Beginners Tips

The 20 most important features a poker player needs to possess

Do you want to be a really good poker player? If you abide by the following guidelines, you are making good progress.With many years of experience behind my back, I am now sharing with you the main principles a successful poker player should always keep in mind.

Beginners Poker Tips: Expected Value

A probability term, it is “an averaged out result of a given action over time.” EV should have more and more effect on your play as you progress in skill; more precisely, you should go for +EV. Watch PaddyPowerPoker.com’s Poker School video on EV calculation and EV in poker here.  

Beginners Poker Tips: Kicker Strength

Kicker is a definition used in poker to denote a card in a hand “that does not itself take part in determining the rank of the hand, but that may be used to break ties between hands of the same rank.” Since in Texas Hold’em it is common to match only one of your hole cards with one or more from the board, the other usually takes the role of the kicker.

In each hand, the strongest five cards are taken into consideration when determining the winner. In case, for example, you had AT and your opponent had A9 on a board of A-Q-7-5-3, you were the favourite as the best combination would be A-A-Q-T-9 in which you held A and T while your opponent had “only” A and 9. If, however, the board was, say, A-K-Q-J-6, both of you had A-A-K-Q-J as the best combination, meaning the pot would be split.

Here is a training video from PaddyPowerPoker.com Poker School to show you how kickers can benefit you and how they can be deceptive. 

What Makes a Successful Poker Player? Skills or Luck?

What does it take in order to win at poker? Is it enough if we just rely on luck or do we have to acquire knowledge and skills to build our bankroll? These are the questions I am going to try to answer and solve in this post.

1.    The outsiders’ opinion on poker

A majority of the general population solely believe that poker is a game of luck. They have a mystical image of poker portrayed as just another casino game. And they are right; they have no reason to think differently of a game that they are not familiar with and is housed in casinos.

Luck
Is poker a game of luck?

But in reality, this is definitely not what poker is about. There are multiple decisions to be made throughout the game, which at times can be easy or hard and all play an effect on our outcome. There is always a good, a bad and an even better decision that can be made and this is what determines the fate of our bankroll. On top of this, we must also consider the fact that when playing poker, we verse other opponents unlike other casino games where you verse the house (and we all know that the house always wins).

Dealing with Tilt in Poker

Getting on tilt is one of the many interesting phenomena in poker that happen because of the human nature, and can have a dramatic effect on our gameplay.  I presume that you guys have also experienced how much a mistake or unlucky twist can influence the way we play the hands following it. But what is the reason behind all this?

I need to note here, that the handling of a ’tilt’ is mostly a capability issue, and the perfection of this is just as important as being able to calculate pot odds or to select the starting hands to play. The so-called bad beats need to be looked upon as something occuring necessarily from time to time. But it is not as easy as that...

Tilt in Poker

The Baluga Theorem of Poker

In this post I am going to introduce and familiarize you with a few well-known poker truth, the Baluga Theorem. Originally posted on the 2+2 forum, this rule was nicknamed from BalugaWhale, a 2+2 forum poster.

Baluga Theorem: If we have raised preflop and receive a re-raise when holding top pair on the turn, most of time we should re-evaluate the strength of one-pair hands and the right option is to fold.

Always Continuation Bet a King High Uncoordinated Flop

Are you the player, who always continuation bet a flop, after a preflop raise? Or are you the one, who just bet, if you hit the flop? Neither is good. If you do not hit hit the board you have to carefully analyse the flop texture and villain’s tendencies before you decide about your flop play.

The more villain folds to continuation bet, the more times you have to bet. And also the more uncoordinated the flop, the more times you have to bet.

But there is a flop when you almost always have to bet, and this is a king high uncoordinated flop. It does not matter if you do not connect to any piece of the flop. Just bet it.

Villains will fold the majority of the time. But if you got called follow carefully.

NL Hold’em Tips For Beginners II. – The Basic Game Techniques

Part II of my two-part beginner guide will be covering the basic game techniques. Read the first part, too.

Help

Only play premium hands:

In the beginning phase, when we are not really clear with the dynamics of the game, our best decision is to focus on playing very tight. We should only consider playing upon receiving premium hands, this way we can avoid several tough situations. Although later on, once our experience has grown, it is a necessity to widen the range of hands we play in order to maximize profit.

NL Holdem Tips For Beginners Part I. – The First Steps

Part I of my two-part guide will provide orientation for beginner poker players. In the first part I will be sharing with you basic practice methods and my second part will cover issues concerning game techniques. With this guide I hope to provide an insight taste of not only the game, but also good management skills to come out on top. In order to reach long-term success, other serious commitments also need to be made.

Help

Let’s start with the practical information. First of all, it is in good  practice to read as many articles concerning poker as possible to enlighten yourself with different situations and techniques.The best places to start acquiring these new insights would have to be strategy sections within poker forums where players can often find the best way to handle their hands by reading reviews and hand analyses of other players.

Do Not Barrel If You Got Called On a King or Ace High Flop

It is a commonly known wisdom, that if you do not connect a king or ace high flop, and your continuation bet was called, you can expect a call on further streets too. So second and third barrels are like burning money.

I can confirm that this theorem is correct. In my experience typical villains do not like to call ace or king high flops without a top pair, but if they have it, they have a hard time to fold it.

It is really true hard to make an average player to fold a so high top pair. So do not bluff the turn and river.

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