Reinventing your poker game – Part 1 Starting over
Self-evaluate your poker game
This 2-part article should be helpful to all those players who find themselves in need of reinventing their game. The guide is applicable to a wide range of poker players. Whether you are a Texas Hold Em, Omaha, Sit n Go or multi table tournament player. Whether you are a newbie micro stakes poker player just learning the ropes or even an advanced hold em shark who is in need of taking stock of and re-evaluating their game, read on, because every player needs to inject some fresh invention into their poker play from time to time.
Starting poker from a fresh perspective
Sometimes in poker you need to approach the game from afresh, almost as if it’s a clean slate and you need a total revamp. This can happen for many reasons. You might have had a break from the game. You might have been on a bad run and need to re-evaluate your playing and/or your game selection. I would even go as far as to say it’s vital that you do this from time to time, sure a routine can be good, but only to a point, being complacent in poker is a recipe for disaster, you need to be constantly learning in poker.
Keep up to speed with the changes in online poker
Online poker is always changing, the amount of useful poker software, high quality poker articles and poker training videos continues to grow and what is available now is massive compared to just a few years ago. The standard of play has increased a lot in just the past year alone and is light years ahead of what it was 5 years ago. Also the way the human mind works, with the mind over time naturally forgetting information it is imperative that you are constantly learning and indeed not just learning new lessons but quite often re-learning old lessons too.
Online poker is always changing, the amount of useful poker software, high quality poker articles and poker training videos continues to grow and what is available now is massive compared to just a few years ago. The standard of play has increased a lot in just the past year alone and is light years ahead of what it was 5 years ago. Also the way the human mind works, with the mind over time naturally forgetting information it is imperative that you are constantly learning and indeed not just learning new lessons but quite often re-learning old lessons too.
Track your poker hands!
Ok I’m going to go back to where it all begins so to speak. If you are using a site that allows a poker tracker such as PokerTracker or Hold’em Manager then you should definitely buy yourself one of these. These are not easy pieces of software to use straight away, however they are well worth the time to get to know. Spend as long as you need to at least get a degree of comfort with using one of these programs.
Ok I’m going to go back to where it all begins so to speak. If you are using a site that allows a poker tracker such as PokerTracker or Hold’em Manager then you should definitely buy yourself one of these. These are not easy pieces of software to use straight away, however they are well worth the time to get to know. Spend as long as you need to at least get a degree of comfort with using one of these programs.
Make use of available HUDS
Test these poker software programs out if necessary at micro stake games until you get more comfortable with them. Create a HUD (A real-time statistical overlay of yours and your opponents poker playing stats displayed on your online poker table) that suits you, or make use of one of the several huds people kindly make their available for other people to use on the likes of the holdem manager forum and other poker forums. Don’t worry if you don’t know all the ins-and-outs of these programs right away, that takes time.
Test these poker software programs out if necessary at micro stake games until you get more comfortable with them. Create a HUD (A real-time statistical overlay of yours and your opponents poker playing stats displayed on your online poker table) that suits you, or make use of one of the several huds people kindly make their available for other people to use on the likes of the holdem manager forum and other poker forums. Don’t worry if you don’t know all the ins-and-outs of these programs right away, that takes time.
In part 2 of this article we continue the theme of reinventing your game by an examination via your hand histories of what the winning players are doing and working on incorporating that into your game.
