Powerful Profits From Poker

opportunity.

Preface

There are many books on poker. Some discuss theory. Others concentrate on hand selection, starting hands, or the hand play after the flop, or the first deal. Still others focus on the play of a hand, or the play of the game, or the strategy of bluffing, betting, holding and folding, or on the psychology of the game. Together, all of these books on poker cover most aspects of the general game of poker. Many of these books are excellent, and some even classics and standards for others to follow. As an author of many books on casino gambling, it has always been my position that the more information you can gain, the broader will be your scope of knowledge and, therefore, the greater your skills and likelihood of gaming success. This also applies to poker books. In addition to this book about poker, I wish to also encourage you to seek out other books about the game and read those as well. I am not an elitist, nor do I wish to be a lone wolf when speaking in the wilderness of gaming information. I think that it is always better to know more than less, and always better to read more than one opinion.

That said, I will, however, also state that I have personally found there to be a substantial chasm, a large emptiness, among the information that is now available about poker in general. I learned to play poker the same way that some learn to swim—have someone toss you in the water, or jump in, and the survival instinct will take over and you learn to swim. Great for the pool—for those who don’t drown—but lousy for poker. In poker, being in effect thrown to the wolves, so to speak, is akin to being tossed in the pool. Unfortunately, there is no inherent survival instinct for poker players. Death by drowning may not be their fear in being tossed into a pool of poker sharks, but the outcome can be just as harsh. Knowing only the basics of the game and trying it out in the real world becomes an exercise in learning the hard way. This is the school of hard knocks, and although there is no substitute for such direct and harsh lessons, there are other avenues of opportunity. Books about poker are such opportunities that should at the very least be considered. When I began playing poker about thirty-five years ago, the games were mostly the home games that many people have played. I did not start to consider poker as a serious casino game until some twenty years ago, and I have been playing the game ever since, in one form or another. It all began for me with Five-Card Draw, then Five-Card Stud, and finally Seven-Card Stud, which was the most common game played in the early 1980s in Las Vegas casinos, where I was first exposed to big-time poker.

At that time, there were precious few books about poker, and the game wasn’t all that popular as a mainstream casino game. I was not even sure that books about poker existed, and when I looked for them in the bookstores, there were few to be seen. Of course, now I know that books like Doyle Brunson’s Super System were already huge sellers at the time, but such books were hard to find in my world at that time. To be fair, if you have read my other books you will also know that at that time I was far more interested in other casino games, particularly blackjack, and not so much poker. It wasn’t until about the mid 1990s that I began to focus more on poker, mostly because by that time the game of Blackjack was becoming unmanageable, at least from a professional perspective. My business life also changed, and I was at that time working as a consultant to the casinos themselves. Interestingly, among my duties was to spot card counters and card-counting teams. That’s another story for another time.

As a means of differentiating between my duties on behalf of my casino clients, I began to pay more attention to poker. Fortunately, that interest coincided with the explosion of the game, not just in Las Vegas, but also in California and the Midwest and East Coast casinos, as well as the new tribal casinos popping up everywhere. Card rooms and poker rooms spread like mushrooms after a rainstorm, and all of a sudden there were not only many more venues in which to play poker, but many new forms and various incarnations of the game. Then, of course, there came the Internet, and the explosion of online poker and, more recently, the WSOP and WPT on television. This brings us to today and the fact that we now have a whole slew of poker books from which to choose. It is now much easier to begin the process of learning the game of poker than it was in the past. This is not only because there are so many great books about the game, but also because there are so many venues in which to play and practice. Not only do the real brick-and-mortar casinos and card rooms spread poker games with really small limits, such as $1–$2 and $2–$4 and $1–$4 and so on, but the Internet poker sites allow you to play for free! That means free practice! This was not available to my generation. We had to learn in real games with real money, and at relatively high stakes. That kind of practice cost us a lot of real money. That road to learning poker was a hard road of hard knocks for many players, and so it was for me. I had to learn the game from the beginning by experiencing my own baptism of fire, by being the fool and the fish at the game. This is a process that was both hard and helpful, all at the same time. The people skills that I learned helped me in all aspects of my life, including the books that I have written. But that hard road fraught with pitfalls doesn’t need to be your fate.

