Poker: Learn the basics of playing poker

Nothing sounds great like improving on your live poker skill and getting a win in any of the games. There are a number of factors to consider in order to improve on your live game; it might include increased rake and confronting your opponents with confidence and determination. However here are three basic steps to help you enhance your poker skills. Live poker is basically a peoples' game and therefore it is important to study psychology since the basic part of the game understands people, and more importantly, your opponents.

Being able to evaluate a person personality is important because this will greatly affect their way of playing, this will drive you to win great and make a fortune. You might be wondering on how to get knowledge about poker psychology, t there are great books available about the psychology of the game. However you need to have at least two of them and have understanding about the same, in order to get a great understanding of your opponents. This is very much important in live poker because, you get to meet your opponent one on one. What's more is that you will have a tactic to apply on your opponent since at fast glance, you will be able to evaluate his/her area of weakness, and this is an added advantage to giving you the win.

Generally if you are eager enhance your skills on your live game, then you might need to make expert friends on the field, or even much more get a mentor to help you out in the game. You will realize that everyone who plays poker quite well might have picked a mentor some time in there learning process or apparently looked for a group of colleagues who helped him improve on the game. Mentors will take through a step by step procedure to learning the tough and simple sections of the game. A mentor will also give you tips on tackling the various games in poker which probably improves on your skill. By using this approach, you will be surprised to improve on your skill remarkably and within a short period of time. Your personal health is important and you have to take great care of it because it is key to your success in poker. This basically includes a good, exercise, diet and proper rest. Unlike online play, live poker is more stressful and mentally draining and takes lots of energy which apparently will need a healthy diet done. Exercises on the other hand gives you physical strength to face the game, adequate rest will help you remain focused on the poker table.

What adequate rest simply implies is that you get at least 8 hours of sleep. Remember that you need extra skill to beat live poker; it will apparently place you to the top, therefore dwell much on evaluating and improving on your skill. Live poker needs focusing and an alert mind. You need to be focused all through, or else you loose the game out rightly.

Is luck something that you stumble upon somewhere on the crossroads of life? Or does dame luck come forward to meet only those people who are ready to pick up a gauntlet with courage? Whatever that be with regard to the general challenges that life throws at you, in the background of poker the word luck seems to take on some unique meanings. People who cannot distinguish one card from the other play Texas Hold’em and make others lucky when they lose. At least in their case, the word luck is definitely used in a slight deviant way.

Dictionary describes the usage ‘lucked out’, or ‘lucked into’, as an intransitive form of luck which conveys the meaning that a person has by chance come across something very advantageous, or that he has succeeded through sheer fortune. While this description might be right under certain circumstances, when someone uses the expression ‘he lucked out’ with reference to poker, he sounds a bit naïve. It confirms of a belief in luck as a power, or a force belonging to a realm that is outside human control. It is construed as a magical force that would treat the player as a pawn and would deal the cards as it wishes and decide who would win. According to this theory, a player has no power at all. Those who believe in this premise keeps on playing thinking that luck is someday bound to smile on them also, since it is smiling at a whole lot of others now and then. It is this probability that makes them play again and again, without trying to grasp the intricacies of the game. Such people has to understand that at least in the game of poker, it is not luck that makes or mars a person but it is the individual who makes or mars his luck.

In its noun form, luck is explained as something that ‘brings good fortune of adversity’ or ‘circumstances that operate for or against an individual.’ Considering the functionalities of poker, it is these explanations of luck that describes better, what goes for luck in a poker game. Luck, in this sense, can lead to desirable or undesirable consequences. It is, after all, a player’s ability to bring about a change in what is happening on the table that is going to result in the inevitable outcome. Whether the end result would be beneficial to him or not would pretty much depend on how he can control the game and that is going to be his luck.

Everything, including bluffing, is a part of this luck. Reading the cards on the table, and controlling the betting, are part of this luck. In short, his mastery of the situation, which results from his ability and will power, is the poker player’s luck. Viewed from that angle, there is not much difference between luck and skill. Part of the situation may be out of his control, but it is by sensing the situation rightly that a player decides his luck. He should be able to rightly grasp the situation when it is in favor of him, and should know the right moment to get out, if the wind is blowing in the other direction. Whatever the role chance has to play in the game, it is only the player’s skill that will determine the eventual outcome.

Is poker a game of pure chance or of skill? In the poker circles this has been a more or less eternal question, one that needs an answer. In Washington DC a research was done on about 100 Texas Hold’em placements and the result thereof showed unequivocally that poker is a game of skill, but the controversy still rages on. The reasons vary with some thinking that the massive wins by a man who just turned in a park of cards must be chance and nothing else. But seasoned players dispute the attitude of putting emphasis on the cards and not on the individual player at that specific time and place. They say therefore that the cards don’t establish the result.

It is moreover agreed among the professional circles and backed by the report that about 75.7% of the hands is as a result of an individuals player’s hindsight and that the player in question can only at one given time scrutinize his own pack of cards without looking at his opponent’s cards or likewise only have sight for the cards on the board. A good enough number of poker players who entered into any form of showdown only about half of the hands eventually were won by skillful players who successfully had the best hand with a five card poker. So definitely the best player by that time would have dropped out with no chance of winning. If still there’re those who maintain the ‘chancily’ of the game I think the reasons are tight and overwhelming.

The study of determining if the poker game is a game of skill was ordered by the poker player’s alliance and they will be using the results in fighting to get poker acknowledged by all people as a game of skill and with the use of the study the battle of determining the game as a skill is won. People who run the game felt that they are taking part in illegal game; the authorities in their side feel that poker is a game of luck and in recent times they have been raiding house games. One recent example also adds a touch of evidence to this issue of the skillfulness of the game of poker. In Pennsylvania an accustomed judge, at least on the wider issues of poker, gave a ruling on a case based on two poker players who were caught. It was really comprehensively examined the need and exercise of reading poker books and articles to improve on ones skill of the game.

Talking about skill should not be confused with unscrupulous dealings in the game of poker. Skill is considered a deliberate effort to perform a particular task. In the game of poker the contention is basically pegged on the know how of the poker player on the nitty-gritty’s of the game. Is a player able to analyze and examine the set of cards and know what to and what not to do before he plays? However, the shady dealings simply employs skill but shady ones to get the better of unassuming poker enthusiasts.

Published on 12/10/2009