Suffered a ‘Bad Beat’ playing Poker? Don’t Tilt.

Many a bankroll has been destroyed by a bad beat. It’s not that you loose the ranch on that hand, it’s what happens after its over. Bad beats are about as much fun as hitting your thumb with a hammer, so you had better learn to deal with them if your playing poker.

Poker maven Lee Jones has developed Poker’s Prime Directive, “Play happy, or don’t play at all.” It’s hard to be happy when your full house loses to a miracle draw. Steam comes out of your ears. The Poker God hates you, and you feel as if the “Law of averages” has been repealed. Get over it or go home.

First realize bad beats only happen to good players. It is rare for a good player to put a bad beat on another player. Good players calculate how to play the hand correctly, so they don’t go for long shots without the proper odds. It’s the ‘fish’ that suck out. When that happens, the good player acts like a pinball machine when shoved too far. They go on ‘Tilt”, play like a maniac and usually lose their bankroll.

If your tilting, but the game is good and you think you can make a profit, you have to cool down. Take a break. Walk around the casino. Ogle the cocktail waitresses or hunks, depending on your preference. Do anything to relax, forget the pain you are feeling, and get back into the proper frame of mind to be a winning player.

To combat the bad beat syndrome there is a universal fact you have to realize if you are a poker player. Short-term results are irrelevant. What counts is how you do during your poker life. Think of it as a book and each session a page in that book. If you are writing a best seller, you have to make the proper decisions when faced with a choice of words to use. It’s the same in poker. In the long run, good decisions make money, bad decisions lose money. If you have the best of the situation, over time you will show a profit.

Here is an example. We make a bet flipping a coin. Every time it lands heads, I will give you one dollar. Every time it lands tails, you will give me two dollars. Over the long run, say a million hands, heads will come up about half the time, and tails will hit half the time. After a million hands heads comes up 500-thousand times and I give you a dollar, for a total of 500-thousand dollars. Tails also will come up 500-thousand times and each time you will give me a dollar for a total of a million dollars. This bet gives me an expected profit of fifty-cents every time we toss the coin. There will be times when tails comes up eight out of ten times. That makes you feel good, you are on a streak. That doesn’t matter. At the end of the million hands each, heads and tails will come up half the time, and since you are laying me two to one odds, I win a half a million dollars. When an outcome's up more than its mathematical expectation it’s called bunching. That is what causes loosing sessions. Over the long run the ‘Law of averages’ is still enforced. In limit poker you will be a winner as long as the odds are in your favor. Playing the ‘law of averages.’ is your profit machine.

Remember two things. In the long run good decisions win money and bad decisions lose money, so make good decisions. The second is the Prime Directive, “Play happy or don’t play at all.” You will win in the long run as long as you follow these too rules. Relax, have fun, make good decisions, and you will be a winning player. Just remember to turn the ‘Tilt’ control to ‘off’.

Playing Poker in a Casino. Playing on the Internet. Different Games, different styles

While the mechanics of the game are the same, there are vast differences between casino and Online Poker. Those differences change how you play. If you don't understand then you should not play in both.

The first difference is obvious. When you play in a casino you are able to see your opponents. That gives you the opportunity to study their play and watch for indications of the strength of their hands. This is known as picking up on ‘tells', a valuable way to increase profits. Online you can't see your opponents and have to rely on betting patterns. In both, betting patterns are more valuable than physical tells, especially when playing with good players. In face to face play a tricky opponent can set you up by exhibiting a tell when holding a weak hand. You catch him at it and assume that tell means he has a weak hand. Later he will exhibit the same tell, but when you call, expecting he is weak, he shows you a monster hand. This is called a reverse tell.

Online poker runs at a far faster pace. In a casino, a fast game may have 40 hands an hour. Online you will be playing far more hands an hour, perhaps double the rate as in a casino. In a casino, you can play at only one table. Online sites allow you to play as many as four to six tables at the same time. A good player can maximize his hourly win rate by playing more than one game at a time.

