Poker is often called the Gentleman’s game (women welcome of course), and that is with good reason! When playing any type of live poker, there are usually a few universal dos and don’ts.

Do…

Protect your pocket cards
Leaving your cards out can end up with them getting tossed into the muck. It’s always wise to use a card protector, or just put a chip down. This simple thing can save you from many an embarrassing situation.

Stack your chips neatly
A pile of messy chips will often disrupt the game at some point, and most casino dealers will ask you to tidy up.

Pay attention to the button/bets
This is quite possibly the most important thing, as someone who is sitting there listening to their MP3 player can cause a lot of annoyance when they cause a delay because they’re not paying attention to what’s going on.

Keep your highest value chips in the open
Most people consider it bad manners to hide your high denomination chips, even when it’s accidental.

Don’t…

Make string bets
String bets are when someone places a bet, then goes back to add more. This can be considered “angle shooting” and is outlawed in most cash games.

Ridicule a player for their skill
Aside from the fact that nobody likes someone who is constantly rude, there is just no benefit to harassing players. You are not a coach and it isn’t your job to educate others on what they’re doing right and wrong. On top of that, all you’re doing is hurting your own pockets as there’s never a reason to drive a fish away from a table.

Have food at the table
It’s just in bad taste to have grease and crumbs and whatever else all over your cards and chips, especially when there’s a good chance that other players will be handling them in such condition.

Most of these are just basic manners, but most newcomers tend to overlook the basics. Like with other areas of life, it’s never bad to follow the old saying – “treat other as you want to be treated.”

Noise is one of the things in the world that everyone has to deal with. No matter where you are, there’s almost always something making noise. More often than not, there’s nothing you can do about it and the poker table is no exception. Whether you’re playing live or in an online cardroom, there’s lots of noise to deal with.

So why should you even care? Because noise can negatively affect your game very easily, even without you realizing it, and poker games have endless sources of noise. Obvious examples are the loudmouths that can’t stop gloating or complaining, depending on how the hand went. Then there are the teacher types that sit there spending half the game trying to tell everyone how they should’ve played that last hand. Online is the worst as that little chatbox is the portal for every drone around the world to make themselves feel better. Most people react to noise with more noise. What do you often see happen when someone trash talks another player? The other player trash talks back. This is often not the best course of actions because this distracts you and puts your bankroll at risk.

So how do you deal with it?

It mostly depends on the location. In live games, it’s a bit more difficult. The simplest method is to just get yourself an MP3 player and listen to whatever you want while playing. If you can keep up with the game while listening to some songs you like, you’ll probably be in a much better mood to play well.

What if the house bans electronic devices? Then all you can really do is ignore them. Just like high school with the big mouthed attention seekers, the best way to win is to not give them what they want. Eventually, they’ll see that what they’re doing isn’t effective, or at the very least, they’ll choose someone else to harass. Simply think of a nice place you’d like to be, a person you want to be with or all the things you want to buy with your winnings!

Finally, you can always report players to the house. If they’re disruptive enough, they can be removed from the game. Be careful with this though as there could be some bad feelings in a situation like that.

Online players are more lucky. How do you ignore the noise of the chatbox? Just close it. Really, there is almost NEVER a reason to have the chatbox open. It is not an effective tool for anything but back and forth harassment. If you make some friends and grow really attached, at least utilize the ignore functions. By this time, almost every cardroom has got ignore or mute functions so just right click the player and take care of the problem before their annoyances cost you money.

These things may all sound obvious, but few people truly follow them. It’s critical to play at your best anytime you’ve got money at stake and playing at your best requires you to do everything you can to stay focused. If you’ve found yourself distracted before, try these tips. They might save you some cash.

Stealing blinds is a crucial part of poker that many newcomers overlook. If you can win any chips uncontested, you add to your overall positive expectation. In nl hold’em, it’s of the utmost importance to know exactly when to steal blinds and when to back off.

