I’ve been playing poker for a long time online. I love it. There’s very few thrills in life that are more exciting than beating someone with a flush when they thought they had you with a straight, or when you get lucky with AA to the point that you end up with a nice full house thanks to the flop alone.
However, if you’re going to be a poker newbie, you can’t rush in. There’s a lot of “rushes” that newbies get themselves into, and I wanted to personally cover a few of them.
1. Too Much Limping
The process of limping is all about calling. You have a good hand, like JJ, but you just call rather than actually raising. If you have a high pocket pair, it’s best to raise pre flop, and then raise again once the flop comes down. This gives people the image that you’re really trying to portray — you mean business. There’s no other way to honestly say it. You mean business, and you’re going to claim that pot. If someone thinks that they’re going to beat you to that pot, they’re mistaken. That’s just the way it has to be honestly.
2. Projecting Insecurity
If you’re insecure in terms of how you play poker, it’s going to show eventually. Players are better off trying to hide when they don’t have the type of hand that they really want. It would be in your best interest to make sure that you aren’t trying to look tougher than what you really are, but you aren’t just running out of pots because you think that it’s going to make everyone feel more like you’re playing the right way. If you know that you have a good hand, go in with it. Bet well. Don’t bail out at the last minute. That will get you the image of someone that’s too insecure to really play poker. You just have to make sure that you start thinking about the type of poker that you’re ultimately trying to play.
3. Not Knowing Your Hand Strength
Hand strength is everything within the world of poker. Quick quiz: which hand is better, the Q-10 or the K-J? Well, in this case, the KJ is better. But what about when you’re dealing with a 10-7 suited (hearts) against a 2-3 unsuited? You would still want to keep the 10-7 in case of a flush draw. Be very careful to watch to see who is actually betting rather than just jumping in. That would be absolutely ridiculous.
4. Giving Too Much Away To See Turn and River
Don’t feed the pot when you don’t have anything to really show for yourself. Sure, you might hope for that last card to make a straight or that last card to make a flush…but is it worth it? If you’re a poker newbie, you need to study up on pot odds, implied odds, and reverse implied odds. Yes, that can be a lot of theory to remember going into a poker game, but it can also save you a lot of chips in the long run. We want to make money in poker perpetually, and that means that we need to be aware of the long term game. That’s all there is to it, really.
5. Not Folding Enough
There’s nothing wrong with folding when you know that you have no way of actually making a successful hand with what you have to work with. The mistake that newbies make is that they think that a magical card on the river is going to turn their crap hand into a great hand. That’s a good way to lose a lot of money in poker. What you must do from here is try to rise above that type of thing and really make sure that you’re going to be able to get the type of service that you really need. It’s going to be up to you to figure this type of thing out rather than just thinking that you don’t have anything else that needs to be done. It’s really going to be up to you when you really think about it. Why stay in a hand that doesn’t help you make money? Making money is the name of the game in poker. And if you can’t make money, then you are better off not flushing chips away just because you’re waiting on the river. Do you know what seasoned poker people call newbies that chase the last card on the board? [Read more…] about Lean Into Online Poker Slowly – It’s For Your Own Good