The Way of Poker

"Poker is not a gambling game!" I think this is the key sentence in terms of poker. However, most of the people still believe that this game is only pure luck. They think that players with no skill, absolute beginners, can win at on poker events too. Of course, luck is part of the game, but a good poker player can minimize the luck as a factor. In other aspect the poker on short term is more luck than skill, as it is on the long term. It is no accident that 90% of the time you can see only professional poker players at the final tables at different poker events. Do they have luck all the time? No! They are only better poker players than a lot of amateurs at these events.

There are several types of poker players. If you play online, you will meet almost every kind of different poker player. Some of them will be passive, active, aggressive, not so aggressive, professionals, and of course a bunch of them will be beginner and amateur. But still the two broadest categories are those of successful and unsuccessful players. A player who is successful does not just look at what is in his hand and on the board. There are players who are unable to read, and there are other players who do not make it a point to watch, even when they are not in the game are often unsuccessful as poker players.

The Fish: Ooooh yeaaaaah! I like them. Probably they are the worst poker players. They are absolutely beginners, so it is not that hard to get their money, if you know how to play against them. Sometimes they have luck, but in 99% of cases they are only losing money. They are really inconsiderate and they will call almost everything. They will rarely bet, and if they bet you can be almost sure that they have a really good hand (pocket Kings, Aces). They are very unsuccessful. Who is belonging to this group? People who are totally new in the world of poker, people who don’t have any talent to this game. They usually began to play poker because they think it is a cool thing. Everybody plays it, so why don’t they?

The Quiet – Passive: They are people who are really concerned about their money, and they don’t want to go in any risky situation. They are playing only the better hands, and they will only call, or raise you if they are in a winning position. This strategy is not the winning strategy in poker. You can’t fold your cards in every risky situation, because then after a while your stack will be gone. They have fear against the aggressive players; they are always thinking that if an opponent raised the pot up, he supposed to have the better hand for sure, so they fold their cards in 90% of situations. These kind of players are rather unsuccesful, but sometimes they can find some minimal money. Probably the people in this group are not in a good money balance position, they have hardly enough cash to play poker, and they have fear to lose their money. In real life probably they have jobs with low wages, and they want to be rich playing poker. Well, they won’t be with this kind of a tactic.

Kamikaze – Aggressive: Aggressive players will play almost any starting hand. The cards in their hand may be the 2 and 7 of hearts and clubs and they will play them. They are the players who will contribute to some of your biggest wins and biggest losses because they are very hard to bluff out of a hand. If you are at a table where everyone appears afraid of what others have, and one player is betting big every hand or every other hand and winning about every hand, "He is the One…" If someone is betting up every hand and constantly winning and mucking it is advisable to "look them up" if you think you might have the hand. These are the players that you don't want to try to bluff, because as bluffers themselves they will often turn the tables on you or look you up. They are pretty succesful, but sometimes they can lose really huge stacks. If we want to have a look what kind of a person could be they, we realise that they are the people who are really self confident, they think that they are the best. Not only in poker, but in their whole life. They have their pretty good job, their life are in good condition. Some of them are playin poker in most of their freetime, and they have enough money to „gamble” with. However, usually they are pretty successful as i mentioned earlier.

The Tricky: These are some of the craftiest players. They have unlimited restraint on betting on a good hand in order to allow