Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
I'm not going to bullshit you
I'm not going to bullshit you poker isn't an easy game. It's fairly easy to learn the rules, and beat some weak players that aren't really sure what they're doing. However, if you want to be really good at this game, then you're going to need to put a lot of work in. Just like anything in life, if you want to be really good at something, you need to prepare, train, take your lumps, learn from your mistakes, know when to walk away and wait for another day, and have good mental discipline. If you aren't prepared to work hard, then be prepared to not be very successful at poker.
I say this having coached for over seven years
I say this having coached for over seven years played for over nine on a professional and semi-professional level, and having my own share of success and failure. Fortunately I've had much more success, and not much failure in my poker career, but this didn't come without hard work and dedication to the art of poker. The truth of the matter is, very few people are successful at poker long term. I've seen studies that say that less than 5% of players are winners long term. Some people may have some short term success, but if you want to make it long term you're going to need to have a level of dedication and discipline that few people do.