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1. First and foremost you have to remember the object of playing Texas Holdem is to win money. The best way to make this crazy game of Texas Holdem an enjoyable one is start being a winning player. A lot of people say they just play for fun but how fun is it to keep losing money every time you play.
2. Set aside a certain amount of money that you are only going to use to play poker. This is your “Bankroll”. Treat it like you would an investment account. This is going to be your number one way of keeping track of your play on the poker tables.
3. Play with money you can afford to lose. The easiest way to be a losing player is to play with money that you have no business risking, or what I like to call “Scared Money”. You will have a hard time being able to play correctly if you are consistently sacred to lose the money you are playing with.
4. Chose the right stakes for your bankroll. No matter how good you are at poker you are going to experience major swings in your wins and loses. If you are a winning player over the long haul you are still going to come out ahead. But to pull this off you are going to have to be playing at stakes that do not wipe out your bankroll when you do run bad. Here is a good site that goes into depth about how to figure out what kind of bankroll you will need to play at certain stakes.
5. You have to be able to manage your bankroll. If you do take on the task of trying to play poker for a living you are going to have to master how to manage your bankroll. When you are living of off your poker winning it essential your net worth and you have to look at things a little different. Before you think about trying this you better know you are a winning player.
6. Don’t play when you have major personal issues in your life. If you are having any major personal problems, e.g. breaking up, death in the family, or anything that can have a major impact on your ability to think clearly you should not be playing poker. Even some of the best players in the world are going to be losing players with these types of things going on in their life.
7. Don’t play when you know you are not one of the better players at the poker table. This may be the most important principle of being a winning holdem player. You might be the tenth best poker player in the world but if you are playing with the nine that are better than you then you are bound to lose. This works the opposite also. You might be an average player but if you always play with people that are worse players, than you are going to win money consistently.
8. You have to be confident in your skills but not overly confident. If you have to trust your abilities enough to believe that you are going to be able to win at a certain poker table. Don’t get overconfident though. This is a surefire way for you to let someone sneak up on you and steal your whole stack.
9. When you start to get tired quit playing for the day. Playing long poker sessions is kind of a macho thing to do. You always hear old stories about pros playing for three days in a row with no sleep. The bottom line is if you are starting to feel like you are losing an edge because of getting tired stop playing. It is going to save you a lot of money in the long run.
10. You have to stay disciplined. Discipline is the cornerstone of good poker. Many players have then know-how to play good poker but it is the ability to stay disciplined that separates the good players from the great players. This is the part of the game that isn’t what a lot of people want to hear about how to play good poker. Sometimes good poker is boring. But it is better to be winning and bored than in the action and broke.
11. Don’t underestimate your opponent. If you have never played against the opponent you are up against it is better to give him more respect than he deserves than not enough. Good poker player come in all shapes and sizes don’t judge a poker player by his cover.
12. Play good starting hands. This is probably on of the first rules you learn when a player is learning how to play correctly. It is also one of the quickest ways for a bad player to become a good player.
13. Try and figure out what your opponent is holding. The more you play the easier this task will become. Once you hone this skill though it is a nice weapon to have. This is one skill that some people are born with and some people develop and some people never can get it down. But it is one skill set that separates the good, the bad, and the ugly.
14. Bluffing can be a great asset but don’t overdo it. Everyone loves the bluff ; it is one of the greatest weapons you are giving in poker. It is the fact that you can win without the best hand that makes poker so great. It is also a weapon if not used correctly can cost a mediocre player a lot of money.
15. You have to be able to change gears. By changing gears I mean you have to be able to change the way you play consistently so that a good player does not figure out what you are doing. If a good player figures out a pattern in your play he will be able to exploit it very easily.
16. You have to be selective and aggressive. This goes hand in hand with being disciplined. This also is the heart and soul of winning at Texas holdem. Being a calling stationis one of the worst things you can be in poker. The best thing about raising or being aggressive is that it gives you two different ways of winning the hand. First if your opponent can decide to fold whether he has the best hand or not and second if he does call you still may have the best hand against him.
17. Figure out your opponents betting patterns. Some poker players may have very obvious betting patterns and the sooner you figure out these the sooner you are going to take all of his money.
18. Learn how to counting your outs in a giving situation. Your outs are the number of cards that can take your losing hand and turn it into a winning hand. The only way you are ever going to know how to make the right call or not is to know how many outs you have left in a deck and know what kind of odds that gives you at winning the hand from that point on.
19. Calculate your pot odds. Pot odds are the size of the pot relative the size of your bet. You want to be able to figure out if it is worth the size of the bet you have to call to win the size of the pot out there. If you are consistently putting money into a pot that you are not getting the right odds to call you are going to lose money in the long run. Sure you may get lucky and hit that miracle card every once in a while but sooner rather than later you are going to go broke. Here is some great blog on the conection between math and poker.
20. If it is obvious that you are not going to win the hand fold. There is no way to through small amounts of money away when you know you have no chance of winning the hand.
21. Keep your head when you are on the wrong end of a bad beat. Poker is a game of skill with a huge luck factor involved. This luck factor can really test your nerve some times and if you let bad beats get to you too much you will never be able to play at your best. One way to keep your sanity when you are on the wrong end of a bad beat is to try and remember all the times you have gotten lucky when you shouldn’t have and realize it is just part of poker.
22. Start keeping detailed records of your poker play. One of the easiest ways a player can improve his game is to keep records of his play. Make sure you record every day no matter what the results. You want the truth not what you think is the truth. So many people think they are winning players but if they ever sat down and tallied up their wins and loses they would quickly find out that they lose more than they win.
23. Keep track of the day, date, and the time you where playing poker. You may find out that you win more when you play longer sessions or vise versa. You will need to build up a large sample of data to start to see trends in your play but you can be sure that after a while you will see when you are playing well and when you are playing poorly.
24. Keep track of what stakes you are playing. By keeping close watch of how you do at different limits you may find out that you do much better at certain limits than others.
25. Make it a habit of writing down your results right after you are done. This will give you the best chance at remembering all of the critical details that could help you evaluate your play later, and it will also deter you from trying to forget those losing sessions.
26. Use some type of software to keep track of play. Try to keep as many details that you think can help you evaluate your play, e.g. net winnings, type of game played, where you played, what the limit was, and you can even keep track of how you were feeling at the time you played. The ability to find any weakness in your game can be a huge asset. You can use a excel spreadsheet or some other software designed for keeping track of your play.
27. Discuss your play with your close poker friends. This is a great way for you to get a better understanding and possibly be enlightened by another way to look at the game from someone. You may want to watch out from who you are taking advice from though. You better sure they are good players. But anytime thinking about the game is time well spent.
28. Get yourself some of the better poker books . There are literally hundreds of poker books flooding the market right now. Some are garbage and some are worth their weight in gold.
29. Teach someone else how to play winning poker. Sometime the best way to learn something is to teach it to someone else. They may ask questions that you may never thought of. It may make you learn the game better yourself.
30. Participate in Poker Forums. There are some great poker forums out there that discuss anything you want to know about poker. These places are great best some of the greatest poker minds hang out on them and they are more than willing to help you out if you have questions regarding the game.
31. Keep learning. The day you think you know it all about poker is the day everyone else is going to start getting better than they already are than you are getting ahead of you.
