You can do this by winning more and bigger pots and by losing less money. Listed below are a Couple of tips on how to do both:
Do not call with any old cards!
Some people will call with anything, with the belief that any two cards have the exact same prospect of winning. This is basically true, dominoqq but some are far more likely to find you the pot than others – why waste money time after time calling to see the flop when you might hit a straight? Save that money and watch as other players waste theirs! You’ll be ahead just by not calling! See the section on starting hand ranking for good starting handson. Bear in mind that checking account free, so in case you are playing speed or turbo hold’em, always check, regardless of what the cards.
In case you are playing speed or turbo and you also don’t have many chips left, its probably best to fold bad hands instead of checking, so you can get better hands in before the stakes are increased.
If the flop does not fit….
In the event you choose to call and the flop does not fit (if the flop does not help your hand), fold. Do not call with the hope that you’ll hit that third ace on the turn, you’ve already seen three cards and it did not arrive, what exactly makes you imagine it will turn up when just 1 card is dealt? A good starting hand doesn’t mean a thing if the flop doesn’t improve your hand! Also bear in mind that calling the flop gives you three cards for the price of one.
Let us say that you had two aces (say diamonds and spades), then the flop comes, and its something like 2 clubs, 7 clubs, 8 spades. There may be someone with a pair of twos who is itching to take your money after he flopped three of a kind!
That you do not have to defend your small blind!
When you pay the small blind, and then you get the opportunity to telephone, don’t think of it as only paying another 50% to see the flop. Its actually an opportunity to save 50% on bad handson. Fold in case you haven’t got a high ranking pair of cards. You’ll soon see your chip level increase.
Bluffing will not always do the job!
Do not bluff thinking that you will always scare the other guy off. I’m not saying don’t ever bluff, just be wise about this. If the flop has three diamond cards, and you have got two spades, chances are someone’s flopped a flush. Of course if you bluff that you’ve got exactly the same by raising tremendous amounts, you better hope he does not have an Ace of diamonds in his hand because he knows he’s got the nuts, and it wont matter to him if you are bluffing or have two diamond cards – he knows he can not be beaten!
Of course this works the other way: say three club card are flopped, and you suddenly go from checking the first hand to going all in, people are going to assume you’ve got a flush, and most will fold.
Then the turn is shown to be a warrior, you could raise at this time, pretending to own a pair of kings, or three of some sort, and the others might fold. Yet another fantastic time to go”all in” is when a pair is revealed in the flop. This might hint to people that you have three of a kind, maybe even quads or a complete house.
You can also bluff to improve the pot. Imagine you have Ace, King spades. Don’t raise, just call (check if given the chance ). Imagine the flop is three spade cards and you now have”the nuts” – the best possible hand. From checking/calling you will have ensured that you never force anyone to fold and some may now have the confidence to raise you, thinking they can push you from this match. If this happens you could keep calling them or raising them with small amounts. This will ensure that once you win the showdown you’ll have far more money in the pot!
Learn if your opponents are good or bad gamers
Don’t raise or go all in with bad players, unless you get a great hand! They tend to call anything thrown at them, and so can’t be bluffed!
Don’t cave in to your gambling gremlin!
Do not find excuses to play badly. If you find yourself reasoning with yourself as you push all your chips to the centre that the other guy is probably bluffing and your pair of twos can take him, take a step back, have a drink and tell yourself:”I am tilting!”
The phrase”tilting” is obtained from the world of pinball, where players who have lost yet another ball tilt the machine in order to try and find the ball back in play. This also happens to poker players after a bad beat (where someone gets lucky on the river and beats their quad aces with a royal flush!) And they decide to try to win their money back by playing stupid hands.
Go all in when you Need to
When playing tournaments and you are right down to a small amount of chips, think about going all in. To make the point clearer, here is a good example:
Let’s say I am in an online tournament and we’re down to just two different people. My opponent has 3000+ chips and I have 940. The stakes are about to be raised to 300/600 (300 for the small blind, 600 for the large blind), so in about two hands time I’m going to be out of chips whether I wish to play or not. I go all in with a Jack, six unsuited (something that should never be done under normal circumstances!) . That I’m tilting.
It’s the same with all the flip side, plus it looks like he’s going to win with king high card, when the river reveals a six. I win nearly two thousand chips with a lowly pair of sixes. This evens out the playing field and he now tilts because I win with a lucky river card!
I’d really like to finish this story by saying that I won, however if I recall correctly he went onto get a place at a $50,000 final and I got a pop up window saying”Your position: 2nd.”
Poker is not reasonable
Well, actually it really is, however it will look like it isn’t lots of times. Statistics prove that if a group of poker players play for an unlimited amount of time they are going to all have the identical amount of chips by the ending . But no poker game lasts an infinite amount of time, and just a life does not scrape the surface of infinity, so people will seem to have lucky and unlucky streaks. These lucky streaks can be explained by way of another example.
Say you toss a coin ten days. In theory it should land heads up 5 times, and tails the other five. However, it is going to probably become much more like 8 heads and two tails, because the number of coin flips is so small that probability will not have a opportunity to show its face. Now do it a thousand times and probability will win out and it’ll soon be much closer, more like 55:45. It’s the same with poker. A poker game is equivalent to the ten coin tosses. The match is so short that the probability of discrepancies in the predicted card pattern are very large. So 1 guy could get all the good hands and another guy could get nothing but garbage all night!
They key is never to let yourself get dragged into a situation where you eliminate money because with this. If you should be on a losing streak, go home. Maybe tomorrow, you will be one with four aces every hand!