No-Limit Cash Games

In this situation, it’s not nearly as important to steal blinds as in other forms of poker. This is mainly because the blinds are relatively small compared to the average pot, so winning blinds on a regular basis won’t always help you dominate the rest of the game. Still though, if it’s folded around to you in a late position, it’s not a bad idea to win the blinds uncontested instead of calling and giving the blinds a free chance to flop a winning hand. Blind stealing becomes much more important in shorthanded games where blinds are posted a lot more often and the middle takes a bigger fight than usual.

No-Limit Tournaments

It’s a lot more important to steal blinds in tournaments than in full ring cash games. This is primarily because blinds in tourneys rise as they progress. Simply winning the blinds can add a considerable amount of chips to your stack and in tournaments, it’s generally better to wait until later to steal as the blinds in early rounds aren’t worth the risk.

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Another good play in no-limit games is to raise in a late position with a garbage hand in an attempt to steal blinds. If you’re called or raised, all you do is throw away the hand for little risk. If your opponent folds, you can show your hand, win a few chips and create an image as a bluffer without much risk, all at once!

Stealing blinds is a crucial part of poker that many newcomers overlook. If you can win any chips uncontested, you add to your overall positive expectation. In nl hold’em, it’s of the utmost importance to know exactly when to steal blinds and when to back off.

No-Limit Cash Games

In this situation, it’s not nearly as important to steal blinds as in other forms of poker. This is mainly because the blinds are relatively small compared to the average pot, so winning blinds on a regular basis won’t always help you dominate the rest of the game. Still though, if it’s folded around to you in a late position, it’s not a bad idea to win the blinds uncontested instead of calling and giving the blinds a free chance to flop a winning hand. Blind stealing becomes much more important in shorthanded games where blinds are posted a lot more often and the middle takes a bigger fight than usual.

No-Limit Tournaments

It’s a lot more important to steal blinds in tournaments than in full ring cash games. This is primarily because blinds in tourneys rise as they progress. Simply winning the blinds can add a considerable amount of chips to your stack and in tournaments, it’s generally better to wait until later to steal as the blinds in early rounds aren’t worth the risk.

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Another good play in no-limit games is to raise in a late position with a garbage hand in an attempt to steal blinds. If you’re called or raised, all you do is throw away the hand for little risk. If your opponent folds, you can show your hand, win a few chips and create an image as a bluffer without much risk, all at once!

When starting out in the lower limits of Texas Hold’em, you’ll notice that many players fold a staggering percentage of their hands before the flop, and of the few hands they do play, they’re generally the premium hands.

Why is this? Because this is what most beginner’s books and articles on strategy will say to do. Newbies first learn that playing too many starting hands is one of the cardinal sins of poker, and while the statement is true at its core, it is an easily exploitable hole when taken to the extreme.

So how do you beat these players? Raise, raise, raise.

When I first started playing online poker in the $1 rooms, the tables were always tight and passive. Most of my raises ended up in being uncontested wins for me. Starting out, I only raised with premium and sub-premium hands. After some time of no action and just raking in the blinds, I understood that I could widen my range.

Consider the math here: if I raise to $3 and win two uncontested hands, I’m basically getting a free third hand. Even if I’m forced to fold every third hand, I’m not losing any chips.

This made me loosen my raising requirements. I started raising with all connectors, all high cards, all suited cards, anything that could even be construed as halfway decent.

What happened? My opponents could not, or maybe would not fight back. Clearly they knew that the I, the maniac raising 50% of my hands probably didn’t have great hands all the time. Still, since playing nothing but good starting hands was the one thing that they instilled into themselves, they just didn’t raise back with anything but the best hands there are.

Even when they had hands like AJ, KJ or QT (declared to NOT be re-reraising hands by tight poker strategy) they would simply call. What happens when they call? I got the chance to hit something with my random hand. I likely won’t go to the flop as a favorite, but even something like a 7-5 can be huge.

Another advantage is that you will constantly get called. Even if you’re playing solid on the flop, turn and river, your opponents see you as a bluffing maniac because of your pre-flop tactics. This of course isn’t true as you’re simply taking advantage of other player’s weaker pre-flop tactics.

