Top 5 tips for a poker rookie.

Given my early varying experiences at the uk poker tables, I feel ready to share a couple of tips for beginners.

 

1. Concentrate! This may sound obvious, but if you are not an expert you should give each hand your full attention, by all means use the auto blind features, to help speed the play up, but whilst you are learning it is important to focus on the game – particularly as there may be clues in what the other players are doing!
2. Only start with a strong hand. I now tend to fold if I have complete dross as my first 2 cards. You may get lucky, but more often you won’t and unless you fold, you’re throwing good money after bad.
3. Start on the free/play money tables. Again I may the slightly hasty mistake or trying to dive straight into the real money tables whereas playing with free chips, will help you build up some time at the tables before you risk your hard earned cash.
4. Don’t try and bluff on the beginner tables. Bluff, and the more tricksy deception related elements of poker, that might work on your mates, are a very risky move in beginners online poker, where inevitably there will be players  who will call you. I’ve tried it, it doesn’t work!
5. Watch the tables before you join. If there is one player taking people to the cleaners, avoid this table like the the plague. Best to pick a game where the winnings are fairly evenly spread out, and ideally where players are making mistakes (if you can spot them!).

Classic overconfidence

So, after finding it all a little easy last time round, I came to the beginner’s tables with a degree of confidence, bordering on arrogance.

Clearly i thought, none of these other “beginners” have any clue what they are doing, and you can simply bluff your way to winnings. As a result I played as if I was ignorant of the probability of any given hand coming up. Initial success with some pretty poor hands (pairs etc) and my approach seemed justified, however 4 heavily bluffed defeats and I was suddenly 15 dollars down. It seemed that once I had started betting i felt a compulsion to stay in the hand, even if the flop and the turn had done me no favours. Oh dear.

Its appears having no knowledge of strategy and playing by instinct is only going to take me so far…

So, right. Conservative strategy kicks in. Fold when you have complete dross, raise cautiously and lets see what happens. Ummm hold on, 3 aces… surely that is good right? So trying not to get too excited I bet relatively low, but it seems as if some “Xante” has a good hand. I go all in. He has a full house.

Unbelievable.

Time to rethink this, and retreat… but still a useful poker lesson learned!

Taking the online poker world by storm.

So, I download the wonderful* uk poker client, and create an account and username. All easy enough so far….

Logging into the lobby, i must admit it seems a little bewildering, and suddenlyI feel ill prepared – not least as there are 30 thousand players playing!!! So I head to the “poker school” on the uk poker site and have a quick refresher course…

Duly refreshed, and feeling perhaps a little reckless, i figure my best chance is to have a go on the “beginners” tables, before I risk any of “my” chips against the hardened pros. Holdem, obviously is the safest choice for a complete amateur like myself. 

Some of the lower stakes tables seem to have loads of people waiting but i opt for the next available table…

Its a dollar stake table…..

Ok I’m in….. tick the auto blind box, so as to avoid looking like a total idiot. First hand on its way. So 2 fives, errr thats a pair right, I’m in! Him…. going to play it safe though and check and call through this hand. BigDogx89x (not his real alias) seems to have a decent hand, he’s raising consistently. I’m just going to go with the flow, and see what happens. The flop is useless for me, as is the river, but i stay in….. and lose. Hmm seem to make a myriad of mistakes there, but it only cost me a couple of dollars, and was strangely exiting…

Over the next few hands I start to get into it, although thank god for the software telling me, when i can simply check instead of  capitulating and folding. I stay on for approximately 20 minutes the highlights of which are a straight (jack high) and a fullhouse, which both feel sweet! I’m 10 dollars up, so decide to cash in, and head to the pub to buy a pint or 2 to calm my nerves.

My first foray into online poker has been a) suprisingly (although perhaps accidentally) sucessful and b) a great deal of fun.

(*contractually obliged to say that, but actually it does seem pretty good to me.)

The UK Poker Virgin.

So here’s the deal. I promote an online poker site, but I don’t play poker.

My colleagues, not unreasonably, think it would be useful (and indeed quite funny) to set me up with an account, give me some funds (naturally I insisted on this) and unleash me onto the poker network I help promote. Quite what this will all entail, I am not sure, will I be (virtually) laughed out of town, or will i discover a (very well) hidden talent and mix it with the best of them? We will see….. so armed with Poker for Dummies, assorted snacks and beverages (I’ll steer clear of alcohol for the time being), I am downloading the software onto my laptop, and preparing to blog about the losing of my online poker cherry for the entertainment, and perhaps education of all.

It goes without saying that I won’t be revealing any clue as to my identity, or indeed those of other players, to avoid the “sharks” and indeed the “haters” as I believe they say…. 

Enjoy.

UKPV.