Today, you have the opportunity to learn the game before you ever set foot inside a casino poker room or a card room. You have the chance to practice the game against real opponents and in real situations by playing online, at casinos like PokerRoom. com, one of the very best sites you will ever find on the Internet. And, of course, you have the many books about poker from which to choose, and from which to learn the game. In this book, I will not be teaching you the most basic concepts. If you want to know, for example, how many cards there are in the deck (52), or how many suits (4), or how many cards in each suit (13), or the hierarchy of the games, such as what pays what and so on, I suggest you first read some of the basics of poker as available online at the Poker School section of PokerRoom.com, or in some of the other books about poker that deal with the very basics for the absolute beginner. I would also like to refer you to my book Powerful Profits from Casino Table Games, in which I offer chapters on Seven-Card Stud and Texas Hold’Em basics.

This book about poker spans all of the most popular casino and card room poker games now available, including the games offered in online poker rooms and online poker games. In order to be of value, I expect you to already know the very basics about poker and the cards that are used in the games. I will, however, explain each game as simply as possible and also explain the various methods and rules of play, including the betting procedure and betting structures and so on, as this applies to each game we will discuss. And this brings me to why I have written this book, and why I think it will be of enormous help to you in all your poker playing adventures.

I mentioned earlier that I consider the world of poker books to be missing something, to have a huge hole in the explanation and treatment of the various games of poker. This is not a criticism of any individual poker book, or of any poker publication. Not at all. It simply means that I think I have found a portion of the poker book world that has not yet been tackled, at least not in a way I think is useful and applicable to the vast majority of today’s poker players. This one fact is, in my opinion, the apparent lack of reality in most poker writing. I have the utmost respect for my fellow poker book authors, and indeed urge my readers to also read and study their books. My issue is not with these authors or with their books, but rather with the general world of poker publishing. When I was considering writing this book as part of my Powerful Profits series, one of my main questions was what could I write that hasn’t been written already? For example, I have no desire to compete with books written by world champions of poker, or the books written by famous mathematicians and game theorists. Nor is it my desire to in some way supersede or invalidate the many other terrific books about poker strategy and methods of play. My purpose was to do only that which I have found to be missing, and that is to write about the games of poker in the way that they are actually played in casinos and card rooms, the games that the vast majority of casual poker players will actually find. I have written this book precisely to show you the real and actual games as they will be when you sit down at a poker table to play. Similarly, in the short chapters about online poker, I use real examples of real games as you will actually find them and experience them online.

In my own reading of poker material, it has become obvious to me that much of what is being said applies to particular slices of the games, or particular circumstances, and not universally to as many situations as possible. There is a lot of information, for example, about the various hands of poker and their percentage of success relative to other factors, such as number of players, the flop, the cards dealt, and so on. These are the kinds of statistics and information that are written by game theorists and mathematicians. There is also a lot of information about how to play various hands and in which position and so on, all of which is great and essential information and I have no wish to contend with or challenge this in any way. In fact, I will use examples of my own that are akin to such treatments of the game being discussed at the time. There is also a lot of information about tells and about the psychology of poker, and about the various personality traits to look for in poker games and poker players. Also very important, I will use these concepts as they apply to my discussions of the various games in this book. In my sections on tournament play, within each chapter on the specific games being discussed, I will also allude to some of this, and if possible refer you to other sources of such information, in addition to my own perspectives.

Ultimately, though, my main purpose in writing this book is to provide for you a complete summary of all those issues and strategies, all in one book, where you can learn how to play the real games that you will actually find, as opposed to theories. This is the direct result of the trials and tribulations I myself have endured for the many years when I was learning the game by trial and error, by being both the novice and the victim during the process of playing poker in the real world and in real situations, and then, ultimately, the shark. It is my intent and my desire to save you from having to go through such terror and trepidation and financial exposure, and to provide for you a complete guide to all the real things you will need to play the real game with real money in real casinos and card rooms against real people, for real. This may sound quaint when you read it, but it is an important concept. What you see in the theory isn’t always what you will find in the real world. Just because in Texas Hold’Em you will get pocket Aces dealt to you an average of once every 220 hands doesn’t mean you will get them like clockwork, nor does it mean you will always win with them. Just because a hand of poker is supposed to be statistically the best, doesn’t mean it will win. Just because the standard theory says that you should always have some specific starting hands, doesn’t mean that it’s always so.

