1) Be Patient

Most of the time, winning at Texas Holdem is about camping out and waiting for a great hand and someone willing to call you when you get it. The top pros all agree on this one. You don’t have to be a patient person, but you must apply patience to the game to consistently win. Fix the patience leak and watch your win rate improve dramatically.

2) Stay On Your Game

Variance in poker is brutal beyond imagination. An intense streak of numerous losing sessions can shake the confidence of any good player. You must try to lose less when these bad runs occur. Do not doubt yourself or modify your standards. Heaters or hot runs of cards and callers can ignite without warning and next thing you know you are up numerous buy-ins in a very short amount of time.

3) Play in Position

Play much less hands when you are not on the dealer button or right next to it. Many things can happen that will tell you about your opponents hand strength that you don’t yet realize from early position. Put the big bets, raises, and all-in shoves where they belong – before you act. Maximize post flop when your opponent bets into you. In position, you never have to give up a betting round when you have a strong hand and you can always check behind to see another card when you have a drawing hand.

4) Don’t Play Garbage

Don’t call pre-flop raises with less than very premium hands. When and A or K shows up, you don’t want to be calling down with a dominated kicker. Also, unless your small hole cards are both suited and connected, they almost never get the correct odds to be played. Even worse, they often only get you in trouble post flop. Low straights and 2-pair and even flushes often get counterfeited. Flopping 2-pair or better happens a bit less often than you might think. Fix this and the patience leak and your win rate will likely double or triple.

5) Bet More

It’s frustrating when we build a big pot and have to fold 1 out of 3 hands or so to made draws (add other big hands and bluffs and it’s even more often we fold), but charging them too much to draw is KEY to winning in the long term. Calling is a huge mistake on their part and their mistakes are how we get paid. Also, when we do hit our monster, we will get players calling our big bets because that’s the only way they see us bet our hands. It keeps them guessing.

6) Call Less

Paying more than 1/3 of the pot on the flop and 1/5 or more on the river when we are drawing to a flush or an outside straight is a mistake and leaks money. Catching flushes and straights are fun but you must be realistic about the numbers. If you don’t have a hand that you would consider a raise with, you often should be folding. 95% of the time, people playing against you bet because they have a good hand and want to take your money. Think of that next time before you call.

7) Adjust to Your Opponents

If your opponents play very few hands, bet into them more and make them fold. When they play back at you, you can easily fold knowing they have the goods. When playing against loose opponents, only play the best hands and play in position. This way YOU control the size of the pot. Be patient and fold to serious sized bets and aggression - it often means they hit a nice hand.

Read Your Opponents

It doesn’t take long to figure out how an individual plays – and how far they will go – with different hand strengths. Use this information to figure out whether your hand is better than theirs. It’s not as hard as it sounds. Practice this while you are working on your patience.

9) Live Tells

Most people are bad actors, so when you see a botched acting job - do the opposite. When a player becomes quiet and withdrawn that often means a good hand. A speech before a bet of any kind is almost always a good hand. “Well, I’m ready to go to bed anyway” as he pushes his chips in the middle is the nuts for sure.

10) Get Rakeback

Much of your online poker win rate is going to the poker site in the form of rake. You can get about a third of that back by signing up for a site under a very simple agreement. You can go through my web site to get Rakeback.

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