12 Things Every Poker Player Needs to Know before Turning Professional – BestUSCasinos.org

If youre considering playing poker professionally you need to make sure that you understand exactly what youre getting into. While you can go pro if youre good enough, its not as simple and easy as it looks.

The first thing you need to do is make sure youre profitable in the long run. Then you need to be able to deal with the grind of playing poker more than youve ever played before.

The 12 tips for amateur poker players in this article cover both of these things and more.

If youve ever heard the term grinder associated with poker, you might have an idea of what I mean when I say the grind is real. A grinder plays poker for hours on end grinding out a profit.

People tend to see poker pros winning big tournaments and dream about how easy it is to make millions. But the truth is that most poker pros are simply grinding out a small profit every hour playing cash games.

If you want to be a poker pro you have to learn how to stay on top of your game while you grind out a profit. This can get to be worse than a job. Youve been warned.

Free play poker is a lot different than when you play for real money. But the fact is that if you cant figure out how to beat free poker games theres no way youre going to be able to figure out how to make a profit when you start playing for real money.

You are going to have to develop and use different skills when you play for real money than you have to use when you play for free, but poker pros learn how to either beat every game theyre in or learn how to find games they can beat. Whether those games happen to be cash games or poker tournaments.

This goes along a little bit with the last section, but I cant count how many times Ive heard poker players complain about the competition at low-stakes tables. They say that theyd get better results at higher limits because their opponents wouldnt make as many dumb plays.

The fact is that you want as many of your opponents to make dumb plays as possible. This is how you make money. The games arent ever easier at higher limits. Learn how to win at your current limit and then move to the next limit. Rinse and repeat until you find a limit you cant beat. Then move back down a limit and make as much money as you can.

Many poker players try to compare their skills to the best players in the world. They try to figure out how they stack u against the pros you see on television.

This is a waste of time, because the only thing that matter is how your skills compare to the people youre actually playing against. The most profitable poker players are the ones who can consistently play against other players who arent as good as them. This might be the most important point in this article, so dont take it lightly.

If you want a single tip that can instantly help you make more money when you play poker, this is it. You need to play fewer hands. This sounds simple, but its extremely rare when I play against an opponent who doesnt play too many hands.

Playing fewer hands means that when you do play a hand you have a better hand, and this means you make more money. Its as simple as that.

The oldest advice I remember about playing poker is that tight and aggressive play is the best way to play. While there are some poker pros that dont play as tight as others, the fact is that aggressive and tight play is still a profitable combination.

In the last section, I explained why playing tight is important, and playing aggressively when you do play a hand is more profitable than playing passively. The aggressive play forces your opponents to make more mistakes.

If you watch poker on television you might see many of the pros playing different variations of poker. They might play no-limit Texas Holdem, 7-card stud, and Omaha hi-lo. This is fine when youre making money and have plenty of experience, but while youre gaining experience and learning how to make good money, you need to specialize.

This means you have to pick a game, limit, and variation and master it first. This can be whatever you want it to be, but pick something to master. For example, you can play limit Texas holdem cash games.

Strong math skills arent required to be a profitable poker player, but they help. In fact, you have to learn how to use some fairly simple math if you want to be a professional poker player. The good news is that youre capable of learning what you need to know.

If you do have strong math skills you might find it easier to play either limit Texas Holdem or some form of Omaha when you start your career. Both of these options are easier to beat when you have strong math skills.

Your long-term poker goal is to make the right plays. Youre going to learn more about this in the next section, but it does go along with this section.

When you make the most profitable decision, you still lose sometimes. But the right decision returns a profit over time, so all that matter is your long-term results.

If you get all-in with a 75% chance to win you make money in the long run, but you still lose 25% of the time. You cant let the 25% keep you from the profits offered by the 75%.

When you play poker you have to make one decision after another. And every decision you make either helps you make money or it doesnt.

When you fold a starting hand of a 3 and 8 from an early position this helps you make money. It saves money that you can use to make more money when you have a better hand.

Your goal is to make the most profitable play every time you have to make a decision. You dont always know what the most profitable play is, but with experience, you can learn what plays to make and which ones to avoid.

The way you know how to make the most profitable play in every situation is to learn about expected value. The fact is that every decision you have to make when you play poker has an expected value.

The expected value can be negative or it can be positive. The key to being a professional poker player is making more decisions that have a positive expected value than ones that have a negative expected value.

Spend as much time as you need to learn how to determine the expected value and learn how to use it for every decision you make when you play poker.

Its always good to learn as much as you can from other people. This includes reading about things like poker strategy and watching others play. But learning from these sources can only do so much for you. Eventually, youre going to have to learn by playing.

You should continue learning from others as much as possible, but you also need to start investing serious time into putting what you learn into practice. If youre not spending at least 20 hours a week playing now, the odds are against you when youre suddenly playing 50 or 60 hours every week.

If you have the skills you need and want to give professional poker a shot, I wish you all the luck in the world. But theres no shame in deciding that you just want to play on a part-time basis. You might be just as profitable and enjoy life more if you can avoid the dreaded grind.

Most poker players have the ability to learn how to win, but they dont have the dedication to do whats required. Make sure you can win first, and then decide if youre willing to put in the long hours.

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12 Things Every Poker Player Needs to Know before Turning Professional - BestUSCasinos.org