Hello all, this post is to commemorate the 4-year anniversary of my first post (which, for the record, isn't actually until December 24th 2015, but who cares). To give you all an idea of how far I've come, in my first post I called AKo a marginal hand:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/32...35/?highlight=

I'm still far from a great player, but I'm thrilled to have found a hobby that four years later I find even more invigorating than when I started.

My goal for this 4-year-anniversary post is for it to be the definitive answer the question, "How do I get started?" Literally, every time someone comes into this forum and says, "I want to learn how to play poker" I'm hoping everybody's answer will be, "Go read DalTXColtsFan's post"!

This post will be very similar to the series of articles I wrote back in March, but scaled back to the point where absolutely anyone can readily understand everything. You don't have to know a nut flush draw from the desire to put cashews in the toilet to understand this post.

This post also assumes that when you say "I want to learn how to play poker" you're really saying "I want to learn how to play no-limit Texas Hold'Em." There are other forms of poker but no-limit Texas Hold'Em (NLHE) is as sensible and practical a place to start as any.

About me http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...16&postcount=2
Lose the idea that poker is easy money http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...39&postcount=3
Understand that poker is about decisions, not results http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...46&postcount=4
The two worst poker players in the world http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...52&postcount=5
The value of play money poker http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...54&postcount=6
How to get started http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...59&postcount=7
Appendix: Playing live http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...65&postcount=8

About me

I have a good friend who's been playing live poker for about 15 years and has won mid-five-figures in that span of time including binking a few tournaments. He'd been needling me to go to the casino with him for awhile. When I finally agreed, I sat at a $4/$8 LHE (fixed-limit hold'em) table and lost about $80 in about 5 hours, then I went to go watch him play $1/$2NLHE (no-limit hold'em) and just drag pot after pot after pot. At the end of the night I went up to the cashier with him and watched her hand him 6 100-dollar bills. My eyes were the size of
dinner plates and I swear there was drool dripping from my mouth as I watched him put c-note after c-note into his wallet. I was like, "You can walk into the room and walk out with six hundred dollars just like that?!?!?!?" I was like one of those cartoon characters that opens its eyes and has dollar signs instead of pupils.

I have a master's degree in mathematics as well, so I was like, hey, I got this! I was hooked - I was ready to start making easy money!

To make a long story as short as possible, it was NOT easy money for me - on the contrary, I consistently contributed significantly to the poker economy (attention winning players everywhere - YOU'RE WELCOME!). It was mainly a combination of taking shots I was nowhere near rolled for, overrating my skill level and point-blank having no clue what I was doing. I played mostly online and occasionally live. In the beginning it was mostly no-limit hold'em (NLHE) but I switched to mostly limit hold-em (LHE) because I found it more fun. I was addicted
to pot-limit omaha (PLO) for a few months as well but had to give it up due to bankroll constraints (a big disappointment - PLO is by far the most fun of all the games I've tried!). Today the only game I will play live is LHE - I'm simply not rolled for anything else. Online I play mostly LHE, but I still play nanostakes PLO when I just want to have fun and don't care about burning a few cheeseburgers worth of buyins.

As far as how I learned and improved, I really wanted my friend to teach me how to play but sadly the circumstances dictated otherwise. (Don't get me started on how sad it is that two people who are best friends and only live an hour apart have to rearrange the fabric of the universe just to get to hang out because they're both so busy with their families and their jobs). So I learned by reading a lot of books and posting on here a lot, but the best accelerator for my learning curve came when I swallowed my pride, opened my wallet and hired a good
one-on-one coach. I've worked with two coaches, one for my NLHE game and one for my LHE game. Today I continue to divide up my time between playing, reviewing and posting hands, reading books and doing one-on-one coaching sessions.

Quite frankly I don't have a serious goal for the near or far future. I just love playing poker and want to continue to improve.

Lose the idea that poker is easy money

OK, so with that out of the way, let's start answering the question, "I want to learn how to play poker - how do I get started?"

The very first thing I would tell someone who's getting into poker is to purge all thoughts that poker is easy money from their minds. Poker is NOT easy money. It's very very very very difficult to make money at poker. It's not impossible - people have certainly done it. But so many people do exactly what I did and walk into the casino with dollar-signs in their eyes only to walk out with an empty wallet.

I would be doing you a strong disservice if I simply told you to purge those thoughts from your mind. It's too easy for me to just say it and for you to say, "Oh, it won't happen to *me*." Greed has a way of making us tell ourselves what we want to hear and *listen*. So I'm going to spell out for you in no uncertain terms exactly WHY it's so hard to make money at poker.

Reason #1 - Rake!

