Guest columnist Lou Krieger provides some pointers on how to improve your game.  Lou is the host of Royal Vegas Poker and author of numerous books on poker including The Poker Player's Bible and < em> Hold'em Excellence .

Do you want to become a better poker player? Read on.Here are six things you can take to heart, and every one of them will improve your game.

This column was jointly written with Kathy Watterson, my coauthor on “Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games.” Some of the material in this column will be found in that book, although it will appear in a somewhat different form.

If you’ve wondered about whether playing poker on the Internet is for you -- whether in play money games just for practice, in learning environments such as Poker School Online, or for real money in cyber casinos -- but you just haven’t gotten around to it yet, this piece should be spot on. We’re going to answer most of the frequent questions we’ve encountered about playing poker online with facts, and with as little spin as we can muster.

This is the first article in a series to be coming over the next several months from Lou Krieger. This article looks at important poker concepts essential to the beginning player. Kathy Watterson, who is my coauthor “Internet Poker: How to Play and Beat Online Poker Games,” coauthored this article with me. Some of this material appears in that book, though in a somewhat different form. This piece is aimed at beginning poker players, particularly newcomers to “brick and mortar” and online casino poker, or those who might have been playing for a while, but never stopped to think about what it takes to become a winning poker player.