It takes time to learn how win consistently at poker. Here at Juicy Stakes Poker Australia, we have spoken a lot about poker for beginners. Other online sites do the same. Most advice is about directly poker-related ideas. Here we will talk about non-poker related ideas!
What are the Basic Poker-related Pieces of Advice?
These themes get repeated ad infinitum at online poker sites. Here is just a short list of good advice that is repeated over and over again.
- Play within your means.
- Play few hands.
- Be aggressive on the hands you do play.
- Play mostly in position.
- Bluff only on occasion.
- Study your opponents.
- Start playing at just one table.
As we said, this is a short list. We are sure that you can add to the list from your own experience!
Now we will try to make a point or two in non-poker related areas!
Poker is a Game and a Game is a Game
Sometimes poker players—from people just starting out to seasoned professional players—have trouble seeing poker as a game. There us so much analysis that needs to be done in poker that people can’t see it as just a game.
We don’t have any trouble seeing chess or GO as games even though they also require very deep analysis before every move we make. Our vocabularies don’t have a term for a game that is not a game! So, we have to accept that poker is a game.
If you need to play poker at very low stakes to be able to see it as a game, so be it. Don’t play in higher stakes games if that alone would change the nature of the “game” into something indescribable or indefinable.
In short, playing games outside of poker is an excellent way to appreciate games as games in and of themselves..
Playing Many Games Helps us Understand Skill and Luck
We have to see poker as an amalgam of skill and luck. When we accept luck as an essential part of poker, we can avoid tilt. Avoiding tilt is as important as playing the hands correctly! Tilt makes players crazy and crazy is not the best mental state to be in if you want to win at poker.
Be Consistent and be Inconsistent
As much as anything, this sounds like a vast contradiction in terms. It isn’t! There are times when we have to be consistent to the basic poker concepts as we listed them earlier. But if we are always consistent with those aspects of poker, we will become an open book. Our opponents will see through us and we will never win at poker!
So, judicious inconsistency is the hallmark of the advanced poker player. Even if you are still playing at low stakes, you can be an advanced player FOR YOUR LEVEL and for you!
Why Did You Do That?
Another angle in the consistency very judicious inconsistency dichotomy is always to have a reason for any move you make. Some moves. Like folding 2-5 unsuited before the flop take no thinking at all while many decisions require a good deal of thought. Make sure that you have a good reason for any course of action you take.
If you can’t come up with a good reason for a move, you clearly need to learn more, study more, practice more and never to consider going to a higher stakes level.
Practice Makes Really, Really Good!
Even the top pros know that practice alone cannot make them perfect poker players! So shoot for being good, then very good, and finally really, really good. There is a deep emotional benefit to both understanding that perfection is existentially unattainable and that being better today than yesterday is a palpable “good”.
Teach Yourself to Fall out of Love
Many poker players fall in love with good cards and even good hands and regret their emotional attachment later. Even pocket aces are not a sure thing! You might be going for an open-ended straight and lose anyway even if you get the straight because another player had a better hand.
Seeing the range of possible hands will make you see the chances of losing even if you hit your best hand!
Falling so deeply in love with your cards will cause you to throw good money after bad. We usually think of throwing good money after bad in the context of a hopelessly weak hand or a hand that is far less likely to hit than to miss. Throwing good money after bad is also common when a player can get a good hand and still lose!
YouTube is Not Real
The many poker hands we can watch on YouTube are fun to watch. We have to realize, however, that they are pure entertainment. YouTube is a monetized social media platform which means that the people who put poker on YouTube are paid to do so!
Enjoy but don’t employ what you see on YouTube!
Train Yourself to See the Hidden
Where’s Waldo?
Is there a SET here?
What is the best next move in chess?
Can I get unstuck in this Sudoku game?
There are many everyday situations where the information we need to make a sound decision is hidden.
What would pops like for Christmas?
The hidden information factor leads to one of the least appreciated aspects of poker, to wit:
Be Happy You are Able to Make a Decision
Be thankful for the opportunity to play poker! So many people don’t have the time or money to play even in low stakes poker! Appreciate the good fortunes you have.
As a corollary to this thought, we should all cultivate outside interests that are as far from poker as they can be! We usually think about hobbies in this context. There is a lot more to outside interests than hobbies. Simply looking at the clouds, the trees, the flowers, kids playing in the park, and so on can take our minds off poker.
Having interests and pleasures that allow us to not think about poker makes us better poker players! When the time comes to concentrate on poker again, we are ready!
Watching clouds in motion or birds in flight is a deep pleasure. We see shapes that we might not be able to conjure on our own! Being able to conjure is an essential aspect of successful poker!
We Have Come Full Circle!
At Juicy Stakes Poker, you can play as long or as short as you wish and at a very large number of stakes levels. We offer players a great and convenient online poker platform.
JOIN JUICY STAKES POKER!