When you go to a casino, the casino takes a piece of every pot. It's how the casinos make money from the poker tables. Most casinos take $1 from every pot for what they call the bad beat jackpot. You're also expected to tip the dealer $1 per hand. And they will take a percentage of the pot, usually up to a maximum - this is what's called rake. At most casinos the rake is 10% of the pot up to a maximum of $5. So if you bet $50 with a pair of aces and get called by a player who has a pair of kings, you don't win $50 - you only win $43.

Now not every pot is going to grow to $50 and therefore generate the entire $5 of rake. So let's say the table deals 30 hands an hour and the average pot size is $30, therefore we're generating, on average, $3 in rake per pot, plus the $1 bad beat jackpot pull and the $1 tip per hand. That's $5 per hand or $150 an hour that's coming off the table - NOBODY wins that money, only the casino wins it. Think about how awful that is: Suppose 9 people sit down at the table and buy in for $200 each. THE ENTIRE $1800 THAT THEY ***ALL*** SAT DOWN WITH WILL BE TAKEN OFF THE TABLE IN ABOUT 12 HOURS.

I hope you're starting to get the picture here: To actually consistently make money at a table like that, you have to not only be better than everybody else at the table, you have to be so MUCH better than everyone else at the table that you're not only winning their money but *also* winning back the money that the casino is taking out of your pots!

The rake in the online game is similar. I won't go into the structure here (your online site's website will have the information about the rake), but I'll give one example: In my first 9,000 hands of .10/.25PLO on Bovada I'd paid $447.76 in rake. How insane is that? That means I was paying $4.97 per 100 hands - that's 20 big blinds! I have to be able to consistently be 20 big blinds per 100 hands better than the competition to be able to make money! Do you know how HARD it is to consistently be 20 big blinds per 100 hands better than everyone else, even in an ocean of fish? It's darned near impossible!

On most sites, the rake in NLHE or LHE isn't quite that bad because most poker sites increase the maximum rake per hand when more players are in the pot. PLO is infamous for multiway pots. Last time I checked I was paying about 3 big blinds per 100 hands in rake in LHE.

So to be very clear: AVERAGE PLAYERS ***LOSE***. It's not an old wives tale, it's not a statistical anomaly, it's a MATHEMATICAL FACT. If 9 people play 50,000 or so hands, the 5th-best player at the table is GUARANTEED TO LOSE IN THE LONG RUN because of the rake.

I hope you're starting to get the picture that if you're getting into poker because you think it's an easy way to supplement your income, that perhaps it's not quite as easy as you thought!

I'm just getting started.

Reason #2 - swings

Here's an exercise for you: Go get 2 dice. Start yourself with 240 points.

Each time you roll a 1 through 5, you lost a hand - roll the 2 dice again to determine how much you lost. Subtract that from your point total.
Each time you roll a 6 through 12, you *won* a hand - roll the 2 dice again, subtract 1 from the total (to simulate the rake). Add that to your point total.

It should be clear that this is a game you should easily win in the long run, even with the "rake" taken out of your point total. 7 times out of 12 you're going to win an average of 5.5 (so 38.5) and 5 times out of 12 you're going to lose 6 (30), so you should "win" 8.5 points with each 12 rolls of the dice.

But throw the dice 100-200 times and tell me that NONE of the following ever happened:
Tell me you *never* lost 5, 6, 7 hands in a row
Tell me that you *never* encountered a stretch where every time you lost you lost 8, 9, 10 or 11 and every time you won you won 1, 2, 3 or 4.

That's poker folks. Poker is not the kind of game where you sit down with $5, grind it up to $7, then $9, then $11 etc. It's more like going from 5 to 7 to 3 to 11 to 1 to 13 to 7 to 9 to 6 to 14 (I think you get the idea). And yes, there's absolutely a possibility that your $5 goes all the way down to zero even if you play every single hand correctly.

Poker is swingy, it's insane, it's crazy. Luck is a major factor in the game.

Here's another exercise for you: See how many times you have to throw the dice to double your original point total.

Reason #3 - the temptation to gamble (AKA TILT)

Later I will talk about the importance of making good decisions at the poker table. For now, suffice it to say that there are a lot of temptations to purposely NOT make the best decision in poker.

There will be times when you're at the table, you're playing well, making good decisions, getting a lot of money into the pot when you have the best hand, and a player who played the hand terribly will hit a miracle card and get lucky against you, costing you a lot of money. That will happen again and again and again and again. Often, the worst player at the table will go on an unbelievable run of good luck and end up with by far the biggest chipstack at the table. It can be infuriating, and it can tempt you to stop playing "correctly" and start playing like a bad player hoping YOU will be the one to "get lucky" and "drag the chips".

