Amateur Texas Hold'em

An amateur is someone that does something for which they don't get paid or make a living at. This means that the vast majority of Texas Hold'em players are amateurs.

Everyone begins someplace. For most Hold'em players the brought to the game poker playing experience from other for ms of poker like 5 card draw or 7 card stud so they already know the hand rankings. Like most poker games it is very easy to learn to play but very challenging to consistently make money doing it.

I will assume that you already know how to play the game. What I want to do is help you to learn to win more often. I suggest that when you first start playing you play on the internet in free games. You will get the feel of how others play (most of them play badly). It will start teaching you one of the most important lessons you can learn, namely patience

There are several game plans you can use but I suggest you first take a conservative or passive aggressive approach. What this means is fold a lot while you wait for premium pre-flop cards. But what are premium cards? Basically this consists of the following 2 cards you are first dealt;

Pair of aces

Pair of kings

Pair of queens

Pair of jacks

Other pocket pairs if you can get in cheap

Ace King ( suited or not)

King queen (suited or not)

These are the hands you look for. If you get one of them you should at least play if not put out a raise to thin out the remaining players.

Anne Duke once said "Play fit or fold on the flop". What this means if the flop doesn't' improve your hand or improve your draw to the hand then just fold and wait for another time. So if you have Pocket Aces and none of the cards on the flop are an ace or king or at least two suited cards that match at least one of your aces or no pair comes of the flop, just check or call or call only a small raise.

This is very tight poker, but if you start out this way you will find you will win more often than you loose and that is what you are trying to learn. It takes a great deal of patience to play this way and that is part of the lesson you will learn.

You will also need to start learning what outs are (how many cards available that will improve your hand) and what drawing odds are (the odds of catching one or more of your outs) You will need to learn things like if you have 4 suited cards the drawing odds that you will catch one of the remaining 9 cards that will make your flush are one in 5. This means you will catch your flush one out of 5 times you try so if you want to get into the hand on that draw you need to get a return of 5 times how much you bet. This way the long term odds are at least break even on your money invested. If you have 4 cards in a straight open at both ends you have a 1 in 4 chance of catching after the flop because you have 8 outs. If you have a straight that is only open on one end your odds go down because you only have 4 outs.

There are many more drawing odds you need to learn to become a good player, like what are the odds of 2 pair on the flop will catch a full house...or one pair catching trips. If you know the drawing odds you know how much you need to win to call a bet or if you should raise

I think every beginning play that wants to start improving their game should read a book by Phil Gordon named "Little Green Book". It will teach you much about figuring out your outs and drawing odds. It will teach you to read the flop compared to your two hole cards to decide if you should bluff or call or simply fold. There are lots of books on advanced Texas Hold'em playing techniques and eventually you will want to pick some of them up and study (not just read) them.

You will start to learn terms like "Passive Aggressive player" and "Wildman player". You will learn why it is good to develop a play strategy before you sit down to play, and you will learn when to play passively and when to get more aggressive in your play. You will learn how to play position and many other things.

As you can see I barely scratched the surface of the game, but this will get you started towards playing well and building a winning game. My next blog on this topic will be about starting to play in games for money on the internet. It will talk about how different a cash sit and go game differs from a tournament to help you decide where to start investing real money in your game