Poker Guides Archive

The value of poker books in the digital age. In previous generations, the spread of poker knowledge was primarily achieved through books. Professional players and mathematicians wrote complete guides to poker variants, hand calculations, odds calculations, how to read poker tells, and everything else considered valuable to a player’s strategic arsenal. Times have changed...

Learn why many poker pros prefer cash games to tournaments. In the greater scheme of poker evolution, there’s a basic order to things. New players learn the rules, then enter low-stake cash games to hone their skills. Next, they move up to tournaments, hoping to one day claim bigger rewards, if not a coveted...

Familiarize yourself with navigating online poker lobbies. I remember years ago the first time I traveled by airplane. I was flying out of, and into, two major airports. Thousands of people milling about, terminal after terminal, security checks at every turn. It was one of the most intimidating experiences of my life. This was...

Three secrets new online poker players need to know from day one. If you’re just about to get started playing online poker, there are three very important things you need to know about. These aren’t exactly secrets, but they are things your opponents aren’t going to tell you about. Most new players figure them...

Beginner’s Guide: 7 Card Stud Poker Rules By today’s standards, 7 Card Stud is one of the simpler forms of poker. It isn’t nearly as popular as it once was, but there is still a niche group of players who enjoy the high volatility, and potentially high profitability, due to its multiple betting rounds....

Is playing online poker really better than playing live? Poker is poker. Whether you prefer Texas Hold’em, 7 Card Stud, or a more traditional game of 5 Card Draw, the rules of each game won’t change between live and online formats. In this way, one could argue that there’s really no difference between playing...

Beginner’s Guide: How to Play Omaha 8 (Hi-Low) Omaha Hi-Low, (aka Omaha 8 or Better, or simply Omaha 8), is a unique Hold’em variant in which players take part in two hands at once. The game follows all the basic rules of Omaha Hold’em, wherein players compete to develop the highest ranking poker hand...

Comprehensive Beginner’s Guide to Poker Hand Rankings If you’re completely new to the game of poker, you’ve come to the right place. You can’t win poker games if you don’t know what hands to put together, and which ones outrank the others. Today, we’ll cover all possible 5-card poker hands, from the menial ‘High...

Fixed Limit, Pot Limit & No Limit betting structures in Hold’em poker games. Learning the basic rules of Texas Hold’em or any other Hold’em-oriented poker game is only the first step in acquiring the necessary knowledge to get in on the action. The next step is understanding all the different betting structures that can...

Beginners Guide: Learn to play Texas Hold’em Poker Texas Hold’em is a relatively simple game to learn. It’s based on the same premise and hand-ranking system of traditional 5-card poker games, but utilizes more cards per player, and a communal sharing of those cards. The following is a beginner’s guide to Texas Hold’em. We’ll...