The rake, how much the house takes from the pot to pay for hosting the game, is lower online than in casinos. Casinos have to pay dealers, floor men, cocktail waitresses, as well as for tables, chips and cards. Online a server can host many games at the same time, making online overhead much lower. Most online sites charge a 5 percent rake, with a two or three-dollar maximum. Casinos usually charge 10 percent with a maximum of up to five dollars. In addition in live games the winner is expected to toke (Tip) the dealer. Say you win a one hundred-dollar pot. Online the site takes three dollars. In a casino the rake could be five dollars and the toke a dollar. Your online profit is 97-dollars, while in the casino it is 94-dollars. That three-dollar difference adds up over the many hands you play. In a hundred wins the difference is 300-dollars. That's not chump change.

Online you can use a "chat box" to communicate with your opponents, but this is cumbersome and limited to short messages such as "Good hand"in the casino you can chat up a storm, socializing with the other players. This gives you an opportunity to use conversation to affect how you opponents play

To play in a casino, you have to dress up and drive to the casino. If you smoke, most casinos have no smoking card rooms. If you are having a nicotine fit, you have to leave the game for a while to go to a place where smoking is allowed. You can play or you can smoke, but you can't do both at the same time. On line you can sit in your easy chair naked, chain smoking and no one will know or care. You also don't have to dress and drive to the casino. Online play is much more convenient.

Both card rooms and the Internet have their advantages and disadvantages. If you live near a casino you can go out to play when you feel like playing with humans, you can socialize with. You can play online if you have only a limited time to play, or just want to avoid the inconvenience associated with a casino. If you don't live within driving distance and want to play, you have only one option, the net.

Daniel Negreanu,One of Poker's best of the best

Poker players like golfers can be divided into three catagorize, duffers, good players, and the very best like Tiger Woods and the top players on the PGA circuit. In poker, Daniel Negreanu is one of the best of the best.

Negreanu was born in Toronto Canada July 26, 1974, and began playing poker in High School. He dropped out to play in the numerous illegal games in Toronto until he turned 21, when he moved to Las Vegas. After losing his bank roll he returned to Canada, rebuilt his stake and moved back to Las Vegas.

How good a player is Negreanu? As of the start of 2007, Negreanu has racked up nearly ten-million dollars in live tournament wins. In 1998 he won his first bracelet at the World Series of Poker, playing in the $2000 pot limit tournament. That win made him the youngest player to win a bracelet in WSOP history, an honor he held until 2004. That year he won the "Best Player" award at the World Series. Since then he has won two more WSOP bracelets. Three may not seem impressive until you realize, the best poker player in the world, Doyle Brunson has won only ten, and he was playing in the Series since before Negreanu was born. On The World Poker Tour he ranks third in the list of poker player of the year awards.

Daniel, known as "The Kid" plays in the highest limit games in Las Vegas and is a regular winner. His greatest strength is his ability to read his opponents hands. He regularity correctly predicts his opponent's cards before they are shown.

He has played in a number of televised poker events including "High States Poker" which featured a 100-thousand dollar minimum buy in. Negreanu bought in for a million dollars, lost nearly half of it during a run of bad luck, then won it back.

Unlike some of poker's other high limit players Negreanu is really a nice guy. In 2006 Card Player magazine named him "Favorite Poker player." He writes poker advice articles, He tutors other players and writes an advice column for Full Tilt Poker, an online poker site.

So how go of a player is Negreanu? You would have to play against him to find out, but most consider him one of the top ten players in the world.

New to Casino Poker? The rules of Poker etiquette

Playing poker in a casino you have to act courteously, remember you are not alone at the table. The best rule is "Do onto others as you would have them do onto you."

Before playing in a new cardroom, read the house rules. Most casinos have the same general rules, but some vary them. Make sure you know the rules of the game before you sit down.