Here's the most frightening temptation you will ever face: The temptation to play at stakes that you can't afford, to try to win your losses back in one fell swoop with one lucky hand. This is a lose-lose situation. If you lose, you lose. But realistically, if you *win* it's even WORSE for you in the long run, because winning once will trick your mind into thinking that taking these kinds of shots is a good idea, and you'll end up taking more and more of them. In the long run they'll hurt you more than they help you.

The swings of bad luck can screw with your confidence and make you second-guess yourself no matter how obvious it is that you made the right decision. The swings of GOOD luck can screw with your mind by making you think you're a better player than you actually are, leading to your taking too many shots at stakes you can't afford and don't have the skill level to compete at.

Making bad decisions due to being emotionally out of control is devastating.

Reason #4 - Competition

I'm going to dedicate the next section to making the best decisions.

Clearly, to have a realistic chance to consistently make money you need to consistently play in games where you are consistently making better decisions than most if not all of the villains at the table (no jokes about how I'm consistently using the word consitently). One of the "temptations" that I did not address in the previous section is the temptation to purposely overrate your relative skill level, a.k.a. "Telling yourself what you want to hear" (which often happens after a run of good luck).

Can you honestly tell yourself that you even know *how* to evaluate your skill level at making good decisions vs. everyone else's?

Can you honestly tell yourself that you know *how* to exploit the less than optimal decisions by the villains that you *do* find?

If you can't spot the sucker at the table, you *are* the sucker. If you sit down at a table and realize that there are no bad players at the table, you either have to accept the fact that you're just there to practice and you're only going to make money if you get luckier than everyone else, or you have to get up from the table and find a better game.

As obvious as it may be to say this, it's often overlooked that for you to make money somebody has to be willing to LOSE it to you. MOST people who sit down at poker tables, live *or* online, DON'T want to give you their money and will do everything they can to make sure you don't get it!

So here's the point: So you're playing poker because you *think* it will be an easy way to supplement your income, whether you admit that to yourself or not. Well, guess what? THOUSANDS OF OTHER PEOPLE ARE THINKING THE SAME THING. What are you doing that they're not doing? What poker talent do you have that they don't have? Are you being realistic about your relative skill level? Do you understand that if you're even 20% above average YOU'RE STILL GOING TO LOSE IN THE LONG RUN because of rake?

Conclusion

Please understand that I'm not trying to discourage anyone from taking up poker. On the contrary, I'm ENCOURAGING it - it's a very fun game. I'm just trying to save people from making the same mistake I did and focus too much on the financial gain aspect. In the last section, Getting Started, I will discuss a much more sensible approach.

Poker is about decisions, not results

The idea that I hope to have sufficiently and thoroughly conveyed by the end of this post is that good poker is about consistently making the right choices over the long term.

It's impossible to talk about making good decisions without diving into *some* theory and math. But I really want these posts to be kept super simple, so I'm going to keep such discussions to a minimum.

Forget poker for a minute and let's just talk about general gambling:
1. Suppose you can make a bet that gives you a 40% chance of doubling your money. Is it a good bet?
2. Suppose you can make a thousand such bets. Should you do it?
3. Suppose you can make a bet that gives you a 40% chance of TRIPLING your money. Is it a good bet?
4. Suppose you can make a thousand such bets. Should you do it?
5. Suppose you can make a bet that gives you a 20% chance of octupling your money. Is it a good bet?
6. Suppose you can make a thousand such bets. Should you do it?

Clearly #1 and #2 are bad bets. You'd have to get lucky to win bet #1. For bet #2 you're all but guaranteed to lose unless you go on a disgustingly sick improbable run of good luck.

Clearly the answers to #4 and #6 are a resounding YES!!!! You would have to be EXTREMELY unlucky to make a thousand of each type of bet and not walk away with more money than you sat down with. If anyone knows of any casino games like that in Vegas, please tell me!

The answers to #3 and #5 just depend on whether or not you want to gamble, and can you afford the amount of the bet. You only get to make the bet once. In bet #3 you have a 40% chance of tripling your money, sure, but you also have a 60% chance of losing it. In bet #3 you have a 20% chance of octupling your money, sure, but you also have an 80% chance of losing it.

See the huge difference between situations 3 and 4, and between 5 and 6?

In poker, you will very often find yourself in situations where you can estimate or even determine the return on your investment of calling, betting or raising. For example, you may estimate that calling gives you a 40% chance to triple up. Obviously this would be a good call - if you make that call 100 times you triple your money 40 times. If you estimated that you had a 40% chance to DOUBLE up, that would be a BAD call for a similar reason.

It should be very clear that the more times you can make a favorable bet the higher your probability of eventual profit.

