Poker is one of the most complex casino games around, and many players struggle to see a consistent profit. This is quite common as average players often fail to bridge the skills gap. Regardless of whether you’re participating in a standard casino game or online poker, you can easily apply the tips that we’ve provided to improve your game.

Here we’ll be looking at a variety of tactics that you can use to find success at the casino table or if you play poker online. Keep in mind that these are tips that will need to be practiced extensively before you use them in a real poker setting. 

Poker tips to help you refine your game

Below are tips that are designed for average players that can’t seem to improve. They can be used in online poker tournaments, along with standard poker games at your local casino. 

Get a handle on tilt

Tilt is when a player’s head isn’t in the right place on a losing streak and they make reckless decisions in a game based on how they feel. The reality is that things aren’t always going to go your way and there will be games where you will be on the receiving end of a brutal defeat. However, you can claw your way back by keeping a level head and not blindly chasing losses.  

By learning how to manage your emotions after taking a series of losses, especially if they’re back to back, you’ll be able to minimize the amount of cash you lose. There have been players who have lost massive amounts of cash in land-based and online poker tournaments because they were on tilt and didn’t take appropriate action.   

If you’re unsure, fold

This is what separates the good players from the elite, as the latter can bring themselves to fold on a good hand when they think they’ve been beaten. While this might sound very simple, putting this into practice is very difficult because of how our brains are wired. As humans, we’re naturally curious and we always want to win. By folding a strong hand, we forfeit our chance to take the pot and we won’t get to satisfy our curiosity by seeing our opponents’ hands. 

By calling too often you’ll lose more, but you can also be unlucky in that game. When your bluff is ineffective then calling won’t work, so the best thing to do if you’re unsure of whether to call or fold is to fold. When you’re playing poker games online or at a casino, take note of the details of the hand that you had when you folded. Here you can determine whether you made the right decision and you can improve your skills and poker knowledge. 

Play against weaker players

This is arguably one of the best poker tournament tips implemented by professional players. If you’re sitting at a poker table and you can’t identify the weakest player, then the chances are high that you are the weakest player! Sitting at a table with seasoned poker pros is the worst thing you can do as you’ll lose your bankroll unless you leave. Your goal should always be to be the best player at the table. 

To ensure that you’re playing in a good poker game, go through the following list:

• There are hardly any re-raises or they are a bit too frequent. 
• There’s at least one player who’s limping, (passively calling,) regularly. 
• There are many multiway pots – a pot that involves three or more players. 

If at least two of the above are checked, you’re in a good position to achieve some success at the felt. Some of the best online poker sites, not least Borgata Online, provide table statistics. When playing online poker, join tables that have a high rate of players seeing a flop and a high average pot size. 

Manage your environment

When you’re playing online poker in the USA, one of the most important things that you’ll need to learn to do is to manage your environment. When you’re playing live poker, this is essentially done for you as you choose the casino and you’re aware that there’ll be people around you. When you’re playing at home, you need to find an effective way of getting into your zone if there are plenty of distractions. 

There are many ways to do this, such as playing with headphones to block out household noise or isolating yourself in your room for maximum privacy. It can be difficult to focus if there are too many things going on, but if you pick the right time and place, getting in the right headspace for playing poker online shouldn’t be too difficult.

With the right hands, defend your big blind

Being in the big blind position puts you at an advantage as you’ll have better pot odds to call compared to other positions at the table. Due to your position and your “discount,” you can call with more hands compared to another position at the table. How you defend comes down to a variety of factors such as:

• The stack sizes. When you’re short-stacked you should focus on high card strength and play fewer speculative hands. 
• The number of players in the hand. If one or more players called a raise, you should play tighter and only call with hands that can do well in multiway pots.
• The position of the raiser. Play more loosely against the late positions and tighter against the early positions. 
• The size of the raise. The smaller the bet sizing, the looser you should play and vice versa. 

Put your skills to the test with Borgata Online

Now that you have the tips to formulate an effective online poker tournament strategy, you’ll need a safe and reliable online poker site to put your skills to the test. Sign up with Borgata Online and play some of the best online poker variations, along with a variety of other online casino games that will keep you entertained. We also host poker tournaments to help you bring out the best of your skills.