what's up guys today I'm going to give you seven easy ways to tell if somebody is good at poker use these seven simple Clues to find out who the weaker players are at the table and then you're going to know who to Target at the poker table who to get in the pots against because you're going to win the most money from them so without any further Ado these are the seven ways to tell if somebody is good at poker or maybe not quite so much all right guys counting down from 7 to one here
we go so number seven is to pay attention to your kicker guys having played this game professionally for over a decade and having coached hundreds of students in these small and mid-stakes games this is one of the clearest tells I have seen again and again that quickly lets me know who the amateur players are and who the serious poker players are so guys your kicker at the poker table is the other card in your hand when you hit Top pair for example the Flop comes down with the dece King five and you've got Ace King
you've hit the top pair with your king and now what is important here is the other card in your hand so a lot of weaker players will play hands like King Jack King 10 King n and I'm not saying you should never play those hands I have a lot of videos here on the channel talking about the time and the place to play those hands but a lot of amateurs in particular tend to overplay these hands and professionals like myself take advantage of them again and again because we're only playing stronger Kings like an Ace
King or a king queen and you can see the very simple math on your screen there Ace King is 87% to win versus King Jack in a situation like this guys bottom line you are not going to be able to fight the math this hard in poker or anything in life to be honest and expect to win if you want to start quickly improving your results in this game you want to make sure that you're playing the right hand so you have the odds in your favor and I'm going to show you what hands to
play in just a few minutes here all right moving on to sign number six and that is basic pre flop hand reading now guys I put up a chart on your screen here of a six player poker table and I don't have time in a short video like this to explain every seat in detail but in a nutshell EP stands for early position MP stands for Middle position and now the two best seats at the poker table are the ones in green the cut off and the button and the reason why those are so profitable
those are the best seats is because you're likely to get to act last on the FL up turn and river and in a game of incomplete information like poker when you get to see what somebody else does first that is always a massive advantage and then you have the two blinds the small blind and the big blinds so guys bottom line here before the flop in poker it starts from EP and then goes around the table and then in the post flop streets it starts from the small blind I know it might be a little
bit confusing for you beginners right now but bear with me here so before the Flop you've just got your two cards when somebody raises from EP or MP you want to respect these raises because they are acting first meaning that they know they have the whole table left to act behind them meaning that they are likely to have a strong hand I hope you guys can see The Logical pieces of the puzzle here and how expert Semi-Pro and professional poker players reconstruct the basic reasoning patterns that most people use in this game so when somebody
raises from EP or MP likely to be a strong hand now let's move on to the button and the cut off this is likely to be a weak hand because in a position like this most people are just trying to steal the Blind by the way if you want to know exactly what hands to play what hands to steal the blinds with I talk about this all in much greater detail in my free poker cheat sheet including what hands to play from each position at the poker table how much to make your bet sizes and
so much more it's totally free you can read it in an afternoon I will include a link to my free poker guide in the description below but guys basically when somebody raises from the button in the cut off I don't respect it too much and then finally from the blinds if it is folded all the way around the table and somebody raises from the small blind and I'm sitting in the big blinds I'm not going to respect that too much either because I know that they know that they only have one person left to beat
and therefore they're going to raise with a much wider range once again I don't want to confuse some of you newer players to the game believe me this sort of logical reasoning does come naturally when you get more experience in this game and I talk about this stuff on a weekly basis in these videos by the way so make sure you're sub subscribe but let's move on to sign number five now that you might be up against a good or bad player and that is you should just Cole versus aggressive players so guys what a
lot of amateurs do these days is they try to fight fire versus fire versus other aggressive players I'm an aggressive player myself and I absolutely love it when people try to Bluff me back because you're just playing into my game what you want to do instead versus highly aggressive players who you know are bluffing a lot is you just want to call them in position that's what IP stands for and specific spefically that's going to be on the button and the cut off the two seats that we talked about before earlier that are the best