That brings me to my first point about decisions that I want to make: IF YOU SIT DOWN AT A POKER TABLE WITH A HIGH PERCENTAGE OF YOUR POKER BANKROLL, YOU HAVE ALREADY MADE A BAD DECISION BEFORE YOU EVER EVEN PLAY A HAND. For an extreme example, what happens if you only have $400 in your poker bankroll, you sit down at a $1/$2NLHE game with $200, four maniacs have gone all in in front of you and you have a pair of queens (QQ)?

Well, if you've studied the game you'd know that QQ has way more than its fair share of equity against 4 essentially random hands, and even has significantly more than 20% equity against 4 top 25% hands. You essentially have about a 45% chance of quintupling up and a 55% chance of watching half of your bankroll go into someone else's chipstack. How can you possibly call?

Now suppose you had $4000 in your bankroll instead of $400. The decision is now snap call, stand up and dance a jig. If you lose, you lose - so what? You have plenty of bankroll to ride out the swings.

I don't want to dwell on bankroll management - there are plenty of posters who can explain it much better than me. I want to talk about decisions, and I want to make sure I've driven home the point that loading up to "take a shot" with half of your bankroll is a horrible idea.

I also don't want to go into pot odds, implied odds, pot equity, fold equity and all those other fancy topics in these articles for the same reason. I just want to say USE THESE TOOLS TO TRY TO ESTIMATE BOTH YOUR ODDS AND RETURN. If you have a 25% chance of making your hand and will very likely more than quadruple your bet if you call, call. If not, fold.

Think of the dice game I described earlier as a poker player playing a hand correctly every single time. IN THE LONG RUN the player should make money as long as he has enough bankroll to ride out the swings.

The two worst poker players in the world

In this section I want to talk about the two worst poker players in the world: the calling station and the maniac.

The calling station espouses these characteristics:
1. They love to call. They will call before the flop with any ace, most kings, any two cards of the same suit (to try to make a flush) and any two cards that can make a straight (like a 3 of clubs and a 6 of hearts that could flop 245 or 457). You will learn that playing hands like a 3 and a 6 of different suits or a jack and a 2 of the same suit is abominably bad. But these players will not fold them - they're too pretty!
2. Since they love to call, they will call on the flop and the turn with any draw, i.e. if they have a 3 and 6, the flop is king-7-5 and the turn is a queen. If they can just catch a 4 on the river they could make a straight which is a GREAT hand - they can't and won't fold!
3. Since they love to call, they will call the flop, turn *and* river with any piece of the board. Like if they have a 3 and a 6 and there are *any* 6s or 3s on the board, they will call - they have a pair and you might be bluffing!
4. If they show any aggression at all, i.e. betting out when they have a chance to just check or raising a bet when they have a chance to just call, they have a very strong hand, usually two pair or better.

How to beat them:
1. Do not bluff them. Ever. They won't fold. The bluff *won't* work.
2. If they show aggression and you have only one pair, you usually need to give up and fold - don't pay them off.
3. When you make top pair (i.e. you have a king and queen before the flop and the flop is queen 9 3), bet hard. They will call with worse and pay you off. If they raise, you're beaten - fold, but that's fine - USUALLY they will call you down with a pair of 9s or a worse queen, so you will make enough money when they *don't* get lucky to compensate for the few times they do. And speaking of getting lucky, sometimes you will flop Q93 where the 9 and 3 are hearts, the turn will be a club and the river a heart. If you bet the river and get raised, just fold. River raises by calling stations are never bluffs. And again, don't worry about the FEW times you bet hard and lose because the calling station got lucky. You will make more than enough money the times he doesn't to compensate.


The maniac will bet, raise, and often even go all in with anything in any situation. They're impossible to read because at any point after any action they can have any two cards.

The best kind of maniac to play against is the maniac who goes all in before the flop every hand. All you really have to do to beat that kind of maniac is call with any pocket pair or any two cards that are both at least a jack (quite honestly you could probably widen your range even more than that and still make a profit). And again, don't worry about the FEW times they either actually have a hand or the times you're ahead of them and they get lucky. You'll make more than enough when they don't to compensate. It's all a matter of having enough bankroll to ride out the swings.

Other maniacs are those that will raise or reraise any two cards before the flop and then bet or raise the flop whether or not they "get a piece of it". These players can be very difficult to play against if you're not properly bankrolled, because the swings will be huge. All you can really do is just try to get money into the pot in spots where you'll USUALLY be ahead. For example if they're raising 50-60% of their hands before the flop you can reraise with 15-20% of yours and expect to usually be ahead. When you flop a pair you can usually expect to be ahead because the villain will only have a pair on the flop about 1/3 of the time.

Playing against maniacs takes patience and practice, but once you learn how to get ahead of their range and ride out the swings it's very profitable.

