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.