General Tips on How to Excel at Poker

April 24th, 2014 Become a Regular in Strategy Forums If you want to excel at poker you must go through the strategy forums and evaluate how better players are thinking. It would be a good idea to jot down specific difficult situations you came up against while playing and post them in the appropriate forum for others to evaluate. The number one most common concern from players who do not usually post in the forums is that they don’t know who is correct and who is not. To solve this problem, you can look to see how many total posts a specific poster has, and use this as a vague indicator of their reputability – if they have a lot of posts, it is probably safe to assume that they have also read a lot of strategy themselves. Make sure to get the opinion of a few of these reputable posters on the subject that you are discussing. Remember, there is not always a clear correct answer for every situation in poker – but there are definitely wrong answers and wrong ways to play in a specific situation. Join a Skype Group If you search the forums you will find plenty of players willing to join Skype study groups. By creating or joining these groups, you will hear the thoughts or players who are better and worse than yourself – you will quickly find out who has the most knowledge and you should strive to pick that person’s brain. Continually ask questions – even if you think they will make you look stupid. Remember, even Phil Ivey had to ask the simple questions at the beginning of his poker career, no one is born with this knowledge. Get a Coach Getting a coach is a great way to excel in any sport or game – poker is no different. Just like other sports, private coaching can be costly, and in the poker world you will see rates that range from forty-dollars per hour, to one-thousand dollars per hour. Obviously the coaches that are charging astronomical rates are coaching higher stakes and need to make their hourly rate high enough to cover their expected value of playing for that hour online. Find a coach that is suitable for your stake, and make sure that he/she proves their adeptness by showing you their graphs, win rate, etc. Make sure you come prepared with questions to every coaching session in order to get the most out of your time. If you are tight on cash you may find that you only need a few coaching sessions to have an eye opening experience. You will be amazed at how small adjustments will positively impact your hourly rate online. Avoid Enduring an Expensive Learning Curve Try to avoid having to go through an expensive learning curve. There are plenty of people out there that had to lose a lot of money online in order to come to the realization that they need to learn more in order to beat the games. Don’t be the guy that blows copious amounts of money before he figures out that he needs to get better.