Why are these the two worst players in the world? Simple: NO OTHER TYPE OF PLAYER WILL CONSISTENTLY PUT A GOOD DEAL OF MONEY IN THE POT WITHOUT THE BEST HAND. It's as simple as that.

An important lesson to learn as early on in your poker career as possible is that if you sit down at a table, look around it, and think to yourself, "You know what? There's not one single maniac or one single calling station at this table", you just have to accept that you're not going to get rich unless you get lucky. No other type of villain is going to put a lot of money in the middle unless they're in a situation where it's reasonably proper for them to do so.

The value of play money poker

A subject on which the majority of the posters on this forum disagree with me is the value of play money poker.

Another major lesson to learn as early in your poker career as possible is this: IF YOU CAN'T BEAT BAD PLAYERS, YOU CAN'T BEAT GOOD PLAYERS. It's as simple as that. You won't believe how many people say, "If they would just fold whenever a 3rd heart hits the turn and I raise, I would be a winner!" WRONG. If you can't beat players who are consistently putting a lot of money in the pot without the best hand, you can't beat players who know how to wait for good hands and know how to adjust their betting patterns to make it more difficult for the other players to know what they have.

You will find more calling stations at play money poker tables than anywhere else in the world. And why *wouldn't* you? What does it cost them to call with that pair of sixes when there are four diamonds on the board? Why wouldn't they call with those play money chips that cost them absolutely nothing just to see if you really have a flush?

You will find more maniacs at play money poker tables than anywhere else in the world. Why *shouldn't* they just go all in every hand? It costs them absolutely nothing, and it can be a lot of fun to go all in with a ridiculous hand like Jack of hearts, three of spades and watch everyone get furious when two threes appear on the flop.

My advice to new players is don't deposit one red cent on an internet site and don't set one foot in a casino until you're consistently crushing and demolishing play money poker. And I'm talking basically tripling your stack within an hour or two every time you sit down.

The main argument other posters make *against* play money poker is that as soon as you start playing even 1c/2c poker it becomes a totally different game. *Nobody* calls before the flop with a hand like a jack and a deuce when it costs them even seven cents to do so. In play money you'll see that all the time. That's true, but in my opinion that doesn't mean it isn't still a valuable learning experience. Just be ready for the villains to start playing only decent to good hands when you do make the switch to real money. And you *will* occasionally see stations and maniacs at 1c/2c, 5c/10c and even 10c/25c tables. They'll usually be either drunk retirees or otherwise-good players who have lost control of their emotions. When do *you* encounter such a rare profitable situation you'll thank yourself that you spent all that time at play money.

Here is what I believe beginners can learn from playing a few thousand hands of play money poker before playing for real money:

1. Reading the board (i.e. your opponent has AA, you have KQ and the board runs out KQ722 - who won the hand? You have AK, your opponent has 22, the board runs out AA952 - who won the hand? Beginners make mistakes on these kinds of boards).

2. Counting your outs, calculating your pot odds and estimating your implied odds (the latter is usually through the roof at play money tables), and disciplining yourself to only make the calls when you have the ODDS to call. It's very easy to say, "They're just play chips, I don't care". At .01/.02 tables, it's very easy for a beginner to get raised for 25c on the river and say, "It's only a quarter, I want to know what the villain is raising me with". If you can kick this habit in play money you can kick it in real money.

3. Variance and bankroll management (which go hand in hand). As I mentioned above when describing maniacs, When you're at a table where 3 or 4 villains are getting it in every hand, you can call with basically any pocket pair or any two cards that are both at least a jack - you won't win every hand, but on the hands you *do* win you triple, quadruple or even quintuple your bet, so you don't *have* to win every time, just once every 3 or 4 times. That's a simplified example but the point is, you can't sit down at a table with half of your bankroll and expect to survive - getting experience playing play money can give you an idea of what the swings can be like. If you're consistently getting your money in when you're signficantly more than a 50% favorite you WILL be a winner in the long run if you patiently ride out the swings while practicing good BRM.

4. Tilt control. As I've mentioned in a couple previous sections, you will experience long stretches where you get your money in way ahead and the villains get lucky against you many times in a row. Play money poker is excellent practice for dealing with that because (as I've already said ad nauseum) nowhere else will so many villains be willing to put their stack in while way behind.

5. Variance and BRM against calling stations. When you flop top pair against 3 villains who won't fold any piece of the board, pot/pot/shove. Sure, they'll occasionally suck out on you, but the times they DON'T suck out on you you'll double, triple or quadruple your chips. Bet when you have it, fold when you don't, and don't worry about getting bluffed. If you can't beat tables where people are fully willing to put chips in the pot without the best hand, you won't be able to beat tables where people are more careful. It's that simple. Just like when playing against maniacs, it's all a matter of having the bankroll to ride out the swings.

