The pen is mightier than the sword is a phrase as old as true. Knowledge brings power with it and if not, it provides opportunities at least. Meanwhile there are a lot of different approaches to impart knowledge, like e-learning courses, all the networks keeping students in touch after they graduated and many different governmental programs. And the last few decades do show the fruits good education can bear. Especially the advancements within the Information Technologies are astonishing. Nevertheless, there are areas where education is urgently needed. Private stock trading is one of these. Studies show that 75 % of all day trading brokers come out with a loss. Almost 70 % of them are private people trading from the kitchen table with a laptop and some rules of thumb. The other is the insanely popular online poker gaming. Way to many start playing for real cash without even being familiar with the most basic poker rules loosing money left and right, maneuvering themselves in a dangerous position money wise.

One of the most basic advices is, besides knowing the basic rules of the game, start playing the game without gambling for real money. Poker might look like a luck based game. People hop on the train thinking that there is a fifty-fifty chance, like roulette betting on red or black. That is not the case. Poker is more a strategy game than gambling. Mostly played at tables of ten contestants, it all starts with the position and the blinds - the money that has automatically to be offered to the table as first bet from the two players sitting next to the card giver. Depending on the actions and the positions of each player someone with a bit of knowledge and experience can start reading his opponents. Calculating the win chance of cards and how those change, as soon as more public cards are revealed, is definitely advanced knowledge and a lot of training. But way more often the money gets lost, because people don't even consider the very basics everyone should learn while playing the first one thousand hands. A bit of education and research upfront than makes the difference on how expansive this learning phase will be.

Do not play too many hands, is a very simple one that directly leads to the most important skill needed for playing poker successfully: patience. Surely all participants want to play and not just throw cards away. Still, playing pike jack together with diamonds four is not really promising. The chance is that you end up with something average useful, at the same time the chance is that others at the table had much better starter cards. Simply throwing those combinations away, even when you lose a small amount of your chips, because you had been the small blind, is always the better choice than being lured into a trap loosing hundreds of your stack. Overrating suited cards - diamonds four together with diamonds ten for example - is another beginner's mistake. The chance to flop a flush is 12 % only and should not be the exclusive reason to play the cards.

The internet holds a wealth of information available, easing the pain of learning poker the hard way. The knowledge that can be found in books, e-books, wiki-articles, blogs and so on, furthermore can conserve the fun playing poker does, preventing tremendous frustration of constant loosing, just because you don't know the game. Nowadays even big newspapers have articles about playing poker in their sports sections where experienced players transmit their knowledge. A quick read now and then sometimes throws up a pretty simple hint that can change someone's play style a little to a big outcome. Knowledge is the key. General Sun Tsu knew that almost 3000 years ago already winning battles versus predominant armies just with knowledge on strategy and psychology. Poker is no different.