Flexibility: The Key to an Excellent Poker Game

A common mistake for new poker players is that they tend to execute formulaic and repetitive actions. For example, since aggressiveness in poker is said to have a value, beginning poker players tend to constantly play tight and aggressive actions.

There is nothing wrong with tight-and-aggressive. The truth is, that is perhaps the best route to take when playing poker. However, repetitively playing with the best cards (the tight part) and raising a lot of chips with it (the aggressive part) will lead to predictable plays. And predictable plays lead to a stack short of chips.

Let us look at a player who constantly plays tight and aggressive. On the first few hands, the player will probably score big, since everyone is just starting to size up everyone. If the player constantly raises just with hands on the top ten best list and with no other hands, opponents will easily predict what the player's cards are.

Therefore, their play will probably be to fold whenever that player has shown strength. What that player will get is a long crawl to the top via stealing the blinds, or maybe a plummet to the bottom.

This does not only happen with novices. Sometimes experienced players stumble upon this mistake too. It so often happens that when an experienced player is unlucky enough o be in a table full of beginning players, the experienced player is beaten miserably.

Why would that happen? Because the experienced poker player is probably used to games where bluffing and other poker strategies could be executed properly, the beginners trampled over them by playing in a maniac manner.

Think about it: a table with beginners will often be a very loose game, with maniacs running loose and calling stations at each corner. Thus, a fancy technique like bluffing or steals will always fail, because one cannot expect maniacs or calling stations to fold.

Hence, it is important for your poker strategy to be flexible. You must be able to adapt and adjust to different situations. A good understanding of poker strategy is really helpful for this. And by 'a good understanding,' we mean good apprehension about the 'why' of the strategy and not just of the 'how.'

Once you do know why the poker strategy is used, you can easily know when. Of course, it is not enough to read. You need to experience the poker strategy for yourself in order to know when it works and when it doesn't. Once you become a flexible player, you could easily score wins, no matter what the situation is.