Pay attention. That is right up there with the best poker advice that you can get. You are playing real poker. You are betting real money.
Wake up and pay attention.
Many many players think that the cards they have in their hand are the most important element of a game of poker, and those many many players are very very wrong.
The cards that you are dealt are one of the least important aspects of your poker game. What is far more important is the cards that the other players have been dealt.
You may say that it is impossible to know what cards have been dealt to the other players, and you would of course be wrong.
By paying attention to what is happening at the table, what the other players are doing, and, just as important, what the other players are not doing, you can get a good idea of who has what.
Just because you are not in a hand does not mean that you can drift off, check out a forum, read a blog post, check your email, anyone of the millions of things that you do online. When you are not involved in a hand is a perfect time to watch the other players and see exactly how they behave on whatever hand it is that they are holding.
Look around you. Watch what is happening all the time. It will not only make you more money, but you will enjoy the game a lot more, and more importantly, you will learn an awful lot.
I want to stress the importance of looking beyond what cards are in your hand. You will often see that a player who has been dealt a premium hand, such as pocket aces, will ignore a threatening flop and go to the river with cards that became unplayable – and un-winnable, long before the river card was dealt.
Pocket aces are no good when a flush or straight draw has developed on the board and someone is betting hard. Watch everything, all the time.
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