4. Aggression

Once you’ve gained the discipline to wait for some sort of hand and an understanding of position, you might notice that the other players start to become a bit more cautious of tangling with you. After all, their reasoning goes, if you’ve entered a pot, you probably have a good reason to be there, right?

Well then, it’s time to execute part two of most winning poker players’ strategy. Careful hand selection gives you an early edge (making you what’s called a ‘tight’ player), but to capitalise on it you need to be prepared to continue with guns-blazing aggression if you make nothing on the flop or miss a draw, particularly at no-limit or pot-limit. Chances are, your opponents will have nothing themselves, or give you credit for something strong and fold in the face of your onslaught.

5 Changing gears

So it’s tight/aggressive play that mostly brings home the money, but if you stick to one style and play hands in the same way all the time then even your weakest opponents are eventually going to pick up on a few patterns and your edge in a game will start to diminish.

Because of this, most top players have the ability to vary their styles of play to confuse their opponents about what they’re up to. In cash games where the structure stays the same this is often done at random – naturally tight players might suddenly play a wider quality or variety of hands and bluff more to steal some extra pots, or loose-aggressive opponents might slow down for a while so that when they get a big hand people don’t give them enough credit for it.

In tournaments, changing gears is more dependent on stack size, and what point of the game you’re at – eg with a big stack you can open up and bully the opposition, but with a short one you must look for a good hand to go all-in with. But there are still options open to imaginative players – such as playing fast and loose when you’re close to the money and you can see other players are holding on to get there – especially if you care less about the increased risk of getting knocked out than winning the tournament.

6. Heart

Speaking of tournaments, this is what the great players who play just to win have in spades. Have you ever seen someone put their entire stack on the line with a bluff, or overcome a series of terrible beats to seize victory from the jaws of defeat?

These are the kind of things poker players mean when they say that someone has ‘heart’, and if you want to win tournaments you’ll need to find some for yourself too, as if you just wait for good cards and hope they’ll carry you there, the chances are you’ll fall short. As Amir Vahedi once said: ‘In order to live, you must be willing to die.’

7. Mathematical aptitude

Whether it’s ‘A’ Level probabilities and combinations or PhDs in Game Theory and Computer Science, most poker pros have a pretty good working knowledge of the mathematics that underpin the game (and the rest have learned the odds by rote or experience).

Combined with years of play and seeing the same situations come up again and again, they can understand and estimate very precisely whether certain actions are likely to be profi table or losing plays. Visit a site like twodimes.net to get you going.