Poker education is something fundamental. It is necessary to read, look at the great poker players and experiment at the tables to make post-game analysis, understand the failures and expand boundaries to learn new concepts and ways to approach the game.

Those who have had little experience playing poker need a starting point that allows them to grow, and what can help them is to have a series of guidelines with which they can be better players with the help of their discipline, their desire to grow and their dedication to poker.

In this brief poker guide, we have collected the essential aspects that can help these beginners to be better poker players in the not-too-distant future.

How to learn to play poker if you are a beginner

So that your first steps are fruitful and you can learn poker well, this battery of brief tips can be useful to define your first steps in the world.

• Focus on one modality. It is better to focus your efforts on mastering one variant of poker first before jumping into other types of the game. Instead of “nibbling” here and there, strive to improve in a specific game. It makes sense for many to start with Texas Hold’em, which is the most played type of poker worldwide, but the choice is personal.
• Don’t even think of playing every hand. In fact, the best poker players barely get involved in 10% of the hands. So, you should not feel the need to participate all the time. If you don’t see a chance with the cards you have, don’t play the hand and wait for the next round. Learn poker by playing, yes; try to learn poker by playing hands that will only make you lose money, no. This is the first commandment. This is the first commandment.
• Don’t underestimate the tells by playing online. Although in online poker tells are not so important, they are still important. But instead of transmitting them with body language, they are transmitted through your actions. And you should not underestimate them. Learning online poker requires understanding that the essence of live poker remains, and that affects tells as well.
• Don’t be afraid to be aggressive. Play, make mistakes and learn. If you’re not aggressive, you’ll never know where you fail. Being afraid of strong play is a mistake.
• Watch, analyze and study. After the games, hours and hours of study and analysis await you. If you do not dedicate time outside the game session to improve, that discipline will be of little use to you. There are no miracles in poker.
• Give relative importance to your mistakes. You are going to make mistakes, especially at the beginning. The good thing is to realize it, so avoid falling into the tilt. Otherwise, you will get into a bad streak that who knows how long it can last. Turn the page soon and move on.

Poker rules for beginners: know the basics

The rules of Texas Hold’em are very simple. Each player occupies a seat at the table. The Small Blind and the Big Blind represent the minimum and maximum betting values, and after each round the places rotate.

Each player is dealt two cards. The preflop game consists of placing a bet before any of the community cards are placed on the table.

The next rounds are the flop, the turn and the river. Three community cards are placed on the flop. From this round on, it is possible to bind a hand or open a draw to bind it on the remaining streets. On the turn, one more community card is added, and on the river, the last one. In total, five community cards that can be used as best suited together with the player’s two cards to move the hand forward.

Online poker strategy: what to take into consideration

The strategic aspect of online poker is enormous. Listing one by one the different strategies available to you, and the possibilities open to you on each street would take a great deal of time to explain.

Poker strategy is crucial, but it is something that develops naturally, with practice. Knowing how to play poker well is an art, and it consists precisely in showing yourself natural while you are shaping a master play with which to tie a better hand than your opponent.

That means that training on the fly is the basis, since there is no point in soaking up strategies and possibilities if they are not understood at the moment you are involved in the game.

For now, it is best that you omit any speculative play. That is, don’t try to bluff. It is common for novice players to be eager to show how much they know and how prepared they are, but you can see it coming. Any higher-level player will realize how green you are still, so it is best to skip plays reserved for more advanced levels, such as bluffs.

If you are going to start playing Omaha poker, you might be interested in this post about Omaha poker for beginners:

Scooping vs quartering in Omaha High Low: everything you need to know

Learn some additional poker strategies:

Slow play: what is it, how is it done and what are the benefits of this advanced poker play

Poker for beginners: concepts to master

You will soon realize that poker is full of terminology with concepts coming from English. Some terms are even invented, such as the “valuff”, a combination of value bet and bluff, which arise over time and with the expansion of plays and the detailed study of certain strategies of advanced players.

But don’t be overwhelmed, it is useless to study. Theory is necessary to know, but cramming as if you had an exam is 100% useless. Instead, focus on understanding the meaning of some terms that you will begin to see with some frequency in order to find their full meaning during the game.

• Bankroll. It is as important to know how to play poker as it is to have full control of your bankroll. By bankroll we understand the amount of chips or money that allows you to enter the game and continue betting. This bankroll is the one that compromises your continuity, so manage it well.
• BRM. BRM stands for Bank Roll Management, bankroll management. It is the set of actions that aim to make a rational use of the bankroll to ensure your continuity in the game in particular and in poker in general.
• Tells. Many will hardly put their efforts at the beginning to find out how to learn to play poker in a practical but fast way. And in poker there are no shortcuts. Because with some mere guidelines you can get an idea of the dynamics of the game, but not an overview of everything that influences poker, and a good proof are the tells. We are talking about the indications that your body emits through gestures or spontaneous reactions, which can be analyzed by another player to find out what your game is. And its importance in online poker is not low.
• LAG. Acronym for Loose-Aggressive. It is a type of player who usually plays a wide range of hands preflop, and they do it very aggressively. Compared to TAGs, they play a higher number of hands, and their aggressiveness is somewhat higher.
• TAG. Acronym for Tight-Aggressive. We are talking about a kind of player who makes a good selection of hands preflop, but does not renounce to play them aggressively.
• 3bet. In addition to knowing how to play poker, it is also important for beginners to familiarize themselves with terms that are often used fluently in manuals or video tutorials. The 3bet is recurrent, especially when talking about preflop plays. It is a third bet made in the same round. For example: a player makes a bet, the next player raises, and the next player raises again. In total, two raises on an initial bet that accumulates a total of 3 different bets.
• Limping. It is unusual for a poker guide to talk about the term “limp” or “limping”, since many novices give up on understanding some terms without mastering the game. But it’s a term you’re going to see a lot, and it refers to the action of calling the minimum starting bet (BB). It is used to keep the size of the pot under control.

So much for the basics of online poker. You can also expand your vocabulary by taking a look at:

Poker glossary: learn all the terminology to play like a pro