5 Bad Poker Myths You Should Stop Believing

There are many myths about poker that can lead not only beginners to believe in erroneous beliefs, but also experienced players. It makes sense to consider the most popular, so as not to fall for them.

Poker is played like a movie

This is by far the most dangerous poker myth. Many of us wanted to learn how to play online poker thanks to the movie Rounders with Matt Damon. But we all learned that this game is not at all like what is shown on the big screen.

Matt Damon and Casino Royale made us think it was absolutely easy to “read” our opponents just by watching their body language. But in practice it doesn’t work. Although there are people who can give themselves away with some kind of gesture, but poker professionals train to hold on.

Poker is just a game of chance

Yes, a lot of things in this game have a lot to do with short-term luck: the hands you get, or even the community cards you see. But it would be unfair to say that poker is a game of chance, since each player will have to deal with good and bad hands, and it is the game that will determine whether he wins or not.

You have to be a math genius to win at poker

Actually, the math part is quite simple, as you only need to do the basic calculations:

• know your chances;
• have a perfect understanding of bet amounts;
• understand the poker key, which is knowing when to call and when to fold.

To play poker online and profit from it, you need to learn a few numbers and forget about complex calculations.

Need practice with play money

Play money poker is a game where nothing is at stake, so people always make sub-optimal and ridiculous decisions. You should know that playing with play money only guarantees that you will only learn the rules. It is very difficult to find poker players who use any strategy at all in play money poker, as most of them always just hit the buttons at random without thinking about it.

Of course, this does not mean that you should start with a high stake, but investing a few dollars in a real money poker game will go a long way. No matter how good you are, if you start playing poker tournaments with only 10 buy-ins, you won’t last long.

To play poker online, you need to bluff 50% of your hands

This is another myth that we owe to movies and even TV poker tournaments. When poker tournaments caught on, people were overwhelmed by bluffs, which led to the misconception that bluffing is the most important part of a poker strategy and needs to be done fairly often to win.

Obviously, you need to know when and how to bluff if you want to build a winning strategy. But be careful – trying to impose yourself at a table with constant all-ins will only make you lose control of your stack, especially if you have no experience.