Most players mix up their play well for small bets – they’ll bet out or raise with nothing on the flop with about the right frequency – but most players don’t mix up their play well on big bets. Some players never mess around when they put in really big money on the turn or river. Other players can never resist the big bluff when they see a lot of money in the middle. Striking the right balance between value bets and bluffs when you are putting big money in the pot is crucial to playing top-level poker.

When you are playing against world-class competition, bluffing too often is a bigger mistake than not bluffing enough. You will get called very often and you will look to everyone like you are spewing chips. You will wonder why they are calling you so often, but the reason will be somewhat simple: your opponents will be getting 2:1 odds on a call (if you are betting the size of the pot) and they will infer based on your betting frequency that you’re bluffing more often than that.

How can they infer that you are bluffing too often? Roughly speaking, if you are balancing your big bluffs properly, you will be betting for value about two-thirds of the time and you will be betting as a bluff about one-third of the time. Hands that you will bet big for value on the turn or river come up quite rarely. It’s not often that you make a straight, a flush, a set, or some other huge hand that merits a big bet on the river for value. If you’re betting big on the turn and river very often, your opponents will correctly guess that you’re bluffing too often.

Bluffing too often can be a huge mistake, but I think that not bluffing often enough in the truly big spots is one thing that prevents great players from becoming world-class. You’ll never hear someone say of Phil Ivey, Tom Dwan or Patrik Antonius "he’s never messing around in that spot." They can be bluffing in any spot. As the pot gets very big, their bluffs will be less frequent, as they will be trying to represent very thin ranges, but their bluffing frequency will never be zero in any spot (other than some trivial ones where it’s only appropriate to raise with the nuts).

Most of your big bluffs will occur when you have position on an opponent. This is especially true for big moves on the river. If an opponent checks to you on the river, it’s likely not a check of strength. With one pair hands, people will often call on the flop and turn, but not on the river. Their "check-call, check-call, check" line often tells you that they have a big pair but no better. Some inexperienced players will fold to a pot-sized bluff way too often in this spot, and will not adjust their behavior even when they begin to suspect that you are bluffing them often. Against these players, you are obligated to keep stealing until they adjust.

Once again, the ability to pull off a big bluff is a crucial element in poker. Do so with the correct frequency, and you’ll raise your game to the next level.

In order to arrive at results which are useful to making sound poker decisions we need to rephrase the problem in terms of the information that we might possibly have at the table.  Usually, we know what specific cards we "the hero" hold.  But the best we can do is put our opponents on a range of hands.  Even if we know that a player only raises with aces, that fact represents 6 distinct hands.  Since it's impossible to put a player on two black aces, the best we can do is calculate our equity versus all six different match-ups.

PokerStove is a poker utility which facilitates equity calculation using ranges of hands, or hand distributions.

PokerStove

Most new players want to start at the real money tables as soon as they can but try to keep in mind that poker is so much more fun when you're winning so get experience at the free play tables. PokerStars is a really good room to practise your play because there are hundreds of people playing on the free play tables so you can get a lot of experience with different type of opponents.

Another very important quality to possess as a poker player is patience. The only way to become a long term winner is to wait for good situations and act upon those. Many new players have the urge to, for instance, play every Ace from every position at the table. 'I won the hand so I did well' is what I hear people say too often. A very important concept and possibly hard to understand in the beginning, is that the outcome of the hand is much less relevant than 'how you got the money in'. In other words, the way you've played a hand and the decisions you've made(and why)are really the only important thing in the long run.

I realise I sound like my math teacher and I always hated him for saying that he only cared for the way how I got to an answer and didn't for the answer itself. Unfortunately, he was right in saying this, the same goes for poker.

I've seen many people playing poker and from watching them I didn't really get the feeling that they wanted to win. I felt that they wanted to click and lose money. Whenever I tried to explain a poker related concept they wouldn't listen and even if they did, they looked at me like I was crazy. If you want to learn how to play poker you need to have some sort of passion or willingness to learn. Read the important books about poker and try to observe people.

The Royal Flush - An ace-high straight of one suit.
Example: A K Q J T

Straight Flush - A straight of one suit.
Example: 8 7 6 5 4

Four of a Kind - Four equal cards.
Example: J J J A A

Flush - Five cards of the same suit.
Example: 5 9 J 4 4 3 2

Three of a Kind - Three equally ranked cards.
Example: J

Pair - Two equally valued cards.
Example:A A Q 6 2
High Card -  When you do not have any of the above hands, your hand is designated by its most valuable card.
Example: 3 6 5 Q 8 In this case you would have 'Queen High'.