So to sum it all up, when your opponents fold constantly pre-flop, you can create an extremely useful image of being a bluffing moron. The best part? It costs you nothing. Then during later rounds when they continue to assume that you’re just a bad player who is mindlessly bluffing, you make your moves.

Winners use lots of varying play styles dependent on the situation and that is one of the beauties of poker. Still, beginners will often find that tight-aggressive play is most suited for them when learning.

First, we have to explain what tight-aggressive play is.
A player’s playstyle is generally described with two measures – looseness and aggressiveness.
A player can be very loose or tight while being very aggressive or very passive, with all the areas in between. In these days, loose-aggressive styles are very popular, but newcomers should stick to a more tight-aggressive game.

Looseness is a measure of how many hands you play. If you see every flop, you’re playing loose. Conversely, if you’re folding three out of four hands, you’re described as tight.

Aggression on the other hand is a measure of how often you bet and raise in the hands that you do play. Each time you call another player’s bet or raise, you are being a passive player. Bets and raises are what makes aggressive players.

Now that you know the basics, you know what being tight-aggressive means – you choose your hands carefully, fold all bad hands, but bet and raise relentlessly when you do enter a pot. This is the playstyle that all newbies should try to master.

Even if people win games using lots of various styles, tight-aggressive play is the safest starting point. The reason for this is simple. Because you are choosing selective hands, you’ll enter pots with decent holdings. You’ll be in a more dominating position than an opponent who plays significantly more hands as you’ll have better hands on average.

A key part aspect to tight-aggressive play is to protect your hand. You’ll almost never hit absolute nuts, so when you hit something on the flop or later, there’s a chance that your opponent can improve their hands to beat you on later streets. To try to prevent players from hitting their winning cards, it’s important to put in sizeable bets.

If you bet too infrequently, or too small, you give your opponent a shot at seeing their next card. If they hit their hand, you can lose the pot because of your timidity. Bigger bets would have saved you. If you bet properly, your opponent will either fold or pay a lot of chips to see the next card. Both situations allow you to profit, at least in the long run. Aside from protecting your hand, every bet or raise is basically an opportunity for your opponent to fold. This is always a desirable situation.

To sum up, the #1 rule for newer players is to enter pots only when you’ve got a strong hand, and to be as aggressive as possible when you do have a strong hand. Once you master this, you can evolve your play and incorporate other styles to maximize your winnings!

Gratuity, or a tip. Also, toke.

A player who shows no emotional behavior; a player with a near-perfect poker face that displays no tells.

A lowball hand in where the four lowest in the hand are the best possible cards any player could have.
Eg, in Ace-to-5 lowball, eight-zilch would be 8-4-3-2-A.

The smallest game in a cardroom or casino, often with the lowest stakes; the opposite of A-Game.

The player who received the last dealt card; the dealer. Youngest refers to the amount of time that each hand has been in play. Since the last hand dealt is the newest, it is always the youngest.

"You go home now."
Expression used in online settings. Generally said when a player beats a good hand held by another player, particularly when it was not expected.

The World Series of Poker; a world-famous set of poker tournaments held yearly in Last Vegas. Always more than 50 events, with the winners receiving the famed WSOP bracele.t The main event is a NL Hold'em tourney with a $10,000 buy-in and prize pools worth millions of dollars.

A world series poker tournament featuring the world's most renowned players. Originally founded by Steven Lipscombe, the current CEO of WPT Enterprises, the controlling organization for the World Poker Tour.

1. The pocket cards 9 and 5. Name originates from the fact that workers in most regions have a 9-5 work schedule.
2. A nine-high straight.

1. A 10-5 hand in lowball.
2. Two pair of 10s and 5s in highball.
3. The pocket card sof 10-5 in Hold'em.
4. Any game where 10s and 5s are considered wildcards.

All definitions originate from the Woolworth chain of retail stores, often called five-and-dime stores (or dimestores).

A marginal group  of cards, or a hand that couldn't likely improve enough to win a showdown. One who holds a wooden hand is said to be drawing dead.

Easily detectable bottom dealing.

A pair that is made by using the first and second cards dealt to a specific player. This is called a pocket pair in community card games.