Author: T

Position means how far round the table you are in relation to the dealer. The nearer the dealer you are (on the dealer’s right), the better off you are. The dealer has the best position of all as he gets to act last on each betting round (except the first).

Having to act first is a major disadvantage in Hold ‘Em. Say you have raised with an ace-jack, and have hit nothing on the flop. What do you do if you are first to speak? If you bet out, you take the risk of being raised by those behind you who have made good hands. If you check, those behind may bet forcing you to fold. However, if you had that same ace-jack on the button things are vel)’ different. If you make a strong hand, you are forcing the others to ‘bet into you’ (i.e. bet before your turn to act) and if you flop nothing, and somebody bets, you can then pass, risking nothing.
Generally then, the earlier your position, the better your hand needs to be before you should enter the fray. In a tough game, with many people raising before the flop, expect to’pass’ (i.e. fold) nearly all your hands in the first two seats in a full game. Ace-jack and ace-10 offsuit, for example, are definite non-starters here. As are ace-small suited and small pairs (say 6s and below). If you call with two 6s and somebody raises you, what do you do? If you call him, you are seven to one against to make trips on the flop. Anything else and you’ll have to check (unless you attempt a bluft), thus handing the initiative to your opponent! He does not even need a pair to bet. He has position and this is all that is needed.
If you do call with, say, ace-jack suited or ace-queen, in an early position, and a solid player raises you, I would recommend folding because there are too many uncertainties. If an ace comes, do you bet into him or not? He might have ace-king. Better not to get into this dilemma in the first place. I am not advocating tight or conservative play here, just solid, sensible play, which is something completely different.

The Flop and Beyond

The person who invented Hold ‘Em came up with a fantastic idea in deciding that the first three cards should be dealt at the same time. This means that the flop is the defining moment in the hand. In five or seven-card stud, where cards are dealt one at a time, the value of your hand changes slowly. In Hold ‘Em, a strong hand before the flop can be made almost worthless on the flop, while an innocuous-looking hand before the flop can turn into a monster. Hence the expression often heard around Hold ‘Em tables, ‘any two cards can win’. So, 7-deuce? (Deuce is a term for 2.) No problem, but only if the flop comes 7-7 -deuce. In reality, any two cards can win, but it is much more likely that A-A will win than say 7 -4 and it is on the likelihood or chance of a win that you risk your money.

Part 2

Gambling is as old as the human race, and as all encompassing as passion, anger and joy. But in many places around the world, casino gambling brings with it a different feel and experience to other forms of gambling. In the UK, it currently involves small, private, “members only” casinos, free-standing machines in pubs, restaurants, clubs and on ferries, a wide selection of betting shops and extensive Internet gambling when players can bet on anything and everything. There is currently a proposal before Parliament that would expand the scope of casino gambling to make it much more like the Las Vegas experience in the US and other parts of the world.

So what is it that makes gambing so pervasive in human nature? Every choice you make in life is a gamble. When you are finally old enough to make your own choices, you gamble with your future with every decision you make. The choices you make each day in real life are easily translated into the choices you make at the casino.

Luck is, of course, the essential element in casino gambling. Sure, you can mitigate that factor by understanding the odds and the most favourable ways to play the games, but you can’t eliminate it.

Similarly, luck plays an enormous role in your life. You can get a good education and be totally prepared for your career but, if you don’t meet that one key person in your professional life, or you don’t get an unexpected break, you may only be moderately successful.

Unlike gambling, where the decisions on the various games will break even over the long run, you can’t depend upon real life to “even up”. Bad luck can dog an individual his entire life, for reasons unknown to anyone except for a higher being. Don’t expect things to turn around because you are due for a break. You have to make your own breaks.

CHANGING YOUR LUCK
When you’re gambling and losing, the natural inclination is to try to do something to win. That can often be the worst strategy. By continuing to gamble, you’re risking more of your money, and you have a greater than average chance of losing. Why? Because now you’re playing with “scared money” – that is, money that you never planned to risk, but now believe you must. Because it’s more than you planned to risk, your decisions will often be suspect, you will play more emotionally than rationally and expose yourself to some very harsh results.

The same is true in life. If things aren’t going well for you on a particular project, for instance, you can get angry. Anger never makes it better, it can only make things worse. And when you get angry, emotional, exasperated or you feel that you simply don’t care, you are going to lose … and that also applies to gambling.

It doesn’t matter how much time or money you’ve invested, either. If you’re playing blackjack, and you have to make a difficult decision, don’t think about how much money you’ve lost already. It doesn’t matter, and it certainly won’t affect whether you win or lose that particular hand. If it affects how you play, you’re in bad shape.

