Here are three simple tips guaranteed to raise the game of any beginning or low limit Texas hold’em poker player to the next level. You needn’t be a rocket scientist or Doyle Brunson to apply them either. All it takes is discipline and the desire to play winning poker.

1. Fold more than you raise,
raise more than you call
Too many players call unless they have a strong reason to do otherwise. It’s their default position. But calling is passive poker, and goes against poker’s strategic Rule No. One1: — Be selective, but be aggressive.

Aggressive play provides two ways to win — it can cause an opponent to fold a better hand, or you can make the best hand. A caller can only win in a showdown.

While it’s fun to play a lot of hands, folding weak hands — rather than calling — is what’s required for winning poker.

2. Don’t bluff players who call too much
It’s tough to bluff when the table sheriff is involved in a pot with you. Forget about bluffing habitual callers. Instead, try betting your good hands for their intrinsic value, secure in the knowledge that your opponents will pay you off with relatively weak hands.

3. Narrow the Target
You can’t present your opponents with a big target and expect to win very much money. If you take the worst of it by risking too much money in unfavorable situations, you won’t win.

Don’t call a raise hoping for a miraculous card that overcomes the long odds against you. Don’t play weak starting cards in early position, and don’t try to prove what a tough, tricky player you are by bluffing players who usually call.

You’ll win far more money by virtue of your opponents’ mistakes than you ever will through your own strokes of genius. While it takes great skill to maneuver a skillful player into making a serious error in judgment, nothing more sophisticated than basic poker technique — the stuff found in most beginners’ poker books — is all that’s needed to rake in those extra bets from players who called when they really should have folded.
By Lou Krieger