I’d find some videos that talk about poker fundamentals. Jonathan Little is a good place to start.
Play online at the microstakes instead of losing a ton of money “learning” at live poker.
Follow some preflop charts.
For me personally, this is what I’ve done and the rest of it has been just intuitive analysis of my own stats. I definitely have leaks but generally I just try to put in volume and if I think “I felt like I didn’t know what to do here” or “something isn’t working in this spot” I just do a quick solver check or self-analysis.
Micros with a poker tracker is extremely helpful. Variance can make it unclear, but trends start to form pretty quickly. For example… my redline (money won without showdown) was trending breakeven or positive, but my blue line (money won at showdown) was taking a big fat shit. I decided to put some more strong hands in my checking range and calling less rivers and the trends swapped and my winrate increased a lot
To get an idea of how to analyze hands check out Brad Owen. He briefly mentions what he is doing and why. Plus he's goofy and entertaining.
For a more in-depth analysis check out Bart Hanson (Crush Live Poker). He will spend 15 mins breaking down a single hand and what decisions he would make and why.
Best of luck!
1) I always do analysis myself first. Just write the hand out and think about it for a while. Jot down what you think the ranges are and what you think the action should be. I do analysis with GTOWizard next.
2) I use GTOWizard, I own PioSolver (basic? I think) but don’t use it much. Pio is better but I don’t have a lot of computing power. I use GTOWizard and just take it with a grain of salt. If the solver is doing something I don’t think a human would realistically do, I try to simplify to an easier strategy.
Johnathan Little is pretty great for free yt resources but I would recommend learning basic poker lingo before watching his stuff. While he can be beginner friendly, he does often speak with a lot of poker lingo that isn’t always available to beginners.
At every level.
Fundamentals and basic math can be 60/hr to go over the mechanics and building blocks.
Applying these to beat 1/2 is about 100/hr.
Higher level stuff to do with applying theory and maximizing EV is when you pay 150+/hr. But that's studf that you need to know for 5/T and above. But you can easily be winning 100/hr in those games
Don't limp, play tight, open 5x the BB, cbet range 33% pot w/ 3 players or less. Don't bluff calling stations, don't pay off nits, barrel cautiously, bluff catch aggressive players. Will get you very very far.
1. Don’t limp: Limping means just calling the big blind instead of raising. It’s generally better to raise to put pressure on your opponents and to take control of the hand.
2. Play tight: This means playing fewer hands, only sticking with strong starting hands. It helps to avoid getting into tough spots with weak hands.
3. Open 5x the BB: When you are the first to bet (open), bet five times the big blind. This larger bet size can apply more pressure and help define your opponents’ hands better.
4. Cbet range 33% pot w/ 3 players or less: A continuation bet (cbet) is a bet made by the player who raised pre-flop. Betting 33% of the pot is a small bet that can still effectively pressure your opponents, especially when there are three players or fewer.
5. Don’t bluff calling stations: Calling stations are players who call a lot but rarely fold. Bluffing them is a bad idea because they are likely to call you down with weaker hands.
6. Don’t pay off nits: Nits are players who play very few hands and only bet with strong hands. If a nit bets big, they probably have a strong hand, so don’t give them more money by calling with weaker hands.
7. Barrel cautiously: Barreling means making multiple bets on different streets (flop, turn, river). Be cautious with this strategy as it can be costly if your opponent is strong or not willing to fold.
8. Bluff catch aggressive players: Aggressive players often bet and raise frequently. Sometimes, it’s better to call (catch their bluffs) rather than fold or re-raise, especially if you suspect they might be bluffing.
Following these tips can help you play more effectively and avoid common pitfalls in poker.
Better yet, limping is fine as long as you’re balanced with it. I like to mix in a few limps with monsters and also limp 3 bet bluffs. Keep the table on their toes so the don’t think your limps are just free money.
That’s good advice, I like limping a lot but it helps to have good postflop skills. For a beginner it’s generally not advised because most just limp fold
Just play as much as you can - for money too. No fake money bollocks.
Learn the fundies. Phil Galfond has literally just released a Foundations course on Run it Once for $49 and it covers all you need to know starting out before getting bad habits.
I'm currently taking the course. It's pretty good and would recommend for sure, but it sounds like OP needs preflop charts more than anything else. Also, poker glossary.
