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The successful young poker pros, those rising to the top, are getting there for old and honored reasons. Sure, they've got some natural talent; they're smart, not particularly risk-averse and have a natural (or quickly learn) emotional stability. No matter how much you enjoy poker, if you have to play it full time, you may begin to get tired of it. This is true for both online or live poker. A casino can become a noxious environment when you spend all your time there, and the pace of play can be frustrating.

Are you struggling to turn a decent profit at the poker tables on a consistent basis? Are your results best described as 'somewhere around break-even'?

First off, don't worry because you are not alone. This describes the results of the majority of poker players.

Often, however, it is just a few small poker strategy adjustments that can take your game from mediocre to amazing — from break-even to crushing it.

In this article, I am going to provide you with seven subtle but highly effective poker tips to take your game to the next level.

While I can't promise you'll win a lot of money with these beginner tips, you should add everything you find on this guide to your poker strategy if you really want to improve your poker games.

Continue reading to discover poker tips like:

I've also added something about pocket aces because you should be always careful when you get them. I have seen so many people play them the wrong way...

1. Think About Ranges, Not Hands

It doesn't matter what type of casino poker you play: one of the easiest ways to spot average and beginner poker players is to look at how they think about what their opponent has.

• Beginner poker players try and put somebody on a specific poker hand.
• Advanced poker players think in terms of ranges. This type of thinking that can be extremely important when calculating pot odds.

A range is the entire spectrum of poker hands somebody can have in a specific situation. For example, player X can have a flush, top pair, middle pair, bottom pair, a draw, ace-high or a complete air-ball bluff.

Good players who have already gone through a few poker strategy articles understand that player X will show up with this entire range of hands with various frequencies. They don't focus on identifying a single winning hand, but they try and figure out those frequencies and then make the best play.

Average players try to put an opponent on exactly (or some other specific hand) because that's 'what their gut tells them.'

If there's one thing you need to know when you learn the game, this is that poker strategy tips and 'gut feeling' don't go well together. Basing your tournament strategy or cash game play on what you 'feel' is never a good idea.

In the first video of this beginner's guide to poker tips for beginners, poker pro Jason Wheeler explains how uses every possible information available to understand his opponent's cards and choose his play.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Be Realistic

Don't put your opponent on a single hand but think about ranges. Nobody has a specific hand in poker — they only have a range.

If you are in still the process of learning the game and you need some help, have a look at the complete poker hands ranking.

2. Ditch Your Favorite Hand

A lot of people have a favourite hand. I know that every time I get dealt the old -suited my eyes light up and I want to play it so bad!

However, in reality, I know that -suited is a mediocre hand. Definitely not one of the best starting hands you can hey in a game of Texas hold em.

Calculate your poker odds FOR FREE with the PokerNews pot odds calculator!

It makes sense to play it in some spots — late position, for instance, in an unopened pot. But it should almost always be folded in early position.

If you currently have some favourite starting hands, that's fine — most people do. But don't give them preferential treatment and make bad plays with it.

Winning poker is about math and cold hard logic, not superstition.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Be Smart

Playing too many hands is a widespread mistake (see: Five Common Mistakes New Poker Players Make).

One of the best ways to avoid it is to introduce range-based thinking in your reads.

3. Adopt a Consistent Strategy

Another big key to becoming a great poker player (and perhaps one of the most important poker tips on this strategy guide) is to consistently apply a winning strategy.

It is not okay suddenly to change things up (e.g. to open with -suited from early position or turn yourself into a calling station) just because you are bored or tilted.

All of your learning, experience and study over the years has given you a body of knowledge telling you how to play Texas holder poker profitably.

But your poker strategy only actually matters if you apply it at the poker tables all the time. Every hand counts and every session counts.

The best poker players, those ones who know how to win at poker, apply the same winning strategy over and over again, no matter how they feel or what their recent results have been.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Be Consistent

Poker is a long-term game. You need time to build your bankroll and find the right cash game or poker tournament strategy that works for you.

You should not change your strategy after a big win or a big loss (here's why).

If you really feel like your approach needs to change, make sure you read this article on Handling the Ups and Downs of Low Stakes Poker first.

4. Always Have a Reason

Big-time winning poker players will sometimes break from their standard, successful strategies, but always for obvious reasons.

An average player might start raising -suited in early position because he is bored or wants to make something happen.

