Poker Advice For Fools

I love playing poker, real poker. Nothing bothers me more than getting invited to a “dealer calls” home game and the host calls a game like Baseball,  Kings and Little Men, or even Five Card Draw with sevens, threes and one-eyed jacks wild. In fact, I always ask first, does your home game use wild cards? If the answer is yes, I don’t play. I was once in a discussion with another card player in which he tried to tell me how much fun game with wild cards are, and how much action it creates. For me, it just adds another element of luck that hurts the skill players.

You see, I really enjoy the skill of the game. The last time I played the game Kings and Little Men, I was dealt four queens, Now if you don’t know this game, it is a guts style game in which Kings and your lowest card is wild. You get 5 cards, decide if you are in or out (If you lose, you match the pot – no betting), and then you can change any cards you want with the deck. So I get dealt a king, 2 queens and of course my lowest card is automatically wild. 4 queen! I commit to the hand and ask for 1 card. The only way my hand could improve is to get a fifth queen. This could happen if I was dealt another queen, a king, or my low card pairs up. One other person also stays in. He asks for 4 cards. He kept an ace. My hand didn’t improve but his did. He got a king, a jack and two three. The jack was the same suit as his ace (I don’t remember which). So, he ended up with a Royal Flush, beating my four of a kind. $25 dollars out the window. Fuck that game!

I enjoy PLAYING poker with people who know how to play poker. If I get to a Texas Hold ‘em tournament and sit down at a table with a bunch of new players, my heart just sinks. I know, unless I get real unlucky, I’ll take their chips, but that’s not the point. I want to play poker. I want the chess game that is Texas Hold’em. I have a friend whom is a few good player (For a home game player, like me), and a love sitting down at a table with him. I know I’m going to have to think, to put puzzle pieces together. When I win a game with him, or people like his, I know I’ve accomplished something.

Of course, at this point, I am not playing for my livelihood. That might be a different story.

And there is the skill of playing bad players. I remember it look me a while to learn to adjust me game to be able to beat them, which is basically, play your cards, don’t be too tricky and bet big. Inexperienced players don’t have enough sense to fold. Of course, this depends on how they play. Sometimes I’ve played new players and they will fold to any raise, others seem to call any raise. Figure them out and play accordingly.

Anyway, poker for me is more for personal growth that a way to build a fortune. Hopefully, one day, I’ll be able to do both.

Lately I’ve been losing a lot by being sucked out on, but that is fine. I couple weeks ago I was dealt pocket queens. The guy to my right raised pre-flop with a sizable amount. I doubled that, more than a third of my stack, and a horrible player on the other side of the table went all-in, which was less than my raise. The guy to my right folded. Just what I wanted. The horrible player had pocket eights. Win this and I’m the chip leader. Nope, eight on the flop.

So this guy almost tripled up and a half hour later, he was watching.

This story has been happening to me too often lately.

I’ve seen this happen to others who don’t have the patiences to deal with it. They cry and whine and talk about giving up the game and I want to slip them upside the face with a dead fish and tell them to be a man! It fucking happens! And if you are going all in pre-flop, you’ve only seen two cards out of seven.

What to do when you are going through stretches like this? Remember, you are playing better poker and eventually, if you keep playing better poker, it will pay off.

There is another thing, and that it to learn.

Back to my story. So I went from possible chip leader to struggling a little. Three hands later, two guys with about half my stack went all-in. I had King-Jack off. I called. Once had Ace-Queen and the other I don’t remember. I lost and now was really hurting. At the time I thought, hey if I get lucky here, I’m right back in it. I was fucking stupid. Normally I would have never gone in with suck a god-awful marginal hand. Hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Can you say Tilt?

So live and learn. The suck out was one thing and I could use that as an excuse, but the truth is, I’m to blame for not cashing that night,

I was playing in a small tournament last weekend. Early in the game, a girl at the end of the table (who had no idea what she was doing) did not raise pre-flop. She failed to raise after the flop. In fact she just called down to the river and lost to trip kings. One king had been flopped and one came up on the turn.  She, of course had pocket aces. The winning hand had King-three off-suit. Immediately everyone at the table started saying crap like, “Curse of the Pocket Aces” and “I hate pocket Aces” or “I always lose with Pocket Aces”!

I, of course, thought, this should be a good night!

