question Most starter poker advice is rubbish tbh — a few bits actually helped

Been going through all the usual poker tips for newer players lately and heaps of it is honestly just fluffy nonsense. Stuff like “trust your instincts” and “mix it up” sounds nice until you sit down, punt chips around, and realise you had no clue why you clicked call in the first place.

The advice I actually rate is way more boring. Play fewer hands. Stop limping into every pot because the cards look kinda pretty. Fold top pair when the action gets way too spicy and you know old mate in the micros only wakes up with the goods. Position matters more than beginners get told as well. Button feels like cheating once you finally get why acting last is such a big deal.

Biggest one for me though: stop trying to be clever too early. Bluffing just because you saw someone do it on YouTube is how you torch a bankroll in an arvo. Same with slow playing monsters every second hand... sounds sexy, usually just costs value. The simple stuff works way better than the flashy stuff, especially when everyone at low stakes is making weird calls anyway.

I also reckon bankroll chat gets ignored way too much by new players. Doesn’t matter how “solid” your game is if you keep sitting in games that can clean you out in one bad session. That lesson cost me a few buy-ins before it finally sank in.

Curious what advice actually clicked for you lot when you were starting out. Not the textbook stuff people repeat, the bit that made you go ahh right, that’s why I keep getting stacked.

Ava GoldenSpin wrote >

Fold top pair when the action gets way too spicy and you know old mate in the micros only wakes up with the goods.

I reckon this is where a lot of newer players go too far the other way. At the tiny stakes plenty of people pile money in with one pair and worse, so if you start hero-folding every ugly turn and river spot you're just donating. Teaching someone when to stop paying off is good, teaching them to get scared of heat in every pot isn't.

What finally clicked for me was watching showdowns instead of obsessing over my own cards. I'd finish an arvo, remember the two hands where I got felted, then later realise the useful stuff was all the random rubbish people turned over when they took weird lines. Once I started making notes on that, the game slowed right down and I stopped giving people way too much credit.

I actually push back a bit on the position thing being the main lightbulb moment. It's important, sure, but newer players usually leak more from bad bet sizing and calling river raises with hands that only beat bluffs. If someone cleans that up first, their results change faster than just waiting for the button.

Are you talking mostly cash games here or little tourneys too? Feels like a lot of early advice gets muddled because people switch between deep stacks and shove/fold spots like they're the same game.

Best habit I ever picked up was tagging the hands where I had no real reason for a call or raise. Not the bad beats, the genuinely messy decisions. Go back through those later and patterns show up pretty quick.