Know Why You Play
What is your goal when you play poker? The obvious answer would be: To win money. No problem, good answer. But what about: Having Fun! Also a good answer but maybe the two goals do not go together.
To make money, particularly as a beginner, usually means folding a lot of hands as you pick up the intricacies of the game. Having fun, for many players, means being involved in a lot of hands. You can’t do both. However, the more hands you play the more situations you face and the more decisions you have to make and the more you will, in theory, learn. It’s an interesting dilemma faced by all beginning poker players. There is no one good solution but we have a suggestion.
Begin your poker career folding most hands but following every hand. You fold and the player behind you raises. Has he raised before? What did he have the last time he raised? Did he bet strong or did he appear weak; don’t know, it doesn’t matter at this point, take a guess. Watch how every hand plays out, who bets, what do they show down? Who plays weak or tight or reckless? Before you know it, you are being dealt another hand and you never noticed that you folded the last one or the last twelve. Being involved in every hand played at your table will accelerate your poker learning curve faster then any other single thing you can do.
It absolutely does not matter what you remember each hand or if you figure out what someone has before they show their cards. What you are doing is training yourself for the most difficult aspect of playing poker and distracting yourself from that fact that you are not playing a lot of hands yourself. Very quickly you will realize that you have certain abilities to read other players and that will lead to your playing more hands with more information.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #16
