Probably behind pure entertainment, poker is a game which improves our self esteem. Thanks to the poker we can measure our abilities to speculate, resist pressure and adopt strategies.
So poker is the game which builds our self esteem and helps us prove yourself in relation to some other people.
Nevertheless, poker is also associated with the glamorous world of the rich and the famous. All this combined creates the magic of poker.
However for some people playing poker is associated with being a star, a winner, a person to which success is everyday routine.
Many people play poker simply for the fact that it can make you a winner the easiest way-the cards are before you-not it is up to you how you are gonna play this. Some will call it a drive for the thrill of a strategy that will or will not work.
However many think of poker as their primary hobby and business in life. Such people practice, prefect their abilities of reading the opponent and try new tricks.
So there are different poker player who are driven by different incentives this game can provide for your life and personality.
Before starting a game try to pre-read your opponents in the category-who they are, what are their goals and how will they behave. Are they focused on winning the game or just having fun. How long have they been playing poker. Such a pre-game research is typical for chess mate players who try to ready the opponent and decipher his style of playing.
On the other hand do not let the other decipher you either before and during the game. If you are to lost do it in a style that the others won’t extract any information about your personality and skills or otherwise you are going to play again yourself in the next game.
Poker is all about the game of character, strategy and wit. It is not a game which is won by the best but by those who know the game…even the best players sometimes forget about it and having a good memory is also vital in poker.
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Observation of the opponents in poker
By: Ian Johnson
One of the most important factors in playing poker is observation of our opponents and making notes. Not doing so is the most common mistake. Even if you fold the cards you should observe the action and how each of the players act.
We should note who and when play, from which position, with what hand and if they aggressive or passive. A good observation would give as an idea what kind of poker tells the players use on their side.
The best poker is not about our cards, but the opponents’ cards. If we would gather all of the information regarding a particular player’s style we would have a huge advantage as we would know what kind of hand he plays with. That’s the key to the success in that game.
We may influence our opponents. Poker is a game, where the rules are obvious. We can use all available tricks to get an advantage over other players. If we’d notice that one of the players gets angry easily we can use it by chatting with him for a while. This is a fight and the best wins – stronger personality, better skills and brighter mind.
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The mechanism mentioned above is very important from the winner point of view. We can not forget that without poker strategy those factors won’t help us much. Poker is a beautiful game because it is so simple and so complicated at the same time.
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The most common mistakes in poker
By: Ian Johnson
Every player at the beginning makes a lot of mistakes, however with a proper education and practice we are able to minimize those mistakes. Our decision are getting better and better. Let’s name the most common mistakes made by the beginners then.
Beginners play too many hands. They have a problem with an estimation of the strength of the hand. This goes to checking too many flops. For total newbies most of the hands look good enough and the position doesn’t matter to them. They don’t only pay to see the flop, but sometime they take the game further and they loose much more.
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The best thing to do is to estimate a percentage value of the games we’d like to join. That could be less than 25%.
Another mistake following the previous one is playing even further after the flop. This one might be very expensive though. Mostly the beginner is deciding to play further if he has anything on the flop, such as a pair or a weak draw. Counting on the good card he looses his money, even though the odds are very poor. Especially a new player should play only strong hands after the flop.
Third mistake is also connected to the two previous ones. Poker is a game, where we should make a logical decisions, not based on the emotions at all. The logical decisions are based on the basic mathematic. Not too many players follow the odds and they play their favorite cards.
Paranormal phenomenon doesn’t happen at all. There is no such a thing as magical cards, even though we won with them once.
We shouldn’t follow our emotions during the game. This might happen to the beginner as well as an advanced player. More experienced player may control his emotions. We shouldn’t get emotional during the game or get angry at the other opponents. If we’d loose some of our stack we can not hunt the winner and get back on track, we can not play against one particular player because he comes from the city we don’t like.
The last common mistake I’d like to mention about is thinking in a short perspective of time. We should realize that poker is a game of the skills, however it is influence by the chance factor at the same time. We shouldn’t analyze our skills after one or two games, but check the progress on the longer perspective of time, months or years.
Beginners would like to end every poker session with the big winnings, even though they’re tired already they play to get back their lost money. This is a serious mistake and can bring a lot of losses.
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Poker Tournaments. Sit & Go.
By: Ian Johnson
Poker Tournaments – this is what magnetize poker players the most. No matter if a big tourney on TV to watch or a satellite online to play. One of the famous poker players said once that cash games are mostly for the money, but poker tournaments are for fame. There’s a lot of truth in that sentence.
