Regardless of what level you play poker at, you will want to improve your game, increase your skills and become a better player. The follow seven tips could help you to achieve those goals.
1.) Take Notes on Your Opponents
Poker is a game played with incomplete information -- we do not know our opponents' hands until they show them to us -- so the more information you can piece together the better.
Taking notes on your opponents is one way to do this. See them make an unconventional play, make a note of it. Notice they play a flush draw the same way every time, make a note. You get the picture.
2.) Join a Respected Poker Forum
There are plenty of poker forums out there on the world wide web and some are better than others. The biggest and best ones are a gold mine of free information on all aspects of poker. Yes, there is plenty of rubbish there also, but dig through that and you have one of the best free resources for any budding poker player.
3.) Join an Online Poker Training Site
Like forums, online poker training sites are widely available and, again, some are more useful than others. Most offer a free trial so take advantage of it and find a site that suits your style of play and offers plenty of content for the games you play.
Getting inside the minds of players who are better than you is more than worth monthly subscription fee.
4.) Invest in Tracking Software
There are two main players when it comes to tracking software: (1) PokerTracker and (2) Holdem Manager. Both are amazing tools that can be used to improve your game and help you to plug any leaks by taking the information from your hand history files and creating a myriad of statistics for you to dissect.
Both can be expensive for a micro-to-low stakes players, but in my experience they all but pay for themselves within a couple of months.
5.) Plug Any Leaks
Using your tracking software to plug leaks is a great way to improve as a player. If you made a mistake where you folded each time you had a full house it would not be a costly mistakes, despite the mistake being a major one. However, if you made a slight mistake once every 200 hands, your seemingly minor mistake could costs you hundreds or thousands of dollars every year.
Leaks can be costly, plug them immediately.
6.) Play More Poker!
Learning all aspects of the game is all well and good but there is no substitute for sitting down and playing poker. It is no coincidence that the very best players also play the most, so get yourself onto Betfair Poker, fire up a couple of tables and get plenty of hands played.
7.) Learn New Poker Variants
There may be a saying that says a jack of all trades is the master of none, but learning a new poker variant can do wonders for your overall game. Skills you learn from playing No Limit Hold'em cash games can often be transferred to the multi-table tournament world and vice versa.
Being able to play multiple game types and variants gives you more options for when things are not going to plan in your main game -- sometimes a change is as good as a rest.
What are your tips for improving at poker? Let us know in the comments box.
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