You may not be aware that poker is not a single game but a complex array of many related games. The games are related, but the strategies required and the experience offered by some poker games may be vastly different from other, perhaps more familiar types of poker.

If you stick to the more familiar versions of the poker game and do pretty well and step out of your comfort zone occasionally, you will discover that the rules have suddenly changed on you and you have no idea how to proceed. The novice soon understands that to play with any consistent chance of coming out ahead, he will have to target one game to specialize in and grow with. How can such a decision be made?

Every poker player is there to win the game and the bank. But for a beginner, to decide which poker game is the most profitable is practically impossible. Every one of the games is complex, allowing plenty of possibilities. None are decidedly more profitable than others.

What decides the overall profit in any poker game is how well you combine your goals, your strategies, and the unique possibilities of the specific game. That is, one must simply decide which game one is best at (at least as far as earning money is concerned) and work to continually improve oneself. Other games may be played occasionally, but mostly as refreshment. Your best profits will usually be at the one or two poker types you have been specializing in for a long time.

This answer is not going to appeal to everyone. To the novice player, some games seem to offer more possibilities of high earnings than others and so stay with those games until luck finally strikes. You can hang around for that lucky streak if that is what you want from the game, but you will sacrifice the potential of regular earnings.

There is one belief usually held by newcomers that if they get to know the game of no-limit reasonably well they stand to gain greater profits than by playing a solid game of limit poker. It seems to them that by betting large sums even though losses are inevitable, those large bets will turn a net profit in the long run.

Now if you are after consistent profitability, you must delve more deeply into the question. Gain is a result of managing your cards well in the face of a constantly increasing bank. The size of the bank, though is not determinant of how you manage your cards. Good card management is determined by the rules of the game. Each hand needs particular skills to make that bank grow to its highest profitability before you collect it. As you are now aware, successful strategies differ greatly between the game versions.

This means that if you choose a game only by how profitable it looks to you, you are likely to end up a mediocre player at best, without the potential to improve beyond your opponents, and thus without the potential to win much more than them.

The author is a successful limit cash game player. He plays poker online and receives True Rakeback as well as Poker Heaven Rakeback.

If you are interested in learning and playing poker, the best way to do this regardless of the reasons why you want to become a player, is to enter into and experience the game in its many forms. Get a feeling for the type of poker you excel in, the one(s) that reveals your natural talents without too much effort. You will find it easier to improve your play and to reach your potential in both skill and profit.

Some games are definitely easier to learn than others. One of the easiest to learn and most popular is hold’em poker. For one thing, there is much literature on the subject as well as blog sites and forums online and general conversation around the casino tables.

However, this is no more than a convenient means of introduction to poker. The fact that Texas Holdem is the most popular game in casinos and online does not mean that you will do well in the game. There may be something of a Hollywood effect about Texas Holdem: some people like to believe that because of the popular status of the game, Texas Holdem will, as it were, discover them and mail their fortune overnight.

Begin with Hold’em if all you want out of poker is to play a lot without much effort on your part. On the other hand if what you are looking for in poker is to take part in a broad and variegated field demanding creative input, go forth, my child, on your own and conquer poker in your own way, the way that comes naturally to you. Keep your wits about you so you don’t lose a bundle the first game you try and you can go ahead and explore many sorts of games.

By allowing yourself the freedom to play many types of games and learn them, you will be much more able to select the game or games in which you want to specialize and spend more time on. The game(s )you like the best are usually the ones you are most naturally good at, which also have the wonderful side effect of making them more enjoyable and profitable. Keep on learning and playing your chosen games and you will gain a sense of pride and accomplishment.

Now that you have learned a lot from the actual playing experience, take advantage of the copious literature on the subject of all kinds of poker. At this point, you know what you want to specialize in, where you want to improve your skills, and you will learn much more than if you just started with the written word. You will also find out how much insight into the game you have now, even if that insight is unorthodox in nature. Now is also a good time, now that you have developed skills and experience, to concentrate more on how to read your opponents actions and behavior. Your perceptions here will make your game even more profitable.

When you can observe accurately your opponent’s weak points, you can make educated, original decisions on how to play poker with them most advantageously for you.

The author is a successful limit cash game player. He plays poker online and receives Carbon Poker Rakeback as well as Rakeback at Victory Poker.

The poker game that relies on creating an image is in another dimension than rule or tactic-based poker, although all of these are essential to a good game. Image concerns everyone at the table and is the total of all you know about your opponents and all you let them know about you. Image-making will sometimes cause you to make moves which your opponents perceive as odd or ill-conceived.

