Poker - learn and analyze

Modern poker relies on learning and analyzing your own hands to such a great extent that without it, achieving success is practically impossible. This article discusses how you should analyze your hands and how to learn poker rules. Remember that poker is not only about playing, but also about absorbing its theory.

Learning and analyzing hands

Usually, inexperienced players commit one basic mistake. They do not pay much attention to the analysis of hands and the poker theory. Generally, an inexperienced player assumes that the play itself is the best way of learning. Curiously enough, it is the easiest way to pick up some bad habits and cling to the belief that our method of playing cards is right, whereas in reality we are doing it terribly. An inexperienced player does not read training articles because he regards them as rubbish. The following words of one of the players express a very common belief, ‘The most important things in poker are bluffing and intuition’. Even if a beginner makes an attempt to learn the poker theory, he will very quickly reach the conclusion that he is wasting his time and he has already learnt enough. So he plays 6 hours daily. But if he devoted only 1 hour out of this time to learning, it would surely bring some excellent results. What is the reason of not doing so? Laziness, simply!

Sometimes a player decides to analyze his play, but here also he makes mistakes. He ignores everything apart from the pocket and community cards. With such a narrow analysis he will not achieve much. The best solution is to paste your hands on the poker forums (you will find plenty of them in the Internet). Other people will surely notice mistakes you would not even think about.

Also, it is not enough to read all the available articles to become a winning poker player. First of all, you must understand them and be eager to continue your learning.

Learning poker theory can very quickly ensure you noticeable dominance over other players who have neglected it.

Today you have many options of learning: you can analyze information in the Internet, watch poker tournaments on TV, subscribe to different magazines, paste your hands for analysis. The options are multiple, so why should you not take advantage of it? If you do not learn, in the long run you will never keep winning.

Analysis of hand

Now a few final words about the analysis of hands. It is not limited only to the evaluation of your pocket cards and community cards. Such an analysis consists of many elements. Most important include:

1) Style of our opponent’s play
- is it loose or tight
- passive or aggressive
- is he predictable
- his habits

2) Evaluation of the scope of our opponent’s hands which should be based on:
- the showdown, which is a mine of knowledge about the way hands were played,
- types of raisings
- positional plays or the lack of them

3) Method of flop and postflop play of the opponent

4) Outs, odds, pot odds and implied odds
- in each case we should assess the profitability of our actions. We cannot rely solely on our intuition, because everything is mathematically justified and even the players ignorant of calculations should come to terms with this fact.