So heres my poker life story… Ive been familiar with poker since I was about 5 years old.  By “familiar” I mean I knew it involved playing cards and one of the good hands was having all the same suit.

Then the movie Maverick came out with Mel Gibson desperately trying to make it to a huge poker game in the old West.  It was a good movie, and it also showed a guy doing just about anything to get the buy in for a huge poker game.  As a young and impressionable kid, I immediately got interested in the game and taught myself the hierarchy of hands and that was the beginning of my addiction… For anyone familiar with Maverick, the poker they played was 5 card draw.. and the popular style of today is Texas Hold Em’.

So again after a few more years I was introduced to that game in a little movie called Rounders.  Rounders is a movie that was definitely before its time and kicked all kinds of ass, I recommend it.  Teddy KGB owns your face, and bends you over like little bitch.  BAM!

Then the World Series of Poker 2003 came around that brought about the poker craze of today where a nobody amateur named Chris Moneymaker won a satellite tournament that got him into the main event and then won him 2.5 million bucks.  He was the first person ever to become a world champion by qualifying at an online poker site, and made poker part of pop culture.

This whole poker craze also fed my gambling addiction where I currently have an account on 5 different poker sites.  Yet after 10 years of playing poker, im still a student of the game and probably will remain that way forever.  Ive played against buddies, family, pick up games, card halls, live tourneys and online and they all have there negatives and positives.

Playing against buddies usually involves a small buyin and tons of booze.. so, little loss, lots of drunk.
Family is just easy money especially my pops who goes on tilt like a pinball machine.  Love that money pops.
Online poker is a LOT more action where I can play about 5 tables at once or 2 or 3 tournaments at once but I cant use my psychological tricks and reads so I’m at a little disadvantage.
Live poker can be reeeeeally boring, but easier to choose your spots and allows me to read other players.

So now that you’ve got some of that info, Im going to give you a little schooling on the game..

Ive played thousands upon thousands of hands in my life and seen all kinds of plays and bad beats, so I think Ive got a bit of knowledge to share.  Im assuming if your reading this you at least have simple poker skills…

So starting off, youll need to have some math and technical knowledge of the game.  Lets start with the starting 2 cards…

With this, feel free to look at a hand chart of ranks if you need to, but Im not going over that.  Im more concerned with knowing when 7-8 suited or other mediocre hands are playable, and when there not playable.  What I mean is, a technical skill to have or learn is knowing which hands are playable with less betters and in what position.

Easy
If you have 7-8 suited and you are the big blind and only one person makes a minimum raise… then play

If you are small blind with no players betting before you… then play

Midway
If you have 7-8 suited and start the bets… then you should take other factors into consideration.

If you have 7-8 suited and someone raises triple the blind… then you should take other factors into consideration.

Hard
If 3+ players raise/call before you… then fold

If someone goes all in… then fold

These suggestions could change for a number of factors, but with no extenuating circumstances then these choices should become second nature.  “Going with your gut” is for tards. If you can gain the discipline to play only good starting hands, make difficult laydowns, avoid going on tilt, and playing as technically sound as possible under any circumstances then you’ll be in good shape.

Along with basic starting hands you need to learn probability, and the odds of winning or losing a hand with the cards you’ve got, or the odds of what a player has in his hand that can beat you.

The most basic form of reading your opponents hand would be thinking of all the possible hands that can beat you.  When digging deeper, you should try and remember the order of players.  Such as who bet, and how much, who raised, who re-raised, who checked in the big blind, etc.  You also want to gauge the ability of the players, and how much action the table sees.  This all adds to the ability to read another players possible hands.  But youll never have ALL the information until an opponent shows you his cards, and remember if you cant spot the shitty player… You ARE the shitty player.

So lets say there was a raise before the flop, in first betting position, from a good player and you called.  This is all information you can use after the flop.

If the flop comes 2-2-7, you can guess that a good player wont have 3 of a kind or a full house because a good player wouldn’t raise before the flop with 2-anything, or 2-7.

But lets say he was in the big blind and there was no raise, and he just checked.  Then any hand combination is possible, even for a great player.

You need to gather ALL the information you can before making a play.

Odds
Probability
Player ability
Player bets
Strength of your own hand

If you can develop these simple technical skills to perfection you will have a rock solid base to your poker skills.  You need a lot more abilities before your winning tournaments, but this is a good start.

Don’t expect these skills alone to win you the world series of poker, but expect these to give you a great foundation.  In the end Poker is a lifelong game because all of these things you learn, youll have to learn to be balanced in an infinite number of situations.