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Now is the time to get your basic skills up to scratch. There is nothing worse than feeling pressured whilst trying to identify a poker hand quickly and nothing more embarrassing than cards flying all over the place when it's your turn to shuffle and deal.

LEARN TO IDENTIFY POSSIBLE POKER HANDS

One of the main things that was difficult for me when learning to play poker, was being able to identify poker hands and learning which hand beats another. I created a simple method that was extremely effective at helping me learn my poker hands fast. Within a couple of hours of using

this technique, you will be able to identify winning (and losing) hands, quickly and accurately. As with any skill, the more you practice, the better you become.

BASIC METHOD

1. Look through the poker hands at the beginning of this chapter again, in order to familiarise yourself with the different hands and which hand is higher in the hierarchy. 2. Thoroughly shuffle a deck of cards.

3. From the top of the deck, deal out seven cards from left to right face up.

4. Take your time in trying to determine which is the best hand, if any, that you would be able to make out of five of the cards that lay before you.

5. Gather up the cards and place them in a pile to the side. 6. Repeat the process from step 3 until you have less than

seven cards left in the pack.

7. Over a short period of time, you will find that you can increase your speed and identify which hands you would be able to make, as well as recognise both the correct name for the hand and it's position in the hand hierarchy.

ADVANCED METHOD

Once you have gained familiarity with identifying poker hands using the Basic Method, you can progress to the more advanced method.

This method gets you used to making poker hands in Texas Hold 'em, by first dealing two cards close to you, representing your hole cards and then dealing out the five community cards towards the centre of the table. When arranging the cards like this, you start to get used to the way the hands look in Texas Hold 'em, where you have the two hole cards near to you, and the five community cards separated from them.

The final step in this technique is to deal out all of the cards face-down, the two pocket cards and the five community cards. Look at your hole cards to see which ones you hold and place them back on the table face-down. Next turn over the first three cards to the left of the

community cards. These represent the Flop. Only looking at your pocket cards if you really have to, see if you can determine some possible hands that you can make with your two pocket cards and the three community that you have just turned over on the Board. Carry on simulating a Hold 'em game, by turning over the fourth community card, the Turn and again seeing if you can improve on your hand. Finally, turn over the River, the final community card and see what the best hand is that you can make with all seven cards.

Remember, only look at your hole cards if you really cannot remember them, but work towards never having to glance at the cards in the pocket a second time, as in a real game it will be identified as a Tell (more about those later).

LEARN TO SHUFFLE

An important basic skill when playing poker is the ability to shuffle a deck of cards without them ending up all over the table and on the floor.

Good shuffle technique is worth learning well. It is simple to do and the more you practice the easier and faster, you will be able to shuffle, as well as keep all of the cards together in the deck.

There are a variety of ways to learn to shuffle and the most common one is the Overhand Shuffle. Steer clear of flashy shuffles, at least to begin with, and master your technique until it is faultless.

To find out how to perform the overhand shuffle and many other varieties, pick up a book on card tricks where it will explain basic Card Handling technique (You will also be able to learn some cool magic tricks and be life and soul of any party!), or do a Web search on Google for “how to shuffle cards”.

Once you are adept at the Overhand shuffle, you can then progress to the Hindu Shuffle, Weave Shuffle, Riffle Shuffle and the Strip Shuffle. The other common shuffles used in Poker are the Wash and Go and the Strip and Cut. Demonstrations of these can easily be found on the world- wide web.

WATCH POKER ON TV

The last task in this section is to watch the telly! Find yourself a few poker tournaments to watch on the box, make some popcorn, crack open a extra large Pepsi and start to pay attention to the cards that are drawn. At this stage you do not need to concentrate on who's betting what and which strategies are being used, all you need to do is look at the players pocket cards and then get used to making potential hands when you see the flop, turn and river.

You will generally find that the pocket cards of the players that haven't folded are displayed on the screen. As the game progresses, the community cards appear in sequence, allowing you to quickly work out which hand is more likely to win.

These games can get fairly fast and you may struggle at first to keep up. Consistency is the key here and if you keep with it and persist, you will find that you are reading the cards like a pro in no time flat.

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5 Basic Strategy

efore we can walk through a few hands of a typical Texas Hold 'em game, we must discuss some very basic strategy. Seeing as you only get dealt two cards prior to the first round of betting, it stands to reason that you need to know how to make the right decision before parting with your hard-earned money.

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Similarly, you will need to consider how you will progress with your game after you have seen the Flop, as well as the Turn and the River.

We shall keep to teaching extremely basic decision- making strategy as it applies to the typical game flow of a simple no-frills game, that once learned will allow you to follow along with any basic game of Hold 'em.

Winning strategies are not discussed in this chapter and will be covered later in the book. For now let's just continue to concentrate on the structure of Texas Hold 'em poker and the base information that we need to play.