And it was for a while, until all these bad players were gone and the final 12 were all competent players. I just didn’t get the breaks and finished 10 out of 40+. Yes, there were a few hands I could have played better, but WTF!

Back to the subject matter. Pocket Aces! Whenever I hear people talk about “The Curse of Pocket Aces” I see dead money.

While this is a great starting hand, and I want all players to remember this, THEY ARE JUST A PAIR! A very good pair, the best, but they are still just a pair. Most hands are won with something better than a pair. They do not mean you automatically win. And if you play them like shit, you are destine to lose. Remember, they are just two of the seven cards you get to play with!

If you are one of the people crying about always losing with this starting hand, first I doubt that is true. Here is the deal: Since you expect to always win with it, I mean it looks so great when you see them, that when you win, you don’t really think about it. When you lose, it pisses you off to no end, so those times stick in your head. When you think back, you only remember the times you didn’t win. And what is added to that memory skew if that usually you’ll win a small pot with aces or lose a huge one. I thin if you kept records, you will win more often than you lose.

And if that is not true, you are probably playing them horribly! If you don’t raise pre-flop and five or more others are seeing a flop with you, you will lose more than 50% of the time. And then you bitch “Pocket Aces  . . . cry cry cry”

If you are truly losing more than you are winning, you suck and need to learn how to play them. Maybe I’ll do my thoughts on how to play them in a few weeks.

I once wrote a piece on a poker forum about getting all your chips in the pot pre-flop, with the best hand is not always the ideal strategy. Here is the situation I described.

I’m at a table of 9 and quickly realize I am the best player at the table. You’ve been there, when you know you can run over the table. A bunch of calling stations that fold to any raise unless they’ve got a pair or an ace and if they happen to get a great hand, they make it clear.

Anyway, so you site at this table and are collecting chips and building a nice stack. Now a new player joins the table and he has about as many chips as you.

For argument sake, let’s say he pushes all his chips in and you are positive that he has Ace-King. Don’t ask me how you know that but you do! OK, you’ve got pocket jacks. Do you call? You’d be the favorite! Approximate odds, you have a 56% chance of winning.

If it is early in the tournament, I say you fold. I have done this, I will keep dong this and it works. I don’t need slight mathematical edge at this point, not against a guy who could knock me out of the tournament with so much other dead money out there.

One of the main arguments I had was that the Casinos in Los Vegas have very small edge and yet they make millions. While this is true, for that to work it would require millions of bets a day. In a poker tournament, these coin-flip situations happen to a single player a hand full of time in one night, not enough to make a slight edge worth it. Eventually I will need to take chances.

You know who takes these changes early on? People who have no confidence in their post-flop play!

Do you wonder why, in most cases, the chip leader early on doesn’t even make the final table? It is because he (or she) takes chances with coin-flips, getting lucky a few times but eventually is catches up with him. Even if you are a 60% chance to win, 4 out of 10 times you will lose and in poker it only takes once to lose.

Like everything in poker, all situations vary. There are times when I will take a chance early on, just like there is a time when I’ll call a raise with a 7-2 off-suit. (yes

So you’ve hadn’t had a playable hand in two hours. You look down and see Ace-Queen off suit. Doesn’t that look nice? It’s like grabbing that cold glass of beer on the hot day in the sun. You’re out of position so you raise big, four times the big blind. Everyone folds until the cut-off three bets you all-in. Now what?

Ace-Queen is the worse hand in poker and playing it is the easiest way to go broke. I’d rather play a 7-2 than Ace-Queen. At least with 7-2 you can get away easy of you miss or get raised, but those pretty cards, with that bitch and her pointy headed friend, they’ll make you think you’ve got gold. And if you catch a good flop with 7-2, like a 7-7-2 flop, you can take down a huge pot. Not so much with Ace-Queen.

The problem is, you either going to get the blinds and antes, or you going to lose everything. If someone plays back at you, they’ve got you crushed, plan and simple. The best you can hope for is a low pocket pair and then you’re still and underdog. Usually you’ll be called with Ace’s, Kings, or Ace-King. The only time you might get lucky with some fish and get called by Ace-Jack or maybe even Ace-Ten, but if you do, invite me to the fame.

My advice for this hand, play it as you would a low pocket pair. Try to get in cheap and see the flop. If you miss, dump it.

One more thing, I know there is more to playing low pocket pairs than my example. But we can get into that later.