands only put you in tough positions later in the hand which will inevitably lead to mistakes.

Working out what cards your Opponents are playing

How do you do this….. we can’t see their cards? Yes correct, however there are a number of factors and methods that you can use to work out a range of cards that your opponents are playing or even narrow it down directly to the exact cards they have.

There are numerous factors to use and interpret and it will take some time and practise to get good at this.

The first thing you would look at it their betting actions in the hand, does it make them look strong, or maybe a little bit unsure of their hand and acting tentatively.

You would then combine this with your knowledge of the player and how they have acted in previous hands when you have seen what cards they had at the end of the hand, are they acting in a similar fashion to a previous situation?

In a live poker game, you may even look at their mannerisms and how they are acting, are they giving off any poker tells, are their hands shaking, do they look comfortable or tense.

Understanding the odds and probabilities of improving your hand / winning the hand

Now that we know what cards we have, and have an idea of the range of hands our opponent might be playing, we can work out if we think we are in the lead or whether we need to improve our hand in order to win the hand at showdown.

If we know what cards we need and we know how many cards are left in the deck then we can work out the probability or odds of that card being dealt. Then if we know what the chances of the card we need coming then we can compare that to the size of the pot in order to be able to make a decision on whether the gamble is worth taking. If the pot odds is worth more than the risk we are taking to hit our card then we can make a very clear decision to proceed.

Simple maths and probability in Poker can help make a very unclear decision into a process driven decision that makes it very straight forward to decide what action to take.

Making the right play at the right time

In poker there are always two ways to win a pot. Either you have the best hand and win at showdown or you make a bet that no other player calls and win the pot uncontested.

This doesn’t mean that you should be bluffing and betting all the time without good hands with the sole intention of winning the pot uncontested.

Using a combination of the three tips above to understand the situation you are in will ensure that you are able to choose the situations where it is likely your opponents will fold to a bluff or knowing the right situation to call a large bet on the river because you think you have the strongest hand.

Ready for some more Poker Tips?

The above is just a very brief introduction to good poker strategy. We have a whole section of poker tips covering popular poker games so take a look at the categories at the top of this page and take a look around.