The number of people searching for tips on how to play poker has been on the increase in the recent past, as more and more people become awake to the potential joys of this game – especially after the emergence of online poker which is taking poker to new frontiers.
In response to the needs of the people looking for tips on how to play poker, here are some 5 tips on how to play poker, tips that if you observe them consistently, can go a long way towards making you a notable poker player in your local circles, and possibly even in the national circles.
The first of the 5 tips for playing poker is something that is very obvious – but which many seemingly proficient poker players opt to ignore, namely observing the other poker players you are playing with and their moves – and resisting the temptation to just focus on your own strategy without trying to see how that strategy will work out when brought up against the strategies of your opponents. This is about the psychology of poker, and it is about observing things like the number (and types) of hands your opponents are playing, and their ‘raising’ tendencies – like how frequently they raise and their (endowment in terms of hands) when they raise.
The second of the 5 tips on how to play soccer is that you should resist the temptation of playing a passive game, and infuse some aggressiveness into your game. Yes, it pays to observe how your opponents are playing, but don’t push it to a level where you are just making counter-moves to the others, and not making any aggressive moves of your own, because doing so puts you at a severe disadvantage, handing as you do, control over the game to the others.
The third of the 5 tips on how to play soccer involves understanding the importance of positioning – and like the second tip on how to play poker, this is about trying to take as much control of the game as position through a wise choice of a playing position. Ideally then, you should try to take a ‘late’ playing position which gives you as much insight into the moves of your opponents as possible, and resist the ‘me first’ tendency of wanting to be the first person on the table to make your moves because by so doing, you would be opening your game (for reading) to your opponents, who might use that information to push you to a wall.
The fourth of the 5 tips on how to play poker is to ‘avoid playing too many hands, especially at the start’ – as this adds absolutely no value to your game, and opens you to making major mistakes you might come to regret later on in the game.
The fifth of the 5 tips on how to play poker is about resisting the temptation to speculate and chase against the odds, because – as any poker pro will tell you- the game is more about strategy than about luck, with luck (which is what you’d be going after in chasing after the odds) playing a very small role as far as success in the game goes.