You see, the main portion of what is missing in most writings about poker is the simple fact that the reality of poker is highly transient and hugely dependent on the very immediate moment. So, while the theory of the game and the statistics involved in the hand and card selections are indeed very important and should always be learned, this doesn’t mean that the reality of poker will always be like that. The fact is that poker games, and each hand in such games, are so enormously individual and isolated slices of the vast overall theory that they rarely if ever actually mirror either the theory or the statistics. And while it is true that better hands will win more often in both a relatively short term and the statistically long run, it doesn’t mean that other considerations of the value of the game in the immediate moment should be discarded. Many people fall into this trap, and they become one-dimensional players. As you play poker, you will see them everywhere. They are the players who will always complain about their tough luck when their best hand loses, and they are the same players who will always talk the math and the stats to make themselves sound like experts. Novice players may be fascinated by this seeming professionalism, but it’s an erroneous perspective. These players are simply mired in only one way of understanding and no matter how much you try to explain the variances of the vast tapestry of poker to them, it will likely fall on deaf ears. In fact, most of these players will try to ridicule you for such a position because they are completely convinced that they are right and that they and their positions and playing methodology are the only ones that can, and do, count. These sad players always lose in the end. They have lost the ability to see and have been blinded by excessive reliance on theory and not enough on the variety and spice of life.

Poker is a game of variety and spice. It is not a game where the statistics always prevail. It is a game where the worst hand can, and often does, win, and where the best hand isn’t always the one that gets the money. Poker is a game of cards, but it is also a game of events, both independent and dependent, as well as a game of people. To understand it well requires you to not just focus on one piece of it, such as the starting hands and the theory and stats, but also on the whole picture. If you look at a painting really close up, you may be able to see the individual dabs of paint that the artist applied on every portion of the canvas. You may get to understand the artist’s brush strokes and genius of paint pigment, but you will never understand, or appreciate, the total beauty of the painting itself. Why? Because your nose is so close to it that you can’t see the vastness around you. To see the picture, you must first step away, back up, and see the whole scene from the perspective of distance. But, in order to do this, you must also be able to recognize that you are so close, and also that there is something outside of the borders that now crowd your perspective. In effect, if you don’t know you are that close to the painting, you will never even realize that there is a painting that is bigger than just that small piece you are able to see so well. As so this is for poker. What you have been able to read thus far are the various pieces of the painting. In this book, I wish to show you the picture in its entirety, in the expanse of the beauty of the entire tapestry of content and color that together make up the portrait of poker.

1

Introduction to Poker: Learning Poker Games

This first chapter provides some of the basics of casino-style poker games that you will be playing when you go to visit your favorite casino or card room. For those of my readers who are already familiar with the basics of poker—and Texas Hold’Em in particular—I recommend you skip to chapter 5, where I begin the serious discussion of poker skills and knowledge. For readers who are less familiar with poker—and Texas Hold’Em—I will provide more detailed introductory information, but I will nevertheless assume that you already know the cards, the suits, how many of each there are in the deck, and which hand beats which in the games of poker. If you are unsure of any of these simple basics of card playing or poker, I recommend that you read some of the many fine books that are available in bookstores or online book retailers. Some of these books are excellent guides to the basics of card playing as well as the very basics of poker. It is not my intent to duplicate the efforts of these many fine authors of books about cards or general card playing. Therefore, I will assume that you already possess the basic knowledge necessary to take advantage of the information about the poker games that I will be describing in this book. I would also recommend that you read some of my other books, in particular my books Powerful Profits from Blackjack, Powerful Profits from Video Poker, and Powerful Profits from Casino Table Games. These books, as well as the other books I have written in my most recent series under the general title of Powerful Profits, will provide you with an overview of casino games and card playing that may assist you in developing a greater understanding of the games of poker that we will be discussing in this book. Some of the general information about card playing or casino games that will be found in this book may also be similar in some parts of my earlier books, because there are similarities and commonalities between the various styles of casino games and the poker games that we are discussing here. After all, casino gaming and card playing are very similar. Although the game of poker is really not a casino game, because casinos do not participate in the game but merely facilitate it, it is still considered a casino game. Even card rooms, such as those in California, continue to call themselves casinos, although they are not technically casinos but merely facilities that provide card playing between patrons. That is perhaps the most important distinction between poker and other card-based casino games. Therefore, the first lesson in this chapter is that poker is completely different from other casino games and is, in fact, not a casino game at all.

