Gearing
Down
We recommend one course of action to any
player mired in a losing streak: Shift gears. We all change
gears during a poker games - sometimes consciously, as a
planned strategy - and sometimes we just wind up playing
differently later on than we did when we first sat down.
When you're losing,
consider gearing down way down, by playing fewer hands.
Losing means it's time for lots of traction and not much
speed. It's a time for playing only the best starting hands.
Not marginal hands, not good - or even very good - starting
hands, but only the best hands. That means you'll throw
away hand after hand, and it takes discipline to do this,
particularly when some of the hands would have won. But
here's the recipe for gearing down:
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Stay
away from troublesome, marginal hands. Go with the gold. |
|
|
Make
opponents pay to draw out on you. Most of the time
they won't get lucky, and that extra money in the
pot will wind up in your stack of chips |
|
|
Never play weak
starting hands from early position. |
These concepts apply
to all forms of poker. But they're not enough. Each form
of poker is quite different, and each demands the application
of specific strategies and tactics if you're to win consistently
(and we hope you will!). We present the five most commonly
played Internet poker games in the very next page, but
we leave it to you to blend the basic concepts of this page
with the games-specific ideas you'll learn in coming pages.
Once you've done that, you'll be on your way to becoming
a solid, dangerous poker player - whether online or off.
