Just what do you have to do to be a great poker player?

This "golden question", may seem like the end all be all in poker.

Is there some secret strategy which makes players successful and sets you apart from the free poker online donks?

The answer to this is not difficult and this ways to win poker games lesson has it in a nutshell.

The key to becoming a good poker player at any level, be it free or big stakes, is to make reasoned, logical decisions at every opportunity.

What we are talking about it here, and I'm sorry it's not more complicated, is to use common sense all the time and you win.

Common sense you screech? "I have plenty of common sense and I'm not winning much at all!". But common sense, you'll come to realize, just isn't that common when it comes to poker.

The failing most people have in this area is how they view poker. Way too many players trust to luck either some or all the time. In reality, poker is a skill based game where making good decisions directly correlates to long term profits.

True, short term results seem to be subject to a degree of luck (uncontrollable probability in fact) but long term the skill play approach evens this out and gives players with a profitable style money! Once you adjust your poker view to accept this you see that "common sense" is the core key to winning poker.

Those big bluffs you see top pros make on TV? They have solid (often complex) reasoning behind them.

The online poker pros making a big living every year?

They make all that money by playing thousands of hands in a solid steady style that overwhelms the majority of their opponents'.

Even at free poker online sites superior poker players make more than the common herd..

OK great, accepted, so how to apply this? Basically by structuring your game around sound fundamentals and a solid foundation of poker knowledge.

This common sense solution is basically a kind of expanded use of the virtue patience.

How does common sense equate to "patience" in poker?

> Well in a standard no-limit Holdem hand, each player gets 2 cards facedown before any betting (apart from posting blinds) takes place.

> Applying simple patience reasoning, we wind up with something like we should wait for hands we can play profitably and then play those because we'll profit.

> There are not so many such hands so basically we are playing tight preflop.

> Adding common sense into this mix we will now say that the idea of poker is to take money from the other players.

> If we invest money with stronger hands than them, we'll profit.

> Therefore, we only play stronger hands preflop so we can profit, and as such should generally play tight.

Where the "common sense" concept outstrips simple "patience" is in the fact that the "common sense" line of thought is more logical in the reasoning it lends to your decisions.

What we are saying if playing vanilla patient is "I play this hand as it is profitable" whereas when you play with common sense you are saying "This hand is profitable because…so I will play it", this is a step above just playing with patience, with preflop hands it is not so different as you have a known list of hands to play or not play but in more complex situations this reasoning process sets you apart.

You have to know what you're doing at all times and WHY you're doing it beyond some set in stone rulebook.

The most obvious example is the one above, of playing tight hands only preflop.

While the patient approach says to play certain hands only as they are profitable your logical approach goes a step further saying that when you play good hands preflop you will get more good hands postflop and make more money, therefore only play tight preflop and fold all trash.

This extends to many other basic poker concepts, such as value-betting "we should bet when we're ahead of our opponents to make money", bluffing "we should bluff when we can't win the pot unless our opponent folds and our opponent is likely to fold", and beyond.

These more complex areas will be looked at in depth later on this free online poker training series.

I hope this free online poker how to be good at poker lesson was useful, for many more lessons and to play free online poker against real people go see NoPayPOKER.com