Even though poker is usually called a casino game, many players do not understand, or are not aware of, the important distinction between poker as a game between players and other games between players and casinos. Every other game in either a casino or a card room is usually a game that is banked by the casino or the owner or operator of the property. Banking here means that the action is between you and the person banking the game, which in most cases is either the casino or the card room, or whoever it is that may be operating that game at that time. Therefore, the risk is between you and the banker. Consequently, the banker has a vested interest in the game as well as you. Therefore, most casino games have what is called an inbuilt house edge, which is derived directly from an alteration to the rules of the game. This alteration results in a mathematical edge, a percentage of the game that the casino owner, operator, or person banking the game can expect to gain in yield from running and offering that game. In many books about casino games, you will often read the words house edge and this simply means that—mathematically speaking—the house, or the operator of the game or the game’s banker, can expect to gain a yield equivalent to that percentage from offering the game. On average, players of these games will be expected to lose that percentage of their wagers over the long haul.

In reality, poker is not a casino game because it is not a game that the casino can alter in the way that it does other casino games. In all of the other games, the action is between you, the player, and the casino. Therefore, under ideal circumstances, you and the casino should face the equal risk of winning versus losing. Of course, that would be too much of a risk for the casinos, who are the bankers of the games. It is for this reason that casinos make such alterations to casino games or to the rules of their payoffs, to assure themselves of a steady win. This is not possible for the traditionally understood game of poker. No matter what kind of a poker game is being spread, the casino or the operator of the game cannot change the game’s rules in order to assure themselves of a steady win percentage in the same way as they do with all of the other casino house-banked games. This is simply because poker is a game between the players of the game, and not between the players of the game and the casino. Even if the casino is called a card room, or a real casino with other games, neither of the operators or facilitators of these games can make any changes to the game that would in some way benefit them by altering the games’ payoffs to assure the casino or the banker of a steady win percentage. This is the single most important factor that you need to learn at the very beginning of any information or discussion about poker. This one reason is also why many casinos, such as those in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, do not always offer poker or do not like to have to offer poker to their casino patrons and players. Casinos, or bankers of casino games, do not like a game over which they exert no control. This is what makes poker so unattractive to them as a game. Poker takes up space, it is labor intensive, and it requires human interaction on a much grander and greater scale than any other casino game that is currently being offered in any major casino or card room in the United States, or the rest of the world. So, you may ask, how do casinos make money from the game of poker? The answer to this question depends on where you play.

In most casinos, including those in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, on the Indian and tribal gaming reservations, and riverboats in the Midwest of the United States, casinos and casino operators make money from poker by charging a percentage of each pot played—a rake. In all such casinos where such a rake is charged, each table will have a little plaque, usually to the left of the dealer, which displays the table game limits (provided this is a limit game as opposed to a pot-limit or a no-limit game), upon which is also written the blind structure and the game type, as well as the percentage of the rake being taken from each pot, and the minimum and maximum amounts of the rake. The minimum and maximum amounts of such a rake are usually described in percentages. For example, a typical small-to middle-limit Texas Hold’Em game will usually have a house rake of 5 percent with a maximum of $3. This means that the house, the card room, or the operator of this poker game will take a rake up to the maximum of 5 percent of any rakeable pot, up to the maximum of the stated $3. In other words, the house will take from any pot over $5 the amount of $.25 for each $5 of increased pot value, up to a total amount of $3. For the rake to be $3, the pot would therefore have to be $60 in total value. If the pot value is greater than $60, the rake would still be at a maximum of $3. Consequently, if the pot is at $60, the maximum rake is still only $3. It is, therefore, to your advantage to look for games with a low rake percentage and a small maximum rake total amount.