6. Memory bias. For even the most experienced players, we remember the times our KK ran into AA but we don't remember the times *our* AA ran into *their* KK, or our KK ran into their QQ or AK etc. Write down the times you value bet with your set and DON'T get sucked out on. In the long run, play enough hands and I guarantee you'll NOT get sucked out on significantly more often than you do.

How to get started

OK, so having gotten all of that out of the way let's finally answer the question, "I want to learn how to play poker - how do I get started?"

As stated in the introduction, I'm going to assume that you want to start with no-limit Texas Hold'em. It's as good a place to start as any. There are more NLHE games available than basically any other form of poker, and there's tons of training material available for it, so why not. You can always switch to fixed-limit hold'em (LHE) or pot-limit Omaha (PLO) or an even more obscure variant like Omaha hi-lo, seven-card stud or razz later. Most of what you learn from playing NLHE will apply.

Step one, as already discussed, is to completely purge the idea of making easy from your mind, and instead establish that you're going to take up poker because it's a fun game. Without this as a foundation you're just not setting yourself up to enjoy it, and you won't stick to something you're not having fun with.

Step two is to Google and download Pokerstove, and start fiddling around with it. It's a free tool that lets you see the starting hands ordered from best to worst. If you feel like someone is playing 20% of 50% of all the hands they're dealt, you can call up that range and see what it looks like. The tool will also let you calculate your equity in certain situations, i.e. you have AK and he has QQ, what % of the time will AK win? You have ace-nine of hearts, the flop is 984 with two hearts and the villain has 99. How often will you win? Or (since I discussed maniacs above), a villain is going all-in before the flop with 20% of his hands. You have KQ. What is the probability KQ wins against a random hand in that range?

Step three is to invest in a good beginners book. My personal recommendation is Blackrain79's Crushing the Microstakes. It does a good job of teaching how to beat calling stations, how to make adjustments when there are players at the table who are *not* calling stations or maniacs, and in general the book just does a good job of making you THINK. So a certain play is the right play in a certain situation - WHY? And under what circumstances might it NOT be the correct play? But don't just take my word for it - go to the "Books and Publications" subforum and ask for advice there as well. Too much information is typically better than not enough.

The next step (which I'm not going to number because most people are going to skip it) is to decide whether or not you want to heed my advice about starting with play-money poker. If you do decide to start with play money, there are a gajillion places you can play for free - zygna on facebook, the WSOP app, www.pureplay.com, www.nlop.com and www.texasholdem.com just to name a few. You can even go to "real" sites like PokerStars, 888 or PartyPoker if you don't live in the US or America's Cardroom, Carbon Poker or Bovada if you do, and play the play money tables on there to give you an idea of what it's like to use the software.

When you decide that it's time to plop down some money on an internet site, my advice is to give yourself a lifetime poker budget of 100 buyins for whatever the lowest stakes is that they have. For example, if they have 1c/2c NLHE, one buyin is 100 big blinds which is $2, so your lifetime poker budget will be $200. If the lowest stakes are 2c/5c, your lifetime poker budget will be $500. You don't have to deposit it all at once obviously.

Realistically, if you buy Blackrain's book (or a similarly-good beginners book), actually start reading it and putting forth an effort to improve your game and discipline yourself to play the lowest stakes AND ONLY THE LOWEST STAKES, it is extremely improbable that you will EVER burn through all 100 buyins. You would either have to go on megamonkeytilt and start playing like a maniac, or set the world record for the unluckiest microstakes player in history, or get greedy and start taking shots at higher limits (don't do it).

Once you've played a few thousand hands, play money or otherwise, you should have a crystal-clear idea of how much you enjoy poker and how seriously you want to take it going forward. If you decide to take it as a more serious hobby, you will inevitably need to invest in some sort of database tracking software. Hold'em Manager and PokerTracker are the 2 most popular and expensive. Expect to plop down between $60 and $100 depending on if any sales are going on.

Whether or not you decide to play play money poker, just divide up your time between playing, reading your beginner's book and reviewing/posting hands. Don't overcomplicate it - poker is a game and a game is supposed to be fun. Expect some backlash if you post play money hands - a lot of posters consider it an insult. If you play the play money tables on "real sites" like PokerStars, Carbon, AmericasCardroom etc, you can still load those hands into database tracking software which makes it easier to review your progress.