Whatever it is you do or don’t do at the table produces an image for your opponents to observe and analyze. There are players who attempt to project nothing. Everyone at the table must play the cards dealt him. An alternative playing style is to make a big show of activity to disorient and confuse opponents thereby obscuring your method of play.

Bluffing is usually undertaken to increase your advantage (and earnings) for a few bets. Image creation, on the other hand, will probably diminish the advantage of a few of your bluff-style bets, but will enhance your advantage in the long run. An example: make a few weak moves in a certain circumstance. You will probably lose this round, but in the same situation in the future, when your hand is strong and your play is good, your competent, unbelieving opponents will think you once again have a weaker hand, while the true experts cannot fathom what you are doing at all. Just a seemingly idiotic play like this has long lasting effects on your opponents and give your strong hands much more value.

Chess is known for its image-based strategies. The players whose strengths are either well known or unknown make credible bad moves or what appear to be oddly ridiculous moves. They will sacrifice pieces, fail to defend their positions or to take positions. This is disorientation by deliberately making bad moves. This player will then use his “bad” strategy to make a quick swoop or attack a weak point that was previously not in his line of focus.

The main idea is the same in both games: you sacrifice current advantage in order to seize greater advantage later in the game. Instead of playing every concrete hand the best way, you envision less palpable but likely future possibilities. The move seems for the present to have put you at a disadvantage, but the game allows you to recover later and when you are ready to recover with a vengeance, your image will be your primary means.

You need to learn to project a variety of images and use the image that best befits a given situation. You will also learn which “dumb” moves to use to fake out your opponents to best achieve whichever goal you have in mind. You may want to use your image to disorient only with regard to a particular skill set. There will be times when you want them to see you as a weak player, or at least wonder if you are or not, or to think you are just a big bluff artist.

It is probably better to generate the image at the outset of the game, when the bank is still small. Otherwise, a few consecutive “bad” moves with a big bank may cost more than the eventual win.

The author is a successful limit cash game player. He plays poker online and receives Victory Rakeback as well as Cake Rakeback.

The language of poker can seem like a foreign one, an English dialect unheard anywhere else but at a poker table. To the uninitiated, it seems totally undecipherable, but listen carefully and learn a few of the terms set out here, and you will begin to understand the jargon.

No matter what the street (how many cards have been dealt = street) a player makes any one of the following decisions: to fold, to answer a bet, and to call. If a player responds to an obligatory bet on a preflop, that bet is known as a limp or limp in, the player himself is referred to as the limper. A player who calls a raise having placed no bet himself, that bet is referred to as a cold call.

Next we will explore the cheek. This is to make no bet if no bets were placed before yours; the first to be placed is simply “to bet.” Of course this can vary by game. In no-limit poker, there are specialized terms that reference different kinds of bets: continuation bet, which is a standard bet about the size of the bank; pot bet, one around the size of the bank, and of course, the overbet – a bet of a significant magnitude greater than the size of the bank. If one raises another player’s bet (however, if the bet was raised previously, than your raise might be noted as a re-raise or a 3-bet. Now, suppose your raise was preceded by a re-raise, then the fourth legal bet placed is referred to as a cap and the player is referred to as the one to cap the betting. All clear?

The bank or pot are chips which have been placed by the players and which comprise the main prize of the game. The chips of each player at the table are the stack. A bankroll is the overall sum of money available to the player for any given game. If a player bets his entire stack he is said to be all-in. Going all-in, a player is usually seen pushing a stack of chips towards the center of the table. The term “push” implies an all-in bet. If the game continues after a player’s all-in, the bank is split into the main pot and the side pot.

If at the conclusion of the game (i.e., the river) two or more players make equal bets, a showdown occurs. Whichever player has the strongest 5-card combination, or hand, wins. A hand is rated thusly, from highest to lowest: royal flush, straight flush, quad (four of a kind), full-house, flush, straight, three of a kind (aka a set should a third card be added to your pocket pair), two pairs, aka a doper, the basic pair (an overpair refers to a pair being stronger than the strongest single card on the table); in a flop, the cards are considered top, middle, and small pairs and are rated accordingly; and lastly (and most lowly) comes the high card. If this high card is higher than any card on the table it is referred to as an overcard. Bear with me, it’s almost over….

Strong hands are monsters, generally ranging from full-house up. The nuts is the strongest current hand. So he who holds the strongest current hand has the nuts.

Finally, in the event of even hands, the difference is distinguished by the highest rated card of the five best cards, but not one that is part of any of the above rated combinations. And that card is referred to as the kicker. When players have the same combinations, you have what is known as a split bank.

The author of this article plays online poker and gets Rakeback at Power Poker where they offer the highest Power Poker Rakeback.