Cheating?
What are the main ways to play crooked?
The goal of poker is not winning hands. The goal is winning money.
Winning hands is about mathematics. But winning money is about psychology.
Winning money is the reason why it sometimes can be good strategy to lose a hand. By playing a weak hand that you shouldn’t have, you can convince the other players that you have a tendency to play weak hands. Later when you have a strong hand, the other players may believe your hand is weaker than it really is and they will stay in when they should fold. The extra money you gain from this will make up for the money you lost on the earlier weak hand you played.
Conversely, folding with a strong hand can also be good strategy. That can convince the other players you have a tendency to fold too easily. Later in the game if you’re bluffing with a weak hand, the other players may believe your hand is stronger than it really is and they will fold when they should have stayed in.
Of course, you can’t always play weak hands as if they’re strong and strong hands as if they’re weak. If you do that, the other players will quickly figure out your strategy. You have to play the truth often enough so that you can surprise the other players with a lie.
And that’s just the offense. While you’re trying to do all this to the other players, they’re all trying to do the same to you and to each other. You have to try to figure out what they’re doing while not letting them figure out what you’re doing.
The easiest way is probably collusion. If two or more players are working together and signalling each other what cards they have, they have more information than any of the other players at the table and this gives them an advantage.
Seriously, though, even though luck of the draw is an element of poker (unlike games such as chess), at any point there will still be a game-theoretically optimal strategy. The problem is that it will indicate something like “bluff with a 10% probability”, and (unlike robots) humans are poor at such dispassionate decisions. AI poker players that can regularly clean out any given human should appear anytime, if they don’t unequivocally exist already, and the closer you can emulate ideal play, the better.
To win money at poker, you need not be that good, just better than 90% of typical players. And have a big bankroll and a tolerance for spending innumerable late hours in smoke-filled card clubs.
Another point about bluffing: it’s ineffective in low-stakes poker (typical of many “home” games). The psychological “cost” of being pushed off a hand that could have won can feel high enough to make a low-stakes player willing to call when he really should have folded.
Very recently, actually. Poker has been a challenge for a long time.
There is a disappointing lack of Rounders quotes in this thread. Since no one else has bothered: “Listen, here’s the thing. If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you ARE the sucker.”
Other than that, take nothing away from any movie about poker, or John Malkovich’s bizarre attempt at a Russian accent.
Stranger
I’ve been playing low stakes NLHE tournaments four nights a week for the last three years and seeing a steady return. Anywhere from $20 to $50 buy-in and then $1/$2 live after the tournament.
To add to your points and realize that this advice is for NLHE:
Pot odds. If you believe your opponent is on a draw to your made made, it’s important to don’t let him have free cards on the turn/river. Make him pay to see those cards. Bet enough so that it’s mathematically wrong to continue.
I think that every bet has a mixture of bluff and value. Some bets are pure value, others are pure bluff. Most are somewhere in between. You want better hands to fold and weaker hands to call.
Position, position, position. The earlier you are, the better hands you need. The later you are continuing all the way to the button, the more you can loosen your starting hands requirement. If it’s folded to you in late position, consider making a steal attempt on the blinds. Don’t make it look like a steal, just come in for your normal raise. If you get called, well you still have position working for you.
Don’t bet marginal hands on the river. Sometimes it’s OK to check behind then to walk into a check-raise.
I will have more but I’m off to the card room. 
“Poker is a game where you take turn making mistakes. Try to skip your turn when it comes up.” --“Crazy” Mike Caro
“Poker is a competition on who can put the most money in the pot . . . if there’s a tie, the best hand wins.” --Mike Sexton
I disagree about Rounders. There is one great takeaway from that movie. At the start when Mike is gathering up his stake from his hiding spots around his apartment, you see it littered with books about poker. Every one of those books is an influential work on the game’s theory and practice.
And yet, Mike McDermott makes repeated mistakes, and in particular placing his trust in some asshole nicknamed “Worm” for the stake of fealty, which is rewarded with incompetent betrayal. What did we learn from Rounders? That a recognized master player can be taken down by an inconsequential opponent like McDermott just for the sake of being shown up regardless of purported skill.