Poker is a game of information. It is important that you don't give information that would help others. The first rule is, wait until it is your turn to act. If you act out of turn, say through away your cards before it's your turn, you are giving valuable information to players who have yet to act. To prevent prematurely giving away what you are going to do, wait until it's your turn to act before looking at your cards. This also helps you by preventing you from giving away the strength of your hand while others who will act before you have decided what to do.

All casinos have a rule, "One person to a hand." Never discuss a hand while it is in progress or give advice to an active player. The later will earn a rebuke from the dealer or a formal warning from the floor man. If you persist in advising active players, you will be banned from the card room.

If you are going to raise, say "raise" when it's your turn before doing anything. The rule is you have to say either raise or place all the chips in the pot in one motion. Saying "I call your bet" placing the bet into the pot, the "and raise you" then placing more chips in the pot is called a string bet. This is not allowed. A cheat could say "I call" look at his opponent's reaction then decide if he wants to raise. Cheats are known as "Cross roaders" and the action is called a "Move." Casino's don't want cheating because it drives honest players to the competition.

Try and keep the game fun and lively, especially at low limits. Most players are there to have fun. Helping keeps the game fun keep's recreational players, who usually are bad players, in the game increases your chance to show a profit. Never, never, never, berate a bad player. There will be occasions when you are a huge favorite to win the hand, but a bad player calls your bet, catches a miracle card and beats you. You have suffered a 'bad beat' and you will be tempted to tell you opponent how bad a player he is, insult his mother, and launch into a tirade of invective. You see this happen often. Don't do it. Not only is it rude, it is bad for your chances of making a profit. Poker is a zero sum game. If you win, someone has to loose. Losers are usually the bad players who are playing for fun. You want these ‘fish' to stay and play as long as possible. Remember P.T Barnum's motto, "Never give a sucker an even break, and never wise up a chump." If you anger a bad player, he is likely to pick up his chips and go home. Veterans have a saying "Never tap on the aquarium." You may feel friendly and try and give advice to a bad player. Curb your ego. Bad players don't want advice and resent someone pointing out how badly they play. Remember never wise up a chump, that bad player is where you will find your profit. If you do succeed in improving his game, you are diminishing your winnings. If you have to say something, complement the player. Tell him what a good play he just made, or say you never would have the courage to do what he did. Pump up his ego, he will stay and pump up your winnings.

To sum it up. Follow the rules. Be a friendly courteous player. And "Don't tap the aquarium."

Hold-em Poker, the best starting hands.

Like everything in Poker, the best starting hand depends. What type game are you playing? Limit, No Limit or a Tournament. What are the stakes? What is the texture of the game? How well do you play? Most important, what is your position?

Obviously American Airlines (AA) is the best possible starting hand, but how good it is depends upon how many opponents you are facing. Against one opponent a pair of Aces will win about 85 percent of the time. Against five opponents it will win only about 18 percent of the time.

If you are playing limit Poker and the stakes are less than $10-20, play, ABC, book poker. David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth have written excellent books that rank hands into five categories. They also have good basic playing strategies.

If you are playing limit, $10-20 and higher, no limit or Tournaments things are more complicated.

What is the texture of the game? Is it loose passive, where players rarely raise before the flop and four or five players are in to see the flop? Is it tight aggressive, where the first player to enter the pot raises and gets only one, two or no callers? Or is the table full of maniacs who raise often and several players will put in four bets to see the flop? Each of these games requires different starting hands, but in general Hold-em favors big cards over small ones.

How well do you play? If you are an excellent player, who can control the game, read your opponents, and use a number of strategies you can play more hands than an inferior player.

In Hold-em position is probably the most important consideration. There are three categories of position. If you are under the gun, one of the first three players to act, you need really good hands. If you are in middle position and no one has voluntarily entered the pot you can loosen up your requirements. In late position, if no one has entered the pot, you can play just about any two cards, raise and hope to steal the blinds. If you get called, especially by one of the blinds, you can still steal the pot. Most of the time when there are two players, the flop misses both of them. When that happens and your opponent checks, bet, he will probably fold. In a higher limit, no limit, or tournaments, stealing the blinds is important.

