Poker Tutorials, Tips and Tricks

1. Add fish to your Buddy List
This is a pretty popular tip used by many of the good players on Party Poker. By checking your buddy list off and on, you can see when your favorite maniacs are logging on to play. Though you are unable to see exactly which table they are seated at, you can manually search through the tables to look for your target.

This tip is mainly useful if you are adding maniacs to your buddy list, as maniacs tend to create table dynamics that are much better for you than say, a calling station. With a maniac at the table and five calling stations for example, there will be serious pots being generated, so you can score big if you hit your cards. At the same token however, with so many drawers in the pot, your chances for getting outdrawn are very high. Just remember that.

2. Click between game tabs to refresh your table listings
This trick is useful mainly for SnG (sit and go / single table) tournaments, which are notoriously quick to fill up. Many times, you’ll see “Wtng for 5 players” as the table status, but when you click on the game, it will have already started. This is due to the table status not updating quickly, which you can force by clicking between tabs. Of note however, is that Party Poker has recently upped the refresh rate of the tables substantially, so this isn’t a major issue like it used to be.

3. Keep player notes on opponents
I cannot stress this enough. So much so that I will be writing an article on how to take some good notes in the future (updated: Player Notes page now up). While you always want to be paying attention to how people are playing, in online poker, players are always coming and going, which doesn’t give you time to feel them out. Taking notes cam help you when you play these opponents again. Even if you aren’t going to play this person it again, taking notes makes it much easier to keep a mental track of how each player plays and what to expect from them. The big things to note are: smart or stupid, aggressive or passive, tight or loose, straight up or bluffs, bets out a draw or not and what kind of hands do they play or pre-flop raise with. Yes, this is a lot of information to note, but it will help you in the long run.

4. Use a four color deck
This tip applies not only to Party Poker but many other poker rooms out there too. There’s a reason poker sites offer four color decks, because they are quite popular and for good reason. If you play poker long enough, you’re going to make mistakes. Everyone who has played long enough has probably misread their cards at some point or another (usually after a long stretch), especially flushes. Using a four colored deck makes it much easier to identify flushes (and more importantly flush draw threats) and enables you to use your brain powers elsewhere.

5. Get hand histories when players don’t show their at the river
Great Party Poker trick that I’m sure many people have figured out. Many times on the river, only the winning hand is shown - but you are very interested in seeing what the loser was holding too. Simply click on the hand number at the top right of the screen and request the hand history for that game via email. Depending on how busy Party Poker is at the moment, you should get an email with the history in a matter of minutes.

Scroll to the bottom of the history and you can instantly find out what the other player was holding. I normally do this in conjunction with player notes, to get me a good idea of what a player is willing to play with on a river. Showdown information is always the most critical, as you can analyze their decision making process from the ground up.

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