An elite poker player will raise with this hand in this position on occasion because he notices the table is playing passively and there are a couple of recreational players in the blinds.

There is a clear reason then to believe that raising -suited in early position (typically a fold under normal circumstances) might be a profitable play in this situation.

If you can produce a well-reasoned argument why deviating from your regular strategy might be more profitable, then it is okay. It is the 'because I feel like it' or 'I am bored' reasoning that has to go.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Be Reasonable

Think. Use your experience to analyse the situations, and then understand 'why' you would take one road and not another.

If you don't have enough experience to evaluate different situations yet, you better go back to the free games and grind.

5. Know When to Fold Your Aces

Another clear difference between average poker players and great poker players is the ability to fold an overpair.

Do you know that little sick feeling you get when you have and a tight opponent raises all-in on the turn? You make the so-called 'crying call', and he turns over the set yet again.

Playing online poker for free is the best way to hone your poker skills and practice with no risk.

You need to start paying attention to that feeling a little bit more often.

Certain patterns are easily recognizable at the lower stakes — especially when you play online poker — where it is 100 per cent the correct play to fold your overpair.

Good players can let go of any emotional attachment to their pretty-looking hands. Average players get married to their aces or kings instead, and can't let them go even when they know they are beat.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Aces Lose Too

Starting with the best of all poker hands isn't enough to guarantee you a winning hand.

Ask anyone for good poker pro tip, and they will all tell you the same thing: sometimes, you'll need to fold those Aces.

For more info on this specific topic, have a look at this article on How to Play Pocket Aces.

6. Realize Tilt Only Hurts You

Tilt is a destroyer of bankrolls, dreams, and poker careers.

I can't tell you how often I receive emails or comments from people who describe to me how they've tilted vast amounts of their bankroll away when things went badly at the poker tables.

The reality of poker is that sometimes things will go badly for you, and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it.

This is what you sign up for every time you sit down to play card games.

There's always the possibility you might run terribly. You might run lights out as well, though.

When you allow yourself to lose control of your emotions and throw your strategy out the window, the only person you are hurting is yourself.

All those hours you've spent trying to learn and improve your game were basically wasted because you decided to choose your emotions over reason when it mattered.

Respect the work that you have done. You owe it to yourself to maintain more composure and stop throwing away money when the cards go south.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Relax

The psychological side of poker can be overwhelming, and you need to be ready to deal with it.

Swings happen and bad beats will come. If you don't know how do deal with this, have a look at the poker tips Italy's poker pro Rocco Palumbo shared with PokerNews at the PokerStars Championship in Prague.

If these poker tips work for Palumbo, they may as well work for you!

7. Don't Play Bad Games

How To Get Really Good At Online Poker Vegas World

One more way beginner poker players can sabotage their poker results is by stubbornly playing in games that are full of decent-to-good regulars.

If you can't find somebody at the table who is playing very poorly, then you have to ask yourself why it is that you are even there.

If you only play poker for the mental challenge or recreation or pleasure, then this is fine. This poker tip doesn't necessarily apply to you.

Use this guide to set up your next home game online and play online poker with your friends for free or real money.

But if winning real money or chips is at all a priority for you, then you need to remember you don't turn a significant profit in poker by pushing tiny edges against good poker players.

You win big by playing against players who are making significant fundamental errors and giving away their money over the long term.

As the classic movie Rounders reminds us, 'If you can't spot the sucker in your first half-hour at the table, then you are the sucker.'

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Choose the Right Games

Don't sit with the pros if you can't beat them. Selecting the right games is key to your successes in poker — one wrong move, and you are out.

Again, there's no shame in playing free poker games or in looking for the best freeroll poker tournaments to play online if that's what you need.

Final Thoughts

The divide between break-even beginner players and big-time winners is not as wide as many people think.

It is often just a few simple little adjustments you can learn over time that can carry you over to enable you to start winning at a higher clip.

A lot of it has to do with starting to view the game in a much more cold, detached, mathematical, and logical way than you presently do.

Emotional and/or superstitious poker players almost always lose or struggle to remain even.

Elite poker players, meanwhile, know they are in it for the long haul and don't get overly wrapped up in each hand or moment. They continue to make the most profitable play again and again, no matter what.

Playing online poker for free is the best way to hone your poker skills and practice with no risk.

Nathan 'BlackRain79' Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books Crushing the Microstakes and Modern Small Stakes. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.