Of course, if you are not playing in a normal recognized poker room, such as those that may be found in major casinos in Las Vegas or Atlantic City, or riverboats or some major Indian gaming casinos, or playing at online casinos that also use this rake method, this can only mean that you are playing in what has become known as the California cardroom–style casino. The difference between this style of poker and casino poker rooms is that these card rooms do not charge a rake from each pot played, but instead charge the player a fee to play at that table or game. The amount of this fee is usually determined by the value of the game, and can be charged each hour, half hour, each twenty minutes, or at whatever rates and conditions may apply to such card rooms. The higher the game, usually the higher the fee to sit at the game. In effect, this is what can be called fee for play or a collection. This fee is usually commensurate with what could be calculated as the potential hourly rake from each table. In truth, such fees can actually get much more expensive than the rake that would normally be charged by casinos, where such charges are permitted by state law. Loose and aggressive players who enter many pots and play many hands benefit from such a fee, because they do not expose themselves to having their pots raked in the event that they get very lucky and win many pots or win many hands. On the other hand, tight players usually pay more to sit at such games, because they play very few hands and therefore win fewer pots. Paying a fee to play at such games, rather than playing in a situation where there is a pot rake, is made necessary by the jurisdiction that governs where the game is located. In California, non-Indian gaming casinos such as the many card rooms that can be found in Los Angeles and San Francisco, are not permitted by law to charge a rake in the game. Therefore, they are forced to offer poker games whereby they charge players a fee to participate, and they do this by charging the players a half hourly or an hourly fee to play at the game of their choice. This is because by law, in California or in other states where such laws exists, card room operators and owners are not permitted to bank their games. This is a restriction placed on them by the kind of gaming license that they are able to obtain. Such is not the case for Indian gaming in those same states. American Indian tribes who have made a compact with the states to own or operate a casino have done so as sovereign nations and, therefore, are not subject to the same laws that govern other casino or card room operators within the same state. Consequently, poker rooms found in casinos owned or operated by Indian tribes often offer games with the rake for each pot, instead of the pay for play fee.

Knowing this distinction is important for you as a poker player because your money is involved in the game. For you to succeed in making money at the game, you must not only know how to play the game, but also be aware of how much of your money is going to the facilitator of the game. Since neither casinos nor card rooms can actually charge a fee for the game itself, such as they do when they alter the game rules in games such as American roulette by altering the game’s payouts, casinos and card room operators and owners need to make money in some other way to pay for the facility in which they offer the games. No business can survive without making a profit, and casinos and card rooms are no exception. Poker rooms located within casinos charge a fee by means of the pot rake, as described earlier, whereas card rooms located outside of Indian casinos or outside of jurisdictions that permit full casino gaming make money by charging a fee for play to each player at each game. Exactly how much is the fee, and how much is the rake, is up to each individual card room or casino. Although I can offer you many examples of casino rake percentages and variables, and indeed I will do so throughout this book as we discuss each game, I will caution you that these examples do not necessarily mirror each and every poker game that you may encounter at either full-service casinos, online poker rooms, Indian casinos, or in poker rooms located in card rooms. The percentages charged as a rake in many casinos vary widely, not only between casinos, but within the same casino from game to game, and even from the same type of game to another. One game of Texas Hold’Em in that same casino may have a rake of 5 percent with a maximum of $3, whereas an identical Texas Hold’Em game in that very same casino may have a rake of 10 percent with a maximum of $5. The differences in these two games may not be immediately apparent to the casual or novice observer. The amount of such a rake is usually determined by the value of the game itself. In the first example, the game may be a $4–$8–$8 Texas Hold’Em game, while in the second example this may be a lower value game such as $2–$4. Whenever a game has a lower value, usually the higher is the rake. This is because the casino does not get as many raked pots of substantial value in a game of this nature. The higher the value of the game, usually the lower the rake and the lower the maximum rake amount. As you become more experienced in casino poker, you will begin to notice these differences much more readily. As a good rule of thumb, the lower the limit of the poker game you are considering playing, the higher the rake is likely to be, and vice versa. This is particularly important in games like Seven-Card Stud, which is most often likely to be the game of choice by many casual or novice players.

