Three Beginner Poker Strategies to Survive Your First Live Game
Starting out learning poker is tough. It seems like people can see your inexperience from miles away. And honestly, they probably can. Players are like sharks; they smell fear. Here are three of the best poker strategies for beginners to help you through those first hours of a live game.
Beginning poker players need some basic strategies to start their journey. © Michal Parzuchowski, Unsplash
Three Reasonably Safe Poker Strategies for Beginners
Many of the things that make poker such a fun and even beautiful game don’t come easily or automatically. I’d love to tell you a story about a “fish” (a beginning poker player) who lucked his way through a big cash tournament and went home with a million dollars. But I don’t know any.
Good poker takes time in the game, as well as perseverance and instinct, none of which a beginning player is likely to have in abundance. So you will have to rely on some basic strategies to help you avoid going broke as you explore the nuances and intricacies of this sport.
Poker Tactics for Beginners
Here is a quick list of the most common errors I’ve seen supervising countless hours of low-limit hold ’em in no particular order.
- Playing too many hands. Wait for the cards, and don’t force your hands; it will eat your stack.
- Learn your opponent. It’s not just your hand, but what does the guy sitting across from you likely have? Is he aggressive or loose?
- Check your emotions at the door. You will likely lose; don’t let it upset you – learn from it.
- In most poker games, position is everything. Be aware of where you are, where the button is, and when you will act.
- Come prepared. You should have already seen hours and hours of YouTube videos and poured over beginner hand rankings. Also, you should have been already playing on the best online poker sites.
Poker Strategies for Beginners
If you can keep that list under control, that’s a good start, and we can discuss some very basic strategies to help you think about your game and begin to formulate how to approach each hand.
1. Be Aggressive, Don’t Be Unaggressive
Poker does not reward timidity. If you are calling when you should be raising and checking when you should bet and limping into the pot, you are going to get punished. Take charge – there are no points for politeness in poker.
Wait for your hands, don’t play garbage; when you are ready, bet like you mean it. You have to get value from strong hands, and to get value, you have to show that you are here to bet. It doesn’t mean bet every garbage hand, however.
It does mean that when you have the button, play like you have a license to steal. Everyone is going to act before you do; you can take a quick read, but if you have something like top pair and you aren’t making them really pay to see the turn and the river, shame on you. Acting last is better than Anakin having the high ground – use it.
2. Limp In, Get Lit Up
Among other poker strategy basics, one of the first things you need to learn is to light up the limpers. Although generally a subset of our aggressive strategy, it ensures that people aren’t stealing pots with poor draws that you should never have allowed them to stay around for.
A limper is saying “I don’t have much, but I want to see the flop”, and you need to be saying “That’s not happening”. Obviously, this works better from late positions, but open up your usual range and tax them for the privilege when appropriate. This will demonstrate you have the technical chops to protect your position and hopefully build the pot a little as well.
Maybe “I’ll hit something” is not a plan. But sometimes it works, and you need to make sure that they fold or think twice. By denying cheap flops, you will also narrow your opponent’s likely range of cards on the turn and river, which is also invaluable.
If you are playing in certain limit games, people may accuse you of being rude or overtly aggressive. Ha, like that is a bad thing in poker. Allowing limpers to walk all over you invites disrespect, and being disrespected in this game can cost you significant money.
3. Pay for Every Street
When you’ve got a great hand or even a top pair, you aren’t here just to rake that pot; you first need to build it. There are no points for raking pots. You only get rewarded for what’s in it. That means you have to extract value from every street.
If you likely have the best hand or have a good read on your opponent’s smaller pair and you check on the flop out of fear or small bet the turn “just in case,” you’ve missed the whole point of aggression and let your opponent potentially live to fight another day.
Bet early and bet often, the saying goes, when you’ve got what you believe to be the best hand.
Knowing when your hand is best will take some time, so as beginners go, it’s best to take it slow with this particular advice. However, even the freshest “fish” must know that you must build pots when you are ahead on the hand. When you underbet and leave value on the table, you may have won the pot but lost the war.
Conclusion
Look, beginners often walk away a little lighter in the wallet than when they arrived, and that’s okay. You are here to learn, but as your fundamentals and hand-reading abilities improve, so will your results. My advice is the same as always. Play fewer hands, play them more aggressively, punish the limpers to assert dominance, and always charge full freight when you are ahead.
Survive long enough, and so much of this will become second nature. But until you get there, practice some of these simple concepts, learn something every session, and always have a solid reason for every action, not just a hunch. That’s not just good advice; that’s the game of poker.
