Here are a few tips we’ve put together to help you when you begin playing poker. To the seasoned player these may seem like obvious things, but when you first start out it is easy to feel a bit at sea.

1. Have fun! – Yes poker is a gambling game, but it’s not something that is worth getting totally stressed about. Enjoy it, and you’ll find things will come a lot easier to you.
2. If you’ve never played poker online then join one or two poker sites that will let you play for fun rather than money. Use this time to learn the ropes and get to grips with the nuances of the game.before you start, but don’t be afraid to ask questions. Most people who play poker are quite happy to answer your questions when you’re a new player, so don’t be afraid to ask, everyone is new once!
3. Don’t play every hand when you’re new, this is probably the biggest mistake that new poker players make. Set yourself a starting hand requirement and don’t play if you don’t have at least that in your starting hand. If you’re playing more than 50% of the hands then you probably need to re-think your starting hand requirement.
4. Don’t drink and play for big money. If you’re going to have a drink then keep the stakes low. If you’re playing for big stakes then don’t drink. The two things really don’t mix well it’s as simple as that.
5. Pay attention to the cards on the table, not just your own cards. It really is important to learn to look at what’s going on around the table not just with your own cards particularly in games like Texas Hold’em.
6. Pay attention to other players. Even if you’ve folded pay attention to the game. When you are a new player, this is probably one of the best ways for you to learn how your opponents think. Look out for poker tells (where someone gives themselves away by a sign or movement or way of doing things when they have good/bad cards) this will help you to gather information for the hands when you do keep playing.
7. Don’t jump too high or too fast. Just because you are doing well at a low stake game doesn’t mean to say that you will at one with higher stakes. Generally speaking, as the stakes rise so does the skill level. Besides that, if you’re winning money at a lower stakes table then why move!

Of course there are going to be other things that you find useful, and for different people it will be different things. There’s tons of good resources out there about poker, for example stay up-to-date with tipsofpoker.net, including poker tournaments schedules, news and photo galleries from the poker events. We think that remembering these things will give you a good place to start from in a game that can be both fun and for the good player sometimes even lucrative.