Over the past 5 years or so, the game of Poker, and especially Texas Hold’Em, has gained massive popularity. As a natural result, hundreds of people every day sign-up with an online poker room account and start learning the game. Most of them, however, lack enough preparation and knowledge, and therefore will commit one of a few basic mistakes that every serious poker player should quickly eliminate.

Here are five of the most common of these mistakes.

1) Spending no time on hand analysis

Another common mistake. Since everyone is running about saying how poker is such an easy way to make money, most people who start playing the game do not think that there is actually some learning involved. Unfortunately, as with anything else, poker is not an easy way to make money. You will need to put in a lot of effort before the game rewards you.

Make sure to signup at some community forums (the best of witch is currently TwoPlusTwo). Make it a habit to save every problematic hand that you’ve had during a poker session. After you are done playing for the day, post all of your saved hands to the forums, and ask for advice. Make sure to give as much detail about the hand in your post as possible. Write down any history that you and your opponent might have had, what kind of player did he seem to be (tight? aggressive? passive?). The more detail you give, the more likely you are to receive a helpful response. Try to make a few poker friends online, too. There is absolutely no better way to evolve as a poker player than to have a few people to discuss the game with.

2) Poor Bankroll Management

Most beginner poker players are unaware of what proper bankroll management really is. They will deposit $50 to their poker account and dive right into the $1/$2 limits with a quarter of a buy-in. While poker is definitely a game of skill in the long-term, there is still a huge luck component in the short-term. This means that no matter how good of a poker player you are, there is a very reasonable possibility that you will go on losing in poker for many consecutive weeks (sometimes months). This is an entirely statistical thing — even the best hands can lose many times in a row. When a poker player faces a losing streak as this one, it is called a downswing.When a player is on a downswing, his skills can only help him to minimize his losses.

To avoid facing a downswing, make sure that you always have at least 25x buy-ins for any stakes that you want to play. If you are going to play a No-Limit $0.50/$1 Texas Hold’em game, then you should have at least $2500 deposited to your poker play. The higher you go up the stakes, the more conservative you should be (meaning, you should have more buyins in your bankroll), because the size of a downswing grows proportionally to the skill of your opponents.

Makes sure to learn as much as you can about bankroll management before proceeding — you will save yourself a lot of time and agony by doing so.

3) Being Too Cocky

Most poker beginners will inevitably get cocky at some point and start believing that they are poker prodigies. This usually happens when they are running hot for a longer period of time and the cards are being kind to them. They start believing that they are winning thanks to their superior skills, even though their actual poker knowledge is very limited. This in turn will result in bad decisions being made: they may move up the stakes to a level way beyond their level of experience, or they may start doing absolutely terrible plays at the table. With their minds clouded by their false sense of security, they are bound to lose their entire bankroll sooner than later.

Keep your ego in check and watch out for this trap. If you suddenly feel that you are unstoppable, post some of your hands to online poker forums for review. You will quickly learn if you are as good as you think you are, or if you’ve simply been running good. And try believing what the forum members tell you — they will most likely be right.

4) Not treating the game seriously enough

I’ve seen it many, many times. A beginner poker player has a few tables open, and in between his raising, folding and bluffing, he is chatting on Facebook and watching YouTube videos. “That Metallica song is so cool…oops, I’ve got Aces! Gotta raise it up! Gimme fuel, gimme fire, give me all that I desire, yeah!”

This kind of approach to poker will do you no good. The game requires absolute and full concentration. The field of poker is extremely competitive nowadays, and you will need every edge that you can muster. Most of the players out there are more focused on YouTube than on the tables, so if you can eliminate this clutter, you are already at a huge advantage. Turn off ICQ, Facebook and YouTube. Keep your tables open at all times and don’t ever minimize them. Even if you are not involved in a hand at the moment, you should still be looking at the tables and trying to get reads on your opponents by analyzing their play.

Poker is not an easy game.

5) Playing too many tables simultaneously

Understand that having more than 5 tables active at any given time is reserved for the most experienced players only. If you have been playing poker for less than 6 months, chances are very high that you have not yet mastered the game enough to be able to handle that much action all at once. It may seem to you that you can because you can click fast enough, but what this usually means is that you are not giving your hands enough thought. If you catch yourself playing poker and not making any money for a long period of time, reducing the number of tables played and paying more attention to what is going on at them should be your first move.

Make sure not to fall for any of the traps described above, and you are on a very good start towards becoming a long-term profitable poker player.