_{This article was originally published on Feb. 13, 2017. Last update: Oct. 12, 2020.}

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  cash game strategytournament strategyonline poker.live pokerstarting hand selectiontiltmental gameno-limit hold’emgame selectionpremium handsrange readinghand reading

First, the results. Since the World Series of Poker last year, I've played 174 hours of poker. I play limit hold'em, with almost all of my play at the $10/20 or $15/30 level. In that time I've made $7594, which is $43.70 per hour.

I say that I'm a semi-professional, because obviously 5 hours of 'work' per week isn't really playing at a professional level. Statistically speaking, it's also somewhat possible that I've just gotten lucky over this time. Considering my level of understanding of the game, including knowing what I don't know, honest evaluation of the competition, and a general comfort level with the game, I can objectively say that I don't think luck plays a large part in my results.

Anyway, I say all that to let you judge for yourself my playing level, rather than having to take my word for it. Real professionals might disagree with some of my advice, but I'm offering it because I think that it's difficult to find the correct path towards becoming a winning poker player, and I've now discovered one such path.

Subjectively, it feels awesome to be good at poker. When I go to Vegas every month, I assume that I'm going to leave with a profit of some sort, and am playing to figure out exactly how much it will be. In the same way a programmer takes for granted that he can build a simple web app, I've come to take it for granted that if I need money for something, I can just play poker. That's part of why I don't play more, actually-- it feels like pulling money out of the ATM that I'm not immediately going to spend. Proficient poker playing actually feels like a low-grade superpower.

So today I want to share some parts of this journey. This post isn't about how to play poker, but rather how to learn to play poker. Despite tons of good resources and information out there, I found it difficult to know exactly how to tackle the problem of 'getting good at poker'.

Hold'Em is a beautifully complex and satisfying game. I'd play it even if money wasn't on the line. Playing for money makes it a pure game which ensures that everyone is playing at the best of their ability. The only real 'move' you have is to add money to the pot. No hitting, standing, or swapping out cards. Yet behind this simplicity are layers of math, psychology, and logic, all woven together.

How hard is it to get good at poker? Not very. I started out playing $3/6. When I moved up to $6/12, I was terrified that everyone was going to be really good. They were horrible. I stuck around at $6/12 for a while, and then, hands trembling, moved up to $15/30. I was sure that everyone was amazing there. A few people were good, but most were pretty bad. After a few months of play, I was usually the best or second best player at the table. I recently took a shot at $20/40 and played two different games. At one game I figured I was fourth or fifth best out of ten, and at the other I thought I was one of the top two.

Unfortunately, you can't just be in the top half to make money at poker. Because of the house taking money, you have to be one of the top three or so to win overall. Because everyone else is playing casually and without discipline, it just doesn't take too much to get to the top three.

Before you ever start playing, you need to memorize starting hands. Start with Winning Low Limit Hold'Em by Lee Jones. It's not perfect, and you'll end up diverging from his recommendations eventually, but by simply following his chart, you'll have an enormous advantage over the other players at the lower limits.

Buy a copy of Turbo Texas Hold'Em from Wilson Software. The interface is hilarious and it only runs on PCs on 32bit operating systems (or in VMware), but it's the best poker simulation you can find. Go through meticulously and make all of the settings as hard as possible, including having the AI learn your style. Turn off the animations and sounds to speed up play.

Turbo Texas Hold'Em is amazing because it's fast. You can play fifteen hundred hands per hour. For reference, that's fifty hours of live poker. The AI isn't exactly like real life players, but it's close enough and the difficulty roughly matches to a $15/30 game.

Once you've memorized the starting hands, start playing a couple hours of TTH per day, just guessing what to do after following the starting hand chart. This gives you some context for the game that will increase your comprehension when you read.

After a couple thousand hands or so, read the rest of 'Winning Low Limit Hold'Em'. Keep playing Turbo Texas Hold'Em, but also start playing real life casino games. Start with a $3/6 or $4/8 game, which are low enough to be cheap, but not so low that it's a complete freakshow.

At these low limits, the rake is proportionally so high that the games are virtually unbeatable. Even a firehouse can't fill a bucket with a giant hole in the bottom of it. There's just too much money being pulled off the table. So you don't have to wait until you're beating $4/8 to move up in ranks-- just wait until you are choosing your starting hands with no thought, aren't playing hands you shouldn't play, and feel like your post-flop play is one of the best two or three at the table. Complete comprehension and implementation of Winning Low Limit Hold'Em should get you there.

