Tips for Winning More Poker Games: Strategies for Success

Anyone can win a game of poker based on a bit of luck but the best poker players manage consistent wins without relying on any sense of fortune. With the right skills and strategies, you can turn the worst hand in the world into a winning one. That makes poker such a fun and intriguing game; you always have a chance of winning and can even bluff your way to success.

Perhaps you’re keen to take poker seriously or you’re sick of losing games with friends. Either way, this guide is designed for someone like you. We’ll break down what it takes to improve at poker with key tips and strategies to encourage more wins. Read on to find all of the secrets!

Be sure you know the hand rankings

For the sake of confusion, just know this guide is focused on Texas Hold’em Poker. It is by far the most popular version of the game played in America and is what they play in the professional World Series of Poker. As a result, we’ll be talking about the different hands involved in this version of the game.

A lot of you might recognize the hands already - but do you know how they rank?

Understanding this is crucial as it pretty much determines what you might do in a round based on the potential hands at play. For instance, if you only have a chance of securing a bottom-level hand, it might not be worth calling or raising any bets. A cheeky fold could save money as you wait for the next one. On the contrary, you could stand a chance of getting a very decent hand that’s high up the rankings and can only be beaten by a couple of other hands. Knowing how to spot a situation like this helps you make tactical bets and win the round.

Here’s the full list of hands in descending order from the best to the worst:

1. Royal Flush - Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and 10 all in the same suit
2. Straight Flush - Five cards of the same suit in a sequence (E.g. 5,6,7,8,9 clubs)
3. Four of a Kind - Four cards of the same value/rank (E.g. Four Kings)
4. Full House - Three cards of the same rank with a pair (E.g. Three 10s and two 4s)
5. Flush - Any five cards of the same suit, no sequence required
6. Straight - Five cards in a sequence from any suit (E.g. 8 of diamonds, 7 of hearts, 6 of clubs, 5 of spades, etc.)
7. Three of a Kind - Three cards of the same rank
8. Two Pair - Two different pairs of cards (E.g. Two 6s and two 3s)
9. Pair - Two cards of the same rank
10. High Card - The highest card in your hand (This is only used when you can’t make any other hand)

Knowing these hands and how they rank instantly gives you more knowledge when playing a game of poker. You’ll see your potential based on the cards in your hand and what’s on the table. One big thing to note is that the rank/value of your cards matters as well - it’s effectively the tie-breaker in scenarios where more than one player has the same hand.

For instance, if you and someone else have a four-of-a-kind, the winner is determined based on whose foursome is of a higher rank. A four of Kings outranks a four of Queens, etc. It’s the same for all other hands too!

As you can imagine, the probability of getting a specific hand decreases the higher up the order you go. GG Poker School calculates the probability of getting a pair is around 43.3% while the probability of getting a Royal Flush is a measly 0.000154%. Why does this matter? Because if you get dealt cards and the ones on the table put you in a great position to secure a high-ranking hand, you know the probability of another playing having one is extremely slim. This is a very rare example to use, but let’s say you’re dealt a Queen and a Jack of spades and the first three cards turned over reveal an Ace, a King, and a 10 of spades. You know you’re guaranteed to get a Royal Flush - the highest hand in the game - so there’s zero chance of anyone beating you. It’s a simple hand for you to win.

Likewise, if the final two cards are flipped and you’ve got a Four of a Kind, you can be fairly confident this is your hand to win. Someone else would need either a higher-ranked foursome or a Straight/Royal Flush - which probability dictates is unlikely. This sounds confusing right now, but the more you play, the more you start understanding how to notice your hands and how to use probability.

Be aggressive but don’t get involved in too many hands

This is mainly a tip for any poker beginners out there - though even some of the more experienced heads could benefit from it! There’s a tendency to try and get involved in as many hands as possible when you start playing this game. You’re eager to learn more about it, so you call every bet or throw in a raise here and there. You’re seldom folding; some people believe this is a smart tactic as the more hands you play, the more you learn, and surely the more chance there is of winning at least one!

In reality, the better approach is to play fewer hands.

Don’t get involved in too many and adopt what poker experts call a tight-aggressive strategy. This is where you don’t jump into many hands, but the ones you do get involved in, you play aggressively. You bet and raise with strong hands rather than just calling bets.

