Improve Your Win Rate by Making Small Adjustments to Your Poker Game

There’s no question that you need to know the basic rules of poker before playing. However, there are many small adjustments you can make to your game that can improve your win rate significantly. These small adjustments are usually psychological in nature, and centered around starting to play the game in a more cold, detached, mathematically sound manner than you currently do.

In general, you should be folding your weak hands, and raising with your strong ones. This will put more money into the pot, and force weaker hands out of it. You should also try to control the size of the pot, by letting it get out of hand only when you have a good, strong value hand.

When you say “call,” you are saying that you want to match the amount of the previous player’s bet or raise. This will put more money in the pot and cause other players to call your bet, or even raise again if they already have.

You should be very careful about calling every card, because it’s easy to lose a lot of money if you do this. Often, you will find that the river will not give you the card you need to make your flush or straight, so it’s smarter to fold if you don’t have an outstanding hand. This will save you a ton of money, even though it may sting when your opponent makes a better hand than you did.