Most online poker players have never played at a land-based poker room. We like to play with friends for low stakes and beer. A land-based poker room has an intimidation factor that online poker does not have. Here at the Everygame Poker Heat Team, we try to instill poker confidence in new players.
You can become a Heat Team Streamer by having a Twitch.tv account with at least 100 followers. Whether you can become a streamer or not, our blog articles can help you navigate the poker waters when they are rough and when they are calm.
Confidence is the Key
In poker as in so many other areas of life, confidence is the X factor. In order to play poker well, we need the confidence to “make a move”. A lot of people in many areas of life have trouble “making a move”. So, you can look at online poker as a way to develop the confidence to make life decisions with more confidence.
How Can Poker Players Develop Self-Confidence?
Some people suggest a kind of self-hypnosis. If that works for you, fine, but we think that there are better ways to become more self-confident than tricking yourself.
Some people advise poker players to plan out a session similar to how a football coach plans out the first 20-something plays and pitchers plan out the way they will attack an opposing lineup.
Planning a poker session may seem impossible since we don’t know who our opponents will be and we don’t know what cards we will get. Well, those unknowns are at the essence of planning. A new poker player should decide which hand ranges to call or raise with in different positions. Understanding how our opponents play should also always be a contributing factor in our real-time decisions.
Won’t That All Take a Long Time to Master?
Yes, it will. We have to develop a “psychology barometer” where we learn as much as we can about opponents in a short period of time. We also need to learn how to gauge our opponents’ response to an unusual play of ours. All of this requires “learning,” and as we all know, learning takes time.
So, one of the many aspects of poker for beginners is that you need to study at least as much as you play! Study requires patience and it takes a lot of patience to become good at poker! One interesting aspect of patience is that it is the flip side of the coin of…
Tilt is the Bane of Poker Players
When you tilt, you demonstrate low self-confidence and even less patience. Tilt is the result of being uncomfortable in poker situations. The confident player knows that he or she cannot know everything. Even Daniel Negreanu doesn’t know everything!
A confident player will understand that mistakes are inevitable and bad beats are also unavoidable. The trick is to not let these "inevitables" and "unavoidables" get to you and show them to the other players at the table.
Start out at Low Stakes
This should be obvious as new players need seasoning to get to a point where they can move to higher stakes. Patience and self-confidence also dictate being prepared to spend a relatively long time at low stakes. While some players see low stakes as a knock on their ego and their fighting spirit, there is nothing wrong with playing at low stakes.
Some players play their entire poker careers at low stakes! They play to have fun and to accept the powerful challenge of poker without placing too much risk on their bankroll.
In baseball, there is a cliché that a batter has to see 10,000 pitches before he really knows what to do at the plate. Similarly, a poker player has to play a few thousand hands in order to feel that he or she knows what is going on in a difficult hand.
Playing a Lot of Hands Sounds Like Practice
And so, it is!
Poker players should practice as much as possible. One good way to practice hand recognition is to play video poker at an online poker room that offers free play.
Hand recognition simply means instantly seeing the potential in a hand. The potential in a hand also leads us to the inevitable subject of poker math. In video poker, gamers play according to a different set of strategic moves but being able to see a hand for its potential in poker is a very powerful way to practice for real poker.
Why Do Poker Articles Always Come Back to Poker Math?
Well, poker math gives players a strong scientific way to look at their next move. Even if a player has been through the “turn” and has a substantial amount invested in a pot, if the math of pot odds and expected value dictate that he or she should fold, then folding is usually the best strategic play. The only factor that might upend this thinking is if you are playing against a loose cannon who might be bluffing without even realizing that he is doing so!
Concentration and Paying Attention are Two Other Important Aspects of Poker
These are sister elements of poker. Concentration means being able to think clearly about your next decision. If your mind is wandering because of a work situation or a family concern, then the best strategic play you could make is to leave the game!
This kind of situation happens a lot more often than one would think and most poker players play on. They lose more money than they should!
Heat Teamers should also know that this factor alone makes online poker a lot better suited to most poker players. Imagine traveling to a land-based poker room and having your concentration intruded upon by those work or family issues.
Even if the work issue is a project with a deadline, if it takes your concentration away from poker, you should give the project your full attention. If the family issue is not life-threatening but requires your attention, give it your attention and leave the poker for the next time.
Are you getting our point?
Paying Attention is a Full-time Job
Just as your real job is a full-time job so is paying attention at the poker table. There is a strong incentive to let one’s mind wander when we fold yet again. In fact, we fold before the flop on about 70% of all hands. If we allow our attention to drift away from the poker table, we give up on opportunities to learn something about our opponents and about how hands unfold.
Here is another reference from baseball. Phil Rizzuto was a great shortstop for the New York Yankees and after his playing career ended, he became an announcer. He was known to lose concentration on the game and not to pay attention to the goings-on on the field. This happened to him too often to have been always a bathroom issue! So, make it a point to teach yourself to pay attention to every hand.
Read Great Fiction
E. M. Forster wrote in Aspects of the Novel that the plot always seems to get in the way of character development. Great fiction is always about character development. As a poker session progresses, players have a prime opportunity to learn about the character of the other players.
Learn from reading great fiction. It will give you an advantage in understanding that understanding your opponents comes with time, and every challenge in your way is to take something to learn from it.
The Heat Team Breaks Down Essential Poker Strategies
On the one hand, it is an essential poker strategy to know what to do with ace-king suited or unsuited in any of the poker positions. Here we have looked at essential poker strategies in a somewhat different manner. We believe that both approaches offer insights into basic and advanced tactics and decision-making.
Let Everygame become your go-to place for online poker and let the Heat Team help you develop your best poker skills.