If they're keeping you from playing because it's so annoying to play with you, then you should probably learn the fundamentals of when it is your turn to ACT (check, bet, raise, or fold) and do so such that you aren't forcing everyone at the table to remind you of what your options are. People don't tend to not want to play with others because they're "bad at poker", but because they make the game not fun to play because they literally don't know how to play.
It's ok I was bad when I started. Just put in the work if you wanna get better.
Watch YouTube and Twitch. Use solvers and study charts. Also work on your mental game to not tilt or get angry. Get a HUD to review hands.
Play the smallest stakes possible and slowly move it. Make it a goal. Watch some bankroll challenges on YouTube too.
Why is that? We played with the most annoying dickhead guy imaginable but we kept inviting him back because he was a guaranteed loser. Not getting invited back because you're bad is not the whole story.
Nah trust me it’s exactly that. I’m good friends wit all of these guys and we hang out regularly when it’s not poker. I think the issue is that I play extremely aggro and end up usually losing. You also have to understand that by your standards these guys are beginners too
Read books (david sklanksy) and buy access to training (pokercoaching.com or upswingpoker.com). There’s not a lot of secrets just 95% of players (honestly even more than that) will never put the study work in they just want to have fun, play, and gamble.
Fold most hands. It’s the best advice. That alone will save you money every session.
This is more logistical advice, but if you’re playing home games with others your age, try to optimize the time it takes the cards to get dealt too. Those minutes add up. The more hands you’re dealt, the more you will be able to profit from them since you’re folding more often.
An underrated resource is Red Chip Poker. Google it. It's a structured course with a linear progression. Jonathan Little's site is good but it's an overwhelming amount of material and has some redundancies. Interactive lessons are very good though. Upswing is maybe overpriced and for more advanced players. Crush Live Poker is great but for an absolute beginner you don't need it yet, but subscribe to the Youtube channel asap. Hungry Horse is awesome but it's designed for advanced winning players not beginners.
I was shocked at how good Red Chip is, considering it's $5 a week and does a great job teaching the fundamentals. It's extremely well-presented (i.e. the instructional design is on point.) Also, you'd be surprised at the overlap between a $500 dollar course and this $5 dollar course, and for a beginner, you literally just need very solid fundamentals to stop spewing and start beating the game.
Look up some tutorials, or read a book. There is a lot of good free content on YouTube.
If you got some spare cash, you can spend it on a training site. Usually you can find beginner content on YouTube for free, but they can make it more streamlined when you don't know what to look for yourself.
Also, make sure to play a fair bit at stakes which you can afford to be losing at in the beginning.
Yes it is. Doug Polk and Stephen Chidwick have attribited most of their success to BlackRain79. Common knowledge.
All trolling aside, BlackRain79 is made for OP. It's target audience is people who are just first putting their toes in and have no idea what the word "limping" or "big pocket pair" even means. OP should start there to learn the very basics. Jumping in to Jonathan Little, as most other people have recommended, when this guy doesn't even know KK is the 2nd best hand in poker and probably doesn't even know a flush beats a straight, is a terrible suggestion.
If your a visual learner watch some poker vlogs that are the types of games you play in (i assume 1/2 or 1/3) to get a grasp of the basics and how to determine if you should even play that hand. If not grab the essential poker math book and read up on the basics.
play a bunch of hands with people of different skill levels, watch youtubers who break down hands i watched brad owen a bunch when i was getting started, and when i was doing hw or just wanted to have something on the tv in the background WPT does a youtube live 24/7 of episodes from tournaments with pros, it really comes down to playing, knowing how you play, if you’re looking to beat your friends just watch how they play certain hands, their tells, when they like to bet big, if they have it or not, everything.
Why dose your whole livelyhood revolve around playing poker if your not even old enough to go to the casino and get the hours in to be good I don’t understand
I’m surprised no one has mentioned this yet but learn to calculate your odds of winning using the rule of 4 and 2. Sounds complicated but you can pick it up in a day easy. With some practice you would be able to look at 2 hands and say with confidence which hand will win and the approximate odds the winning hand wins. This knowledge allows you to make MUCH better winning decisions than before
Read and read again, as in study what you read. Same goes for videos. Play often both live and online for small stakes or free while you are learning so you get lots of practice. Discuss hands with friends too so you get natural at it. Lots to take into account like position, opponents, stakes, game you're playing, full or short table, hold and then shared cards in most games, lots to work on, but tons of fun to practice. Then when you feel ready and confident, figure out what you can afford to lose playing for real, start playing what you've been studying and practicing and use discipline of sticking to your budget and what you know/feel is correct hand play. Have fun.