Let’s take the stock market as an analogy. Suppose you purchased stock in a particular company for £5,500. Now suppose that company suffered some downturns that no one anticipated, bringing your stock down to £2,750. But another investor is willing to pay you £4,500 for that stock. You don’t want to take that offer because you believe you’ll be losing £1,000. But if you accept his offer, you’d actually be picking up £1,750. It doesn’t matter what you paid for the stock initially; it only matters what it’s worth at the moment you get the offer. Make the decision on that basis, not on past events.

After everyone remaining has exchanged there is another betting round, which proceeds along the same lines as the first, except that the rule is that the player who has opened the betting before the draw always speaks first. At the end of the second betting round, the remaining players show their hands and the person with the best poker hand wins the pot. (This will be the first time in the playing of the hand where players get to see any cards other than their own.) If one player has made a bet that nobody calls, he wins the pot without showing his cards.
In the previous example at the start of the second betting round there is £106 in the pot and the betting might proceed as follows:

Here player C was first to act (because he opened the original betting) and checked, player F bet and player B folded, player C then raised, even though he had already checked (this is called a ‘check-raise’). Some people consider a check-raise to be unethical and some home games prefer not to allow it, but it is allowed in all games held in casinos. Player F then chooses to call player Cs raise although he had the option to raise again. Indeed if both chose to they could have continued raising until one or other ran out of money. Once the last bet or raise made by either player has been called by the other, they then show their hands and the one with the best five-card hand wins the pot, which has now reached £146. This is called the’ showdown’. There are often more than two players involved in a showdown. Note that at any stage if one player makes a bet that the others do not call th~n that player would win the pot without having to show his cards. 

That’s the mechanics of the betting dealt with. In the above example, all of the bets were in units of £10 but the limits you place on the game you play is up to you. You might allow units of say £5 before the draw and £10 after or simply allow any amount between £1 and £10 to be bet at any time (but bear in mind that a raise must always be at least as much as the original bet). Usually in a fixed limit game there is a constraint of one bet and three raises per round to prevent two players constantly re-raising each other and trapping a third in between them. To show how this could arise let’s look once again at our example.

 Player                 B                  C                F

Betting Action:                        Bet £10          call

                        raise              re-raise         call

                        re-raise          re-raise         call

                        re-raise          re-raise         call

                        call                call

Total bet            £70               £70               £70

Put yourself in the position of player F. It is probable that he would have been happy to just call the first £10 bet and have a showdown. But because the other two players are constantly re-raising each other, player F has to continue to meet the extra bets or fold, losing any chance of winning the hand. On this occasion, player F has had to put in £70, but with the restriction on raising described above, the most he can be forced to put in to have a showdown would be £40, i.e. a bet of £10 and three raises of £10 each. Of course, when only two are left they can raise and re-raise as often as they like.

At the end of the first completed betting round then, the action has moved from player A (the player on the dealer’s immediate left) to player B then to player C and so on back to player B. The action ends at player B because he is the last to match all of the previous bets and raises. After the betting round there are three players remaining in contention for the pot. They are players B, C and F and they have each contributed £31, including their antes. Player E contributed £11, but has folded giving him no further claim to the money he has already put in the pot, in the same way players A and D have each lost their £1 ante. Therefore at the end of the betting round there is £106 in the pot.
All of this looks complicated on paper, but in reality it is easy to grasp. But be sure you understand how a betting round works, because the same principle applies to all types of poker game.
It is interesting to note that at this stage in the game in the example above, each player has only seen the cards that were dealt to him and can only guess what the other players have. However, there are clues to what a player’s hand is, and these clues are identified in the bets that the player makes. Several tentative conclusions can be drawn just from the bets alone in this betting round. Firstly player A had a poor hand, so he initially checked and when later he was faced with a bet he folded his cards. Player B initially checked but then called’ a bet and a raise and then subsequently-he called a re-raise, so he must have liked his hand to some extent. Player C made the first bet, called a raise and made a re-raise of his own, so again he must have liked the hand, possibly thinking it to be the best hand at this stage. Player D folded at the first opportunity, so he most probably had ‘a very poor hand. Player E called the initial £10 bet but none of the subsequent raises, so it is possible that he considered his hand to be of moderate value. Player F called the initial £10 bet and then raised £10, so he must have liked his hand, but he only called player Cs final re-raise rather than raising again himself, so he may have had doubts about whether his was the best hand at that stage.
After this first betting round player F, the dealer, then asks the remaining players, starting from the one on his left, how many cards they want to change. By the way, in cases where the dealer h~s folded early in the progress of the hand, he would still continue with the job of dealing and controlling the action. Remember it is the dealer’s job not only to deal the cards, but also to control the action. Each player, when asked, tells the dealer how many cards he wants to exchange. This exchange of cards is called the draw. A player can keep the original five cards, or change up to five (some poker schools allow only a maximum of four to be changed). The dealer exchanges his own cards last and announces how many cards he is changing, e.g. ‘dealer takes three’. He makes this announcement so that the other players know how many cards he is exchanging. It is important that every player knows how many cards each other player has exchanged, because this is another way that one gains information on the strength of an opponent’s hand. An extreme example to illustrate this point is to consider a player who decides to change none of his cards. You could make the reasonable assumption here that the player had a strong hand (you might also think it was possible that the player could have a weak hand and intended to bluff – but this sort of consideration is left for later in the book). By contrast a player who changes all five cards at the draw will undoubtedly have a worthless starting hand. The cards are dealt from .the top of the remaining deck, that is, folded cards are not reincorporated as part of the deck. For this reason, usually draw poker games are limited to seven players to avoid running out of cards. The cards that have been folded are put, by the dealer, into a separate pile beside the pot, and near the centre of the table. These cards are collectively known as the discards or colloquially as ‘the muck’. Thus folded cards are said to have been discarded or mucked.

