Archive for the ‘poker’ Category

7 Card Stud

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

7 Card Stud is a simple poker game that is easy enough for new players to pick up, but also challenging and interesting enough to hold your attention beyond the basic level. It’s a classic poker game that was very popular during the Second World War.

A good variation can be found at http://pokerforfree.org/. The game begins with an ante, where every player puts a small predetermined amount of money into the pot to start it off. Beginning to the left of the dealer, each player is dealt two cards face down known as the “hole” or “pocket” cards and one card face up.

After each player looks at their hole cards to see what they’ve been dealt, the player who has the lowest card face up is required to place a small bet known as the “bring in”. Play then continues to that player’s left, and each player around the table can call, raise or fold their cards.

Once this round of betting has been completed, each player is dealt another card face up known as the “turn” card or the “Fourth Street”. Another round of betting takes place, but this time it is the player with the highest two cards showing who begins. From this point onwards, it is always the player with the highest combination of face up cards who starts the bet.

Once the second round of betting is complete, another is dealt to each player face down known as the “river” or the “Fifth Street”. Each player should now have three cards face up on the table. A round of betting follows, then another face up card is dealt to each player, bringing the total to four.

Another round of betting takes place before the last face up card is dealt. This is the fifth face up card for each player, but their seventh card in total including their hole cards. Each player now has their maximum amount of cards.

A final round of betting occurs after every player has seven cards. Each player must then reveal their hand at the showdown, and the player who is able to make the best five card hand from a combination of their hole and face up cards is the winner.

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Play better Texas Hold’em

Monday, March 8th, 2010

If you are a beginner at Texas Holdem poker, here are a few elements for correct play. If you are experienced already, you can still read this as a refresher.

The most important thing that all PokerStars pros know is to raise and reraise big pairs and big aces at the first round of betting, in other words pre flop. The main reason for doing that is to make the pot size larger when you have a high chance of winning it. The second reason is that you want weak hands to fold, because there is hardly a worse situation than getting your rockets cracked by a garbage hand like 96o when the flop comes K96.

Another key point that Phil Hellmuth mentions in his book is to avoid drawing to the idiot side of a straight, i.e the lower side of the straight. If you hold 98s and the flop comes JT4 rainbow, it is not too good an idea to bet or call big bets with such a straight draw. Because you will often win a small pot or lose a big pot. The reason is if the pot gets big someone else has a big hand and if a queen comes, there is a good chance another player has a higher straight than you.

The next tip is to fold unconnected cards of medium strength most of the time. Even low pairs should be mucked unless you are set mining. But even if you hit a set, there is always the chance that another player has a higher set, and it is very costly to lose a huge pot in a battle of sets when you are dominated like that without mercy. Remember you want to win big pots and lose small pots, so the habit of folding such low cards is a good one to have.

Finally top poker pros say that learning how to catch a bluff is a fundamental skill to have. Learn to understand which of your opponents bluff a lot to attempt to make you fold your good hands. Try to be not predictable yourself. Master how to bluff perfectly, since this will potentially add a lot of money to your wallet. Study your competitors to see if they are easy to bluff, or if they bluff all the time.

Even if you spend a lot of time playing online poker, you may not win money immediately. You do need to first sharpen your skills to become good at the game of poker so read articles like this one to learn strategy.

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Early poker days

Monday, September 21st, 2009

The Journey Continues

A pastor once told me that each decade in one’s life offered new challenges. The twenties are usually spent finding one’s place and developing a career. I may have found God, but exited my twenties without a career. I left that decade still working at Wendy’s and fearing I wouldn’t ever find my lot in life.

Thankfully, at the ripe old age of 32 I found poker. Unlike today’s young guns I was a decade late and a computer short, but I was on my way. Earlier, I described the beginning of my poker career which started out playing $1-2 limit holdem and $20 tournaments.

Now I will share my personal travels through tournament poker along with some of the key discoveries I’ve made along the way.With my first five-figure win in Lake Elsinore, a $10,000 bankroll seemed sufficient to take on the poker world. It probably would have been enough if I had proper money management skills.

Instead I bought a new Ninja motorcycle and jumped into the biggest game in the casino, which at that time was $40/$80. But my skills couldn’t keep up with my ego, and it wasn’t long before I took a hard fall onto the pavement of reality. I refused to learn my lesson and spent the next few years wandering and squandering my bankroll.

I wanted to turn poker pro, but lacked the financial discipline to make the jump. I eventually found my way back to the $20/$40 games at the Hollywood Park Casino. It was then that I met Lucia, a long-time professional who possessed perhaps the best money-management skills of anyone in poker.

Lucia took me under her wing and began to teach me how to invest my cash game winnings into satellites and parlay satellite wins into tournaments. Her style, while different from my own, led me to learn the value of discipline and patience – but more importantly how to survive. in the late 90′s, I was either lucky or smart enough to have surrounded myself with twenty-plus-year professionals like her and others, all of whom gave me a greater perspective of the game.

Alone I would not have made it anywhere as big as I did in poker.

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Early days of poker

Monday, July 13th, 2009

This follows on my post about poker in the early days.

I started watching the yellow chip ($5-10) games and began setting my sights on them. I was making $125 a day dealing and probably was squeaking out another $100 from the felt.

The moral decision still hung in the back of my head, but I made the move and continued to play. I began losing and eventually went broke more then once. I would borrow money, win and pay back, and then go broke again. It was a vicious cycle.

I remember one night in particular, sitting in my car in the parking lot of HPC, crying and wondering what I was going to do next. My emotions hidden by the dark night as I slumped against the steering wheel, I picked myself up but still struggled to balance work and stay in action. This went on for a year until I was promoted from dealer to running the daily tournaments.

Then in 1997 I had an epiphany, the notion that poker was not a game of me against everyone else, but rather a game of me against myself. My ability to develop and apply qualities such as discipline, patience, and the ability to read people and their actions not only brought better poker results, but helped develop character beyond the table.

As I learned the game and improved, I found that the game held me accountable for my new found knowledge, and that if I deviated from what I knew was right I was usually punished. My lack of patience, of waiting for the proper hands or situations, is a high cost for education; it’s a class in which I am continually enrolled.

I began to see the game come alive and become a microcosm for life. I now understood that the work was within and not looking out, and the chips were just a way of keeping score. With my moral dilemma resolved, I started playing more of the $20 tournaments and experienced some good results.

I liked the idea that everyone started on equal footing and that the champion would be decided by who played their cards best that day. I won my first weekly tournament that year and, in between work, extended my tournament travels to Lake Elsinore.

The tournaments were bigger ($200 buy-ins) and the structures offered the players more chips and longer rounds. One night, I finished second to Jun Prado and just like that I won over $10,000, had a bankroll, and felt ready to conquer the poker world.

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