Playing heads-up is the closest you’ll ever get to feeling like you’re playing Russian roulette with Christopher Walken in The Deer Hunter. There might not be a gun to your head, but going toe to toe at the poker table is a high pressure situation.
And if you can’t conquer this aspect of the game then there’s no chance that you’ll be able to pull off your dream win, like American Chris Moneymaker.
The problem with poker is that it’s easy to get good and it’s difficult to get amazing. You can win a lot of poker hands, but if you don’t have a great bottom hand, then you’re going to be on the losing end of the stick.
Any good poker player knows that you need to be able to execute some amazing moves in order to be a top winner. You can’t get away with basic stuffs, such as playing good starting hands, calling good bets and staying in the game when all you have to do is fold – stuff that a lot of amateur players know to do but don’t when confronted with the choice.
If you want to play poker and win money then you’re going to have to learn some of the more advanced techniques like bluffing, slow playing and require patience to allow you to take your time to make the right reads and get the results.
Bluffing is essentially a lie you tell yourself you’re holding a good hand when you’re not. It could also occur to be guessing the cards that your opponent has, etc. Bluffing is a vital component to being a great poker player because it’s one of the few times in poker that a player can get a hand containing no essence of his own.
Once you’re able to master the art of bluffing, you’ll be able to play as tight or as loose as you’d like. You’ll also be able to win big pots with players just hoping their Ace or King will be better than yours, or that you’ll chase your flush and get tripped by a flush.
Mastering the art of poker means learning to read your opponents, which will make it easier to tell if they’re bluffing or not, whether they have a strong or a weak hand, and much more.
The best way to learn poker is to find a strategy that works for you. There are many different strategies available, although the first I recommend is to start with a tight aggressive Texas Holdem poker strategy.
This strategy is especially good because it will help you get a feel of the game and what happens when you bet aggressively. When you learn to play poker this way, you’ll also learn to play loose poker with fewer chips, which is another reason it’s a good strategy to learn. If you won’t have enough chips to last you a few rounds of high stakes poker, you won’t last long at the smaller stakes games.
Most Vegas88 players who learn to play poker this way, become very aggressive when they play and will often steal the pots and blinds from other players who are lucky enough not to fold.
I teach players to stop worrying about what to do and just concentrate on the cards in front of them. Poker is about betting and shuffling the cards, and that’s it. Don’t worry about your cards, just bet aggressively and you’ll win.
Once you learn to play poker this way, you’ll also learn to play non-conference and road games against weaker opponents. You’ll be able to select games with better players, so you’ll know if you can dominate a better player in a game, then you do the opposite and play against weaker opponents.
This is the essence of the Texas Holdem strategy; to use aggressive betting to get the best results, to build your chip stack and to eventually dominate all of the other players.
Take it from me, I’ve been playing poker successfully for over 20 years. I also understand that it takes effort to learn how to play poker; I’ve spent countless hours agonising over what to do and when to do it. But I also know that once you put the time and effort in, you will reap the rewards. And that’s what really matters.