the Chip Shuffler

A crucial idea in poker is to select your battles, in other words your pots.

Of course all poker players want to win as many hands as possible and lose as little hands as possible. Also, players would choose to bet more when they win and might fold or not bet when they are sure to lose. These are the basics of the poker game.

Poker is a very complex game, though it looks simple. One important step is choosing your battles the right way. You may win less pots than you lose. But if you win bigger pots on average than you lose, you can be a profitable player. The strategy goes as follow:

Win big pots, lose small pots.

Normally, money is said to attract more money. But, that is not the principle we follow in poker. Instead, poker is a game where money is used to make more money. Each little part of money is like artillery. The more you have, the more money you might have later.

It sounds trivial to say to win bigger pots and lose smaller ones, but this is a skill only the top players master. Learn to build up the pots when you have the advantage. Learn to keep them small when you feel dominated, or even fold early in such situations.

Similarly, repetition is another tactic used to make money in poker. Getting the best of it again and again is sure to lead to success. It is not to be flashy but your strategy, edge and the bit of money you have with you is your edge over others.

Think of the casino in your aim to make money. A casino earns money through a small regular cut of each pot or collection charge. This is called the rake. These small sums from every game and every pot add up to a good sum over the time. Similarly the good players are sometimes called grinders, because they try to get a small chunk of the pot on a consistent basis.

Big players try to play for big money. But skillful players look at smaller sums and keeping the units small can lead them to success. But, bad players always look at the big score involved above anything else. They try and play even the most complex steps, to win a large sum at one go. This is not the right path to be followed.

In poker, it is not always possible to get all of what you want, but you should try and get what you want more often. This is possible by structuring your game and winning the big pots.

This is just a few ideas about good poker.

How to be a winner at online poker? It seems that some players have natural skills to play correctly, while most of the other ones are just average, understanding how to play, but unable to break out from the crowd.

Here are a few traits of poker winners: (1) poker winners learn from their mistakes, (2) winners do not take the game personally, (3) winners adjust to change, (4) winners are selectively aggressive, (5) winners accept responsibility, (6) winners admit their mistakes quickly.

Each of these points is fundamental, and most of the average players do not follow these directives.

For example point number 4, selective aggression in online poker. Everyone one knows that you have to be an aggressive player to have a chance to succeed in modern online poker, but this is only the beginning as far as aggression is concerned. Aggression is a question of building an aggressive image so that the other players fear you. But you can only be aggressive selectively at the right time and against the correct (bad) player. Otherwise too much aggression will backfire and people will target you for their big traps.

Or point number 3, adaptation to change. In order to be a good poker player, you must always adapt to your table. Playing in a rigid way always following a set of preset rules is a certain recipe for losses. You will be straightforward and predictable if you play this way. You need to have a flexible way, where you never play the same situation twice the same way. So adaptation is part of being flexible, and if you are already very flexible in your poker game, then is will be so much easier to adapt to any new conditions.

Finally every pro knows about point 3, do not take it personally. Whenever you start to take it personally because another player outplayed you, this is the path to tilt and a winning session. This is not personal, this is poker.

Remember these 6 traits of winning poker players, and if you try to follow these principles, your results will improve immediately.