We can earn big money by playing cash games, but it is not the essence of the sport rivalry. Thanks to that many people started to notice that poker is a sport, that the tournament is the sport.
Poker tournaments require more skills than cash games do. In the cash games – if someone prefers to play tight he might wait ages for the good cards. Blinds comparing to the stakes are low and they aren’t raised. There is no pressure of time. Poker tournament on the other hand require a constant change of the style. Blinds keep raising, we have to control our own stack in compare to the blinds, other players’ stacks and general results in the tournament.
Sit&Go Tournament
These tournaments are the most popular online. There is no start hour and the number of players is limited. We have one table tournaments, which start as soon as 8, 9, 10 players will join and two or multiple table games, which start once the players join the game.
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Sit and Go Tournaments are available to anyone at any time. This is why they’re so popular. We can find an interesting tournaments at any time, signup and wait at least 5- 10 minutes. These tournaments have a quite aggressive structure of the blinds (1500 chips and 10 minutes levels.
Multiple Tables Freezout.
These poker tournaments are also popular, mostly because of the huge winning pot. In this kind of games we have a few thousands players. Freezout is this kind of poker tournament, when once we’ve lost all our chips we don’t have a chance to redeem ourselves. Because of the huge number of the poker players we have to find at least 4 hours to play in it.
Big freezouts are the best tournaments in poker. Beside that they give a chance to check our skills against hundreds, thousands players and give a possibility to win big prizes. If you are willing to play with 30 – 50$ buy-in you might also meet the celebs of the poker world.
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How to improve your game?
By: Ian Johnson
Let’s say you play well already but you are not able to change the level up. To improve yourself you’d need to find all the situation you can not deal with. Some of the players don’t know what to do with their AK hand without a position after a bet, when the flop is a different story. First of all we should prepare ourselves to make difficult decisions.
Let’s think of ten most common situation which are difficult to us from some reasons. Each of the situations should be analyzed from every possible angle. If we miss the flop with AK for example we should analyze if we play in the position, what type of player we have to play against, what is our image at the table, etc.
If we help somebody else by explaining in details what to do in a particular situation we might learn as well.
If our student ask why we have raised we have to explain the reason of our move. Teaching requires thinking, so there is no place for an automatic play this time. The best way of teaching is by showing the students the hands already played. You might be surprised how many of those hands are played without a logical explanation. If we do not have any student we can always give some tips to the forum members. Poker forums are the best place to exchange information regarding particular situations and moves.
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Give up the sick ambition. Y u don’t have to be the best poker player. Sometime grinding at $1/$2 - $5-$10 at a couple of tables might bring you more than playing at $30/$60. You do not have to be a poker hero. The most important is the process of winning itself. Try to write about poker a lot. That would motivate us to the game more seriously.
If we already are able to win, but we can not change the level then making another step might be very difficult.
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Poker etiquette.
By: Ian Johnson
Poker as a live event requires some kind of an etiquette. It prevents from making mistakes, which would make us unprofessional player. First of all we shouldn’t make any scenes, no matter if we win or loose. After a good game and bigger winnings we should take our chips out of the table and run away. It won’t be in a good style, however plenty of poker players practice that. Let’s estimate that we would play carefully further games and after half an hour we can stand up from the table. Otherwise you might have problems with finding poker pals to play with.
We shouldn’t think of the past hands to much. We should wait until the end of the game to analyze our play. If we experienced a bad beat it might be even more dangerous to our further play. There is no point of doing so out loud as it might frustrate our poker pals and the good atmosphere is the most important after all.
Don’t comment the game while you’re playing. If you’d play a serious game you might by punished by sitting-out. Don’t react once you fold the cards. For example if you have 2-7 and the flop shows 7-7-2 don’t make any weird sounds as this might frustrate other players.
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Play quick and don’t slow the play down. There might be some hands, which require more time, however most of the time you’d be able to make a decision quickly. Might be even better to switch the mobile off and focus on the game. There is nothing more frustrating the player who asks: Is it my turn?
If you fold the cards try not to show them. If there is all-in situation don’t show the cards before other players make a decision. Keep your stack visible to everyone. Don’t make a mess with the chips and don’t hold your cards in a hand. This might be badly seen by others and cause some misunderstandings.
Don’t teach others how to play. Even when some poker players don’t really know how to play poker, once you’re all in the game you shouldn’t tell them what to do in a particular situation. First of all other players would like to win as much money as they could. Second of all they might not want to hear our advices as they came to have fun.
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