seats at the table and so for example if I've got a hand like two red nines the nine of hearts and the nine of diamonds on the button and a loose and aggressive player raises before the Flop I'm usually just going to Flat call them on the button here and the reason why is because I do not want to raise them and reopen the beding so that they can make another raise behind me and then all of the sudden I'm in a terrible spot with a good but not great hand like pocket 's so guys
I have found that the best way to beat overly aggressive bluffy players like this when you have one of these good but not great hands like pocket 99's is to just call Cap the size of the betting and just simply outplay them after the Flop and we're going to talk about that more in a few minutes here so let's move on to tip number five now and finally now we're going to jump into playing the right hands so guys I put up some basic charts here on your screen for both six player and nine player
games six player poker games are much more popular online these days but nine player games are still routinely played all over the world especially in live casinos in a six-player poker game I typically suggest playing around the top 20% of all hands deal to you and that is all hand in red on your screen so that is all pocket pairs most Broadway cards so that's any two cards 10 and above most suited Aces a lot of suited connectors and then in a nplayer game I suggest playing only the top 15% of your hands as you
can see on your screen there and a lot of people ask me though why the difference well the reason why I suggest playing 5% less of your hands in a nplayer game is because when there's more players at the table of course logically the chances that somebody have something good go up because there's simply more players at the table so therefore you want to have stronger starting hand selection in a situation like this guys bottom line if you are relatively new to the Game of Poker I would recommend studying some charts like like this stick
to these hands only for now and you're going to have a strong mathematical Advantage entering each hand of Poker once again I do have these charts included in my free poker cheat sheets and I will link that up as the top Link in the description below all right guys let's move on to tip number four now and that is to never pay off the nits or AKA The Rocks so guys nits rocks these are the tightest players at the table there's a lot of them in today's games I see them everywhere they're sitting around folding
every hand they're waiting for pocket aces pocket kings ace King they only put significant action in the middle and what I mean by that is putting their money in the middle they only do that when they have a really strong hand like a flush like top pair like a straight like three of a kind I'm sure you guys have seen these players before so like we just talked about with the loose and aggressive players who like to Bluff a lot the same thing applies here guys you don't want to play into their game if you
know that they're just sitting there waiting for the best hand possible all the time they're folding every single time they're playing Super discipline then it should go without saying when they finally wake up and start raising and reasing you it's because they have it it's not because they're running some highle Bluff out of nowhere instead they're just playing their hand face up and you need to adjust accordingly so once again let me give you an example here you've got pocket aces and a knit raises you on the turn of nine of diamonds Jack of Spades
eight of diamonds and five of clubs guys you should without a doubt fold in this situation I know this is a big shocker for a lot of newer players but guys there are so many different hands they can have in a situation like this remember tightest player at the table they're sitting around waiting for hands like three of a kind so they could have pocket NES pocket Jacks pocket eights pocket fives they could have flopped the straight with a hand like Queen 10 they could have flopped two pair with a hand like 98 or Jack
n or jack8 I think you guys get the idea guys bottom line do not fall into the Trap of these super tight players when they raise you especially on the turn or river which I call the big money streets in poker they're not messing around they're doing it because they have a hand which absolutely crushes your one pair hands and that's what pocket aces here is by the way it is one pair they are clearly announcing to you that they have something that is greater than that such as two pair or better and therefore you
have roughly 5 or 10% odds to win the pot once again we don't make money in poker or anything in life by throwing our money in with such terrible ODS so you want to throw your hand away in this situation all right guys let's move on to tip number three now and that is to cat most flop so guys a cbat in poker stands for a continuation bet I have talked about in many of these videos on the channel that you should always take control of the pop before the Flom and what I mean by
that is Raising or R raising in fact I made a video just last week showing you how much to make your raises and R raises you can go check that out but guys bottom line all good players these days know that you should be continuing your aggression on the Flop by giving them a reason to fold whether you hit the Flop or not so let me give you an example of a few standard flops like an ace king queen rainbow rainbow meaning three different suits an ace five Deuce with two diamonds a paired board like