So to summarize and conclude, here is my answer to the question "I want to learn how to play poker - how do I get started?":
- purge the idea that poker is easy money from your mind and replace it with the mindset that poker will be a fun hobby
- start with no-limit Texas Hold'Em
- download PokerStove
- get a good beginner's poker book
- start at the lowest possible stakes and STAY THERE until you're TRULY ready to move up (not when your ego or your greed want you to move up) - start at play money if you're willing to swallow your pride
- once you are confident that online poker will be a long-term hobby for you, invest in database tracking software
- divide up your time between playing, reading, reviewing your database and posting hands

That should be as solid a foundation for your poker career as it's possible to build, and note that once you set aside the funds for the book, database software, 100 buyins at the lowest possible level and MAYBE some additional money for a one-on-one coach a few months down the line, that should establish a CEILING for the most money you will EVER need to invest in your poker hobby.

I hope that you enjoyed my four-year-anniversary post, and if you are indeed a beginner, I hope that four years from now poker is an even more invigorating hobby then than it is now, as it is for me.

Good luck at the tables!

DalTXColtsFan

Appendix: Playing live

I want to talk about one final topic before I wrap this up, and that's playing live.

Every poker player thinks about taking the occasional trip to the casino. The reason is obivous: We have dollar signs in our eyes. We've heard (accurately) that a lot of the worst opponents we will ever face are found at the casino. You will face retirees who are just there to gamble and don't care if they lose. You will face people who know nothing about the game and just want to sit down and play so they can say they did. If you're lucky enough to sit down at a limit hold'em table with 4 or 5 people who will limp into every hand and you know how to crush players like that, you're in a potentially VERY profitable situation.

Playing at a casino can be a lot of fun, but it can also be very, very, very expensive. If you're still a beginner and don't have a lot of experience, you *will* make basic mistakes. Up above I discourage you from even making those mistakes at 1c/2c poker where it could cost you $2, $4 etc - if you go to a casino and make a mistake it could cost you $100-$200! If you go on tilt at a casino you could suddenly find yourself down a cool grand!

Having said that, no matter how much you've played online there is an adjustment period involved in transitioning to live. Online players can play 200 to 500 hands an hour. It's more like 20 to 30 at a live table. You will learn that there are times where the correct play is to fold 30 hands in a row. Online that's about 5 minutes. That's an HOUR TO AN HOUR AND A HALF of doing nothing but fold at a live table! Online you'll sit at a table with $2. Live you'll sit with $200 or $300. Those are all things that require MAJOR adjustments, and the only way *to* make those adjustments is to sit down and give it your best shot!

While it's true that you will find abominably bad players at these tables (often worse than anyone you find online), you have to know *how* to crush them and take their money, and that takes practice that you just can't get at 2NL online.

So I guess the best way I can put my thoughts into words is, if you do want to go play at the casino, do so with realistic expectations. You simply can't play good poker if you're scared to lose the $200 you sat down with. Also, if you're still a beginner even online and are still struggling to figure out what the right decision is in each situation, it won't be any easier to make the right decisions at a live table. So go with the intention that you're just going to have fun, have a learning experience, that your buyin may last 20 minutes or 20 hours, it all depends on luck. Nothing wrong with that.

Nice post. Happy anniversary.

Just skimmed it, but seems a solid post. NH.

Great stuff. I've been playing for a little less than a year now so I'm not a beginner anymore (HA!), and this helped me pinpoint at least one problem with my game --somehow I've morphed into a calling station without realizing.

Thanks for this!

Hi,

I only joined yesterday and your post was the first one I read in full, I have in the last few months started playing a lot of poker, I have played infrequently over the past few years though. I have been winning more than I lose on 888 on the "Double your money" sit and go tables, and I am mid way through Slansky's Theory of Poker.

I found your post good and informative and it made me think that I too am one of the people who think I am a better player than I am so I decided to go back to Zynga and the play money tables for a night however I am finding the plays so random and unpredictable that despite sticking to my disciplines and only calling when I have a good hand I am still finding it 10 times harder to make any significant gains than I do through 888.

But I just thought I'd let you know I thought your post was very helpful and if you have any advice on what I should be doing next to improve that would be great, I am thinking about a poker stat tracker but and the moment I don't know if it would be any help as I still make some stupid plays which I think are sensible then realize they aren't after.

You are two of the people who have helped me a great deal over the last 4 years so I'm especially glad you chimed in!

No problem! Welcome to the forums. Just keep posting hands and there will be plenty of people ready and willing to help you continue to improve!

Thanks for the response!

If you're not consistently beating play money my guess would be you're just trying to get too fancy. Wait for top pair with a good kicker and bet the heck out of it - hit the pot button if you can. Do that 10, 20, 30 times and you'll most certainly make more when you win than you lose when you lose. Don't try to trick them, don't try to trap them - they're not paying enough attention for it to work.

I gotta get to work, I'll post more later, but really quickly, my honest advice would be to stick to play money until you're demolishing it.

Have fun! (Poker is a GAME at the end of the day, right?)

