5 traps poker players often fall into

It goes without saying that learning to play poker, and mastering it can be a fairly difficult task. Even if one knows the tricks of the game and all the tips you can imagine, as well as having been playing for quite some time, he/she’d still be far from calling himself/herself a poker professional in the true sense of the term.

Almost all people who start out playing poker get struck by all kinds of poker lingo, and make numerous errors over and over again. Many a times you might not even know what’s wrong. Unless of course you’re playing in an online poker room at a reputed platform such as Casino Room (here’s a detailed Casino Room review [3]to tell you more).

Let’s tell you about 5 traps that poker players often fall into.

Playing multiple hands prior to flop

By far the biggest trap of all, new players often indulge in many hands prior to flop. Please note, if you do decide to play a hand prior to flop, it should meet some specific criteria. On the whole, you shouldn’t be playing any more than 20% to 25% of all your hands. The rest should always be folded.

Quickly taking the hands past the flop

An extension of the trap detailed above, not only do the starting out poker players indulge in plenty of hands, they often go the extra distance with them. It’s not uncommon to see newbies taking pairs or draws to the river. In general, you must continue in the hand only if you have a strong draw or a top pair, or something better.

Playing with gut feel instead of basing things on math, situation and cards

You’d often see starting out poker players saying that they have a certain gut feel about a hand. This can be the perfect recipe for disaster. Poker, at core, is a game of mathematics and everything (in it) boils down to the matter of odds. Played right, it can win you millions [4]!

Hence, the only reason of staying in a hand should be good winning odds and nothing else. You play certain types of hands only because continuing playing those hands in the long term is going to make you more money.

Letting the emotions get to you

Watch any high-end poker tournament, for instance, World Series of Poker [5] and you would know how stressful this game can be. It’s common for people to let their emotions get the better of them. They start making some very silly mistakes even if they lose a couple of hands.

Please know, poker is all about making good decisions and in order to do that you must always be in a good frame of mind.

Taking a short-term approach

Many poker players start out playing correctly, but then lose the pot and start second-guessing themselves. You can hear them say, “Oh, I did a blunder playing pocket aces because the other guy ended up with a straight.” It’s a wrong approach. Sometimes you’d win and sometimes lose. Poker should be played with a long-term approach and should be about making the right decisions.