When you just started your bitcoin poker journey, there are many traps waiting for you on the road ahead, and you will fall into the pit if you are not careful. With that in mind, this article will provide 10 quick tips that can protect players who have just begun from common mistakes.
1. Be Tight against Pre-flop Raises
A common mistake beginners make is to play against a raise with a hand you want to raise from a certain position at the table. Novices can fall into the trap of calling an early position raise with KTs, AJo, or 76o at a full table. These hands are extremely playable as the first player in middle or late position, but our early raises must be respected and viewed as a very narrow range against which we play The win rate is terrible. Make sure there is a big quality difference between the hands you play as the opener and the hands you play when you have a raise ahead of you.
2. Efficient Use of Position
The position has a huge impact on the playability and profitability of a hand. Calling with Q6s from the small blind is unwise, even against a very wide stealing range from the button. Being out of position and players acting behind you will hurt your expectation of calling. However, if you have Q6s on the button and the players in the front fold, this is often an excellent opportunity to raise. If the blinds are tight or passive, the possibility of taking the pot preflop and the positional advantage when called make raising this hand clearly profitable in the long run.
3. Use Outs to Estimate Equity
Optimism is a good thing for seasoned poker players because optimism keeps them open-minded and aware of easily overlooked opportunities to make money. However, newcomers to the game of Texas tend to place too much emphasis on hope, chasing draws because of the temptation to hit strong hands, rather than calculating whether they can make draws often enough. You can convert outs into equity using multipliers two and four. On the flop, you multiply your outs by four to determine your approximate equity in the hand. On the turn, you multiply your outs by two.
4. Know the Percentage Win Rate You Need
You need certain equity to call a raise. Sometimes there are other factors that interfere, like how often you win extra bets and how often you can get your opponent to fold on later turns, but if we ignore these factors for simplicity, then you need to call a pot size bet 33% equity, 25% equity to call a half-pot bet. We can use these numbers as a benchmark to estimate our win rate. If your opponent shoves a lot of money into a small pot, you may need equity close to 50%, but never reach 50% because there will always be some dead money in the pot (even if it's just the blinds).
5. Watch Your Opponent
You probably don't pay attention to the hands you didn't play in. In fact, this is a valuable opportunity for you to gather important information about the players at the table. The information you collect may ultimately influence your future decisions. Pay attention to the cards that your opponent shows at showdown and record them. If you see an unconventional bet size or weird play, take note of it too. This opponent is likely to be unbalanced in some way, giving you a good opportunity to change your strategy in an exploitative way.
6. Manage Your Money
There is a lot of skill in poker, and there is also a big element of luck. Ultimately your poker skills and technical superiority are the deciding factors, but luck matters in the short term. This means that no matter how well you play like the best player in the game, you still have a chance of losing money on the day. The role of your money is to provide a buffer against those short-term fluctuations. Try to make sure you have at least 50 buy-ins in regular rounds and 100 buy-ins in more volatile multi-table tournaments.
7. Selective Bluffing
Avoid desperate bluffs just to win the pot. For some opponents, bluffing is a dangerous thing to do. So you want to make sure you bluff at the right time. For bluffing to be a better option than checking, you should know that your opponent is not a calling station. Also, you should have a hand that has no showdown value (meaning it tends to lose without improvement). If you're bluffing on an earlier turn, give priority to bluffing hands with multiple improvements (semi-bluffs) to avoid getting called.
8. Don’t Be Distracted
Browsing social media, chatting on the phone, and playing games are sure ways to get distracted and make mistakes. Hands can be tough when you don't get a good hand for a long time, but you need to improve your multi-table ability, not your multi-tasking ability. You should use the time you are not playing to study your opponent's tendencies or think about previous hands. When I first started playing poker, I used to play guitar, eat and chat while I played. When I decided to become a professional poker player, I quickly kicked these bad habits.
9. Take Responsibility for Mistakes
You have three options in the face of errors. You can ignore mistakes to protect your self-esteem; you can punish yourself for mistakes and create a negative association with them, or you can use them as opportunities for your own growth. You should analyze errors in an objective, unbiased manner. Then you jot down what caused the errors and how you can avoid them in the future.
10. Seek Help and Guidance
There are many websites on the web that provide Texas Hold'em tips and techniques for live poker players. You can enhance your theoretical knowledge with the resources provided by these Poker sites, such as Anonymous Casino