Wow, that last post was long and probably boring too. Sorry, but we need to get through the foundation before we get to the good stuff (my humiliating defeats at the poker table!).
So in this post I'll lay out my general strategy, here, at the beginning. I expect this to evolve over time.
Most players have watched a bunch of WSOP on ESPN or World Poker Tour on the travel channel or one of the gazillion other poker shows on TV these days. They decide that they can do the same thing as these guys, no problem! Especially after seeing Chris Moneymaker win the WSOP in 2003 everyone thought they could be a professional poker player. And that's as far as most people go in understanding the game. Beyond the basic rules they figure that Hold 'Em is all about being lucky enough to get good cards and having the balls to bluff your opponent when you don't. They figure that the game generally consists of "going all in" and trying to bluff your opponent.
However, what most people don't stop to think about is they are essentially watching a highlight reel of what occurred. Nowadays over 5000 people enter the World Series of Poker. The first day goes for 12 plus hours with over 550 tables of nine people playing poker at each of them. And out of those thousands of hours of poker being played, you get to see less than 90 minutes of action in a two hour show once you cut out the commercials and fluff pieces. 90 minutes from over 6600 hours of action during the first day alone!
To put that into perspective let's say the first day of the WSOP is equivalent to the first quarter of a football game. You are seeing the equivalent of a highlight reel of an eigth of a second of that 15 minute quarter! So by the final table, let's be generous and say that you get the equivalent of one minute of that last 15 minute quarter. If you knew nothing about football other than what you saw in those ridiculously short highlight reels you might think you could be a professional football player, just by suiting up and running out on the field!
So what are you missing? What doesn't make it to the air? Folding, lot's and lot's of folding. And small pots where no one's chip stack is on the line. People getting whittled down slowly and ground out of the tournament. Uninteresting play.
The other thing that has led to poker success is the "hole cam" try catching an old poker tournament on tv sometime (by old I mean pre 2002) one of the ones with Gabe Kaplan commentating. Without seeing each players hole cards, it is like watching paint dry. The best part of the current poker shows is that you know more than the players and you can determine when they are being bluffed or when they are dominated and making a mistake. When you are playing in a live setting you do not get the all powerful view of seeing everyone else's cards, which makes things quite different (duh!).
So given all of that I've decided to take a much more methodical approach to getting better at poker rather than just jumping in and going all in every chance I get until I learn something.
First and foremost I've started reading a bunch of poker books. I also started playing "kitchen" table poker with friends for several months before trying to play in a casino.
The first book I'm using as a guide is Lee Jones' "Winning Low Limit Hold'em" which can be picked up here from Conjelco. The one listed on Amazon is the second edition and the one on Conjelco is the third edition. You can also get it at Borders. This book is written specifically for playing at low limit hold em tables and addresses the many types of players and the kind of play you will find at these tables.
Essentially, the book can be summed up like this: Only play quality cards and when you do play, play aggressively.
If you play the way the book tells you to play, you will fold most of the time and then when you play you will bet like a madman. You would figure that people would get wise to you and not play when you play but you would be surprised by how short people's memories are at the table or just how much they are not paying attention.
I'm getting my limit game down first because it is purely mechanical, especially at low limit games. You have a set list of hands you will play and then you either bet them or you fold. There is very little subtelty to the game because it is wasted on the players you find yourself pitted against because they don't understand what your play means anyway.
Think of the low limit game as the fundamentals of the sport. Once we master the basics we move up in levels and expand our repetoire and knowledge as we go.
August 03, 2008
Here We Go
I'm on a mission. I want to grow a poker bankroll so that I can play medium limit Texas Hold 'Em and low no limit Texas Hold 'Em. Eventually, I'd like to have a sizable enough bankroll to be able to enter the World Series of Poker, but that is putting the cart before the horse. Of course, so would a lot of other people. If you've had it with all the hype and over blown coverage of poker lately then you may not like this blog as it is going to be more of the same, or it could be a breath of fresh air. Hell I don't know, you decide.
What I want to do in this blog is describe my thinking process, and how I'm going about trying to be a better poker player. What this may end up being is a cautionary tale about how not to go about learning to play poker.
For those of you who are not poker players here are the basics:
Texas Hold 'Em is a deceptively simple card game. The point of the game is to have the best hand of five cards from two "hole" cards dealt to each player and five community cards. The five best cards make up the hand and that hand can be the five community cards, one of the cards dealt to the player and four community cards or the two cards dealt to the player and three of the five community cards.