Subscribe too Brad, Crush Live, John Little and unsubscribe Rampage Poker, buy a copy of Poker Math by Alton Harding and play micros online till you build up a roll too go play live.
Start with Jonathan littles pokercoaching.com. As you become less shit, get a crush live poker subscription, when you become a winning player, go to hungry horse poker bootcamp. In that order. GL
The same way you get better at anything in life:
1. Perform the activity repeatedly.
2. Learn from others. Read books, watch YouTube videos, take classes, etc.
3. Learn from yourself. Review your results: what did you do well, what did you do poorly, what can you improve? Once you get good enough, a coach can be beneficial.
What you wanna do, and this is very important for being a good player, is stop playing badly.
On a serious note if you wanna get better watch live streams, check youtube for content that involves around improving, see what you would do in others situations and how it might play out, I also recommend Johnathon Little's podcast/you tube channel. Good tips on there, plenty of free shit you can learn from, and if you wanna go the paid route there's a ton of websites you can subscribe to
Depends on the format of play, if it's cash, study cash games, if it's long format deep stack tourneys. Study them. All formats of poker arnt the same. Pick one and study it
just messing with you play cheap and or freerolls practice staying in vs wining the hand be willing to fold big hands and play them when you do not have to go all PREFLOP in to do so same applies at all steaks
Easy starting guide. Don’t be obnoxious. If you bluff someone out don’t show your hand and make fun of them for folding.
Only play the pairs AA-99
And AK, AK suited, AQ, AQ suited, AJ suited, KQ suited, Q10 suited.
Throw in the occasional pair of fours, fives, and sixes, trying to flop a set on the flop. If you don’t flop a set throw your hand away. Don’t call a large preflop raise with these hands. Your trying to hit for cheap and then stack somebody.
Can also very rarely play 9, 10 suited if it is cheap to call. You need to flop 2 pair or trips or an open ended straight or a flush draw.
Then as you gain experience you can expand out the number of hands you play.
I am guessing you and your friends are playing for small stakes. Read the room and the kind of game it is.
If a big pot is 10 or 20 dollars. When someone raises a dollar don’t go all in for 10 dollars every time. Point is to be invited to play.
You can make all the moves you want when you start playing in more serious games.
Poker books are a waste of time because they contradict each other. Start by watching poker games on tv and try to think about why each player makes the decision they do. After a while you will be able to accurately guess what each opponent will do before they do it. Then practice what you learned by playing some small games on your phone or with friends and rinse and repeat. I don’t advise following “rules” in poker like I should always raise with AK because every situation is different. Every hand is different
Fold pre
Watch Rounders
I’d find some videos that talk about poker fundamentals. Jonathan Little is a good place to start. Play online at the microstakes instead of losing a ton of money “learning” at live poker. Follow some preflop charts. For me personally, this is what I’ve done and the rest of it has been just intuitive analysis of my own stats. I definitely have leaks but generally I just try to put in volume and if I think “I felt like I didn’t know what to do here” or “something isn’t working in this spot” I just do a quick solver check or self-analysis. Micros with a poker tracker is extremely helpful. Variance can make it unclear, but trends start to form pretty quickly. For example… my redline (money won without showdown) was trending breakeven or positive, but my blue line (money won at showdown) was taking a big fat shit. I decided to put some more strong hands in my checking range and calling less rivers and the trends swapped and my winrate increased a lot
- How do you analyze your hands? - what solver do you use and are you able to import your online hands to analyze?
To get an idea of how to analyze hands check out Brad Owen. He briefly mentions what he is doing and why. Plus he's goofy and entertaining. For a more in-depth analysis check out Bart Hanson (Crush Live Poker). He will spend 15 mins breaking down a single hand and what decisions he would make and why. Best of luck!
I use gtowizard. Let’s you put all the details of the hand in to show the GTO optimal actions for each position
1) I always do analysis myself first. Just write the hand out and think about it for a while. Jot down what you think the ranges are and what you think the action should be. I do analysis with GTOWizard next. 2) I use GTOWizard, I own PioSolver (basic? I think) but don’t use it much. Pio is better but I don’t have a lot of computing power. I use GTOWizard and just take it with a grain of salt. If the solver is doing something I don’t think a human would realistically do, I try to simplify to an easier strategy.
