1. Poker Pros Favorite Hands Emoji
2. Poker Pros Favorite Hands Ever
3. Poker Pros Favorite Hands Clip Art

Learn to Play Poker in no time: poker tutorial is a great way to learn the card g. Not really a favorite but J-4os has become my 10-2 in my monthly home game. Was shortstacked and decided to go all in with any two cards and was called by pocket K's. Hit a Jack on the flop and a 4.

Table Of Contents

Phil Galfond once turned a single $100 deposit into millions on a poker site. But to prove he was the best, he issued a challenge and dug a hole that would require a miracle to overcome. A bot can now beat poker pros at six-player Texas Hold 'Em He wrote two books, founded a nonprofit for players to donate to veterans causes and Las Vegas communities, and created partypoker. Top 10 Poker Hands. As many of you know, Phil Hellmuth is one of the most successful Texas Hold 'em players of all time. I recently read his book, Play Poker Like the Pros, and was very impressed with his Hold 'em Strategy. It is not my intent to plagiarize his book, but no poker strategy site would be complete without mentioning the playing.

Are you struggling to turn a decent profit at the poker tables on a consistent basis? Are your results best described as 'somewhere around break-even'?

First off, don't worry because you are not alone. This describes the results of the majority of poker players.

Often, however, it is just a few small poker strategy adjustments that can take your game from mediocre to amazing — from break-even to crushing it.

In this article, I am going to provide you with seven subtle but highly effective poker tips to take your game to the next level.

While I can't promise you'll win a lot of money with these beginner tips, you should add everything you find on this guide to your poker strategy if you really want to improve your poker games.

Continue reading to discover poker tips like:

I've also added something about pocket aces because you should be always careful when you get them. I have seen so many people play them the wrong way...

1. Think About Ranges, Not Hands

It doesn't matter what type of casino poker you play: one of the easiest ways to spot average and beginner poker players is to look at how they think about what their opponent has.

• Beginner poker players try and put somebody on a specific poker hand.
• Advanced poker players think in terms of ranges. This type of thinking that can be extremely important when calculating pot odds.

A range is the entire spectrum of poker hands somebody can have in a specific situation. For example, player X can have a flush, top pair, middle pair, bottom pair, a draw, ace-high or a complete air-ball bluff.

Good players who have already gone through a few poker strategy articles understand that player X will show up with this entire range of hands with various frequencies. They don't focus on identifying a single winning hand, but they try and figure out those frequencies and then make the best play.

Average players try to put an opponent on exactly (or some other specific hand) because that's 'what their gut tells them.'

If there's one thing you need to know when you learn the game, this is that poker strategy tips and 'gut feeling' don't go well together. Basing your tournament strategy or cash game play on what you 'feel' is never a good idea.

In the first video of this beginner's guide to poker tips for beginners, poker pro Jason Wheeler explains how uses every possible information available to understand his opponent's cards and choose his play.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Be Realistic

Don't put your opponent on a single hand but think about ranges. Nobody has a specific hand in poker — they only have a range.

If you are in still the process of learning the game and you need some help, have a look at the complete poker hands ranking.

2. Ditch Your Favorite Hand

A lot of people have a favourite hand. I know that every time I get dealt the old -suited my eyes light up and I want to play it so bad!

However, in reality, I know that -suited is a mediocre hand. Definitely not one of the best starting hands you can hey in a game of Texas hold em.

Calculate your poker odds FOR FREE with the PokerNews pot odds calculator!

It makes sense to play it in some spots — late position, for instance, in an unopened pot. But it should almost always be folded in early position.

If you currently have some favourite starting hands, that's fine — most people do. But don't give them preferential treatment and make bad plays with it.

Winning poker is about math and cold hard logic, not superstition.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Be Smart

Playing too many hands is a widespread mistake (see: Five Common Mistakes New Poker Players Make).

One of the best ways to avoid it is to introduce range-based thinking in your reads.

3. Adopt a Consistent Strategy

Another big key to becoming a great poker player (and perhaps one of the most important poker tips on this strategy guide) is to consistently apply a winning strategy.

It is not okay suddenly to change things up (e.g. to open with -suited from early position or turn yourself into a calling station) just because you are bored or tilted.

All of your learning, experience and study over the years has given you a body of knowledge telling you how to play Texas holder poker profitably.

But your poker strategy only actually matters if you apply it at the poker tables all the time. Every hand counts and every session counts.

The best poker players, those ones who know how to win at poker, apply the same winning strategy over and over again, no matter how they feel or what their recent results have been.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Be Consistent

Poker is a long-term game. You need time to build your bankroll and find the right cash game or poker tournament strategy that works for you.

You should not change your strategy after a big win or a big loss (here's why).