It's important to be aggressive in moving up in limits, even if you're scared. The buy in for $6/12 is $200, which is a small price to pay for a test to see if you're ready to move up or not. Don't make your decision based on whether you win at the new level or not, but on how the game felt after a couple hours of play. If you felt like people were running circles around you, and you didn't understand what the better players were doing, don't move up. If you think you're in the top half of the players, do move up. You need better competition to progress, and sometimes you have to pay for it in the form of losing a small amount of money to the rake.

Once you start playing $6/12 or $8/16 or $10/20 (depending on which of these your local casino has), most players will still be horrible, but you'll run into a few people that actually have some understanding of the game. Now you can put into practice slightly more advanced tactics like hand-reading, free card plays, and certain bluffs. To learn these, read Small Stakes Hold'em by Sklansky.

The rake in these small/mid limit games is small enough that they are beatable. Keep at them until you feel like you're one of the best three players at the table, and are winning money. If you're diligent about reading the book and putting in some hours on TTH, it won't take long.

The big skill to work on in these mid stakes games is hand-reading, which isn't explicitly covered in any of the books I'm recommending. The idea is that as your opponent makes his moves, you narrow down the range of hands he could possibly have. The goal isn't to figure out the exact hand he has, but rather what his 'range' is, and how you fare against it.

For example, if an opponent in late position raises a two-tone flop, but then checks the turn, it's extremely likely that he has a flush draw. If you have a pair, you can assume that you're going to win unless he he hits his flush card.

The second part of this equation is to figure out which play will net the most money based on these assumptions. To continue the previous example, if a non flush card comes on the river, you should actually check, even though you know you're probably winning. Why? Because he might try to bluff at it and bet. If he DOES bet, you should call, but not raise. A raise will only be called by hands that beat you (like if he made a set on the river).

Once you're becoming somewhat proficient at hand reading, move up to $15/30 or $20/40. Because these games are finally getting into the realm of stakes played by professionals, you have to tread with a bit of caution. The $15/30 game I play in San Francisco has a couple pros, but no one particularly intimidating. I played a $20/40 game in Seattle that was full of horrible players that I would expect to see at the $6/12. On the other hand, the one time I played $20/40 at Bellagio, it was a tough game.

While moving up to this new limit, or even just before, read Hold'Em For Advanced Players. This book is more complex than the first two, and many of the plays it prescribes will only work against decent players. You should continue to work on hand reading and thinking very critically about how each of your possible plays will work against that range.

Make sure to track your progress as you go. I like 'Session Logger' for Android, and my friends like 'Poker Journal' for iPhone. Once you settle in to your $15/30 game, you should be able to make about $45 an hour. It's not a huge amount of money, but it's not bad, and it's a fun way to do it.

The last thing I'll mention is the importance of discipline. If I were to point out the biggest error I see opponents making, it's that they lack discipline. They want to play crappy pocket pairs early. They want to call one more street to see if they make their miracle straight. It's only a bet here and there, which seems negligible, but it adds up in the end.

How To Get Good At Online Poker

When I sit down at a poker table, my goal isn't to win. It's to play correct poker. I don't try to justify any call or fold-- I just try to do what I think is best. I don't always get it right, but that attitude has helped me avoid the emotional playing that would have easily turned me into a net loser.

As for going beyond these limits, I just don't know yet. I definitely haven't fully absorbed Hold'Em for Advanced Players, but I imagine that doing so would be the first step towards moving up limits. I'm currently beating the $15/30 in San Francisco and the $10/20 at Bellagio in Las Vegas. I'm a bit intimidated by the $20/40 at Bellagio, and I don't have enough data to know whether I can beat it or not. I suspect I can't yet.

I also don't know anything about online poker. For whatever reason, it just doesn't appeal to me, and I don't play it.

How To Get Really Good At Online Poker Deuces Wild

As my awareness of the game grew alongside my profits, I was shocked to see just how bad most players are. They've put in the time playing, but without any real study, they're mostly reinforcing bad habits. You can do differently. With just a few months of concentrated study and play, I'm convinced that anyone can become a winning player.

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How To Get Better At Online Poker

No pickup update because, honestly, this last week has been useless. my wing and I moved to Las Vegas for at least the next few weeks to remedy the situation. the full story will come out in the next update.

I think this post may not be the best edited, but it's 5:15am and I'm running out of batteries, so I've got to post it.

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