Gaming centers such as Las Vegas offer many different kinds of poker games. Seven-Card Stud is a game that is most often requested by people who are only just trying poker, or are wanting to play a casino-style poker game that is similar to the kinds of poker games with which they may be familiar from home. Usually, these players select the lowest limits possible. For this reason, many Las Vegas casinos, even those that are traditionally high end type casinos, often spread lower limits Seven-Card Stud games such as games with limits from $1 to $4, or the more common $1 to $5. Formats such as those with limits listed as from–to mean that you can wager from the smallest amount of the money indicated ($1), up to the total amount of the highest number indicated (either $4 or $5). Therefore, you can bet $1, $2, $3, $4, or perhaps even up to $5 during any one round of betting at this game. They are called nonstructured limit games. These small limits are very comfortable for the great majority of players. The problem is, however, that casinos have the same expenditure for the table, the space, the dealers, and other such expenditures relative to the value of the game that they are offering in these small limits as they do with higher limits. As a consequence, casinos use a higher rake amount for these small games. Usually, this is a 10 percent rake with a $5 maximum. In effect, what this really means is that the casino is getting the majority of its money early in the dealing, rather than later when the pot has developed to a substantial amount, such as in the lower-rake games where the limits are much higher, therefore resulting in bigger pots sooner.

In the smaller-rake games, casinos have to assure themselves of some money because they know that these small-limit games will produce pots that only very rarely reach the maximum rake amount. As a smart poker player, therefore, you should become acutely aware of what these rake amounts and percentages actually mean to your bottom line and your win expectation at the game. Traditionally, it will cost you a lot more money to play games in the lower limits where the pots are smaller but the rake is higher. Therefore, another lesson that I can offer you early in this book is to learn to play poker well enough to play at the higher limits. By higher limits I do not mean the very large games where perhaps thousands of dollars may be wagered. I simply mean games higher than the $1 to $4 limits or the $1 to $5 limits that I have just described. In the game of Seven-Card Stud this higher rake is usually found at these $1 to $4 and $1 to $5 limits. In the game of Texas Hold’Em, these higher rakes are usually found in the $2–$4 games. If you wish to avoid being exploited for these high early rakes, you should never play a Seven-Card Stud game lower than $5–$10, or a Texas Hold’Em game lower then $4–$8–$8. In most casinos, such as those in Las Vegas, Reno, or Atlantic City, you will find both types of games with both styles of rake. You should, therefore, learn to choose the game that not only suits your bankroll, but also suits the longevity of your bankroll. If you cannot afford to play a Seven-Card Stud game in at least $5–$10 limits, or a Texas Hold’Em game in at least the $4–$8–$8 limits, then I recommend that you save your money before you ever try to play poker in a casino that offers games that are raked in this manner. Of course, if you are playing in card rooms such as those in California, or at limits higher than $30–$60 in some casinos where there is no rake and only a collection fee for sitting at the table or the game, how much these games will cost you will depend on the amounts of the fees that are so being charged by the casinos or card rooms where you happen to be playing. In the end, it will be up to you to gauge and judge how far your bankroll will be able to take you at the game of your choice. You should, however, be very acutely aware of precisely how much of your money the casino, the facilitator, or the card room or casino establishment where you are playing is going to get simply by you being at the game, either through a rake, or through a fee.

Such considerations apply not only to Seven Card Stud and Texas Hold’Em poker games, but to all poker games no matter where they are played or what they may be. As part of the first lesson in your poker success, in addition to the rake and fee awareness just described, you should also add skills in games selection and, most important, game limits. Selecting the correct game limits is important not only because it will help you avoid the higher-rake lower-limit games, but mostly because it will allow you to select the game that is both advantageous for your bankroll as well as advantageous from lower rake, or the fee charged play at that game. Game limits are mostly determined by your bankroll, as well as your skills at the game. While game limits are mostly tied to your bankroll, the amount that you can actually afford to play with, game selection is directly tied to your skill level. If you are very new to poker games, or perhaps are playing for the first time in a casino or card room environment, or a poker room, you might feel intimidated by the seeming professionalism of those who may be playing at the higher-limit games such as those I described earlier. Do not be so fooled. Players playing at the $5–$10 limits in Seven-Card Stud, or the $4–$8–$8 limits in Texas Hold’Em, do not necessarily have greater poker skills than you. They may appear more skillful than they really are simply because they may be more familiar with the environment in which the game happens to be played. As soon as you sit down, within a few minutes you too will become accustomed to that environment and will appear to another player such as yourself just approaching the game as equally as proficient at the game. For this reason you should not automatically relegate yourself to the lowest-limit games. Even if you are a novice at the game you should always look for the games with the lowest possible house rake, and the lowest maximum rake limit. You should then select the game in which you will feel most comfortable. If you are most comfortable with Seven-Card Stud, then that is the game you should choose in at least the $5–$10 limits. If you have become more comfortable with Texas Hold’Em poker—perhaps from seeing it on the World Poker Tour on television—then that is the game you should choose, in at least the $4–$8–$8 limits. If another game is more to your liking, because you are perhaps more familiar with it, then choose that game to begin your poker playing career.