Lancey Howard: Gets down to what it’s all about, doesn’t it? Making the wrong move at the right time.
Cincinnati Kid: Is that what it’s all about?
Lancey Howard: Like life, I guess. You’re good, kid, but as long as I’m around you’re second best. You might as well learn to live with it.
Stranger
We only see that he owns the books, not that he has actually read them. 
If poker was strictly about playing the mathematical probabilities, it would be a very boring game.
Imagine you’re playing a game like Seven Card Stud or Texas Hold 'Em. Everyone is dealt their cards. Everyone could see their cards and the face-up cards and determine what their odds are of improving their hand and of winning the hand. At that point, anybody who didn’t have an acceptable probability of winning will fold.
But suppose a player doesn’t fold when the cards he appears to have don’t give him a good probability. According to the mathematical probabilities, you have to assume he has a good unseen card. So you should fold if he doesn’t.
This demonstrates why poker isn’t just a game of mathematical probabilities. If the other players play the way I described and strictly follow the numbers, you can win every hand by simply never folding. The rational players will assume you must have a good hole hand and will fold. And if everyone else folds, you don’t actually need a good hole card. So irrational play can beat rational play.
In order to win you can’t play strictly rationally. And you certainly don’t want to play strictly irrationally. You have to play a mixture of rational and irrational plays and not let the other players know which way you’re playing on any particular hand.
From chapter 10 of Poker Wisdom of a Champion by Doyle Brunson (a real life rounder):
As to the OP, after fully understanding and practicing all the sound advice in this thread consider this from chapter 1 of the same book:
Which is echoed by practically every successful poker player in the world. The game is very situational. Every hand out of hundreds or thousands you’ll play that night, and millions you may play in a lifetime is its own unique situation in a vacuum.
Once you learn all the basic ‘rules’ for when you should bet, raise or fold you’re just on equal footing with presumably everyone else playing. At that point other than luck of the cards every player would always walk away even.
What makes one more successful than another with the same level of knowledge is the ability to accurately interpret the situation and play based on that instead of the normal ‘rules’ that everyone knows.
If a player has been playing really loose all night you might call with cards you would fold in a second to a player who has been playing really tight. Is the player angry at you for an earlier hand? Did they just order a 3rd drink after their wife called? The situation will dictate the right way to play. A lot of professional poker players could beat most of us in this thread without really considering what cards they have if we stayed at the table long enough.
That’s literally true, but it’s somewhat akin to the people having this discussion about how to be a good golfer;
BILL: How do I become a good golfer?
MARY: Well, I’d suggest you take some lessons and learn the basics of how to drive, hit irons, and putt.
BILL: Sure, but what about a situation where there’a strong crosswind and my ball is on a forward slope 70 yards fro, the green, should I use my sand wedge to pitch it forward, or…
MARY: Honestly, I think you should stick with the basics of driving, irons, and putting for awhile.
BILL: But it’s not just about that!
The fundamentals of poker are math and some rudimentary logic and game theory. It’s not complicated math or game theory, but it does take awhile to get it down. As with any game, any sport, you need to learn fundamentals. You know what baseball players work on? Fundamentals; footwork in the field, the basic structiure of their swing. You know what basketball players work on? Fundamentals; positioning, drills, passing, free throws. Math and basic game theory are the foundation you build poker on. And they make it more fun, not less. You can spend a lot of time on this and it’s really fun to learn.
Talking about bluffing and psychology if you do not know what the odds are of hitting a flush by the river, and therefore whether it makes sense to call a $20 bet out of your $80 stack when there’s already $36 in the pot, is exactly like getting into the details of how you want to defend Kyrie Irving if you don’t know how to dribble a basketball. If you do not know in five seconds how many outs you have, and which ones are to the absolute nuts and which ones are dirty, and how that number of outs relates to the explicit and implied pot odds, you shouldn’t be worried about bluffing just yet.
Deception and mixing it up is an important part of poker, but it’s Lesson 32. And it’s really quite unnecessary if you’re playing against people who skipped half the lessons before that. They will make stupid mistakes.
