Poker is a game that requires careful assessment of your opponents. A big part of this involves reading their tells and putting pressure on them to fold before they have a strong hand. This is one of the key things that separates beginners from pros. Thankfully, this is easy to do with online poker software, and many live games will have a camera pointed at the table that you can use to watch other hands. Not just the hands that went badly either – you should also look at more successful ones too, so you can see what they did well and learn from their moves.

If you don’t want to put any money into the pot (the pool of bets) then you can ‘check’ and let the player to your left act first. Once they have, you can then say ‘open’ to start betting – or raise if you wish. You can then call the amount raised by your opponent or fold if you don’t think you have a strong enough hand.

The most common mistake beginner players make is that they don’t understand the importance of their position at the table. If they are in the first position to act, for example, then jumping in early with a bet could cost them a lot of money. You can read more about this in our article on Poker Position. It’s an often undervalued strategic tool, and is one of the most important things to get right.