a 778 I actually break these down in extensive detail in my second book modern small Stakes I talk about the 10 most common flumps and spoiler alert as I say in the book you want to be seab betting on most of them by the way I will link up all my books in the description below if you're interested in learning more but guys bottom line most of the time in poker if you are up against just one player and you get any of these common sort of flops like this even if you have nothing you
very often want to be making another bet guys always remember aggressive poker is winning poker give them a reason to fool don't just check that is the way you're going to have the most success in this game all right guys moving on to number two here and that is to only slow play versus aggressive players so building off of what we just talked about the only time when I will slow play in poker let me explain slow play by the way slow playing is when you just check with a big hand so for example you've
got Ace King as you can see on your screen there and the Flop comes down with the King 810 we already talked about this situation before we have top pair top kicker here which is an extremely strong hand remember if they have something like King Jack we already talked about how we're going to be like 87% to win in a situation like this so unless they have one of those extremely rare hands like a two pair or a trips or a set that beats us in this situation we have far the best hand here so
in a situation like this this is one of the only spots where I will sometimes check it versus an aggressive player because I know that there is a strong likelihood that they will Bluff at it with a hand like 98 for example with bottom pair whereas if I just make a big bat here or a big raise they might just fold their hands which doesn't really help us because we're not getting any more value from that hand now I want to be clear here guys I only use this strategy versus highly aggressive players if we're
up against those passive knits and rocks the typ players that we just talked about I am literally never going to be slow playing here because I know they're just going to check behind which is going to keep the pot low we don't win in poker by winning tiny pots this is a huge mistake that a lot of amateurs make so guys versus 95% of players in today's games you just want to fast play your hand here and what I mean by that is just making a big bet like we just talked about in the previous
example but versus those handful 5% of hyper aggressive players in today's games that you know just love to Bluff all the time I will sometimes Play My Hands slow in a situation like this to give them the Rope to go hang themselves all right guys moving on to my number one way now to tell if somebody is good at poker or not and that is to Simply have a look at their red line now red line is a key statistic that you get in a lot of Poker tracking programs these days such as poker tracker
which I have used for for over 10 years as a professional I will link that up in the description below if you're curious there is a free trial you can try it off yourself but guys in a nutshell the redline stands for your non-sh Showdown winning so guys what you need to understand about poker I'm sure this is not news to you you are going to get over the long run the same amount of good hands mediocre hands and bad hands the only difference between the handful of really really top elite players and everybody else
is how they play mostly their mediocre hands which is honestly what people have most of the time and their bad hands too basically when you don't have much at all which is the case in 90% of pots in Texas hold them nobody really has anything so where the rubber really meets the road in this game where the elite players really get ahead is they simply take away more of these pots and we've already touched on a couple of those ways earlier in this video I'll be using a lot of bluff raises I'll be stealing the
blinds a lot and I've discussed this in many other videos here on the channel by the way how to make Bluff raises on the Flop I made a video a couple weeks ago talking about that but bottom line guys do not be one of those passive players who sits around just waiting to hit the nuts all the time waiting to get the best hand possible that is a losing strategy in poker because good hands in poker do not come around very often you need to be stealing the blinds you need to be bluffing them sometimes
in the right situations so that your red line is roughly Break Even or slightly positive you don't want your red line to be massively winning by the way because that means you are bluffing too much which means you're probably just going to get called Down by any sensible poker player and start hemorrhaging money but that is a topic for another video guys I know that a couple of the points in this video today were a little bit more advanced than normal but I hope that some of you guys got some value from this by the
way if you want to know my entire strategy to beat the small and mid-stakes games make sure you grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet once again I will link that up as the top Link in the description below like And subscribe if you did find this video helpful thanks for watching guys I will catch you next time
