Are you looking at getting more into poker? If you are…great! A lot of people are trying to get deeper into poker, and that’s not a bad thing at all. What you need to do is make sure that you’re thinking about which table to join. The table really does matter, because you want to maximize your time. You need to think about a few things, such as your aggressiveness, the number of chips you have to play with, and how willing you are to adapt.
Since you’re playing with real money, you don’t really want to get into the thought that you can just take chances without thinking about the consequences. There are always consequences, positive and negative. If you’re looking at 20 different tables you could play at, then you need to make sure that you have some ways to filter things out.
Keep in mind that if you are at a table where a lot of the players have big stacks, you need to really make sure that you keep your game strong. They are going to be pretty aggressive and see you as an easy target. Be aware of possible bluffs.
Make sure that you also go back to the fundamentals. There’s no reason to ignore the structure of flops, or to skip over pot odds and implied odds. A lot of players tend to default back to playing from the gut, and that’s not good poker. It might sound like it’s good poker, but you’re mistaken. It just doesn’t make sense to start playing at random unless you’re trying to deliberately disrupt your image and shake things up. Even then, you need to know what you’re doing and be ready to stop when you’re getting ahead of yourself.
Can you force people to fold? If so, then you might find a great way to get chips quickly. You also want to make sure that you know when to move on to a new table. This is something that poker newbies fail at. They get so caught up with playing the game of poker that they don’t really think about what else might be hiding out there for them. Know when you’ve gotten most of the money out of a table. Don’t get greedy — this has caused a lot of poker players to suffer big losses that could have otherwise been prevented.
Keep these tips in mind, and there will be nothing that you can’t do!