I've often thought to myself that there is definitely a better way of learning poker than reading forums, watching videos, and posting hands. I remember a talk my brother had with Barry Greenstein where Greenstein pretty much stated he thought forums were trash, because people needed to be discussing different things than is normally the culture. I tend to agree with this sentiment, however I'm still not sure what the best way to learn is. There are two paths you can go on. One, you can play poker through guides and memorization and ignore understanding and concepts, and only focus on concepts later after you have a lot of experience. Or two, You can focus on concepts from the very beginning. I'd like to think two is the best way, but on the other hand without basic experience and hand reading ability you need an enlightened master to convey concepts to you.

That being said, I'd still like to teach you all concepts of poker that especially need to be focused on as fundamentals.

1. Texas Holdem is a game where you need to fold a lot

This is an inherit quality of the game. No matter how good you are, you are not going to win money without playing tight OOP. There are two reasons for this. One, think of the percentages. Every person who hasnt acted has a certain % chance to have AA (aka nut hands), which discourages us to play a marginal holding. Think of it this way, if we knew an opponent had AA preflop, would we put any money in preflop? NO! It's the same concept, accept we know that one opponent will have a nut hand x% of the time since they were all dealt cards.

2. Texas Holdem is a game where you need to do a lot of betting.

I give this as general advice for low stakes players, but any time where you were the pre flop raiser or have initiative, AND you know if you check you are going to call a bet, bet! If thats confusing, heres an example. You raise preflop in MP, get a caller on the button. Flop comes something. You bet and opponent calls. Turn is something. You have a pretty good hand, good enough to the point where if you were to check you are calling a bet. In this situation, you should bet the turn. This is the reason why. Our opponents at low stakes normally all have similar qualities. First, they don't value bet thinly. Secondly, they are passive, do not bluff very much, if at all. So pretty much this means that there is not more value in checking than there is in betting. Also, when we are betting or raising if gives us an opportunity to more profitably bluff, since there is no such thing as call bluffing!

3. Texas Holdem is a game where we try to exploit our opponents mistakes

Why are people advocating playing a super tight style? Why are people advocating not bluffing very much? It's simply because thats the best way to exploit fishes tendencies. Since our opponents simply dont fold enough, and since sometimes we run into maniacs, we can easily win money by playing stronger ranges than our opponents. If we play loose and bluff a lot, we weaken our ranges overall and our actually theoretically throwing money at our opponent.


Hope that helped, I'm not sure how I'm going to continue to contribute to the BC but I've been inspired to try to help.

-Danny[/b]