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Sure there's a whole lot of luck involved playing poker. I saw my ace-queen lose to a queen-three at Texas Hold'em when the board came up with a queen on the flop and also a three on the river. Speak about bad beats, I am sure you've got your stories too. Luck plays a part within your success but developing skill at poker may only benefit you within the long run.
You can read and study but you must practice many hands (I'm talking thousands!) so that you can better your probability of winning consistently. So that's tip number one, practice as well as more practice. I recommend you use poker software and play at least two or three hundred hands a day which should take you about a half hour. In a casino setting you will play about forty hands an hour, so you may see how much time you may save. You can also practice directly with the on-line casinos. Many offer no-bet and low-bet games for practice. Keep in mind that these games are for a beginner and those trying to find entertainment and might not exactly duplicate the games you will play in an online casino online casino.
Tip number two builds on tip number one. Work your way up. Don't jump in to a high stakes game without being successful at the low level games. A twenty or forty dollar minimum bet game plays a lot differently than playing for little if any money. The pros call the low stakes Texas Hold'em games "no fold'em, hold'em." After all if it only costs a little or nothing to stay in, players shall remain in hoping for a miracle like that draw to an inside straight. While you work your way up you will notice the players have a lot more skill and may make fewer mistakes than those at the low limit games. You need to also learn to cope with the different subtleties in the higher stakes games. In general you can find tougher and many more conservative opponents within the higher stakes games and much less bluffing.
Third tip: Fold early and fold often. Learning when to fold is absolutely important to winning poker. In Texas Hold'em the most effective play is to fold after the very first two cards in the event that you don't have super-strong hand. Fold after the flop if you don't have top pair or better, or possibly a straight or a draw to an outside straight, or a flush or possibly a draw to a four-card flush. Sometimes you will have to fold with a strong hand if others are raising and you don't feel they are bluffing. On another side of the coin, among the worst plays you may make is folding a winning hand and watching someone else scoop up the pot. If there's the remotest chance of you having the best hand when it's the very last round of betting, you're better off within the long run calling and not folding.
Luck is a factor to winning at poker but winning can also be determined by you developing skills and capitalizing on other players' mistakes.