I'm not really trying anything too fancy I just shove with both cards above a Jack, Ace 10, or a decent pocket pair, however it just doesn't even really feel like poker to me. like at least on 888 with cash even in the decent game there is some bit of thinking to it which I enjoy more, however I just think because I could come top 4 out of 8 in a few double your money games I was getting a bit cocky and thinking I had the game cracked haha. But with play money this to me feels more like a lottery.

Thanks for the reply though

A common mentality. And that's fine. It's supposed to be fun. If you find it boring it's totally defensible not to play it .

I still advise new players to make sure they can at least *beat* play money before trying 2NL. It's just one man's opinion!

I'm a fairly seasoned, but somewhat leaky tourney player. I worked out that my biggest challenge was post-flop final table (I'm completely fine with push/fold) in the $2.50MTT Turbos anyway. After 6 months break I decided to start again with the fundamentals.

In my circumstances I've jumped in 5NL and am having a great time, but am clearly leaking all over the shop. My bankroll is holding up though.

I already have PokerTracker, so what sample size would you say shows one can beat play-money? 20,000 hands? 75,000 hands? More? Less?

Hello Teal_Panda!

I'm not much of a tournament player so can't give you much advice there - when I do play tournaments I do so for fun and don't take them particularly seriously.

Regarding your play money question, I would say to review this post:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...54&postcount=6

because that pretty much covers it. The most important lesson to learn is about swings. If you're playing villains who will go all in preflop (or CALL a preflop all in) with any two cards, going all in yourself with any pocket pair or two cards both at least a jack is profitable - BUT - every now and then they will actually have a big hand, and every now and then their worse hand will get lucky against yours. You still made the right DECISION - you just got unlucky.

Same with villains who will call to the river with any piece of the board - if you have KQ and the board runs out Q9643 with three diamonds, you will USUALLY win, but SOMETIMES they will hit their miracle flush or miracle straight or miracle two pair.

In both cases, you will encounter stretches where you get unlucky 10, 15, 20 times in a row. Those are the stretches that can screw with your mind and make you second-guess yourself. If you can look at each hand individually and be confident you made the right DECISION, you're ready.

So to avoid a tl;dr, when you can read through that post and say to yourself, "Yeah, I get all of that", in my opinion you're ready to move up to real money. Just be prepared for a much, much tighter game when you do.

Hope that helped.

DoN's are probably one of the last types of format a beginner should be playing. You are going to make horrible ICM misstakes even if you are kind of decent. Sure you could still maybe beat them but DoN's require alot more thought and understanding since ICM is at its heaviest due to the literally flat payout. One plus though is the low variance but playing games were its close to chip ev is better.


Most people wont be able to play appropriate ranges and folding big hands when they should.

Good stuff

If not already done, yhis belong to The Best of the Beginners Forum sticky.

Nice basic info.

Awesome post. Appreciate the book suggestions, I'll have to pick them up.

How is the 'right decision' determined?

I can see in videos where they analyse the hand after it happened and we can now walk through the correct play with complete information.

During the game when you don't have the complete information, how is known what is the right play?

Put villains on a hand range and figure out what they'll do with that range.

This is a very general question! It's like saying, "When I'm playing chess, how do I know what the right move is?" without including a picture of the board!

The most common suggestion on this forum, is when you're in the middle of playing, you're in the middle of the hand, and you think to yourself, "I'm not sure what the right decision is here", make a note of that hand, then when you're done playing, post that hand in the forum and CUT OFF THE ACTION AT THE DECISION POINT. Do NOT show how the hand plays out or what the next card is - that only skews the advice you get. Include any relevant stats or reads you have on the villains or state "I have no reads".

Then the posters will tell you what to be thinking about in that spot.

It's only minimally different than chess where you post a picture of a board and ask, "What is the best move for white and why?"

Is there really a "correct move" (and only one) for each position given perfect information (like chess)? How is this determined? That's a critical gap in my understanding of poker.

I am extremely confident in my reads, a huge downfall is that I pay them off sometimes just to confirm that my read was correct (also a huge flaw though many do it, even Negreanu) however playing at the lower stakes the hand range is generally trash.

Most of the time I will have a made hand, be it trips or 2 pair and the board is draw heavy. I bet and then they shove and hit the draw. But its with hands like 49o on a 678 flop and I have something like 78s or TT. My reads are OK and I am able to get the chips in when I'm ahead but it really feels like lately I can't catch a break.

Other times I make a semi/bluff because I read that the other player is weak and feels like it's the right thing to do in that situation and get called down with bottom pair and I look and feel like an idiot, even though I'm confident that 9/10 that player would/should fold. But again, another mistake that happens from time to time.

How can you forget everything you know about poker and start again without having a frontal lobotomy?