Emil has asked me to put together a nice series of articles for new and beginner poker players to help them really get their heads round the game of Texas Hold’em. For more experienced players, this means you may not get that much out of these articles but there may well be some nice nuggets of advice that you can use. My aim is to speak in plain and uncomplicated English and try to make things as simple as possible.
For today and tomorrow, I’m going to begin by offering my Top Ten Tips for beginning players; five today and five tomorrow. Next week, we’ll go into a little more detail about specific areas of play.
Tip #1: Know the Rules!
This is the first bit of advice I ever give to new players. Before teaching any strategy or anything of ilk, it really is important to know how the game works; who acts first in a hand, what your betting options are and what not. You don’t want to be left thinking that a straight beats a flush or be thinking there’s a still one card to come on the river. There are so many sites on the internet that can help. Even if you think you know it all, a brief brush-up can’t do any harm
Tip #2: Watch the game.
This is a very simple bit of advice. Just pay attention to what is going on. Whether you are playing in a local casino or online, not only will it make sure the other players don’t get annoyed that you don’t know what’s happened every time that the action comes round to you but you get extra information. Concentrate on each and every hand.
Tip #3: Don’t be the fish
They say that if after half an hour at the table if you can’t work out who the fish (bad players) are it’s probably you. You want to be playing against worse opponents as they are the ones who are going to donate you their money because they play so bad. Even the tenth best player in the world is sat at a bad table if he is playing with the nine players that are better.
Tip #4; Exercise Discretion
In Hold’em a whole bunch of starting hands are just plain, complete and utter junk. Chuck them away! Don’t play too many hands. While any hand can theoretically win, most of the time you’ll need to get lucky and while laymen would better be lucky than good, the opposite is true for poker players. Have a bit of patience and you’ll reap the rewards. Starting hand guidelines will be the subject of my first article on Monday.
Tip #5: Stick to your limits
If you’re playing in real money games, you really can’t afford to sit straight down at the high limit tables. You may as well burn your money or give it to me (actually, that’s not a bad thought, donations welcome!). As a new player, you are inevitably going to lose some money at first so only play with what you can afford to lose. Don’t chuck down all of your money at one table- the end result will be you going broke and that won’t be good for anyone.
Check back tomorrow for the rest of my Top Ten Tips for New Players
This article was written by meshuganater.
Tags: advice, Back to Basics, beginners, new players, poker strategy