The fact that you just can’t seem to be able to climb above that red line in poker has multiple causes. Most rookies never realize that many of those causes can be eradicated with a minimum amount of effort, and that they can improve their game by leaps and bounds by just taking care of a few basic issues.
Learning a little bit of basic math is one way to kill the sucking of your game. Don’t worry, I’m not talking about high level math here. Poker math is basically about counting your outs and comparing the odds you get for making the best hand with the pot odds. That’s all there is to it.
How do you count your outs though, and what are outs to begin with? Outs are cards that will hit your drawing hand to possibly make it the best hand at the table. You always need to draw for something in order to have outs. If you have like 4 cards to a flush, then you know you need another card of the same suit to make your hand. How do you find out the number of outs you have? Simple: there are 13 cards of the same suit in the deck. 4 of them are already on the table/in your pocket, so you know that there are 9 cards left that will help you make your flush. The number of your outs in this case is 9. In case of an open-ended straight draw, you have 8 cards that will help you. A gutshot straight draw only has 4 outs (there are only 4 cads of the same face value in the deck),. If you happen to have an open-ended straight draw and a flush draw to go with it, you have a massive 15 outs to make a straight or a flush.
If you’re set-mining with a small pocket pair hoping to hit a set on the flop, you only have 2 outs.
The tricky thing about counting your outs is that you really need to take all the outs you have into consideration. Take the outs a set has to make a full house for instance. You have 6 outs on the flop and 9 on the turn and you need to add one out for quads too, which may very well land as well. If you’re looking for a straight, don’t forget to count your outs to a flush and vice versa too. If you do not get the number of your outs right, you will end up with skewed odds and faulty math that will recommend you the wrong course of action.
Another mistake that many beginners make is that they never bother to learn about rakeback. Rakeback deals like the ones offered at rakemeback, offer players a rebate on their cash game rake and on their tournament fees too. While the math behind the poker rake rebate is rather complicated, a player doesn’t even have to understand it 100% to reap its benefits. Signing up as a poker prop may carry even bigger benefits as it increases the rakeback percentage radically. Do you need any special skills to play with rakeback? No, none whatsoever. Why do so many people miss out on such a good offer then? Out of sheer ignorance probably, there’s no other reasonable explanation.
Make sure you do not become the victim of any of these beginner mistakes. Spare some time to read up on poker related deals and strategy. The time you spend educating yourself about the game is an investment which will keep generating profits for you, for a long time to come.



