In my experience with poker of all types, whether it’s simple free online poker or more serious cash games, with their ups and downs, I’ve come to know that the most important thing you can learn is patience. .
Even the blind mouse finds the cheese sometimes, and no matter how unlucky you think you are, how many chips you have, or how many people are left in your tournament, the most important thing is to be patient with yourself.
Sometimes you get so tired of seeing terrible cards and your stack starts to deplete enough to the point where you get desperate and start calling with J5 offsuits or other hands with the same idea. I can tell you that I have been there many times, and it has been my death many more times than it has helped me.
Another key to patience is not just before the flop, but throughout the rest of the hand as well. Let me show you an example, you draw a K(c) Q(d) and call with 2 other people in hand. The flop comes K(h) A(h) 8(h). Obviously, this is a very dangerous hand, and many times I would fold immediately. But for the desperate, sometimes I would get a trusted bogus source in my hand, and 85% of this time I would get burned, despite only having two others in hand.
Patience is one of the many obvious traits important to success in poker. Some people get carried away sometimes, and it’s important to be consistent in your poker game. Try to find a baseline on what you would call pre-flop and what you would not.
Obviously free online poker is a very different game than live as online is much faster and live is deeper and slower. Despite many complaints from my peers, I like to exploit every second of my time limit for every decision. I recommend this to any competitive and casual online poker player, because it can be the difference between a bad beat and a big fold.
Many times in the game of free online poker you will come across what we call “Donks”. Most of the time they will have a much bigger stack and will win hands using force and bluffs. It is important not to give in to their intimidation and to play it cool. If you hit a good flop, let him make the mistake. The classic check-raise works well, but if you move too early, you’ll lose the opportunity to cash. “Donks” can be a great source of chips, if you are patient and play well.
They are going to give us all bad blows, it is inevitable. It happens to the best of us and there’s nothing we can do about it. However, what we can do is be smart, take our time, and again, be patient.
All of these are extremely important no matter who you play or how long you’ve been playing, which brings me to my final point. You can read so many poker articles, magazines and books, but nothing can compare to the experience, so just go out there and play free online poker at first to build your skills and understanding of the game and develop that all-important habit of patience.