Each player is dealt two cards face down. Everyone looks at his or her cards and then an initial round of betting occurs. The dealer "burns" the top card from the deck (discards it) and deals out three community cards, known as "The Flop" or "Third Street". Another round of betting occurs, after which the dealer burns another card and deals the fourth community card, known as "The Turn" or "Fourth Street". A third round of betting occurs and a final card is burned before the last community card is dealt, this is known as "The River" or "Fifth Street".
Astute readers with some poker experience will note that this game is essentially seven card stud.
There are a few variations of the game with respect to betting: Limit, No Limit, Pot Limit and Spread Limit.
Limit - Generally denoted by two numbers with the word Limit after them like 2-4 Limit, 3-6 Limit, 20-40 Limit etc. The first numbers indicate the amount of the bets during the four betting rounds. In a 2-4 Limit game the pre-flop and post flop betting is $2 a bet or raise capped at four bets (usually, sometimes three). For example: You are playing in a 2-4 Limit game. You are dealt your two cards and are the first to act. You must decide to call a $2 bet (I'll explain why in a moment), raise to $4 or fold. You cannot raise to $3 or $5 because the bet increment on the first two rounds is $2. There is a maximum of four bets so the betting is "capped" at $8. In the final two rounds of betting the bet increment is $4 so you must bet or raise in increments of $4.
Generally, people sit at a nine person table shaped roughly like an oval or a rectangle with rounded edges. Along one long side sits a dealer. A disk labeled "Dealer" travels around the table from player to player in a clockwise direction. In order to get the action started and seed the pot, the two players must put in some money before the cards are dealt. They are known as the Small Blind and Big Blind. Typically, the Small blind is half the initial bet and the big blind is the full initial bet. These are "live" bets which means there is already a bet in play before the cards are dealt.
After the first two cards are dealt, the person to the left of big blind acts first, calling the bet, raising or folding and the action continues to the left until everyone has acted and the pot has been made "square" by everyone either calling the raises or folding. Provided that there is still more than one player in the hand the community cards are dealt and on the next betting round the small blind (the person directly to the left of the player with the dealer button) acts first and play continues to the left. Play continues in this fashion on each subsequent betting round. If there is more than one player left in the hand on the last betting round, players show their cards and the person with the best hand wins the pot.
No Limit Texas Hold 'Em works the same way as Limit Texas Hold 'Em with the following exceptions:
There is no limit on the amount you can bet each round. You can bet the minimum amount up to the total amount of your chips (all in).
The numbers in a No Limit Hold 'Em game denote the minimum bet amounts on each round, so a 2-4 No Limit game means that in the first two rounds you can bet from $2 to all your chips and in the last two rounds you can bet from $4 to all your chips.
Pot Limit works very much like No Limit except that your maximum bet is limited to the amount of chips currently in the "pot" or the amount of chips already bet. Again a Pot Limit game will be denoted by the minimum bets on each round 2-4 Pot Limit for example.
In California, it is illegal to play No Limit Hold 'Em in many communities. So to get around this law card rooms frequently have Spread Limit Hold 'Em. This allows you to bet any amount between the spread on each round, so I Spread Limit game will typically be denoted as something like 2-100 Spread Limit Hold 'Em where you can bet anywhere between $2 and $100. Most of the time the spread is large that this game essentially plays the same as No Limit.
There are ridiculous numbers of variations on the betting rules and the types of card games you can play. But to keep things simple, I'm not going to get into them here, if something comes up down the road I'll do my best to explain it, and if I don't leave a comment and I'll do my best to clarify things.
Okay, wake up people! That last section was mostly written for my mom and my wife so they won't feel lost, okay so lay off with the sarcastic comments thanking me for my stellar explanation of Hold 'Em.
So with all that in mind here are my "rules of engagement" so to speak:
1) I'm letting my bankroll determine my level of play. I need to have at least 200 "Big Bets" to play in a Limit game of a certain size. So to play in a 3-6 limit game I need $1200 in my bankroll to play.
2) I need 300 "Big Bets" to play in a No Limit (and Spread Limit counts here too) game of a certain size. $1200 would also let me play 2-4 No Limit or 2-100 Spread Limit.
3) The exception to the above two rules is I can play in a 2-4 limit game with a bankroll of 20 big bets ($80 for the mathmatically challenged).
4) I will add $20 to my bankroll each month as long as it is below $800. As soon as it gets above $800 I stop adding to it and vice versa.
So four simple rules that will guide what game I play in. And with that, we are on our way.
What I want to do in this blog is describe my thinking process, and how I'm going about trying to be a better poker player. What this may end up being is a cautionary tale about how not to go about learning to play poker.
For those of you who are not poker players here are the basics:
Texas Hold 'Em is a deceptively simple card game. The point of the game is to have the best hand of five cards from two "hole" cards dealt to each player and five community cards. The five best cards make up the hand and that hand can be the five community cards, one of the cards dealt to the player and four community cards or the two cards dealt to the player and three of the five community cards.