If you really feel like your approach needs to change, make sure you read this article on Handling the Ups and Downs of Low Stakes Poker first.

4. Always Have a Reason

Big-time winning poker players will sometimes break from their standard, successful strategies, but always for obvious reasons.

An average player might start raising -suited in early position because he is bored or wants to make something happen.

An elite poker player will raise with this hand in this position on occasion because he notices the table is playing passively and there are a couple of recreational players in the blinds.

There is a clear reason then to believe that raising -suited in early position (typically a fold under normal circumstances) might be a profitable play in this situation.

If you can produce a well-reasoned argument why deviating from your regular strategy might be more profitable, then it is okay. It is the 'because I feel like it' or 'I am bored' reasoning that has to go.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Be Reasonable

Think. Use your experience to analyse the situations, and then understand 'why' you would take one road and not another.

If you don't have enough experience to evaluate different situations yet, you better go back to the free games and grind.

5. Know When to Fold Your Aces

Another clear difference between average poker players and great poker players is the ability to fold an overpair.

Do you know that little sick feeling you get when you have and a tight opponent raises all-in on the turn? You make the so-called 'crying call', and he turns over the set yet again.

Playing online poker for free is the best way to hone your poker skills and practice with no risk.

You need to start paying attention to that feeling a little bit more often.

Certain patterns are easily recognizable at the lower stakes — especially when you play online poker — where it is 100 per cent the correct play to fold your overpair.

Good players can let go of any emotional attachment to their pretty-looking hands. Average players get married to their aces or kings instead, and can't let them go even when they know they are beat.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Aces Lose Too

Starting with the best of all poker hands isn't enough to guarantee you a winning hand.

Ask anyone for good poker pro tip, and they will all tell you the same thing: sometimes, you'll need to fold those Aces.

For more info on this specific topic, have a look at this article on How to Play Pocket Aces.

6. Realize Tilt Only Hurts You

Tilt is a destroyer of bankrolls, dreams, and poker careers.

I can't tell you how often I receive emails or comments from people who describe to me how they've tilted vast amounts of their bankroll away when things went badly at the poker tables.

The reality of poker is that sometimes things will go badly for you, and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it.

This is what you sign up for every time you sit down to play card games.

There's always the possibility you might run terribly. You might run lights out as well, though.

When you allow yourself to lose control of your emotions and throw your strategy out the window, the only person you are hurting is yourself.

All those hours you've spent trying to learn and improve your game were basically wasted because you decided to choose your emotions over reason when it mattered.

Respect the work that you have done. You owe it to yourself to maintain more composure and stop throwing away money when the cards go south.

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Relax

The psychological side of poker can be overwhelming, and you need to be ready to deal with it.

Swings happen and bad beats will come. If you don't know how do deal with this, have a look at the poker tips Italy's poker pro Rocco Palumbo shared with PokerNews at the PokerStars Championship in Prague.

If these poker tips work for Palumbo, they may as well work for you!

7. Don't Play Bad Games

One more way beginner poker players can sabotage their poker results is by stubbornly playing in games that are full of decent-to-good regulars.

If you can't find somebody at the table who is playing very poorly, then you have to ask yourself why it is that you are even there.

If you only play poker for the mental challenge or recreation or pleasure, then this is fine. This poker tip doesn't necessarily apply to you.

Use this guide to set up your next home game online and play online poker with your friends for free or real money.

But if winning real money or chips is at all a priority for you, then you need to remember you don't turn a significant profit in poker by pushing tiny edges against good poker players.

You win big by playing against players who are making significant fundamental errors and giving away their money over the long term.

As the classic movie Rounders reminds us, 'If you can't spot the sucker in your first half-hour at the table, then you are the sucker.'

Poker Tip Key Takeaway: Choose the Right Games

Don't sit with the pros if you can't beat them. Selecting the right games is key to your successes in poker — one wrong move, and you are out.

Again, there's no shame in playing free poker games or in looking for the best freeroll poker tournaments to play online if that's what you need.

Final Thoughts

The divide between break-even beginner players and big-time winners is not as wide as many people think.

It is often just a few simple little adjustments you can learn over time that can carry you over to enable you to start winning at a higher clip.

A lot of it has to do with starting to view the game in a much more cold, detached, mathematical, and logical way than you presently do.

Emotional and/or superstitious poker players almost always lose or struggle to remain even.

Poker Pros Favorite Hands Emoji

Elite poker players, meanwhile, know they are in it for the long haul and don't get overly wrapped up in each hand or moment. They continue to make the most profitable play again and again, no matter what.

Playing online poker for free is the best way to hone your poker skills and practice with no risk.

Nathan 'BlackRain79' Williams is the author of the popular micro stakes strategy books Crushing the Microstakes and Modern Small Stakes. He also blogs regularly about all things related to the micros over at www.blackrain79.com.

