By Lou Krieger
As poker’s popularity continues to grow in the United States and overseas, experienced home game players as well as those who are new to the game itself, continue to sidle up to casino poker tables asking to be dealt in. Although new and exciting, playing poker in a casino can be confusing at first, and new players are usually full of questions. This is particularly true, and quite understandable, when that newcomer is playing hold’em for the first time, since even experienced home game players may either be more familiar with stud or have played such a wide variety of home poker games that they may never have studied, or even thought about hold’em to any measurable degree.Some newcomers think they know it all. Others ask a lot of questions, particularly when they are attempting to learn hold’em the right way. Rather than simply sitting down and paying for lessons at the table, many new players - in an attempt to fast-track their own learning process - are reading books and using computer software to learn essential poker principles before attempting to put them in action in live games.

Some new players have read so extensively about poker that their questions are quite sophisticated. While these players are the exception rather than the rule, you can usually tell how schooled they are because their inquiries are aimed at sorting out information hierarchically, so they’ll know what’s important and how to apply that knowledge in the heat of battle. Players who haven’t read much about the game, or even thought about it at all, generally….  read rest of article at PokerPages