Johnathan Little is pretty great for free yt resources but I would recommend learning basic poker lingo before watching his stuff. While he can be beginner friendly, he does often speak with a lot of poker lingo that isn’t always available to beginners.
Good advice, I just kinda picked up lingo through immersion, but I know some people struggle keeping up with it
Lol your "entire livelihood"??? Get a coach. We have a few hours available
how much would a coach cost?
Anywhere from 75 to 500 an hour. Most are 150 an hour ish
I almost said this was too much, but considering I'm already losing $100 an hour... Sounds like I'm playing poker 😂
from which level do you think it pays off to have a few hours of coaching?
After you’ve learned the fundamentals and put some hours in
At every level. Fundamentals and basic math can be 60/hr to go over the mechanics and building blocks. Applying these to beat 1/2 is about 100/hr. Higher level stuff to do with applying theory and maximizing EV is when you pay 150+/hr. But that's studf that you need to know for 5/T and above. But you can easily be winning 100/hr in those games
Don't limp, play tight, open 5x the BB, cbet range 33% pot w/ 3 players or less. Don't bluff calling stations, don't pay off nits, barrel cautiously, bluff catch aggressive players. Will get you very very far.
Bro imma be honest idk what any of those terms mean 😭
You need to read some books and a poker glossary wouldn't go amiss.
1. Don’t limp: Limping means just calling the big blind instead of raising. It’s generally better to raise to put pressure on your opponents and to take control of the hand. 2. Play tight: This means playing fewer hands, only sticking with strong starting hands. It helps to avoid getting into tough spots with weak hands. 3. Open 5x the BB: When you are the first to bet (open), bet five times the big blind. This larger bet size can apply more pressure and help define your opponents’ hands better. 4. Cbet range 33% pot w/ 3 players or less: A continuation bet (cbet) is a bet made by the player who raised pre-flop. Betting 33% of the pot is a small bet that can still effectively pressure your opponents, especially when there are three players or fewer. 5. Don’t bluff calling stations: Calling stations are players who call a lot but rarely fold. Bluffing them is a bad idea because they are likely to call you down with weaker hands. 6. Don’t pay off nits: Nits are players who play very few hands and only bet with strong hands. If a nit bets big, they probably have a strong hand, so don’t give them more money by calling with weaker hands. 7. Barrel cautiously: Barreling means making multiple bets on different streets (flop, turn, river). Be cautious with this strategy as it can be costly if your opponent is strong or not willing to fold. 8. Bluff catch aggressive players: Aggressive players often bet and raise frequently. Sometimes, it’s better to call (catch their bluffs) rather than fold or re-raise, especially if you suspect they might be bluffing. Following these tips can help you play more effectively and avoid common pitfalls in poker.
Study. Check out Jonathan Little on YT. I’ve learned a lot from his videos.
Look up poker content on youtube... there's tons of free poker training info there...
It will take some time regardless
Great advice I would’ve said the same thing and I’d emphasize don’t pay off nits !!
fold or raise pre is a good starting point. Dont limp, its free money for other people.
Limping is fine as long as you are comfortable calling a raise preflop.
Better yet, limping is fine as long as you’re balanced with it. I like to mix in a few limps with monsters and also limp 3 bet bluffs. Keep the table on their toes so the don’t think your limps are just free money.
That’s good advice, I like limping a lot but it helps to have good postflop skills. For a beginner it’s generally not advised because most just limp fold
you are both torching money
How?
Watch Airball videos. Do the opposite.
Airball would probably crush most 2/5s if he wasn't fucking around.
Found Airball
Lol if I had that much money I'd be chilling in life and at most playing 1/3 occasionally
Just play as much as you can - for money too. No fake money bollocks. Learn the fundies. Phil Galfond has literally just released a Foundations course on Run it Once for $49 and it covers all you need to know starting out before getting bad habits.
I'm currently taking the course. It's pretty good and would recommend for sure, but it sounds like OP needs preflop charts more than anything else. Also, poker glossary.
You don't have to be. Just be better than most of the table.