It sounds so simple; if you’ve got a good hand, the chances of winning increase. You won’t get a 100% hit rate (no strategy will ever yield this) but it does lay the foundations for some positive habits. The players around you start to pick up on when you fold and when you raise. It becomes fairly apparent that you’re aggressive when you have good cards in your hand. This makes them uneasy - do they call and hope their hand is better, or do they simply fold?

Be consistent with this and focus on good setups where you can go aggressive. It opens the door for some great bluffs down the line too - we’ll talk about bluffing later in this guide!

Keep an eye out for tells

A “tell” is anything a player does that hints at their actions. They’re easier to identify when you’re playing poker with friends or people around a table. This is where you can focus on body language or little things someone might unconsciously do - like raising their eyebrows when they’re dealt good cards or scratching their chin when they have a dud hand. You only learn these types of tells by playing with the same people regularly, so it’s a good tactic to adopt if you have a regular poker get-together with friends.

Having said that, we’re aware that most of you will play online poker. Its popularity has been increasing as of late and saw a 30% increase in traffic in one year alone. You love online poker because of its convenience - but it will have key differences compared with the live version of the game.

Specifically, it’s harder for you to spot tells.

You don’t see people’s faces or their body language, so how can you keep an eye out for tells that may sway your decisions? It becomes a case of watching how they play each round. Some players make things more obvious than others by doing things like…

• Always raising when they have a good hand
• Folding if two or more people raise during the hand
• Playing extra conservatively when they think they’ve got a good hand
• Going all in when the final card is dealt if they have a bad hand to try and bluff

These tells are easy to spot but others might be harder. It’s one of those things you learn as you go with poker - and some players exhibit the same tells. For example, most beginners will always raise when they have a good hand because they think they’re guaranteed to win. Learn how to read your opponents and you’re one gigantic step closer to winning a poker match.

Don’t be afraid to fold

New poker players - and some experienced ones - always make the mistake of not folding when they should. There feels like a big misconception in poker that folding means you’ve admitted defeat. Some players see it as the coward’s way out, but it’s the complete opposite.

Don’t be afraid to fold when you know your hand can be beaten.

Avoid the bad habit of seeing a couple of cards in your hand and on the table that you think could bring in a great score. You’re always just one card away from a high-scoring hand, but it never seems to come in. Stop hedging your bets and hoping that the only card you need will be pulled from the deck - it’s extremely rare for this to happen. If you don’t have anything that resembles a good hand by the time four cards are on the table, then it’s time to fold and cut your losses. Especially if a couple of players are raising their bets. Let them fight it out and save your money!

The best poker players in the world will know when to fold even when they have what look like amazing hands. You see pros fold with a three-of-a-kind because they know someone else at the table has something even better. It takes a long time to get to this point, but when you’re starting out you should get into the habit of folding early when you’ve got a dud hand. Don’t give into temptation unless you want to bluff your way to victory.

Identify ranges rather than specific hands

When you start playing poker, you look at your opponents and try to figure out what hands they might have. You think simplistically and look at each opponent with an idea of a singular hand they might have. For example, you think about how likely it is they have a four-of-a-kind or a flush.

That’s not the right way to approach a game of poker.

The right way is to identify “ranges”. This refers to a collection of the hands a player could have. Every player will have ranges before the flop (so before the first three cards are revealed) and after the flop. Your task is to try and work out what ranges each player has to help you figure out what to do during the hand.

Be warned, this is highly complex. We recommend reading this guide as it goes into ranges in far more detail. For now, you should stop thinking about each player as maybe having one hand and think about all the possibilities they could have. You mainly do this by considering all the cards available to see - this will be the two in your hand plus the 3-5 on the table.

Learn the correct way to bluff

Everyone loves the thought of winning with a terrible hand. Bluffing is seen as the “holy grail” of poker; it’s the ultimate con. You feel like you’ve mentally manipulated the whole table and now everyone will second-guess everything you do. To be fair, that’s kind of what happens with a successful bluff. It can throw everyone else’s strategies and perceptions into disarray as you’ve gone against the grain.

Sadly, bluffing is rarely that successful because people don’t know how to do it.

We see this with beginner players all the time; they try and bluff their way out of every situation. They have terrible hands and attempt to get everyone else to fold, so they pocket the winnings for the round.

This is one of the worst poker strategies known to mankind.

