Poker Guide: Playing poker the professional way

This is the most regular question associated with the part time poker players that how can one become a professional poker player. The answer consist a lot of description. It can not be stated in a word. Professional poker players can not be produced from a school and no one can be a professional if he/she wishes. It is like a level that one adopts for himself/herself. Generally people get playing poker as their profession to earn money is called professional poker player. To be a professional player you have to have an intention and clear mind setting. If you have a family, I suggest you to stick with your job and to play poker part-timely. This is not to discourage anybody but be realistic because you have to feed your family regularly.

You should have two stock of money before being a professional player. One is your expense money and another is your stock. First one is related to live your life and you should have one year’s expense before you start playing poker professionally. The stock money will be used to play poker regularly and get entry to the tournaments.

After you get the financial back up, you can step forward for the next step. This step is consisting of some important question. You have to ask your self, what kind of person you are. Did poker suited with your personality? Do you have a real temper? Have you the ability to meet the quick changes? Did you have the ability to meet the taste of lose and start again? If any of the answer is no, my advice is, you need not to take poker as your profession. You have to have a gambler mentality to be a professional player. You also need to be an attentive reader. Because you need to read a lot about poker before start playing poker professionally. A professional poker player is really a businessman. He/she take playing poker mainly to increase their income. A true and real player always plays the game which gives him the maximum profit. Because the main intention is to make money, the professional always wants to play against the people who are interested to lose money.

There are some characteristics of pro player is given here. It is not a very social activity being a professional poker player. The professional poker player mainly wants to make highest money from his playing. Income of the professional players varies a lot. So, a professional player never thinks about their daily income. They must have the capabilities to meet the loss. It is very much hard to play against the professionals. So, if there is no new and poor players come to poker world, it is better to do some other job for the professionals. So, it is better not to make poker as a first and only job. Take it as a secondary job and play it for entertainment. This will help a lot to get the benefit from the game and become a real poker player. Every day I get lot of emails asking various questions from different Holdem and Stud poker players asking about various sundry poker strategies. I don’t think I am the clever person who knows about poker game, but than those who knows a lot about poker I have access to a public email where I can write and publish things.

Last week, and instant message has popped out asking the question “How tight is Too Tight?” I laughed at looking the message and was thinking how I can answer such a question. It seemed a bit ridiculous to me. But the more I thought about it, I realized that the answer was simple like any other poker question. The below description is the email that I have sent to the requestor. Sometime back, I read an instruction manual to install the handle door. The instructions have said to make to tight but not too tight. I was little surprised when I read this. Instead of informing how to tight it they used the phrases ‘not too tight’ which indicates that you need to tighten the handle so that it can hold firmly and not too tight that the threads of the screw are distorted or you break the handle itself.

The same concepts also can be use in poker. There are many variables at the stud table and the explanation of these variables is quite general. You cannot always explain how to play certain set of cards in certain situations at the stud table. So, we can give only some vague concepts with some better examples. For example, let us see hot to play the first three cards in Stud. Sometimes rather than focusing on what cards to play I found it is more useful to concentrate on the general concepts. The instruction to the lower limit players is always to play tight and to be aggressive. But according to me, the word tight suits only the beginner. Players have to play tight, but not too tight. When I say tight but not too tight means that you need play carefully but should not play rigidly. This does not mean that you need to sit tight when the other players are playing loose. At such times, if you play tight, you might be the looser. Tight but not too tight shows the flexibility that one should follow in the game.

Let us take another example. When we are playing with people who tend to just bring in and who do not raise hand at the third street; tight play in such scenario is nothing but folding everything but a high pair. But when we add too tight we open many other possibilities in the game without becoming too loose. We allow other players to play low pocket pair at the third street and there are many other possibilities that we can allow the low players to continue with the play.

How tight is too tight? If you are a beginner then you still need to get a hang of the poker table. But if you are looking for some tips and tricks to play the third street at the stud table, then tight but not too tight is the correct approach for you.

Published on 12/31/2009