Starting a new hobby can be an exciting experience as it tests your ability to be patient and persistent. However, whether we are picking up an instrument, learning to surf, or practicing a game, it’s best to start with the basic principles that will allow us to improve our skills enough for us to enjoy this new activity for years to come.

This statement becomes particularly true in the case of poker, a game that might be easy to learn but hard to master. The main objective of this hobby is to test your skills against other people, which will probably be trying to predict your moves while tricking you into thinking they have a particular set of cards.

But how exactly can we do this? Where should a beginner poker player start?

Start with the Hand Rankings

The game of poker revolves around trying to calculate your odds of having a set of cards that can beat the other player’s hand. That is something that is made a lot easier by actually knowing what the hierarchy of hands actually is. However, it’s not enough to know that a straight beats three of a kind and that a flush beats a straight. It’s pretty much essential that you understand the probability of getting a particular hand in poker. For example, getting a royal flush will allow you to go all-in as it beats any other hand, but the probability of getting it is approximately 30,000 to 1.

Learning the Terminology

While it sounds about as basic as it gets, nailing down the common poker terms is actually crucial to feeling comfortable in an online poker match. Beginner players don’t want to get into an online poker room and feel completely lost the moment they start hearing people talk about things like “backdoor draw” or “donk bet”. Learning these and other terms will allow you to smoothly transition through the different stages of a game, and focus on estimating the best possible way to play, instead of trying to decipher this new language.

Forget About Bluffs and Tells

If there’s something poker movies and tournaments are guilty of is convincing mainstream audiences that poker is all about bluffing and tells. Sure, it might be tempting to trick your opponent into thinking you have an amazing hand using nothing but your wits and persuasive personality or to figure out an opponent’s tell, but it’s not a reliable technique and it’s definitely not going to earn the respect of any serious player. The game of poker is mainly about calculating your odds and trying to predict the hands your opponents have. That’s it.

Consider Your Position on the Table

One of the first things you will notice when playing poker is that the position of the dealer, as well as the small and big blind chips (which indicate who places the low and high bet before a new round begins), changes throughout the game. This may seem irrelevant for the inexperienced player but will become a basic component of your strategy. This is because the last person to play has a chance to decide their bet after everyone else has decided theirs. As a result, it’s considered the most powerful position, allowing people to play more aggressively and vice versa.

Choose Your Table Carefully

Usually, people playing a game of poker are in it to make money in the long term, and this sometimes means looking for a table full of beginners. It’s important then to carefully observe the way other players behave and notice early on if there are a couple of more experienced competitors at your table. A good idea is to use an online app that offers sit-and-go games like Zynga Poker, in which the player is allowed to switch tables as soon as they fold.

Learning to play poker can be a wonderful journey. You get to enjoy a new game and see your performance get progressively better as the rules and odds become second nature, and you develop your own strategy. But as with any new endeavor, it’s essential to avoid skipping any steps like learning the rankings, limiting your bluffing, and making sure you know the major terms before starting to bet any real money.