Comfort factor in the game is equally as important as game selection and bankroll. If you are not comfortable, you will not play well enough no matter how much you have learned about the game, or how much you know about the game, or how well you have practiced in learning to play it. The most common reasons you may not be comfortable at the game include being new to the casino, the environment, or the game; being uncertain about the game and its rules; and lacking a substantial bankroll. The last reason—lacking a substantial bankroll—is a killer to any poker player no matter how knowledgeable or how new. Before venturing to a card room or a poker room, determining and allocating your proper bankroll is the most important factor you will have to consider before you ever play any poker game. Simply put, if you don’t have enough money to play with, you will not feel comfortable. As a result, you will not play well, and you will be easy prey to other players. This is the first of my do-not-do list of things and items that will prevent you from ever being able to play poker well. To determine what is a good bankroll with which to begin playing poker, use the simple formula of 100 times the minimum bet amount. If you are playing a game where minimum wager amount is $5, the amount of bankroll that you should bring with you is $500. If you are playing in a game where the minimum wager amount is $4, then you should never walk into that game unless you have at least the minimum of $400 as your playing bankroll for the session.

Not having enough money is the chief reason why many players bust out too soon, are unable to override sequences of bad cards or bad beats, and quickly become discouraged. Players who are more familiar with these games and at those limits will very quickly spot such a player, either as a novice player or as a player who has entered the game undercapitalized, and will very quickly take advantage of him. Therefore, if you are such a player, you will quickly become a victim of the game of poker, instead of its master. This will happen to you if you begin playing poker undercapitalized in any game, or select a game that is too high in limits relative to the bankroll at your disposal at that particular time. Selecting a game that is too high for your bankroll is equally as bad as not bringing a sufficient bankroll to the smallest game that you can select. Both of these will result in your not being comfortable at the game, and this will inevitably lead to your ruin. Perhaps not this day, perhaps not at this game, but eventually. Reaching comfort level in your poker-playing expertise is extraordinarily important, no matter which game you play and no matter how often you play it.

Therefore, selecting the right game for the right bankroll, and selecting the right bankroll for the right game, are the two most important learning tools you must acquire before venturing into any casino poker room or any card room, or continue to learn about the poker games such as those that I will discuss in the remainder of this book.

2

Texas Hold’ Em: Five Keys to Overall Success

The following five key items are directly related to your success as a poker player. No poker player can play without them, no poker game can be played without them, and no one who ever plays poker can become a winning poker player without knowing them or using them properly. They are easy to learn but very difficult to successfully put into practice each and every time you play poker. I present them here in what I consider to be their primary order of importance, although they can all be easily interchangeable with one another. Neither is more important than the other in the overall scheme of things, but all of them put together are the single-most important total unit in your poker expertise and your eventual poker success. Individually, each of these five items can be modified—and will be and must be so modified as you gain your poker expertise—because no two poker games are ever alike. While these five items must remain as your core of poker knowledge, individually they are—and must be—always adaptable to the circumstances at hand. I have already discussed some of these items earlier and will again refer to them throughout the remainder of this book because they affect and impact every aspect of the game. I consider the following to be their most useful order of importance:

• Bankroll

• Limit selection

• Game selection

• Knowledge and skill

• Patience

BANKROLL

The previous chapter states that the proper bankroll for your poker game of choice is perhaps the most important decision you ever make before you venture into any public card room or poker room. I place bankroll as