_{This article was originally published on Feb. 13, 2017. Last update: Oct. 12, 2020.}

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  cash game strategytournament strategyonline poker.live pokerstarting hand selectiontiltmental gameno-limit hold’emgame selectionpremium handsrange readinghand reading

We've all heard players talk about their favorite hands and how they play them. We've seen them win big at times and lose big with them at others. After a big loss, we shake our heads and consider the logic of some of them - 7-2 offsuit as a favorite for instance. After a big win, though, we may see it differently. When they win with that same 7-2o (because no one would be expecting them to being playing that), it makes us stop and think that there must be a method to their madness.

In some cases, you will see people playing their favorite hand repeatedly and remarking, 'It's my favorite hand, I have to play it,' as they turn over what we would call rags. Personally, I don't have a favorite hand, other than two aces. Any color is fine, but I prefer two black ones, a spade and a club.

But what do I know is that I'm not a pro, and since I'm not, it seems best to ask someone who is. So that is exactly what we did for our third installment of PokerStars Women's Ask the Pros series. The responses that follow were garnered from several of the female pros from Team PokerStars.

A huge thank you goes to all of them for answering our questions and providing so many great tips.

Q. Clare Todd: I play at my local casino two to three times a week, and I constantly hear players saying, 'It's my favorite hand.' As a very tight player, I don't play silly cards, but sometimes I think I should pick two cards that I will play with every time to try to bluff. Is so, which two should I choose?

Victoria Coren: That sounds like a terrible idea to me. The sort of players at the local casino who talk about 'favorite hands' are the kind of people you want to get in a game with, i.e., losers. Never mind favorites, just make sure you've got the winning hand. If you're a 'very tight player,' as you say, you won't feel comfortable bluffing anyway. You could try opening your range up to play more hands in late position, but bluffing from the off just doesn't sound like your natural style.

Leo Margets: I think that planning a bluff in advance is not a good idea. A bluff has to be credible. You need to tell a story that makes sense to represent, so my advice is that you shouldn't be too rigid about it. It is way better that you carefully choose the player and the spot. It's also important that the sequence, the betting in each street, has sense for the hand you want to represent.

Maybe you have to give up halfway if you smell your opponent won't fold, or if the board gets too messy and you can no longer represent a strong hand there. Don't try to win the hand no matter what. Make a credible story and put yourself on your opponent's level of thinking. However, if you are stealing pre-flop with a marginal hand, do it with one that has some equity, like suited connectors that have the capacity to flop very strong, rather than a random J-4 offsuit.

Poker Pros Favorite Hands Ever

Fatima Moreira de Melo: I wouldn't recommend doing that . . . it's just silly. Just bluff in a spot you feel is right.

Liv Boeree: Absolutely do not do that. Poker is about situations, not actual cards. If you bluff with a particular hand often enough, people will catch onto it, and then you'll be in big trouble. Bluffs are best on occasions when there is a lot of money in the pot and when you suspect your opponent has a marginal hand and is more likely to fold. This maximizes the reward (but minimizes the risk).

Natalie Hoff: I'm not a fan of having a favorite hand, especially if it's not a playable hand, like 9-2 offsuit, for example. I think if you always try to play your favorite hand, you will lose a lot of money because you will get into bad spots.

Vivian Im: I personally like to bluff with 8-10 offsuit whenever I get the chance. But the hand itself really doesn't matter when you are bluffing. It's the right read and timing that makes a bluff work. You really shouldn't worry about the hand you have.

Celina Lin: Generally, I don't think you want to do things in poker every time. It makes you too predictable. Instead of picking hands to bluff with, you are better off playing hands that have great flop equity. Like three-betting with 6-7 suited. With a hand like that, you have a greater chance of connecting with flops while you still have the option to bluff as well.

When you see professionals play junk hands, I'd say more often than not, it's not a favorite hand. They're making a play regardless of their cards because it's a correct decision based on their read. It just happens to be some funky hole cards.

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So there you have it; the pros have spoken. Sounds like those specific 'lucky' hands may not be so lucky after all. So next time you're up against those 'lucky hand' people, do as Vicky Coren says, and make sure you play those people as often as you can, because as she counsels us, those people 'are the kind of people you want to get in a game with.'

For more strategy and tips from the pros see the first two installments of our Ask the Pros series here.
Episode 1: Poker as Virtue, Not Vice
Episode 2: Mixing Love and Poker

And for all the latest news on women in poker see the PokerStars Women home page and our Facebook page. And for updates from the world of women's poker, see our Twitter feed.

Poker Pros Favorite Hands Clip Art

Finally, thanks again to all the pros who took time to answer our questions in such detail. You're the best!