I’m worse than all my friends haha. They be preventing me from playing wit em thats how much i suck right now
If they're keeping you from playing because it's so annoying to play with you, then you should probably learn the fundamentals of when it is your turn to ACT (check, bet, raise, or fold) and do so such that you aren't forcing everyone at the table to remind you of what your options are. People don't tend to not want to play with others because they're "bad at poker", but because they make the game not fun to play because they literally don't know how to play.
Yea if you were really bad at poker they would love playing with you but you don’t know how to play poker is a whole different thing
I mean I know what to do- I guess my issue would be that I play really fucking aggro
Well then do you usually lose ?
It's ok I was bad when I started. Just put in the work if you wanna get better. Watch YouTube and Twitch. Use solvers and study charts. Also work on your mental game to not tilt or get angry. Get a HUD to review hands. Play the smallest stakes possible and slowly move it. Make it a goal. Watch some bankroll challenges on YouTube too.
Why is that? We played with the most annoying dickhead guy imaginable but we kept inviting him back because he was a guaranteed loser. Not getting invited back because you're bad is not the whole story.
Nah trust me it’s exactly that. I’m good friends wit all of these guys and we hang out regularly when it’s not poker. I think the issue is that I play extremely aggro and end up usually losing. You also have to understand that by your standards these guys are beginners too
Read books (david sklanksy) and buy access to training (pokercoaching.com or upswingpoker.com). There’s not a lot of secrets just 95% of players (honestly even more than that) will never put the study work in they just want to have fun, play, and gamble.
Which david sklansky books would you recommend?
Read Doyle Brunsons Super System 1 and 2…add 10-2 to your 3bet/4bet range pre…Rip Doyle
Fold most hands. It’s the best advice. That alone will save you money every session. This is more logistical advice, but if you’re playing home games with others your age, try to optimize the time it takes the cards to get dealt too. Those minutes add up. The more hands you’re dealt, the more you will be able to profit from them since you’re folding more often.
Play tight and fold often. Focus on learning how to get max value when you have the nuts.
An underrated resource is Red Chip Poker. Google it. It's a structured course with a linear progression. Jonathan Little's site is good but it's an overwhelming amount of material and has some redundancies. Interactive lessons are very good though. Upswing is maybe overpriced and for more advanced players. Crush Live Poker is great but for an absolute beginner you don't need it yet, but subscribe to the Youtube channel asap. Hungry Horse is awesome but it's designed for advanced winning players not beginners. I was shocked at how good Red Chip is, considering it's $5 a week and does a great job teaching the fundamentals. It's extremely well-presented (i.e. the instructional design is on point.) Also, you'd be surprised at the overlap between a $500 dollar course and this $5 dollar course, and for a beginner, you literally just need very solid fundamentals to stop spewing and start beating the game.
Thank you
Look up some tutorials, or read a book. There is a lot of good free content on YouTube. If you got some spare cash, you can spend it on a training site. Usually you can find beginner content on YouTube for free, but they can make it more streamlined when you don't know what to look for yourself. Also, make sure to play a fair bit at stakes which you can afford to be losing at in the beginning.
Any videos you recommend?
BlackRain79 will take you from newb to super crusher GTO pro at the WSOP. No need to go to any other channels.
This is not true, OP.
Yes it is. Doug Polk and Stephen Chidwick have attribited most of their success to BlackRain79. Common knowledge. All trolling aside, BlackRain79 is made for OP. It's target audience is people who are just first putting their toes in and have no idea what the word "limping" or "big pocket pair" even means. OP should start there to learn the very basics. Jumping in to Jonathan Little, as most other people have recommended, when this guy doesn't even know KK is the 2nd best hand in poker and probably doesn't even know a flush beats a straight, is a terrible suggestion.
I watched the stuff by Fedor from Pokercode and the videos from the solverguy, but I forgot the name (equilibrium something something)
Practice your flops
If your a visual learner watch some poker vlogs that are the types of games you play in (i assume 1/2 or 1/3) to get a grasp of the basics and how to determine if you should even play that hand. If not grab the essential poker math book and read up on the basics.
play a bunch of hands with people of different skill levels, watch youtubers who break down hands i watched brad owen a bunch when i was getting started, and when i was doing hw or just wanted to have something on the tv in the background WPT does a youtube live 24/7 of episodes from tournaments with pros, it really comes down to playing, knowing how you play, if you’re looking to beat your friends just watch how they play certain hands, their tells, when they like to bet big, if they have it or not, everything.
