I’m trying to learn how to play and I understand what community cards are, what they do, who goes first/last, etc, but how do the cards in your hand effect the game? I can’t find the answer anywhere and it’s getting confusing.
Something not mentioned yet. Poker is a gambling game. You can say that it’s a game of signals, and reading the opponents. So, a big part is guessing what could the other players have based on their bets and what’s on the table. When you have a better hand, you can be more daring with your bets, and vice versa. But if it seems like all the players have bad hands, then being aggressive and lying could win you the pot.
The strategy is on the probabilities. This is a solved area of math. There are certain starting hands that are statistically more likely to form the best winning hands with the table than others. You can use that to decide how aggressively to gamble at the beginning. For example, a 2 and 7 off color is one of the worst. You’ll hardly win anything with that, but depending on what others do you could steal the blinds without a single card on the table. One of the best is a pair of Aces. You can be sure that you can out bet almost anything at the beginning. But if by the river there are only nonconsecutive, non-repetitve, off color numbers, you know the best you got is barely a pair. On that table, an aggressive player could be read as someone who lucked out with two pairs or even a straight. Now your hand isn’t as pretty as it was at the start. Thus the thrill of poker begins. Should you go in and be aggressive taking the risk. Or do you cut your losses. They could be bluffing.
to add to this, reading people is important, but also controlling yourself and minimizing tells- or using tells to enhance the bluff.
But generally speaking the vast majority of people are going to better with something like an ABC strategy- something simple, easy to follow that’s based on the cards. Like Maverick says in that movie. I hardly ever bluff
I minimize my tells by playing high as fuck. Hard to read my hand when I’m not even really sure what I have.
