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| Poker Articles - From rookie to pro |
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From rookie to pro
Going from beginner to professional level is a lengthy learning process. What’s more is that this learning process never ends. As one famous poker professional once put it: if you get up from the table and realize you haven’t learned anything new in the session that just concluded, you probably didn’t do a good enough job.
As a beginner, one needs to realize that Texas Holdem is a very deceiving game. On the surface, for the superficial onlooker it may seem simple, however, once you begin playing and thus delving ever deeper into its intricacies, you’ll realize that it’s everything but that.
Beginners always play too many hands, and they always let luck muscle in on whatever they’re doing. The first revelation that a rookie online poker player has is usually when he realizes that he plays too many hands, and every now and then he needs to fold a few of them, to save on his stack. For most beginners this means they’ll study starting-hand charts and begin to exercise starting hand selection. For many, this will also mean that they’ll slowly turn into the tight-weak players sharks are especially fond of feeding on. Being weak-tight means that our rookies are practically married to their cards, despite the fact that they have no knowledge of pot odds, and the mathematical system that tells them when to fold a hand, when to call and when to bet.
While starting hand selection is good, by itself it will never be able to significantly improve anyone’s game, especially not if it’s abused by rookies.
As they struggle on, rookies will sooner or later realize that this game is not about taking down spectacularly big pots by risking their entire stack time and time again. They soon begin to suspect that the driving force behind successful poker is to be sought somewhere else. This is the stage that beginners need to pick up poker books and read. They now understand enough of the game to get with the flow of the lingo easily, and to understand a few concepts. Mind you that because it takes an additional effort and ambition on the part of the rookie, this stage is the most selective one. The majority of casual players will never get past it.
Those who do however, will discover a whole new view on the game, and they will understand that all the little pieces they found out about so far, (and all those they never heard about) are like the pieces of a puzzle: they only make sense when they’re linked up the right way.
This is usually when a rookie understands what the EV is, why it is that he loses every time he plays negative EV (even if he wins) and why he wins something on positive EV (even if he loses a given hand on it). With that understood, concepts like the hourly rate, and differences in strategy between tournaments and cash play, fall right into place.
Mathematical concepts like pot odds, the odds of a hand being completed (which is directly dependant on the number of outs), making the connection between the pot odds and the number of outs, implied odds and effective odds slowly sink in as well. Recognizing the fact that choices based on mathematics alone might not always be the correct ones, and sometimes other factors (among which table position is the most important) will overrule the apparently “right” decision, is the next step.
This is the stage where the endless learning begins, because this is where exact science ends, and psychology comes into the picture. Making reads on opponents, putting them on certain cards or a range of cards, bluffing them, stealing their blinds etc., are all skills that can only be mastered through endless practice. Many of the most fundamental things that make someone a winner in poker can only be taught by experience. No, one cannot be genetically talented at poker, but one can surely possess a bunch of born-with abilities that will make it easier for him/her to dominate poker. Good memory and the ability to spot edges (like rakeback) where others don’t suspect there are any, are such traits.
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