It’s time to continue with my Poker Strategies guide and talk about Poker Skills.

Poker Skills

Poker Skills #1: Maths

A good poker player will know the probabilities of a game. Here is an example: they will know you have around a 1 in 8.5 chance of hitting a set when holding a pocket pair, & that you will have around a 1 in 3 chance of completing a flopped flush draw by the river. (Check out my recent post about Poker Jargon if you didn’t understand that).

Clever players understand the importance of outs. Outs are the number of cards that will greatly improve your poker hand. Go ahead: count your outs, times them by 2, then add 1. That’s roughly the percentage shot you have at hitting. Clever, huh?

Fantastic players can figure out the odds of the pot. Knowing outs doesn’t mean a thing unless it’s turned into calculated betting. If you know you have a 10% chance of hitting, what do you do?

Mathematic skills are basic knowledge. Anyone who doesn’t fully understand these skills should definately not play in a game for real money.

Poker Skills #2: Discipline

Great poker players will expect an advantage. What separates a winning poker player from a fish? A fish does not expect to win, but a poker player does. A fish is content playing roulette or the slots: he just hopes he gets lucky. A great poker player never hopes to get lucky. He just hopes other poker player don’t get lucky while he’s playing.

Good poker players understand that each game needs a different discipline. A disciplined no-limit player can very well be a silly limit player and the other way round. An example is: a disciplined limit hold’em player has solid preflop skills. When there isn’t alot of action preflop, they only play the better hands. When a lot of people are limping in, they will make a loose call with a suited connector or other speculative hand.

A good poker play with discipline knows when to play and when to quit. They know that they aren’t perfect. When a disciplined player makes mistakes, they learn from it. They don’t blame others.

Poker Skills #3: Psychology

A great player is not self-centered. They may not care about anyone but themselves but when a great poker professional walks into the room, they will always empathize with their opponents. The poker pro will always try to have an answer for these three questions:

1. What does my opponent have?
2. What does my opponent think I have?
3. What does my opponent think I think he has?

Knowing the answer to these is the 1st step. Manipulating the answers is the 2nd & definately the more important step. If you have a pair of kings and your opponent has a pair of aces. If you both know what each of you has, and you both know that you know what the other player has, then why play a game of poker in the first place? A poker professional will manipulate the answers to questions 2 & 3 by slowplaying, fastplaying, & bluffing in order to confuse their opponent.

Poker Skills #4: Understanding Risk vs. Reward

Great Poker players are willing to take a risk if the reward is high, but only if the expected return is higher than the risk itself.

Most importantly is they understand the risk v reward nature of the poker game outside of the room. They will know how much bank they will need to play, and how much $$ they need in reserve to cover other expenses.

Put your Poker Skills to the test and try playing online poker.