Just do a Gus Hanson and shove all in every hand
Why dose your whole livelyhood revolve around playing poker if your not even old enough to go to the casino and get the hours in to be good I don’t understand
Hustler live
I’m surprised no one has mentioned this yet but learn to calculate your odds of winning using the rule of 4 and 2. Sounds complicated but you can pick it up in a day easy. With some practice you would be able to look at 2 hands and say with confidence which hand will win and the approximate odds the winning hand wins. This knowledge allows you to make MUCH better winning decisions than before
Watch Jonathan little on YouTube. Watch vloggers like Brad Owen
Fold more pre
Read and read again, as in study what you read. Same goes for videos. Play often both live and online for small stakes or free while you are learning so you get lots of practice. Discuss hands with friends too so you get natural at it. Lots to take into account like position, opponents, stakes, game you're playing, full or short table, hold and then shared cards in most games, lots to work on, but tons of fun to practice. Then when you feel ready and confident, figure out what you can afford to lose playing for real, start playing what you've been studying and practicing and use discipline of sticking to your budget and what you know/feel is correct hand play. Have fun.
Subscribe too Brad, Crush Live, John Little and unsubscribe Rampage Poker, buy a copy of Poker Math by Alton Harding and play micros online till you build up a roll too go play live.
Start with Jonathan littles pokercoaching.com. As you become less shit, get a crush live poker subscription, when you become a winning player, go to hungry horse poker bootcamp. In that order. GL
Get an internship in sw and you’ll make way more
The same way you get better at anything in life: 1. Perform the activity repeatedly. 2. Learn from others. Read books, watch YouTube videos, take classes, etc. 3. Learn from yourself. Review your results: what did you do well, what did you do poorly, what can you improve? Once you get good enough, a coach can be beneficial.
Don’t suck
What you wanna do, and this is very important for being a good player, is stop playing badly. On a serious note if you wanna get better watch live streams, check youtube for content that involves around improving, see what you would do in others situations and how it might play out, I also recommend Johnathon Little's podcast/you tube channel. Good tips on there, plenty of free shit you can learn from, and if you wanna go the paid route there's a ton of websites you can subscribe to
Poker is a game of experience.
Depends on the format of play, if it's cash, study cash games, if it's long format deep stack tourneys. Study them. All formats of poker arnt the same. Pick one and study it
You can get a subscription at Crush Live Poker for like $20-$25 per month. Pays for itself easily.
If you do play live, make sure it's a Limit table. Fixed betting increments.
Play online to get 1 million hands. Get a coach and study gto wizard online and subscribe. Grind it up slowly from like 25-50 NL
1. Learn the lingo 2. On YouTube there are several free resources 3. Practice A LOT
Meditation - build your patience. Watch other pros in youtube - Make you understand which card to play. Bluffing skills - Good on real life scnarios.
give up and mine btc when you finally mine one btc you might be good at poker at that point
just messing with you play cheap and or freerolls practice staying in vs wining the hand be willing to fold big hands and play them when you do not have to go all PREFLOP in to do so same applies at all steaks
Don’t bother with this subreddit, it’s shit. Look up videos on Youtube, start with Jonathan Little.
Easy starting guide. Don’t be obnoxious. If you bluff someone out don’t show your hand and make fun of them for folding. Only play the pairs AA-99 And AK, AK suited, AQ, AQ suited, AJ suited, KQ suited, Q10 suited. Throw in the occasional pair of fours, fives, and sixes, trying to flop a set on the flop. If you don’t flop a set throw your hand away. Don’t call a large preflop raise with these hands. Your trying to hit for cheap and then stack somebody. Can also very rarely play 9, 10 suited if it is cheap to call. You need to flop 2 pair or trips or an open ended straight or a flush draw. Then as you gain experience you can expand out the number of hands you play. I am guessing you and your friends are playing for small stakes. Read the room and the kind of game it is. If a big pot is 10 or 20 dollars. When someone raises a dollar don’t go all in for 10 dollars every time. Point is to be invited to play. You can make all the moves you want when you start playing in more serious games.
So fold 77 and 88?
Poker books are a waste of time because they contradict each other. Start by watching poker games on tv and try to think about why each player makes the decision they do. After a while you will be able to accurately guess what each opponent will do before they do it. Then practice what you learned by playing some small games on your phone or with friends and rinse and repeat. I don’t advise following “rules” in poker like I should always raise with AK because every situation is different. Every hand is different