best beginner games Sky Poker

Are you a complete beginner when it comes to poker? Are you the player who your mates cannot wait to get to the table as you are easily parted from your money? Are you the player who when they start playing at a table, cannot tell who the donk is, because usually it is you?

If you are, the online poker realm can be a somewhat miserable place for you. It’s very easy to get disheartened as a beginner player when you see more experienced and able players taking chips from you with seeming ease and watching your bank balance slowly dwindle away to nothing.

What you must remember here though is that everybody was a beginner at one time or another and if there are poker players having a good giggle at your lack of experience and poor decision making at times, then you can be sure that at some point in their poker careers, they have done precisely the same.

Of course, being a poker donk is never easy. For one, it can prove to be very expensive, especially if you play the wrong type of games. So if you are a poker player with a very low skill level, how can you play games on a site like Sky Poker and enjoy yourself, improve your play and perhaps even make a profit?

As crazy as it sounds, if you carefully target specific types of games, then it is possible. You won’t become a poker millionaire overnight, but you can stop haemorrhaging cash!

So this is a friendly call to all those struggling poker donks and fish out there. Don’t give up because on a site like Sky Poker, you can improve, you can learn, and you can even play while you do and it won’t cost you much money at all.

And here are the six games beginners should target on Sky Poker to help improve your poker skills and bank balance, fast.

But first you’ll want to avoid the most novice of all novice mistakes: failing to use a Sky Poker free bankroll code to secure a no deposit welcome bonus. Just click the link for more information.

1. Free cash tables

If you are a losing poker player then the word you want to look for on any poker site is FREE and Sky Poker is no different. The best place to start your road to redemption as a poker player is by heading to the Cash Games tab and clicking on the Free Play option.

This brings up a list of free to play cash table games, where players will pay for points rather than cash. This means that they do not cost you anything in real money terms when you win, or lose.

There are free to play tables available for Hold’em, Omaha and Omaha Hi Lo, though the availability for each does vary depending on how busy this part of the site is.

If you want to play Hold’em, then you have a choice of both Pot Limit or No Limit Hold’em available, No Limit is the most popular game to play so it may be prudent to play these tables first.

What these tables are, is a complete replica of the Sky Poker cash tables, but with no cash changing hands. They are completely free to play and as such, a great place to try out your new strategy or to watch how other players play.

I wouldn’t say that free table play is an ideal preparation for playing for real cash – I don’t believe it is for many reasons, however it can be a very useful tool for learning the basics of poker, especially if you use the Sky Poker Community and other tuition tools on the site to help you develop your skills and test them out here.

It is also worth remembering that cash table play is different to playing sit & go or multi table tournaments so you will only be sharpening up your skills in just one form of poker.

Once you start to win hands on a more regular basis and you find your chipstack is tending to increase, rather than decrease, it’s time for phase two of your poker workout plan.

2. £20 GTD Turbo Freeroll

Now that you have a basic understanding of poker strategy and have managed to win more hands more consistently, it is time to expand your horizons and experience a different type of poker. A game where you could actually win money, but not risk any of your own. The humble, but hugely important, freeroll.

Sky Poker offer a number of daily freeroll events which offer a prize of £20, which is shared out between winners dependent upon the number of players in the event. You can’t win life-changing amounts of money here, but what you will gain is perhaps a few extra pounds in your account over time but more importantly, great experience of tournament poker.

Sky Poker runs four daily £20 GTD Freeroll events throughout the day, they are free to enter in terms of cash but cost you 10 Sky Poker Rewards Points to play in.

The great thing about these tournaments is that they are not easy to win. You’ll be testing your new-found skills against usually almost 200 other players and that presents an enormous challenge for the new player.

However by testing your skills out without risking your own money, you can trial and run different strategies and hone your abilities without it costing you a penny.

Don’t expect these freerolls to be easy – they attract a high percentage of strong players every day and cashing out in any event, as a novice, should be viewed as a real positive.

3. Bounty Hunter Seat Freeroll

Each day at around 4pm, Sky Poker run a Bounty Hunter Seat Freeroll, costing 75 Sky Poker Points, with the top five players earning a seat at the £500 Bounty Hunter Tournament at 7.45pm that same evening.

This is a free to enter tournament that offers you no cash prize, but a chance to play in a tournament for free, with a total guarantee cash prize of £500.

A Bounty Hunter tournament is different to a typical tournament. In a standard tournament, you gain cash by finishing as late in the tournament as you can. The longer you last in a tournament the more chance you have of making money.

In a Bounty Hunter tournament, the focus is slightly altered. Yes you can earn money by playing conservatively and grinding your way through, but you earn more money by taking opponents on and knocking them out, earning their bounty and increasing yours in the meantime.

The more players you eliminate, the more bounties you’ll earn and the more chance you have of winning more money from the tournament. Plus, you don’t have to go deep into a tournament to turn a profit. Simply eliminate a couple of players early on and you are guaranteed a profit.

Bounty Hunter games further build on your experience of multi table tournament and are great for encouraging more aggression at the tables, especially when you have none of your bankroll at risk.

4. All-In Russian Roulette

Did you know that if you really wanted to, you could play a game of poker on Sky Poker that offers you basically a 50/50 chance of winning? This is Russian Roulette poker and it is found in the Sit & Go tab under the all-in button.

Russian Roulette poker is simply a game of one hand and two opponents. You and an opponent buy in for a stated buy in fee (from £1.10 to £55 usually) and you are dealt your two cards and then both players are automatically placed all-in.

The game then deals the next five cards and the player with the best winning hand doubles their money.

If the players tie (which is unlikely), then the chips are split, a new hand is dealt and the winner decided in the second hand.

Russian Roulette is essentially a game of chance. There is no skill involved and it is purely down to luck, the strength of your pocket pair and how well the flop unfolds for you, as to whether you win or not.

For some donks though, this may actually offer a potentially better return than playing in real cash games and tournaments initially, though remember, it does not actually increase your poker abilities any.

5. Small Stakes Double Your Money

So now it is time to play real poker for real cash and you should head immediately to the sit & go tables and to the low stakes Double Your Money games. These games cost as little as £0.60 to play in and with just 6 players at each table, and you only needing to finish in the top 3 to double your money, they offer a much better chance of success.

These small scale events are great because you do not have to actively eliminate players yourself to progress. If you can avoid losing all your chips and battle through to the last three, you double your money, regardless of how many chips you have.

Therefore you can be flexible and check out different strategies to find what works best (though I would advise a balanced approach).

6. Small stakes heads up

Another game to target is small stakes heads up poker. This is similar to Russian Roulette poker, only this time, your poker skills will be required in order to help you win.

Heads up is a specialised form of the game and it may take a little while to get the hang of, but you can learn many key poker skills very quickly and start to turn a profit, if you become proficient at this type of game.

However, if you find that you are losing money, then head back to the freerolls and other games listed above until you get your confidence back.

We have a bunch of excellent in-depth Sky betting guides for the novice and more established player alike. If you are interested in learning more about Sky’s freeroll tournaments, we recommend our newest guide to Sky Poker £20 Guaranteed Turbo Freerolls.