Each player is dealt two cards face down. Everyone looks at his or her cards and then an initial round of betting occurs. The dealer "burns" the top card from the deck (discards it) and deals out three community cards, known as "The Flop" or "Third Street". Another round of betting occurs, after which the dealer burns another card and deals the fourth community card, known as "The Turn" or "Fourth Street". A third round of betting occurs and a final card is burned before the last community card is dealt, this is known as "The River" or "Fifth Street".
Astute readers with some poker experience will note that this game is essentially seven card stud.
There are a few variations of the game with respect to betting: Limit, No Limit, Pot Limit and Spread Limit.
Limit - Generally denoted by two numbers with the word Limit after them like 2-4 Limit, 3-6 Limit, 20-40 Limit etc. The first numbers indicate the amount of the bets during the four betting rounds. In a 2-4 Limit game the pre-flop and post flop betting is $2 a bet or raise capped at four bets (usually, sometimes three). For example: You are playing in a 2-4 Limit game. You are dealt your two cards and are the first to act. You must decide to call a $2 bet (I'll explain why in a moment), raise to $4 or fold. You cannot raise to $3 or $5 because the bet increment on the first two rounds is $2. There is a maximum of four bets so the betting is "capped" at $8. In the final two rounds of betting the bet increment is $4 so you must bet or raise in increments of $4.
Generally, people sit at a nine person table shaped roughly like an oval or a rectangle with rounded edges. Along one long side sits a dealer. A disk labeled "Dealer" travels around the table from player to player in a clockwise direction. In order to get the action started and seed the pot, the two players must put in some money before the cards are dealt. They are known as the Small Blind and Big Blind. Typically, the Small blind is half the initial bet and the big blind is the full initial bet. These are "live" bets which means there is already a bet in play before the cards are dealt.
After the first two cards are dealt, the person to the left of big blind acts first, calling the bet, raising or folding and the action continues to the left until everyone has acted and the pot has been made "square" by everyone either calling the raises or folding. Provided that there is still more than one player in the hand the community cards are dealt and on the next betting round the small blind (the person directly to the left of the player with the dealer button) acts first and play continues to the left. Play continues in this fashion on each subsequent betting round. If there is more than one player left in the hand on the last betting round, players show their cards and the person with the best hand wins the pot.
No Limit Texas Hold 'Em works the same way as Limit Texas Hold 'Em with the following exceptions:
There is no limit on the amount you can bet each round. You can bet the minimum amount up to the total amount of your chips (all in).
The numbers in a No Limit Hold 'Em game denote the minimum bet amounts on each round, so a 2-4 No Limit game means that in the first two rounds you can bet from $2 to all your chips and in the last two rounds you can bet from $4 to all your chips.
Pot Limit works very much like No Limit except that your maximum bet is limited to the amount of chips currently in the "pot" or the amount of chips already bet. Again a Pot Limit game will be denoted by the minimum bets on each round 2-4 Pot Limit for example.
In California, it is illegal to play No Limit Hold 'Em in many communities. So to get around this law card rooms frequently have Spread Limit Hold 'Em. This allows you to bet any amount between the spread on each round, so I Spread Limit game will typically be denoted as something like 2-100 Spread Limit Hold 'Em where you can bet anywhere between $2 and $100. Most of the time the spread is large that this game essentially plays the same as No Limit.
There are ridiculous numbers of variations on the betting rules and the types of card games you can play. But to keep things simple, I'm not going to get into them here, if something comes up down the road I'll do my best to explain it, and if I don't leave a comment and I'll do my best to clarify things.
Okay, wake up people! That last section was mostly written for my mom and my wife so they won't feel lost, okay so lay off with the sarcastic comments thanking me for my stellar explanation of Hold 'Em.
So with all that in mind here are my "rules of engagement" so to speak:
1) I'm letting my bankroll determine my level of play. I need to have at least 200 "Big Bets" to play in a Limit game of a certain size. So to play in a 3-6 limit game I need $1200 in my bankroll to play.
2) I need 300 "Big Bets" to play in a No Limit (and Spread Limit counts here too) game of a certain size. $1200 would also let me play 2-4 No Limit or 2-100 Spread Limit.
3) The exception to the above two rules is I can play in a 2-4 limit game with a bankroll of 20 big bets ($80 for the mathmatically challenged).
4) I will add $20 to my bankroll each month as long as it is below $800. As soon as it gets above $800 I stop adding to it and vice versa.
So four simple rules that will guide what game I play in. And with that, we are on our way.
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