If you love the game of poker, you know that the strategies and complexities of the game can sometimes take years to master. Although the game itself may appear deceptively simple, poker requires that you understand the odds of obtaining a winning hand. That, and the understanding of certain psychology factors, as well. If you understand the basics, however, you can avoid certain mistakes that can keep reoccurring, if you're not careful.

In this guide, I'm going to give you some tips on how to improve your game. These steps are great for those new to the game – but long-time players can benefit, as well. So, let's get started – shall we?

Difficulty: Challenging

Strategy Tips:

Step 1

To begin with, you'll need to understand the rankings of all the possible poker hand combinations. Once you know the probabilities of each type of hand, you can use this along with the psychology techniques we'll discuss later in this lesson.

The best hand that you can get, in poker, is called a "royal flush". This hand consists of consecutive cards of the same suit and begins with the Ace (then King, Queen, etc.). Next in line is the "straight flush. This hand is the same as the royal flush, but can be in either ascending or descending order beginning with a King or below.

Other poker hand combinations (listed by descending value) are:

• "Four of a kind"
• "Full House" (three cards of the same value plus a pair)
• "Flush" (any value cards – all of the same suit)
• "Straight" (all the cards are in consecutive order – with different suits)
• "Three of a kind"
• "Two pair"
• "One pair"

There are approximately 2.5 million possible card combinations in poker. The probability of getting a pair is around 42%. The probability of getting a straight flush is .0015%.

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