Believe in Lucky Cards

For me it’s the two of hearts. You can see how a hand like two of hearts, seven of clubs instantly looks so much more powerful. I'd certainly not pass up the chance of betting on it. Raising... well, not so much really.

Let's get more sensible. Such cards may act as random signals to bluff and as such should not be pooh-poohed. Players use combinations too. Any five and ten is a popular one on the basis that all straights contain one of these cards. So, you're going to hit your opponents with a not-so-well disguised straight.

And then there's that old perennial favourite: ace and... ace. Ha! Don’t make me laugh. The number of times that's failed?

Don't Worry About the Size of Your Bankroll

You'll win soon enough to increase it, and keep on increasing it. Your cash in hand will always be sufficient to cope with the few losses you'll suffer. Oooh, half a dozen at the most; certainly not twenty or thirty on the bounce.

Should Fate actually dare to treat you so badly, simply replenish the bankroll, make a loan to it – you know, just for the short while that you're in the red. It won't be a question of throwing more money at the game; you'll take the loan back when the winning times return.

As they surely must.

Call a LAG Only with a Great Hand

Despite your lack of notes, you’ve identified the guy who’s in every hand and who bets every flop. Time at least mentally to give him the LAG label. Loose-aggressive. You’ve got his number. And you’ve finally got a good hand, better than top pair anyway. Call him all the way to the river, or the end of your stack, whichever is sooner. He'll not beat you this time.

Trouble is: LAGs have a tendency only to stick around when they do have a chance of winning or if they can bully you out of the pot. If you start picking and choosing the hands to stand on, they'll out-guess you every time.

THEY'RE NOT STUPID.

But it’s so much easier to believe that they are.

Texas Hold'em Isn't Proper Poker

So seek out draw or stud games. They'll be easier to come by if you insist on sticking to cash but much harder in tournaments. You may be twiddling your thumbs a while there. Frustrating – always a bad start.

You can overcome this by mixing your games – a dash of draw here, some stud there, a few hands of hold'em in between. Nothing like switching methods and mindset to obscure the basics of poker, which you are still trying to learn, right?

Texas hold'em tournaments – how dull, for an inquiring mind, so make sure they're long ones that require hours of concentration. (You know sit'n'gos make sense really.)

Play Cash Games

Let's assume no-limit hold’em here. You can take a certain wodge of your bankroll to the table and replenish it from time to time. Unlike a tournament (barring the rebuy variety, which is a whole other snake’s nest), there's no limit to what you can lose.

Uh, yes there is: your bankroll is the limit and you really don't want to lose that.

Maybe you have iron discipline and can pull out of tables that are bleeding you dry. Even so, consider who it is that may be sucking your lifeblood away. The pro’s don't bother with tournaments. They grind away day after day on the cash tables. They keep on doing it.

They’re not sadists. They're making a profit, albeit a slow, steady one. They're making a profit. Out of... who?

You.

Play Many Casinos At Once

This is clearly the best way to find one that you like. You can check out all the different tournaments, varying structures of cash games, styles of players and you might even toy with the note-taking. And those bonuses... if you're finding that clearing one bonus is a tad slow-going, clearing several in parallel will be positively glacial.

And what's happening to your bankroll? Haven't I mentioned bankroll yet? Oh, I will. Unless you're Bill Gates, there's probably a limit on the amount you can lose – er, sorry, invest in this new venture. Splitting that amount between a number of sites increases the danger of going broke on one of them. And the danger of just “putting a little bit more in there.”

But that's not so dangerous really, is it.

Don't Play with Play Money

In your impatience to work towards your big, fat bonus, you will of course start playing with real cash. Never mind that a bit of finger trouble operating an unfamiliar interface may push you all-in on a beer hand. Or you don't notice that one raise and a call has already happened as you try to steal the blinds with your K2, off-suit.

You'll get the hang of it after the first few losses. And, boy, that bonus is... just as far away as it ever was.

(Hey, this is post number 150. Yay!)

Call a LAG Only with a Great Hand

You’ve identified the guy who’s in every hand and who bets every flop. Time to give him the LAG label. Loose-aggressive. You’ve got his number. And you’ve finally got a good hand, better than top pair anyway. Call him all the way to the river, or the end of your stack, whichever is sooner. They'll not beat you this time.

Trouble is: they have a tendency only to stick around when they do have a chance of winning or if they can bully you out of the pot. If you start picking and choosing the hands to stand on, they'll out-guess you every time.

THEY'RE NOT STUPID.

But it’s so much easier to believe that they are.

Take No Notice Of Note-Taking

Every poker-room lets you take notes. But how easy is it? And how easy is it to read those notes? Can you float the mouse to do the latter? Click once, to start the former? A bare minimum, surely, given the speed of online games.

Who’s worrying? We're not taking notes anyway. It’s far too much effort. Who needs to know if the latest pre-flop raise or bet from mrfish, or some such innocent sounding name, is part of a long line. Or whether sharky has been limping into way too many pots. Or mthrfkr (do all online poker players have the imagination of a two-year-old?) will never shift off a hand.

God knows it’s hard enough to put opponents on a range of hands without muddying the waters with their tendencies. You don't need a casino’s note-taking ability.

Choose the Biggest-Bonus Poker Room

That's right. There are loads of online casinos out there, all desperate to fleece – er, sorry, establish a meaningful customer relationship with you; and they all offer humungous cash bonuses to reel you in. It makes sense to pick the biggest one and deposit to the max. So you have to play a bit to earn points, and what do points mean? Points mean unlocking the bonus.

Then you start grinding away at the tables. And probably losing. Still, you're earning all those points towards your bonus, so you check them just to make you feel better. Uh-oh.

Unless you're playing at ridiculously high stakes for a tyro (and I’ll have something to say about that too!), it'll take you the rest of the century just to release the first five dollars.

Never mind: it is a big bonus.

How To Be a Bad Poker Player

With apologies to Simon Barnes, but this does not even intend to turn you into any sort of poker player. It should warn you off by listing all the traps I've fallen into on my way to becoming a poor poker player. If it doesn't, then follow my advice to play a worse game than I do. And, please, end up playing on my table. Please.

OK, so you're not listening and the first mistake you must make is your choice of poker room. Or even whether to play live or online.

Play live. It’s so much more expensive and you can lose far more than you ever could online, quite apart from having to spend on travel, drinks and food. Still, for a night out with the lads, it beats a strip club. And if you're a girl – yes, even girls get tempted by poker – it definitely beats a strip club.

Now we're sitting nice and comfortable at home in front of the Web, still reading this, I hope. And I’m going to make you wait for the next nugget. And the next. And so on.

Watch this space.