Winning At Poker
Winning at poker at first seems very easy. Show down the best hand, or make your opponents fold and the chips slide over to you. But how do we go about doing this consistently, repeatedly? After all our opponents are going to get AA just as often as we do, right? What makes some people win while other people lose? The answer is edge.
Edge in Poker
Edge is the advantage we have over our opponents (or their edge over us!). One player has an edge over another because he makes better decisions than them at the table. We all get the same cards, we all get the same coolers, we all get the same bad beats. Over a large sample of hands, the only thing that separates the winning players from the losing players is edge, which is the product of making profitable decisions.
What are profitable decisions?
Some decisions are obvious, good decisions in a vacuum - for example someone re-reraises all-in preflop and you have a pair of aces. Calling is always the correct play here - however these decisions are rarely the most profitable ones. Why? Because your opponent probably has a pair of kings and the next time you have kings and he has aces, the money's going over to his side of the table. Even though your stack is bigger no money has really been won - there was no edge in play here - there was no profit. This concept is known as reciprocality - it's really important you understand it so I'll write about it further later in the series.
The only real profit lies in the good decisions you make that your opponent does not. For example, you flop a set of fives and get your opponent to call off his entire stack with second pair. Later that day the same situation comes up again in reverse but in this case you fold on the turn - here you have actually made some money from your edge against this player! Let me just repeat this again just to be clear because it's REALLY important you understand this and do not focus on whether you win or lose individual pots - the ONLY profit in poker comes from making better decisions than your opponent.
How do I make profitable decisions?
This is where we need to come up with a strategy. What is a good strategy for poker?
On the most basic, obvious level we want to win a big pot when we have the best hand and lose a small pot when we fold or have the worst hand. From this we can extrapolate that we should put a lot of money into the pot when we think we have the best hand, and fold when we think we have the worst.
This sounds incredibly simplistic - and it is - but it is also the starting point for a good solid poker strategy. If we win more from a hand than our opponent would then we make money. If we lose less from a hand than our opponent would then we make money. The focus of the next articles in this strategy guide is to help you learn the basic fundamentals pre-flop, identify where you stand in a hand, and then choose the best action to take to maximise your earnings in any given situation.
What about bad beats?
Most players think of bad beats as another player getting lucky and winning a pot that they were not a favourite to win. This is a simplistic view and shows a huge misunderstanding of the way that luck works in poker.
The truth is, in every single hand of poker that goes to showdown someone has gotten lucky and someone has gotten unlucky along the way. Even the hands where the favourite wins! For example, you get it all in preflop with AA vs KK and you win the hand - ship it! You got your just desserts right?! Wrong! You got lucky and your opponent was unlucky. The odds of AA beating KK all in preflop are around 80%-20% in favour of AA - 20% of the time KK is meant to win the hand! So really you should have won 80% of the pot if luck had not been involved - but you got lucky and won 100% of the pot.
Over enough played hands this variance of lucky and unlucky hands will balance out and all that will be left is your edge. Bad beats DO NOT MATTER. The luck WILL even itself out. You need to be able to shrug them off and focus on the next hand knowing that you will get your rewards if you keep getting your money in as a favourite. The only time bad beats become a problem is if a player does not have the knowledge or discipline to shrug them off, and plays worse poker as a result.
If you want to win at poker you have to be in it for the long-term. In the short-term, luck is king in poker - a terrible player can take your stack and leave you cursing at the screen. In the long-term skill is king - there are really only so many times someone can get lucky!
Can I win at poker?
Poker games at low limits are generally populated by bad players and it is certainly possible for any moderately intelligent person to build a significant edge against these players by playing good solid poker. In today's micro-limit games there are now a lot more educated players than before, however these players all have leaks in their games and we're going to teach you how to exploit them
How much can I win at poker?
A good winrate is considered in the region of 8-12 big blinds per 100 hands. This means if you were playing 50NL with $0.50/$0.25 blinds you would expect to win about $4-$6 every 100 hands. With close to 100 hands per hour on sites like Full Tilt, a good player could make $15-$20 per hour playing four tables of 50NL.
Copyright Best Rakeback 2009
