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.

The poker game is surrounded around blind and antes. When you start of every player will try to get the ante or blinds. An Ante is a small portion of a bet contributed by every player to seed the pot at the start of the hand.

A blind is a forced bet made by one player or several before any card was dealt that is why  it’s called a blind. In Stud games, players usually ante and in Omaha Hold’Em, Texas Hold’em players use blinds. Whatever the game uses the game needs seed money to start the action. Before that poker would become a rather dull game. People would just wait for the best hand to come up and then taking the pot.

Playing for an empty pot would not make for a fun fast poker game but rather slow and boring. Blinds and Ante serve a very important purpose. They serve the same purpose though, to tempt and entice the players into the pot, creating action because there is a monetary target to aim for.

You can always classify your opponents but knowing their habits is the best thing you can try to memorize. Imagine your playing poker with Bob and Martha who both like to call too much for no apparent reason and you get a AceHeart and KingHeart. You then take advantage and put something in what to do. You look at the flop and see JackHeart, 5Heart, 9Heart. You have two overcards and nut-flush draw. And if you know something about implied odds and semi bluffing you got this in the boxes. They call. The turn brings a 4Heart, it’s checked to you, you bet, thinking they might fold and you win at that moment. Maybe you have the best hand and would even win a showdown. You perhaps a heart will come from the river. These are players that often beat you and think you will lose again like always.

The river doesn’t give you what you wanted. And Rick calls you he has 6-5 mix suits and wins. What went wrong? Semi bluffing never works with player who always call, You have to actually show them the best hand to win. So you have to be involved in a showdown. While you still would have lost the pot but not the bet on the river.

Casino poker is different from home games and even internet friendlies. It’s more competitive and the addition that you have your game opponent right infront of you adds to the tension and action. The best thing about Casino’s is, poker is being played 24h, 7 days a week. You won’t have trouble finding a nice table to make some money.

Another advantage is that unlike a small club or bar, the casino is a safe a place. Casino’s don’t won’t their reputation to be hampered by cheating or anyother stuff. The casino has atm machines so there is no reason for you to carry large amounts of cash in your pocket.

Casino’s offer a variety of games, Texas Hold’em, Omaha High-Low Split, Stud Poker, Lowball. If you know the variation go with the one where you spot lots of weak players. Unlike in your home the weak players won’t stop coming in a casino.

More reasons you should try casino poker.

-You will meet all kinds of people, movie stars, company owners, people from around the world. You can meet anyone in a casino.

-Becoming skilled at poker pays, other hobbies like golf, fishing, tennis cost alot of money but never pay off, other then a nice feeling. But with poker you can earn large sums if you play it smart.

I must admit it can be a bit complicating how to get into a poker game in a casino but like all things simple it doesn’t take time.

When you enter the cardroom, you will see a white board with intials. These are players initials for the games they want to be playing. If your initial is AB, you tell the board attendant to write AB with the game and the amount of money in it.
So if I wanted a game of Stud around $5-10$ it would like this.
“AB $5-$10 Stud”.

That’s all there is to it and then the board attendant will call you out when they find a suitable game for you. Sometimes when there are lots of initials on the board it will take more time for your turn to come. Some casinos don’t use this system though most do, in those you just give your initials to the attendant and they will call you out. In small cardrooms, you just have to ask the dealer if there is a seat available.

To be a good poker player you need to learn the basic concepts.
And then make an effort to understand them. But the hard part is applying these concepts. Even applying them is easy but continualy using them and refining them is what you need to do. That is the hard part, always using these concepts that you will learn will be the tough part. Refining them is the part that takes the most time, maybe because you need alot of wisdom to know how improve it.

Andres Sergovia, the best classical guitarist of his time. He became better even though he was the best. He didn’t practice new pieces or concert songs. He spent four to six hours practicing the scales. Just the basic, he just got better foundation until it was so good that no one was a better player then him. 75% of his practice time was just devoted to the basics. And the same should be done to poker.