Steal the Blinds. Most people think they do a good job of stealing the blinds, but many still pass up a. How to play Poker (Beginners) Poker is a family of card games that combines strategy, intelligence, and skill. Poker games vary in the number of cards dealt, the number of shared or 'community' cards, the number of cards that remain hidden, and the betting procedures. The most prominent ones being HOLD’EM Poker and OMAHA Poker. Cash Games Strategy – learning in the right way. It is not enough to learn poker hand rankings, understand positions, or blindly apply aggression to become a winner in today’s games.Learning efficient cash game poker strategy can take time, but it is totally worth it.
I am really glad that you found my easy to follow complete Texas Hold’em strategy guide where we will cover the basics as well as advanced concepts on how to play poker. The four-part tutorial is designed to benefit beginners, intermediate players, and even advanced players. No matter what your background, this guide will help you sharpen your skills with the end goal of making you a big winner in your chosen game.
I have been playing and teaching poker for over 10 years and know how difficult it can be to find useful information that actually leads to winning money at the game. My strength has always been in breaking down the game into simplified and easy to understand elements that optimize the speed at which anyone improves at poker. It is my belief that anyone can become an elite poker player with a bit of knowledge and hard work.
First, we need to establish the entire reason we play poker.
What Is Poker and What Is the Object of the Game?
You may be wondering why I would even bother to define something that might seem really obvious to anyone reading this guide.
The reason is that the vast majority of people who sit down at a poker game really don’t understand what they are trying to accomplish or what the object of the game truly is.
- They may think it’s all about making a better hand than your opponent or winning some giant pot with their monster hand.
- Others may believe that the “secret” to winning is to know when to orchestrate a well-timed bluff or figure out your opponents’ tells so that you can spot when they are bluffing.
On all accounts, everything that thinks these things is completely off base. Let’s establish the object of the game and what should be at the forefront of every decision you make at the poker table. That information will allow us to hone in on a formal definition for poker.
So, what is the object of the game in poker? The object of poker is to win more money or chips than your opponents over your lifetime by consistently making better decisions than them at every possible decision point.
That’s it.
So here’s the formal definition of poker: Poker is a family of card games where individual players compete to see who can win the most money or chips over the long term.
Ultimately, your goal as a player should be to figure out how to win more money. In this guide, we will focus on Texas Hold’em since it is the most popular game today. However, many of the concepts we will discuss will be relevant for any variant of poker you choose to play.
The Goal of This Guide
The mission of this guide (and website) is to expedite your journey toward mastering all the simple and complex concepts of poker so that you can become the best player you can be. Unlike other poker tutorials, I am not going to spend a bunch of time telling you what hands to raise, what to 3-bet, when to c-bet, etc. Each of those topics could fill an entire book. Besides, there are hundreds of articles, books, forum posts out there that go into the minutiae of that information in depth.
Instead, my objective is to provide a solid fundamental and theoretical foundation that allows you to comprehend poker strategy in a more efficient way. Basically, I want to teach you the proper mindset and give you the fundamental knowledge that allows you to maximize your potential. Once you understand the basics of how to win money in poker, building a strategy around that core goal becomes much easier. Put another way, if you don’t understand the information in my guide, learning poker would be like playing golf with a blindfold.
Who This Guide Is For
I wrote this tutorial for everyone. Whether you are new to the game, are a struggling intermediate player, or even an advanced player this guide has something for you. Beginners will benefit from obtaining all of the basic knowledge that I wish I had when I started over 10 years ago. Intermediate players will likely find a few things that they might have missed along the way. Advanced players will sharpen their skills by getting back to basics as a refresher course.
Whatever your background, this guide will help you either build or rebuild a poker game that is firmly based on sound fundamentals and theory. Once you master all of the concepts I have laid out for you, the rest all comes down to adjusting to your opponents. Your ultimate level of success in Texas Hold’em, or any other poker variant, depends on how well you adjust your strategy based on what other players are doing at the table.
What Format Will I Learn to Play?
This guide will focus on teaching you to win at Texas Hold’em cash games. Even so, the knowledge you will gain here will have relevance for any game format you choose. After all, cash games are the purest form of poker since there are no prize pools or ICM concerns to worry about. Mastering the information here will make you a beast in whatever game you choose to play. There is a reason cash game specialists are the best players in the world.
Why Should I Trust You to Teach Me Poker?