Previous – Part 3

At the start of the poker session the players cut the cards to decide who will deal first: the person with the lowest value card is the first to deal. The job of dealer in poker is very important, for not only does he shuffle the deck and deal the requisite number of cards to each player, but he is also in charge of the game during the period of the deal. The dealer will ensure that each player acts in his proper turn and puts the right amount of money into the pot. Play starts with the player on the dealer’s immediate left and progresses in a clockwise direction. This means that the dealer enjoys the advantage of being able to bet last. After the first hand has been dealt the role of dealer passes to the player who is sitting on the immediate left of the original dealer and then to each player around the table, again in a clockwise direction, so that all players can enjoy this benefit.

Before the cards are dealt, everyone contributes a small amount to the pot: this is called the ante. This makes sure that there is some money in the pot for the players to fight over at the start of the hand. Once money has entered the pot it can only be taken out again by the winner of that particular hand.

After everyone has anted the dealer shuffles the deck and offers it to the player on his right to cut. Then he deals one card from the top of the deck to each player, starting with the player on his left, dealing clockwise and finishing with himself. He does this five times in all, so that everyone has five cards. It is important that the cards should be cut, because it is one way to reduce the risk of cheating. Sometimes at the start of the session, the players might also cut to determine the seating arrangement, but in most home games people sit where they like at the table. The relative seating positions of players at the table is important for several reasons, some are prosaic but some are tactical.

The Betting

The first player to act in a draw poker game is the one to the immediate left of the dealer. His options are to check (meaning to make no bet at this stage) or open if he likes his cards. To indicate a check, players can say ‘check’ or simply tap the table. When betting it is usual to announce the amount you are betting, so everyone is clear about what you are doing. Then the option passes to the next player. Once somebody has opened the betting however, those behind can no longer check. They must fold (throw their cards away and take no further part in the hand), call (put in a sum to equal the bet to stay in the game) or raise (increase the bet). So when a player is calling a bet, he puts in the same amount of money as has already been bet. If he is raising he must say/raise’ and put in the amount of money required to call the bet plus an additional amount of money for the raise. Except when a player is all-in’ (see below for a definition) the amount of his raise must be at least as much as the amount of the bet. So if the bet is £10, the raise must be at least £10. Thus the player making the raise would have to put £20 into the pot, £10 to call the bet and another £10 to raise. All players must have put in the same amount of money in order to stay in the game. In the following example I have kept all of the bets in units of £10, apart from the antes (£1) for simplicity. This would be called a £10 limit game, because the bets are limited to a maximum of £10.
At the beginning of the betting round there is £6 in the pot (made up of a £1 ante from each player). The dealer was player F, meaning that player A is first to act. To begin with players A and B both check, player C opens for £10, so
now all subsequent players must call this £10, raise or fold. Player D folds and thus takes no further part in this hand. Player E calls by matching the £10 bet. Player F raises £10 and to do this he must first match the £10 bet and then put in a further £10 for the raise, making £20 in all. Note that all players must put an equal amount of money after each betting round to remain in contention for the pot. So as Player F has now put £21 in the pot, players A and B are each required to put in £20 (as they have only put in £1 each at this point) in order to stay in the game. However, player C only needs to put in £10 to call (because he has already put in £10). Player A decides to fold, but player B calls the £20. Player C decides to re-raise a further £10, but of course first he puts in the £10 to call, making £20 he puts in at this time. So now all subsequent players must put in the difference to equal the £31 total contribution that player C has made to the pot. Player E, who would have to put in a further £20, decides this is too expensive and folds, player F calls player C’s re-raise of £10, as does player B.

End of part 1, click for part2