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.