Poker Tips

The Novice 

Starting out in Poker can be intimidating. The thought of risking your own money can be a daunting one. Novice players should always consider beginning with small buy-in tournaments and low-limit cash games where any potential losses can be minimised and managed. You don’t have to be the best player in the world at these limits; just better than the others at the table! The strategies for winning at smaller games where there are many novice players is, for the most part, straight forward.
 
Novice players on low-limit games tend to focus heavily on their own cards and won’t pay an enormous amount of attention to you and the potential hands of others. They will play their hand the same way no matter whom or how many players there are in the pot. If you want to succeed in this type of environment, the best strategy is to take the element of luck out of the equation. Play tight. Bet aggressively with strong or winning hands. It is also important to learn pot odds and whether your chances of hitting your drawing hand are equal or better than the investment you will need to make in relation to the pot in order to stay in the hand.
 
Many players new to Poker become excited at the prospect of bluffing. They will bluff for the sake of it because they feel it’s “part of the game”. Bluffing players at this level is mostly counter productive. They are highly likely to gamble and call your bluff because they just want to see your cards. Don’t be surprised if your $5 is not aggressive enough to scare novice players away!
 
The key to winning at this level is to master starting hand selection. Play premium hands and play them strongly. Learn to evaluate pot odds and lastly, abandon the idea of employing psychological strategies; your opponents will probably be too wrapped up in their own cards to notice.

The Intermediate Player

One of the keys to playing at an intermediate level is to manage your bankroll. This is the stage where you are managing your risk and therefore managing what you are prepared to lose.
 
When selecting limits, it’s wise to remember that professional players (those who make their living from playing Poker) steer clear of low limit games because the potential gains are not lucrative enough. You will find that players at the lower limits have more vulnerabilities to exploit and if luck works against you, you will be minimising your potential losses. Once you feel that you have mastered these games, you are ready to move up a level.
 
It is important to choose games where you aren’t frightened. If you are scarred of losing at a particular level, you shouldn’t be playing at that level. Playing scarred means that you have misjudged both your bankroll and your skill level. If this is the case, shift down to a game you are comfortable at – even if you have losing sessions.
 
When judging if the level is right for you, you should be excited by the potential gains and losses, but not scarred. You shouldn’t shift down to a level where you don’t really care about the outcome. If that is the case, you have probably shifted down too low. Just as if you are scarred of the size of the game and the potential losses, you may have aimed too high.

The Advanced Player 

No-Limit Hold'em requires more psychological and bluffing skills than any other popular poker game. However, advanced play is often based on a study of your opponent and their playing styles.

If you are playing a lower stakes No-Limit game ($1 / $2 NL - $2 / $3NL) bluffing is frequently pointless as your bluffs or studied mask of concentration will go unnoticed by novice players. The odd bluff on the flop against few opponents may occasionally win, but these opponents will frequently pay off their whole stack on hands as low as second pair. In these games, you should just wait for solid winning hands and then take down your opponents with bets equal to the size of the pot.
 
Shifting up to the higher stakes games ($5/10NL and above) is where the psychology of Poker comes in to its own. When your opponent has a deep stack and you are testing to see if he is prepared to make a decision for all of his considerable chip stack, you will truly discover how well you can read other players and deceive them in turn. In these high stakes games, categorising other players is important. Are they tight, loose, aggressive or passive? Playing mind games with aggressive players will more frequently work to your advantage. These players are often predictable in that they play according to the strength of their own hand and you can soon learn to accurately predict the strength of their hand based on the strength of their betting. If you can accurately read your opponent’s play, you need to make it as difficult for them to read you in turn. You will need to change your playing style. You need to ensure that no predictable patterns appear in your play such as always bluffing on the flop. Changing the pace on where you bluff is important in keeping your opponents off guard.
 
Last, but by no means least, the size of your bet can give valuable information or disinformation to your opponent. Don’t necessarily bet on the size of your own hand, bet based on the chances of beating what you believe your opponent to have. Bad opponents can be read easily if they always bet based on the worth of their own hand. To maximize the value of your winning hands, you should consider betting however much your opponent will be willing to call given their hand.
 
Ultimately, what separates a novice from an advanced player is that advanced player is confident that he knows what cards his opponent is holding and plays on that information. Often the last consideration for an advanced player is the card they hold themselves.