The best way to determine the value of your hand is through experience. Read some books to learn the basics, then play a lot of low limits to hone your skills. As you improve your play, advance to higher limits, and no limit. In learning no limit, tournaments are a good way to get experience. You only risk the buy in, a dollar to ten grand, and if you are good and/or lucky the payoff can be large.

To play good poker is like that old joke, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, Practice, Practice."

The Successful Poker Player

To be successful playing poker, you don't need what is commonly referred to as a "Poker face," in fact that kind of demeanor can cut into your profits, while still giving away "tells"

While tells have their place at the poker table, they are far down the list of skills you have to master. The most important is to play the game was as few ‘leaks' in your game as possible. Even if you are a stoic as Mr. Spock and have the countenance of a face engraved on Mount Rushmore, if you play poorly, reading your opponents will not make you a winner. At best it will limit your losses.

After you have learned to play well, use proper card selection and the tools of the trade, such as the semi-bluff, then you can expand your repertoire to watching your opponents for tells.

The most important question is what limits are you playing? Tells are most valuable in no limit or high limit games. If you are playing at limits lower than 10-20 most of your opponents are playing for fun. They are concentrating on their own cards and rarely if ever thinking about what you may be holding. You can use this to pick up tells on your opponents while not having to worry much about your own give a ways.

At these limits you will win more by engaging with your opponents, making the game fun for all. While everybody else, along with you, are laughing it up, they are not paying attention to the game and are apt to make more mistakes. Not you, because you can walk and chew gum at the same time. While you are laughing on the outside, your mind is focused on the game. That allows you to play better than your opposition as well as taking advantage of there tells. Tells they probably don't even know they have. This loose passive game is probably the most profitable for the good player. While the others are playing to have fun, you are playing to win money, and you will.

If you put on your "Mt. Rushmore" face and look like you are taking the gamer seriously, your opponents will notice and start paying attention to their game. You don't want that. You want their money so lighten up and let everybody have fun while giving you their money. Conversely, if you see a table with all the players looking grim and serious, run, don't walk away as fast as you can. There is no profit there.

The key too not giving anything away about your hand is to play every hand the same physically. When you bet, raise or fold always use the same motion. It's a good idea, when it's your turn to act, count to three before doing anything. They keep the observant player from picking up betting or physical patterns he can use against you later.

When the cards are dealt, never look at your own cards until its time for you to act. That keeps you from accidently giving away information about your hands. Instead watch the other players, especially those who will act after you. Many players will immediately look at their cards and indicate what they are going to do, Say you are in middle position in a Hold-em game and notice the players behind you look disgusted with their hands indicating they are going to fold. No one or just one player has entered the pot when it comes your turn and you have a mediocre hand, say a pair of sevens or QJs. Knowing those behind you are not interested in the hand you can raise, driving them out and either winning the pot immediately or isolate one opponent with position on him. Since most of the time both of your will miss the flop and you can steal it with a bet.

As you climb the latter to higher limits, tells become more important. At low level you need to know what you have and a good idea what your opponent has. At higher limits you thinking has be become more sophisticated. In addition to knowing your cards and having a good read on your opponent, you have to fathom what your opponent thinks you have, how he will react to your moves as well as how he may counter them. Like in Chess you have to look as far into the future as possible. This is when tells become really valuable, harder to find, and less likely to be accurate. A good player can play a hand while giving a subtle tell. You pick up on it and call his bluff winning the pot this time. Later in a big confrontation that player may exhibit the same tell, you think he is bluffing and call only to find he has the nuts. You have become a victim of a reverse tell. This is when experience playing with the same players come in handy. If you know your opponent is tricky, you may avoid his trap. In no-limit this will save you a lot of money.

While there is no way to learn about tells without a lot of playing experience, you can get a head start by studying a good book or video that shows common tells. Mike Caro's "Book of Tells" is a good starting point.