LOU KRIEGER
Some of my best ideas come from readers like you. Recently a
reader’s email suggested a column offering a survival guide to ease
the transition for beginners who are about to take the plunge and
play casino poker for the first time. This is an idea whose time
has come, and it probably ought to come around about once a year,
since there is a continuing influx of new players and new readers
who may never have given a moment’s thought to the differences
between playing poker in a casino or cardroom, and playing in a home
game or across the kitchen table with family and friends.
Playing in a casino
is not like playing in a home game or with family and friends. The
game is faster, for one thing, and that takes some getting used to.
And regardless of how many truly awful hands you’re apt to find
played in low-limit, “no fold’em” hold’em games, those games are
usually a lot tighter than they are around the kitchen table when
your opponents are Uncle Billy, your parents, and three or four of
your cousins. Even if you are an experienced home game player,
you will find the pace of casino poker substantially swifter than
the home game variety. You probably should figure on losing money
the first few times you play in a casino, if for no other reason
than your own unfamiliarity with the pace of the game and a few
formalized procedures, rules, and points of etiquette that are new
to you. Since you will, in essence, be paying for lessons the first
few times you play poker in a casino, there’s no reason to make them
any more costly than necessary. My advice is simple: Play small at
first. And stay small until you feel comfortable with the
environment, are sure that you can outplay your opponents, and can
afford a bigger game. Then move up.
Playing marginal
hands can be your undoing. Play few hands, but play aggressively
when you are dealt a good hand. Actually, if you’re going about it
the right way, you’ll gain as much or more by watching your
opponents when you are not involved in a hand than you’ll learn by
vying for pots with them. Make sure you have some idea about the
hands you will play from various starting positions before looking
at your cards. If you’re playing hold’em, my books contain
suggested starting hands that can be played from early, middle, and
late position. Other authors have also promulgated starting
standards for hold’em players, and most agree about the vast
majority of starting hands. What matters most is that you need a
basis for deciding which hands are playable and which ought to be
folded. When you’re really new to casino poker, playing fewer hands
will probably mitigate your losses while affording you an
opportunity to watch your opponents, observe and mentally catalogue
the kinds of hands each of them plays from early, mid, and late
position, and eventually use that knowledge to outplay them.
Low limit games are
no place for bluffers. In these games, where you typically have a
relatively large number of opponents seeing the flop and even
continuing beyond it with all sorts of hands I can’t imagine ever
playing, a bluff is unlikely to work for two reasons. As a general
rule, the more opponents you are confronting, the greater the chance
that at least one of them has a hand. And he or she will call when
you come out betting. In addition, low limit games are populated
with players who sleep very well, thank you, knowing that no one,
but no one, is stealing from them. Since bluffing is unlikely to
work, don’t try it
unless you’ve identified some opponents who are actually willing to
throw hands away when someone bets into them with what appears to be
a big hand.
Don’t be disappointed
if you can’t bluff. It’s an overrated tactic anyway. What you have
going for you instead is the certainty that you can expect to be
called whenever you bet, and may of those callers really should have
thrown their hands away a lot earlier. Moreover, whenever you make
a big hand, like a full house, the nut flush, or nut straight, you
can raise with the certainty that you will be called
thereby winning additional bets that you could never count on
winning in games where players will lay down marginal hands to a
bluff. In the low limit games you’ll be starting out in, you’ll
probably have to showdown the winning hand to capture the pot. That
makes for a somewhat mechanical, occasionally boring, but undeniably
profitable strategy: If you got the goods, bet. If you don’t,
check. And if someone is betting into your hand and you know yours
is better, go ahead and raise.
You’ll never know it
all. There is always something more to learn about poker, and even
when you think you know all there is to know, you won’t. Moreover,
much of what’s learned about poker has to be relearned from time to
time. Read books. All of them. Even if you get just one or two
good ideas from a book, it’s an investment that will pay for itself
in a relatively short period of time. I have a large library of
poker books, and I don’t consider any of them to have cost me money.
They are investments that have repaid the money spent to acquire
them many times over. Books aren’t all there is, either. Watch
videos, get yourself some software, like Wilson’s Turbo Texas
Hold’em, or Turbo 7-Card Stud (which not only lets you
play against computerized opponents, it is a terrific tool for
running simulations and conducting your own research about various
hands and scenarios), discuss poker with knowledgeable players, and
avail yourself of the advice offered on
the Internet newsgroup, Rec.Gambling.Poker.
This seems like a
pathetically small measure of advice, particularly when there is so
much to know before one morphs from newbie to skilled poker player.
But there’s a finite limit to the number of angels I can get on the
head of this particular pin. If you take my advice, you’ll get your
feet wet gradually
there’s no real need to dive into the deep water head first
and reinforce your experiences by thinking about what’s transpired
in your game and assessing it against the theories you’ve learned
from books and software. Don’t expect too much at first. Setting
the world on fire isn’t important. Learning and improving is. Keep
moving forward. Baby steps will do. As long as you’re making
progress, you’ll reach that point when you realize you’re a poker
player
a real one too, not a pretender. Even then, you’ll have to keep
learning. But it’s much more enjoyable when your winnings are
underwriting your hobby and maybe even your lifestyle.
PHIL GORDON
(Taken from his book, "The little green book")
Flopping 2 pair
Flopping two pair is worthy of celebration, or
at the very least, a bet or a raise. I am almost always committed to
seeing the turn card. In fact, I can’t remember a time that I folded
two pair after the flop against a single opponent unless the board
had three cards of the same suit.
Not all two pair are created equal. There are three different
varieties—top two pair, top and bottom pair, and bottom two pair—and
each has its own unique properties and strategic implications. One
constant among all three, however, is how unlikely I am to improve
my hand. I will only draw to a full house or better 17% of the time.
In other words, I’ve got to plan on winning with two pair.
Top Two Pair
When I flop top two pair, I want to get as much money into the pot
as possible. I’m almost certain to have the best hand, as there’s
only a small chance my opponent has flopped bottom set, and an even
smaller chance (given my two cards) that they’ve flopped top or
middle set.
In a perfect world, my opponent has flopped top pair with little or
no chance of drawing to a straight or a flush. I am in line to win a
big pot with very little chance of losing.
JENNIFER HARMAN
Join our
forum (click here) to discuss these tips or purchase Doyle
Brunson's Super System 2
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Jennifer's tips.
Beginner's should stick to a strict guideline
then you will:
1) Learn patience and discipline
2) Not have large daily swings
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