We’ve had a good time teaching you the fundamentals of poker all over again. Again, it cannot be stressed enough — learning the basis of what makes good poker is better than not learning anything at all. Or worse…going through things based on fear or gut emotion. There are going to be times where you go with what your gut days. But that doesn’t mean that it’s necessarily the best choice that you can make. The reality here is that it’s all about doing what’s going to be profitable. There is a world of difference between trying to play for a house game between your buddies, playing on Facebook with a free poker game, and then trying to go into real money poker. If you think that your little Facebook app is going to be competitive, you haven’t seen real money poker. It’s a pretty fierce battle that attracts quite a few poker players. You will need to make sure that you are at least looking at the fundamentals.

We talked about the different characteristics of poker players, and we went into aggression a little bit. You might not realize this, but aggression is something that can be definitely measured. You will need to look at the aggression factor in poker, which is very important.

Simply put, the aggression factor is a stat found in heads up displays — you know, the software that lets you gain a better picture of what your opponents are really like.

The aggression factor is derived from the sum of bets and raises, divided by calls. Keep in mind that the number has to be viewed in the context of the other numbers. You need to make sure that you are looking a player that has honestly played enough poker to yield good statistics. Do you really want to go after 50 hands… or 5,000 hands? More is definitely better in these circumstances.

Of course, when you don’t have a good aggression factor on hand, you will need to look at how the person is playing. Knowing how aggressive a player is can help you figure out if they’re likely to bluff you or actually have good hands. Good luck!