A great number of people hone their poker skills at online platforms these days, before moving on the real life land-based tourneys. Visit any reputed online casino portal and you’d be offered UK no deposit bonuses, to get easily initiated into online poker. From thereon, it’s all about learning, preparation and application.
Although your poker journey will never be without bumps, what matters most is how you respond to the challenging moments. Making right choices and strengthening your game would only be possible if you steer clear of the mental pitfalls. Here are some useful tips for starting-out Texas Hold’em players.
Let’s now acquaint you with some mental mistakes that you must avoid making.
Playing every single hand
People starting out with poker feel that they must play every single hand. This thought process could be because of several different reasons, including, the need to impress other players, not giving away a bad hand and simply being a part of the action. Unfortunately, you’d fail miserably at poker if you play to impress others, as the focus would get diverted from the game in that case.
Thinking based on absolute values
The game of poker is all about relative values. It implies that you don’t necessarily require a monster hand to score a win. All you require is a hand that’s comparatively better than the others. In the same way, a monster hand doesn’t automatically guarantee a win. Even though your hand might seem better than everyone else, your opponents could have better cards post flop. For example, in WSOP 2009, Joe Cada’s winning hand was 9-9 while Darvin Moon’s was Q-J.
Bluffing excessively
Some people develop a habit of bluffing excessively because it seems exciting to them, and there’s plenty of thrill in making a bluff count! However, the downside of such strategy is that people stop believing your bluffs after some time. Putting it another way, your poker strategy would become highly predictable after a while.
Not studying the opponents
You cannot succeed in poker over the long term if you fail to study your opponents. It is important to analyse other poker players, as well as their styles, in order to learn about their tells. In case you are unable to find any mental mistakes in your opponents and can’t make out anything from their habits, it would be better that you find easier opponents.
In fact, understanding the behaviour patterns and thoughts of other poker players is so critical in this game that some pro-level poker players and all the help of ex-FBI agents to train them in this aspect. Here are a few things you can learn from Joe Navarro, a retired FBI agent and a well-known poker player.
Apart from that, you should also know how your own habits betray the cards you might be holding.
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