Cheat.

It’s the best suggestion I can offer, the other following techniques are significantly less profitable and aren’t nearly as easy. They also require you to be pretty decent at the game and that takes a ton of work, you need to understand odds and percentages (which sucks because man, you bought a videogame not a math lesson). Cheating puts you in a better position in case you end up with a terrible starting hand (I’ve won with a 7-2 off suit) and best of all doesn’t have an effect on your morality meter. If you’re caught cheating a member of the table will challenge you to a duel which will either see you dead or short the money you walked in with (but, you get an increase to your fame rating so swings and roundabouts).

The hardest part is starting off; in order to be able to cheat you have to play a round of poker to unlock the Elegant Suit. Buy it from the tailor in Thieves’ landing and either get a room to change in or go out of town and set up camp. When you next play a round you’ll be given the chance to hit Y to put a card up your sleeve. To do this you need to keep a slider from moving too far into the red on either side, use light taps on the left analogue stick because too much pressure will send the meter in the other direction and you’ll be caught. If you need practice getting your balance, break in a few horses (you’ll learn how in an early mission and you can find others in the world map).

Getting a card in your hand is significantly easier, just a light tap in the direction of the card you want to replace is enough to last the entire countdown in most instances. I recommend only doing this once because it lessens the risk you’ll get caught, you’ll always have an opportunity to swap the card after the fifth one on the table is laid down even if you’ve called all-in earlier in the round. There have been several situations where I’ve moved a card over only to move it back because I had better options.

Any card can potentially help you out, but it’s good to hang on to aces because they’re the most handy (being the highest rated). If you know you’re going to win without using the ace then change the card that you’re sparing to cheat with.

This is the most important rule: Only cheat to get a card in your hand once, you’ll kick yourself by giving away an important one for the next hand or you’ll mess up and be caught when you’re 1000 chips up wasting a good amount of time. I’m unsure if it gets progressively harder to keep the needle in line as you’re dealing to less people, but I am always a worse cheat toward the end of a game.

That’s everything on cheating, now understanding when to raise and when to fold. This is based on AI which is almost incapable of bluffing, if you raise on a table of players who have been checking the entire hand they will fold and you can walk away with the pot. (though, be careful about the last card, they may surprise you with something unexpected) this works really well for wearing down the final AI player at the end of a match because having more chips means that you can raise after the blind and walk away with the small change bit by bit until you win (though, at this point maybe just quit out and walk away, it’s a dull game of attrition).

I’m sure I’ve missed some so I’ll update at intervals. Feel free to suggest tips in the comments.