It’s especially important to learn the fundamentals today because poker is very popular, and the vast array of poker books, websites and ease of online play means that even at low level games, while there will be fish, there will also be some pretty clever people looking to make some fun money who absolutely DID read Miller and Sklansky and are playing solid fundamental poker. If you have the fundamentals down, you can avoid those people taking your stack, and win money from the folks who are on tilt or dumb or whatever.
I feel obliged to point out that in a fantasy world that fits this description, this will work right up to the point that an opponent has the nuts, at which point, of course, you will lose every penny you bet.
The OP did ask, “how to win in poker”, not “how to play poker like a cowboy”
I grant that if your opponents are playing irrationally, and if you can figure out the pattern in their plays (as good poker players can), then obviously you can exploit that to your profit.
Since humans are no good with randomness, there is almost always something to pick up on, which in poker is part of the game.
I respectfully disagree; probability is just that: nothing is certain. Even among ideal mathematical players you would observe wild bluffs, monster hands losing, etc.
What is true is that if all players were perfect, each one would break even in the long run. In real life, skill levels vary, which is what enables the dedicated gambler to consistently win.
Do you consider bridge a very boring game?
This part is false. Irrational play can never beat rational play. Imagine you are playing rock-paper-scissors, and you rationally choose each one with equal probability. Nothing your opponent does, rationally or irrationally, can beat you.
(In your example, eventually you will get called…)
If you consistently deviate from ideal play, you risk one of your opponents figuring it out and using it against you! Yet I believe we are in complete agreement that exploiting your opponents’ irrational play is a rational part of the (meta-)game of poker!
You’re assuming that rational play is based only on winning individual hands. But there’s no reason that you can’t take into account bluffing in developing the rational play: In fact, not doing so is itself irrational. As in paper-rock-scissors, the rational play in poker must involve some amount of randomness.
Yeah, I have a friend that always offers to coach me so that I can keep up with his crowd at the “big boy table” on his poker jaunts to exotic places.
But do I want to be in some wonderful pacific island resort, and spend a good chunk of time indoors, in a darkened room, with people I may not even like?
That “innumerable late hours in smoke-filled card clubs” line made it hit home.
The last time I “had a good night”, that night went from afternoon til 3 am. Once I figured out my winnings divided by the hours I’d spent, the hourly rate wasn’t impressive. Oh, and I was useless the next morning.
If you don’t like playing poker for its own sake, there isn’t a lot of point to the advice. To a pretty near approximation, a person’s chances of making a living at it are basically nothing today; it was always very hard, the competition is ferocious, the market isn’t getting bigger, and anyway, it’s a young person’s game. Obviously people do get rich at it, but people also get rich becomes professional baseball players or famous comedians, and you’re a fool to get into baseball or comedy and not have a plan for what your day job will be.
But it’s a lot more fun if you can at least break even. That means you’re winning some nice pots and getting involved in exciting hands, and having fun.
To me, playing poker from mid afternoon to 3 AM in our (thankfully, smoke-free) local casinos sounds just insanely fun. A day to just go play poker might actually be what I ask for for Father’s Day. With a new dog and stuff that ain’t happening like it used to, but, hey. That’s why I play - I don’t make living money at it. But then, my family is crazy about cards. When family is together, I guarantee you cards will be played; maybe poker, maybe spades, maybe Oh Shit, maybe euchre. (True story; the morning after our cottage wedding my new wife and I got up early and hid all the cards, because we knew if any were handy our relatives would start playing cards instead of helping clean up.) I just love cards, and poker is the best card game of them all.
If you don’t like poker, grinding through the laborious process of getting good at it is kinda pointless. But if you like poker and casinos and cards, like I do, you might as well get good at it.
I agree. The first thing you need to know in poker is the math. You have to learn and understand the probabilities, forwards and backwards, at all times. They are indeed the fundamentals.
But my point is that while you have to know the math, you have to also go beyond the math in order to win on a regular basis. A person (or a computer) playing strictly by math will be beaten by a player using math and psychology. (And a player trying to play strictly by psychology will be regularly beaten by a player using psychology and math.)