Learning Poker & About FTR

Learning Poker & About FTR Section Articles

So you want to be a winning poker player. Well, you've come to the right place to get started. But before you get carried away with dreams of being the next World Series of Poker bracelet winner, you'd be well advised to take some time to think about what it takes to become competent enough at the game to even become a break-even player, never mind a WSOP champion.

For the beginner, poker is game that needs to be learned and played at a basic level before the player can start to embrace more advanced concepts. Giving yourself a solid foundation of knowledge in the basics will enable you to build your game to the point where you can embrace more advanced concepts as you become more experienced and adept. In large part, poker is a game of patterns, and once you've studied and played enough to become familiar with them, you'll start to recognize them as they begin to crop up at the table and know how to adjust your play accordingly.

Lou Krieger, author of 11 best-selling books and co-author of Poker for Dummies, put it this way: "I believe there is a sufficiency of technique that needs to be learned in poker before a player can comfortably and confidently deviate from the book play. Just as a painter must master brush technique and a musician needs to practice scales before improvisation and creativity allows them to bend the rules they have been taught, so does a grounding in generally accepted poker theory make it easier for a newcomer to quickly come up to speed."

Lou also said: "Most of the money you'll win at poker comes not from the brilliance of your own play, but from the ineptitude of your opponents." So true. In large part, what differentiates a winning player from a losing one is that the winning player makes less mistakes than his opponents and capitalizes on theirs, losing the least when he's behind and making the most when he's ahead. Lather, rinse, repeat - and you're on your way to building a nice bankroll.

That said, there will still be days when you'll come out on the losing end of things no matter what you do. "That's poker," as they say, and if there's one thing we can guarantee it is that you'll have losing days. But if you dedicate yourself to really learning the game - and good bankroll management practices - in the long run you'll come out ahead.

One thing that already makes you better than many of the players you're going to run into at the tables is that you're taking the time to read this. You want to learn how to improve your game. Well, don't stop reading now! We've got a wealth of information to share with you from some of the best players there are, and if you dedicate yourself to absorbing their advice and putting it into practice, you'll be well on your way to putting together a truly winning game.

Put in the work to properly learn how to play and luck at the tables will follow. As Thomas Jefferson said: "I'm a great believer in luck and I find that the harder I work, the more I have of it." In poker, that's advice you can take to the bank.

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