How to play poker
Poker is cool. There’s no question about it. You see poker players wins millions of dollars on TV every single week and it makes you want to be there and live the experience. For a few of us, this might actually happen but before you can win at poker, you need to learn how to play poker.
Learning how to player poker is like learning a musical instrument. Some people have a natural knack for it while others need to work a lot harder at it. There is also the few that are simply tone deaf and will just never be good at it no matter how hard they try.
One of the first things you might want to consider when learning how to play poker is your own strengths and weaknesses. Not in terms of poker strategy, but in terms of your personality, of who you are and how you react. Winning poker players have certain character traits that naturally blends well with some essential poker skills. Three of these traits are:
- Being patient
- Being smart
- Being observant
The winning poker player has all three. If you’re patient but not smart or observant, you’re going to miss out on opportunities to bluff, or you’re going to make mistakes like calling when you should fold.
If you’re smart but impatient, you’re going to get cocky and take too many risks and it’s going to byte you in the ass eventually.
If you’re observant but not smart, you will misinterpret the things you see and make critical errors.
Essentially, the three traits complement each other and those who learn how to play poker well in a short amount of time understand this. Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you’re just starting to play poker or of you’ve played for 5 years. No matter what your poker experience is, you’ll always need to develop and maintain those three critical elements and their linkages.
Why is being impatient so important? Being patient does not mean waiting until you get a great starting hand and folding everything else. Being patient means waiting for opportunities to arise. These opportunities can be getting a great starting hand, but most of the time they have to do with other players making mistakes. How can you tell when that happens? By being observant and identifying betting patterns, typical behaviors (often linked with table position) and unusual behaviors. Being smart means processing that information to determine if you should act now, and more importantly – identifying the method you should use to capitalize on the opportunity at hand.
Let me give you a typical example: Let’s say you think you have the best hand. It’s the last betting round and you’re facing a single opponent. What do you do?
- Check
- Value Bet
- ½ pot bet
- pot size bet
The answer is: It depends. It depends on a lot of things actually, and each of the options could be the correct answer. Are you in a ring game or in a tournament? How many chips do you and your opponent have? How much is in the pot? What are your table images? Etc, etc, etc… Remember, don’t get discouraged when something doesn’t work out. Even the best guitarists in the world break a string once in a while. In Poker, you’ll sometimes get impatient, missread a situation, and make a stupid call. Think long term goals and performance. The ability to wait, identify and process information correctly is what you need to focus on if you want to learn how to play poker well.