Some good advice for new players is to stay away from bluffing in your first few games. Focus on getting to grips with the mechanics and flow of poker before you throw a bluff in. Never rely on a bluff to help you win money when you’re down - they are more reliable when you’re already up as it doesn’t matter too much if you lose.

One strategy could be to throw a bluff in after 10 or so hands in a game. By this point, all the other players think they’ve got you figured out. They believe they’ve learned your tendencies, so a bluff can shock them and make them wonder what you’re doing. The trick to a good bluff is building up a “tell” over multiple hands. This makes your fellow players assume things about you.

For example, play aggressively and raise the bet when you have a dominant hand. After 10 or so rounds, everyone should recognize a pattern to your actions. So, when you raise the bet again, they assume you’ve got a good hand and are more likely to fold. You then reveal a terrible hand and take the winnings with a great bluff.

Now, your opponents start questioning your tells. What if you raise aggressively again on the next hand? Are you bluffing this time too? It adds so much confusion to the way people perceive you in-game. Still, don’t get carried away. You may only need to bluff once or twice during an entire poker match - and sometimes, no bluff is needed at all.

It depends on who you’re playing as well; if you play with the same people all the time, it's good to have some games where you never bluff. You could also throw in games where you bluff loads. In cases like this, you’re thinking about the long-term future of your poker success. You’re effectively throwing the match, but it means people will think you’re a heavy bluffer the next time you play. This puts you in a good position to wipe the floor as everyone misreads your moves.

When you play online against random people all the time, it’s okay to adopt a similar strategy in each match. Try the bluff after 10 rounds tactic or think about throwing at least 2 or 3 bluffs in during the whole match. These people have never played against you before and won’t play again, so they won’t understand that this is your style.

Be patient and avoid tilting

Patience is arguably the greatest asset you can bring to a poker table.

We’ve seen incredibly smart people lose poker matches because they’re impatient. You need to get ready for what lies ahead and this means preparing to sit around for a long time waiting for other people to make moves. Moreover, if you pay attention to the other tips in this guide, you’ll know that the right strategy is playing infrequently and aggressively. That means you’ll spend many hands folding and watching other people.

It’s so easy to lose patience and decide to raise a bet one round or throw in a bad bluff another. This is especially true when you see everyone else around the table racking up the money and you’re lingering behind. You’re desperate to catch up, so you lose patience and do something silly.

This is also called tilting. Fans of any other game will know what tilting is; it’s when your emotions get the better of you and you do things with no patience or strategy in mind at all. In poker, it’s when you’re desperate and you start calling or raising every round. This is music to your opponent’s ears. They love playing with tilted players as it means their chances of winning go through the roof.

Don’t tilt; learn to be patient and stick with your strategy without making reckless decisions.

Practice makes perfect with 247 Free Poker

It’s time to put all of these tips together and win big in poker. Before you do that, you need to put in many hours of practice.

247 Free Poker is the best way to do this!

It’s a completely free game where you play poker against AI opponents. You can play as often as you want and it has multiple difficulty levels to go through. This is the perfect spot for a beginner to start their poker journey; 247 Free Poker helps you get to grips with the game and practice key techniques like predicting ranges or considering the probability of hands coming in. You begin to understand what hands are good and which ones are worth folding on.

All the while, you’re not wasting any money. You can train up and become a poker genius before playing for money with friends or at online poker rooms. Practice makes perfect - and you can play this game on mobile or desktop devices whenever you like.

Start winning more poker games today!

To summarize our tips and tricks for improving at poker, you need to:

• Understand all the different hands and how they rank
• Avoid getting involved in too many hands but be aggressive when you do play
• Keep an eye out for obvious tells to take advantage of your opponents and get in their heads
• Don’t be afraid to fold when you think players have stronger hands as it saves money
• Focus on identifying hand ranges rather than specific hands
• Don’t bluff too often and understand how to bluff correctly
• Be patient and don’t tilt
• Practice regularly with 247 Free Poker

Put all of these elements together and you have the makings of a poker expert. Poker is such an enjoyable game anyway, but it’s even more fun when you know what you’re doing!

DISCLAIMER: The games on this website are using PLAY (fake) money. No payouts will be awarded, there are no "winnings", as all games represented by 247 Games LLC are free to play. Play strictly for fun.