Month: January 2020

So you already know how to play Texas Hold’em. It doesn’t take very long to learn the rules of the game, the rank of each hand, or what in the world the blinds are all about. You can pick up all of these ideas very quickly, but that will take you only so far. To really play the game well, you have to learn – and use – poker strategy. Don’t worry. You don’t have to do math (pot odds calculations) in your head. That comes later. For now, because you’re still new to the strategy of the game, you should start with a much more basic concept: folding before the flop. This basic concept is also the first thing that players should learn when playing poker games. 

Some new players think that folding hands, especially preflop, is a poor way to play. “But if I don’t stay in the pot, I can’t win!” That’s true for that particular pot. You can’t win a pot when you don’t play the hand. Playing is exciting; folding and watching other people rake in those pots is boring. But when you realize that you’re better off sitting out when you know that you’re trying to work with a big pile of nothing, you become a better poker player: one who has more money or play chips or whatever it is that you collect when you win.

Before you sit down for your next poker session – whether it’s live or online – set your own standards for starting hands. You should have a very good idea of what is worth playing and what you will fold before you show up for your game. That way, you have one less decision to make at the table. This frees up more of your brainpower for other decisions, such as how much to bet or raise.

Good starting hands include everything from high pairs to A-K to high connecting cards (like Q-J). You should definitely play A-A, for example, considering that this is the best possible starting hand. What to do with other high pairs – like Q-Q – depends on what the players ahead of you have already done. If you’re in late position and three people ahead of you have all raised, you can be reasonably certain that somebody’s holding a higher pair (A-A or K-K). Somebody might have Big Slick (A-K), which is another starting hand that can beat yours if the cards fall in that player’s favor. Think about what other players have already done before you commit yourself to your own cards: this will save, or make, you a lot of chips over time.

Bad starting hands…well, there are quite a few of these. 7-2 off-suit is the worst starting hand in Hold’em, so you should fold this one every time. Of the tens of thousands of Hold ’em hands that I’ve played, I have regretted folding 7-2 off-suit once. And that was only because three deuces came on the flop (I would have had quads). This is not going to happen very often. The overwhelming majority of the time, I’ve been justified in folding those terrible cards. So I’ve lost one monster-sized pot by folding 7-2, but saved myself many, many losses by folding that hand. So far, I’ve saved myself a lot more money than I would have won in that pot. This is why preflop folding is a good idea in the long run.

Some starting hands are good or bad depending on the action before your turn. If you have A-4 off-suit in late position, for example, the hand could go either way. If one person raises, then another person re-raises, then a third guy shoves all-in, you have to think about your starting hand. You have a weak Ace (an Ace with a poor kicker): somebody in front of you probably has a better starting hand, which definitely puts the odds against you. There is no shame in folding a weak ace. None. Really.

A common question is, “How many hands should I fold preflop?” Actually, you will probably fold at least as many hands as you play. This doesn’t seem right to many new players. That’s mostly because the version of Hold’em that we see on ESPN and the Travel Channel is edited for content. It’s not exciting to watch everybody fold to the Big Blind, so the powers that be cut out most of that boring footage. We don’t see much folding, so we’re tempted to think that the top players don’t do it very often. That’s just not true.

Every now and then, you’ll fold a weak starting hand that turns out to be the best one. This is not going to happen very often, so don’t be tempted into thinking that you need to play that hand. More often than not, folding a bad starting hand turns out to be the best decision. Keep this in mind when you fold your 4-2 off-suit and see what would have been a full house come on the flop.

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I got a phone call for a small (kind of) house game. Currently unemployed and in debt, I should have thought twice about agreeing to go. But a true poker player at heart leaves all that junk behind and goes to play, even if it is only a 5 cent-10 cent table. We go. We flock to these new age torture chambers with hope and big dreams. While my earlier gaming addiction was limited to KoinQQ, it had now evolved to include a wide array of other games as well.

Thinking about it, we seem to be no different than my grandparents who came here for a better life. Instead of crossing bodies of water or land masses, we trudge to the nearest casino with hundreds of dollars in our pocket, our fragile skill set, and hope. Hope is the thing that keeps poker players going. No matter how bad the economy is getting, on a Friday night the poker room at the Trop always has a waiting list. The itch to play can only constitute for so much of an excuse. We are dreamers. Poker players all look to have that once in while lucky streak that Jamie Gold rode into a WSOP bracelet and over twelve million dollars. We hear stories of people making $100 into $1000 in a few hours. Most of us have done it at least once. Poker shows us the doors and the hands we play are the keys to open them. But what happens when we play poorly or get a bad beat? Do we falter? Maybe. Maybe for one month we pull back the reins and try to bury that part of us.

But, we miss the exhilaration of an all in, the satisfaction of bluffing out someone, and the genuine happiness of getting called when you have the nuts. We forget about the junky calls and the misdeals and the mistakes. We forget and give poker another chance. It has the same characteristics of a twist love affair, but if you play your cards right you can profit. No matter how much a poker player gets cracked with Aces, we will always love them. No matter how terrible the economy is becoming, we will still find time for our little house games.

The poker table is a microcosm for the world, a stage, if you will. Yet, perhaps the biggest draw to poker is the fact that an unemployed 21-year-old woman can sit at a table with a Product Manager, a Goldman-Sachs executive, and a Pizza man and we are all equal. Job titles, socio-ecomonic statuses, class do not come into effect at the poker table. It all gets washed away. The only aspect that divides us is our poker ability. Off the table, we are who we are, no doubt about that. Yet when we sit, be it 5-handed or at a full table, we can be whoever we want to be. The rest just fades away and the focus becomes that very moment.