Because I actually win big at poker. I am not some famous “poker star” or someone who travels to the World Series of Poker every year. I am just one of many poker professionals who you have never heard of that plays poker as a side hobby instead of as a career.
The best thing is that I have been grinding the stakes that everyday players, like you and me, play right now in the real world. I know how the games run from 2NL all the way up to 600NL. I can teach you how to crush those games because that’s what I have been doing for years. I also am a winner in MTTs, SNGs, and even have won over 100 local live pub poker events. No matter the format, I can help you play better.
If you want a brief history of how I got started in poker, check out the about page. Or, if you prefer to see it with your own eyes, I have a ton of content on YouTube that shows me playing and talking through hands. In 2017 I completed something called the Spare Change Challenge, where I took some loose change from around the house and ran it up to $4,000 in about 70,000 hands. During that span, I also took first place in a small stakes MTT for $1,800 and had an ROI of 150%. By the way, the picture at the top of this page is one of my graphs.
What You Will Learn
For ease of navigation, I have split up the guide into 4 parts:
- Part 1: Basic Rules of Texas Hold’em Gameplay
This part is for people who are either complete beginners or need a refresher on how exactly the game is played. If you an intermediate player and already have a firm grasp of how to play Texas Hold’em, you may skip to part #2. - Part 2: Basic Poker Fundamentals & Theory
In this part, we cover the basics of poker strategy and fundamentals as well as where the money comes from in poker. - Part 3: Fundamentals of Advanced Poker Theory
The goal of part three is to start bridging the gap between the fundamentals of poker and how we use that information to formulate a winning strategy. - Part 4: Building Your Poker Strategy
Once you understand the basic fundamentals and theory, it’s time to create a core “vacuum” strategy that will serve as the foundation for all of your play. We will also discuss the mental side of poker and how to study and improve your game going forward.
Resources
Fortunately, that doesn’t mean that novice players are caught between a rock and a hard place, as there’s plenty of quality tutorial apps that can help you bridge the gap between theory and actual in-game application. As you’d expect, while PC and Mac users have the largest number of resources at their disposal, the massive surge of popularity of iPhones resulted in some quality apps being released for Apple’s smartphones. This article is meant to give you some idea of how those apps can help you improve your game and what specific pieces of software you should be looking out for on your next visit to the iTunes store.
Poker Odds Teacher - $0.99
HeadsUp Poker Trainer - $1.99
Poker USA - FREE
Poker Expert - $6.99
Computer Poker Games
Find The Nuts - Texas Hold'em Trainer - $1.99
Poker Brain - Free
Additionally the app prompts you before starting the quiz to read up on the appendix section. This includes a seating plan, hand rankings, an outs percentage and ratio chart and also a section on understanding pot odds. In all honesty, this section alone will be of a massive value to most players but it’s important that its read and understood before taking the quiz.
Insta Poker Coach - Free
For each aspect of your purchased article, when at the table you will receive points on making the right decisions. The more correct decisions you make the more points you earn. The app also explains why your move was either correct or incorrect at every stage of your decision making process. The opponents you play against will also range in ability and style, so this means you to react to this as well. Without doubt one of the best poker tutorial apps we have come across.
WPT Poker Trainer - Free
Additionally there is a player stats section that allows you to see how well you are doing in terms of making the right decisions. It’s a great feature to be able to see which parts of your game you need to work and will give you tips as to what to do to improve these areas of your game. One thing that was noticeable on the app is that you will need to pay for some of the packs which can get rather pricey, but after sampling a couple we can confirm that they are actually really good value for money.
Poker Trainer - $0.99
After each question in the quiz the app will fire out a bit of information regarding your answer whether it is correct or incorrect. This is the strategy part and the section where you will essentially learn about that concept. The early stages are really easy but as you work through the levels they will get much tougher and allow you to really test your poker knowledge.
Poker Tutorial Cash Games
SNG Poker Lesson 1 - $0.99
The video is of Mr Rock Solid playing his way through a SNG of which he just so happens to win. He discusses concepts such as raising in position and stealing the blinds along with some basic ICM concepts for more advanced players. Whilst not a traditional app by any means, watching this 45 minute video will likely give you way more than the majority of apps out there for SNG players at least.
Best Free Video Poker Tutorial
Online Poker Tutorial
It’s important to understand that each app will be fitting a particular brief from the manufacturer and so it’s pretty hard to compare them against each other. That being said, at the end of the day they are all aimed at the poker tuition market so it will be interesting to see how they stack up against each other.