The first thing you notice is the selectiveness of poker players in a casino. The other thing you notice will be, speed.

The dealer will always push the pace and a new player will take time to adapt. A new player will be startled by the speed. But once you get use to it, you only have to play recreational players and regulars. The first you will beat blindfolded and the latter you will be able to read them if you play more then once with them. The thing with the regulars is that they want money but don’t put time in studying poker and always make the same mistakes. So if you notice that one mistake you will probably see it again.

If you live in an area where poker has been legalized recently, you shouldn’t have any big competitions locally. Even if you play in a place like Vegas but manage to play with better players and manage to learn and study poker at the same time. Soon you will be winning a few games against them.

Poker has luck and lots of probability but being lucky in poker is like throwing a coin and guessing one side but then throwing 200 more coins and being able guess the right side for each coin. That is how unpredictable poker is. But you can still calculate some of the things in the game.

Though calculating probability is not the best thing to do. It is not good to rely on this but rather rely solely on your own talent and skill to succeed. That is what a true poker player will do rather than use probabilities. Though ever pro will tell you that you should study about probabilities in poker. After you do, you will notice the benefits it gives to your critical analyzing.

Whenever you play poker you must read your opponent. Something that new people often passby. But to do that you must know your opponent. Of course if you are in poker parlor and your playing in a low limit game you won’t be facing last year’s World Series champion or any of the good local players. To better know your opponent you have to classify them and know their motives. There are three catogeries I use to classify players, Casual Recreational Players, Regulars and Pro’s.

Casual Recreational Players

Thes players are people who don’t really care about poker but will use it as moment in their free time to have fun. They won’t be the kind of people to make big researches in the internet about hand ranking etc. They will just know the rules and play for fun. They don’t care to lose, if you lose against these kinds of people after reading guides etc, you should quit playing poker.

The Regulars

This group is the hardest to spot out since they come in many shapes and form. They could consist of retired people, students looking to make some cash, dealers who work there and anyone else who plays poker to make some cash but is not seriously into it like a pro.

Pro’s

They are players who know every trick in the book or at the least most of it. They don’t play low limit games as they try to actually live off poker. They will be in most casinos in the higher limit parts. Some are just Semi Pro’s, these are really good players but have another income also.

Proposition Players

Proposition players are players who play on their own salary but are paid by the casino to start up games in empty tables etc…They will only be there when the games are running low. Like at nights when games are slow they will join in. Or early mornings in the summer. Their jobs might sound fun but it’s not they have to often play games with people half drunk who can’t get off. They often play conservative, they don’t try to beat or lose. Most casinos hire a strong regular player but not a player who would beat pro. This player will tend to play weak. Many people try to avoid props but casino do their best to keep them at the minimum.

Probably the most important thing in poker that I haven’t mentioned yet is Judgement, that only comes from experience, time and devotion, not reading only guides and books. No player will always make the right decision, in poker it is impossible. It is like winning the lotterie 10 times in a row. It just doesn’t happen very often. Just try to prevent yourself from catastrophic misakes and you will be alright.

These decisions are money makers and breakers, even if you don’t make many of these, when you will you will know them. If you can’t decide on the options, don’t worry you will learn to be quick about these later thanks to experience and wit.

At the start everyone started as a bad player but gradually got better, me, you and the player who wins all the time, as well as all the players who have won the World Series. Troy Alkman couldn’t throw a football, Michael Jordan was cut from his basketball team. Everyone was at some point a beginner, and they were all bad, sure they had some talent to become legends but they had to refine and work hard to become what they did.

So don’t worry about skills but worry about your work and effort. You will always have the power to improve if you wish to do it. But the rate of improvement varys per person. Some improve by leaps and bounds, others by baby steps. But one way or another they reached their goals to improve and become better players.

Everyone can reach their goals in poker but you do need some kind of initiate. If for you playing winning poker is important then first of all you need a good foundation. If you already have some poker potential you will reach that goal faster. Everyone who started poker has gone through phases from newb to journeyman to pro to superstar, they all have had a solid foundation.

Poker is much like life when you learn the fundamentals the limit is the sky. When you have those fundamentals you can add stylistic touchs that make your game represent you more. When you know these fundamentals, you can start to improvise in games. If you think of it poker is like jazz too, the good jazz players are always improvising but with what they know and learned of the fundamentals. The product of this improvisation is sweet and beautiful poker skills. But to achieve this you need to play lots of games and be very experienced.

If you ever go to a cardroom and watch a game you will notice that they don’t play as many hands as in home game. These players will be risking real money and will be selective of the hands they play. Most of these players will fold, trying to avoid errors, they will only play a hand when they are 100% that they have the best hand. So you too must learn the perfect time to play card and avoid silly errors by playing to many hands.

Playing low limit games at start with other new players, will feature tight games but sometimes these games will be too loose. In tight games the players will all enter the pot, while in a loose game players who actually shouldn’t enter the pot will enter it. When you start with the good hand in a game, you will be considered the favorite(favored to win the pot).

Basically your 10-20 low limit games are like paying for a lesson there always will be someone more experienced than you. But when you have at least 10 games in the pocket you will learn some of the basic things that happen in a casino poker game.

Success demands preparation. Not only does success come by faster if you always prepare well, it does indeed come.

Knowledge, experience, preparation is what it takes. If your experienced but still manage to lose more then winning. You should consider a few things before using this hobby to make money cause you just might do the opposite.

The primary step is to change your bad habits in poker, like always calling to much, raising for no reason. Making gestures when you have a good hand. The possible excuse one can have without noticing these flaws is blaming themselves. And if don’t your denying your problem, so sometimes it can be hard spotting these problems and habits you have.

Many people think of poker as just one entity but it is not, poker has lots of variations which are known throughout the world and all with different rules, hand rankings. In one the best hand wins, in the other the rare hand wins, in some other the high hand wins and in some the low hand wins. This gives poker all kinds of looks and flavors. If you can’t find a variation that pleases you must be a very hard person to please. There are also split variations in which there are actually two winners and they split the pot among themselves. The winners are the one with the highest hand and the one with the lowest hand. If there is only one of the hands in there, only one person gets the entire pot.

In casinos the two most popular split games are the Omaha High-Low Split, Seven card Stud.

In Poker there are a few things that you have to know. One of these are simple basic strategies of the game of poker. Without strategy poker becomes like the lottery, sure you will win once or twice but that’s our motive here. We want win as much as we can. Strategies and decision making are the two most important in-game aspects of poker.

If you pick 100 poker players and asked them the same question which would be, what is the goal in poker, all would in some form or another would say win the pot. But that is not actually the case here.

The goal of poker- fun is a goal too… is playing to win CASH, money, dollars, euros, pounds whatever you want to call it. You could easily win each put but never get any money. Just play every hand and call every bet you can you will win every pot possible but will lose lots of money, fast.

The good players in poker win with their good hands and lose less with their weak hands. Even though poker requires skills, sometime luck decides the fate of game. Even atrociously poor players can win from time to time, losing to them can be depressing. Though in other competitions, hobbies it is different. If your on a one on one vs Michael Jordan, you better start playing cause there is no luck to help you out.