I never had an interest in gambling until I moved to Vegas. I was living in the suburbs of Chicago and working as a kitchen manager of a downtown restaurant. I never had time to socialize since work seemed to take up all my time. I was usually too tired from the long days of managing the restaurant. My wife and I were in the process of building a house in a brand new development. After our house was built, we made the decision to moved to Vegas. The timing was perfect, there was a housing boom in full force at the time and we bought our 2nd home at a great price. I moved out ahead of my wife for the purpose of finding work in the restaurant business. She was a registered nurse and was guaranteed work at a very nice hospital. Everything was good, or so I thought. Still unable to find a job at that point, we both eventually settled in our new home in Vegas and sold our house in Chicago and then divorced. I was single and jobless. I went through a few meaningless jobs before I landed a job dealing poker at Binion’s Horseshoe during The World Series of Poker. I had a natural love for the game and was intrigued by the math involved in poker. My fascination with being able to get good “reads” on people led me on a pursuit to learn all I could about body language and the math behind poker.

I have always had an interest in understanding people. I studied psychology at Middle Tennessee State University in the early 90’s. I have spent the last 11 years studying body language and facial expressions to better understand peoples’ personalities. It has led me down a completely different path than I had anticipated. My aim is no longer to improve my poker game but to use research and studies to help myself and others understand personality.

Poker was originally played by groups of guys getting together for a “friendly” game of cards. Games were held in inconspicuous back rooms, dimly lit, where going “all in” could cost you more than the money on the table. There was always the threat of being raided by police, mugged by gunmen or both. It wasn’t until Benny Binion moved poker to the gambling mecca now known as Las Vegas to legitimize what we know as poker. However, today’s poker is an entirely different game. From excessive numbers of players to accessibility to information found on the Internet about the game and new and improved methods of play, finding the advantages in poker are becoming scarce.

There are three basic ingredients when it comes to playing poker effectively. The first is understanding the numbers behind poker, in other words knowing poker math. Next, is the ability to read someone’s body language. And the third is understanding a person’s personality. In this article, I am hoping to show you how these three interact with one another and how you can improve your ability to read others.

The first part to learning poker is the math skills. If you are saying to yourself that you are not good at math, that’s ok. With a little logic and common sense, you can understand the fundamentals. Just understand that the math never changes. The statistical chance of drawing a specific card has, is, and always will be a 20 per cent chance. The basic are the percentages or probability of making your hand. For example, when I was playing consistently, I would look for certain percentages of my hole cards (Texas hold em) before I would get up from the game and try my luck at another table. I know that I should see a pocket pair once every sixteen hands, suited cards once every three to four hands, and suited connectors once every forty-six hands. The big statistic that saves me a lot of money is the issue with pocket jacks. I always thought this was a strong hand, however I learned that when holding pocket jacks, my percentages of a higher card coming on the flop are greater than my chance of getting pocket jacks! Lesson: don’t play jacks to strong, you end up a long-term loser. An advanced skill to keep in mind is your expected value. Without going into too much detail about it, it is basically what you expect to get from a given betting session, and armed with this value, helps make your decisions. It’s a little tricky and should be reserved for when you move up the poker ladder to then next level of game. For now just focus on the basic percentages. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Get the basics down. It wont take you long. It took me about a week to understand the basics, then I was off to the races. Once I had an understanding of basic percentages and EV (expected value) I was still hungry for more. I felt like something was still missing from my game. I found that in my ability to read body language.

The next ingredient is the ability to read someone’s body language. The skills you learn here can help you in every aspect of your life. As I continue my research and study in body language, I am still in awe of how this information is not valued enough to be taught in schools. The basic premise to body language is never, and I mean never, take a single body language and make a judgment on just that one trait. Some guys say if you really want to know what someone is going to do on a poker table look at their feet. At their feet? Come on, when I am sitting at a poker table, the last thing I am going to is say, “your all in, can you wait a second, I have to look under the table at your feet and then I can make my decision. ” no, I’m afraid this isn’t what would happen at a poker table. And it defies our basic rule to take gestures in isolation. The key to body language is to take body language in context. If someone has their arms crossed, it usually means they are being defensive. However, if they are sitting under the air conditioner vent and its 60 degrees in the poker room, it could mean they are cold, not being defensive. This is the best advice I can give you when it comes to reading someones body language. Once you become familiar with the putting body language expressions together in a meaningful way, the more advanced stage is to focus on the face and facial expression. There are more nerve connections between the brain and the face than any other part of the body. The poker face is expressionless, motionless but full of information if you know what you are looking for. There is a lot to facial expressions, too much to cover in this article, but what i can tell you is that your game will drastically improve once you start studying the face and all that it has to offer. Once again stick with the basics, learn to read overall body language, then move to more detailed information in the face.