A good read of the basic tips for beginners summarizes a little what are the skills you must have to reap successes in poker, both online and offline. None of this changes when real poker professionals tell you about their personal recommendations. The bases remain the same, but they do have something else to teach us in terms of the mental.
A little quick multiplication, probability and statistics. Bases in which you become a pro and gain mental speed by practicing while you play poker, but Jose Miguel Espinar, a professional online player who has won several tournaments in this modality, tells us about another key aspect. Self-control and perseverance.
Self-control focuses on the control of emotions and that they do not hinder our decisions. In poker the biggest enemy is yourself. The first thing you should do is accept that sometimes you lose and sometimes you win, the key is to manage an indicator of profits greater than losses. In an interview granted to the blog Jugar Con La Cabeza , Miguel recounts cases of colleagues who end up leaving poker because they lose control of their emotions during a game.
Perseverance teaches you that results are not immediate, and that the road to learning to play poker begins slow and bumpy. The road will not always be uphill, it will have its ups and downs. If your emotions are under control, you will be able to overcome these bad times and take them as a learning opportunity. If you do not learn anything from mistakes, both yours and your opponents, you are destined to continue losing for the same reasons.
Tips from Professional Poker Players
Doug Polk also offers a series of tips culled from different players on his personal blog.
Tip #1 – Play fewer hands but aggressively. When starting a tournament, he develops a solid strategy (that you have already tried successfully several times) of preflop ranges. This refers to having a predetermined strategy such as betting when you have a certain combination of cards in your hands and what button position you are on. There are downloadable preflop cards to guide you.
Tip #2 – Don’t just bet the minimum when you’re in the first round of betting. Either you fold or you raise the bet. If you play timidly at the start, you are giving other players a great chance of catching something on the river as they can stay in the bet.
Tip #3 – Aggressive semi-bluffs with good cards. Bluffs are essential to winning at poker, but you don’t want to do it with just any card. Try to always have good options to win, even if at the moment of threatening it is not very clear. Have semi-bluffs with pairs or two cards of the same type. If you are bet, at least you have chances to get good combinations.
Tip #4 – Bet hard on your strong cards. It’s always tempting to pretend you don’t have any good cards when you’re dealt AA, but it’s a bad idea to check without betting in the hope that other players will raise their bets. Always raise the big bet with a strong set of cards. Your goal is to build your pot and protect your liquidity.
Tip #5 – Defend the Big Blind . When you are in this very favorable position (last to bet), if another player raised you, you are in a good position to at least call his bet and see what cards come on the river. Not that you should call mediocre cards like 9 and 5, but decent cards like Q9 are fine in this position. The reason is because few players will enter the next round and outside of that you already had to bet the minimum being on the button, so calling will not cost you much to see what comes out.
Tip #6 – Back away when you’re not too sure. It’s one of those things that really separates a novice from a pro. The professional knows how to withdraw from the hand without any problem, even with high cards, when he feels that he has no way of winning the game. The rookie will try to leave everything to chance and continue. Take note of whether your decision was the right one in the end to improve when a similar one arises.
These are just some of the tips you can learn from professional players. The best thing is that you put them to the test in online games, and analyze how it goes according to your style of play. You will see how other newbies ignore many of these suggestions.
