7 things beginners should know about hold’em

December 12, 2024

News

by Matthew Warburton

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5 Minute Read

If you’re new to poker, the game can seem overwhelming at first. Although it’s a simple game to learn, you sense that something else is going on and that some players know more than others.

The journey from beginner to advanced player is a long and arduous one. But you have to start somewhere. So here are seven things every beginner should know about hold’em.

Remember, poker is played against other people

Poker is different to other casino games because it’s played against other people. You’re not just playing the odds of the cards coming, you’re competing against others and using skill to gain an edge (or not!).

The other players also want to win. This makes poker an incredibly competitive landscape. Especially as you move up in stakes and play for bigger prizes. In order to be good at poker, you’ll need to learn, study and practice to become better than the rest.

Because we’re all individuals, you can gain an edge by taking into account people’s skill level, motivation and tendencies. Study how they act so you know how to play against them.

You don’t play a lot of hands

What many beginners don’t expect, is how often they should fold. If you’re playing a typical frequency of hands, you’ll be folding around 80 percent of the time (or more) preflop. That’s a lot of folding!

It requires patience to wait for the right opportunities to enter a pot. Losing this patience is a fatal mistake. Poker strategy starts with preflop hand selection so as a beginner you should be opening a particularly tight range.

The same goes post-flop. You won’t always hit and you’ll sometimes be forced to fold your hand.

Selective aggression is key

Although you’ll be folding a lot preflop, you can’t win a poker tournaments playing passively. You have to be selectively aggressive, picking your moments while looking to maximize your value by making bets and bluffs.

Beginners often want to get in as many pots as possible for cheap, calling or limping to see a flop. This is a losing strategy as it relies on chance to make hands.

It’s far better to utilize raises and reraises to inflate pots when you have the best of it. And give yourself more opportunities to win by getting opponents to fold.

Bluffing isn’t just about throwing chips in the middle

Beginners know that poker involves bluffing. But they don’t know how it works or how to bluff well. Bluffing is one of the most glamorized actions in the game and doing it wrong can be costly.

You can’t just throw chips into the middle in a bid to get your opponent to fold. It might work some of the time, but other times you’ll get caught out by perceptive players. Or by those who have a great hand.

To bluff profitably, you need to represent a hand and do so in a way that is believable. You’ll also need to target the right opponents, those who are willing to make a fold. Intelligent bluffing often involves having some equity in the hand, such as raising a flush draw as a semi-bluff.

Hand ranking and valuing your hand

Now it’s time to touch on basic poker strategy. As a beginner, you won’t get very far without learning the basics of the game, starting with hand rankings. These are easy enough to learn and you can find charts online.

What’s more difficult is how to value your hand relative to the strength of other player’s holdings. A pair can be strong or very weak, depending on the situation, the player and the better action.

Working out where you are, and reading the hand strength of your opponents, is one of the most important skills in poker.

Position is powerful

Another key strategy lesson for beginners is the power of position. It’s one of the most important factors in a given hand. Whoever is in position will act last during every round of post-flop betting. It gives them a huge advantage in terms of information and pot control.

The dealer button is the most powerful position. It guarantees you’ll have the advantage post-flop. Being in early position, meanwhile, guarantees you’ll be out of position with a disadvantage.

This is so important you’ll change which hands you play depending on position. You’ll stick to premium hands from early position and open up your range to include more speculative hands in late position.

Poker is won and lost on solid fundamentals

At the lower stakes poker is won and lost on solid fundamentals. It’s not about playing really fancy and making the most unexpected, leftfield moves. It’s about keeping your cool and using your knowledge to play solid strategy that works.

As you gain experience, you can learn how and when to add more advanced moves into your repertoire. As a beginner though, aim to learn everything you can about hand ranges and basic strategy, apply it at the tables, and you should be able to gain an edge.