Books, seminars, and other kinds of advice are all well and good, but
nothing instructs us in certain lessons like experience. Lessons learned
through painful experience tend to form a deep groove in the brain.
«You can close your eyes to reality, but not to memory». – Stanislaw J. Lec
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
Rule 36: One of the main ways we improve in the game of poker is by getting certain lessons pounded into our heads.
Thursday, 6 March 2008
Free rules for poker 35: If you're doing a lot of folding, won't this look odd to the other players?
You might sometimes get the feeling that all this folding you're doing looks
pretty obvious to the other players. You can almost feel their watchful eyes
on you – and hear them thinking: «Boy, he sure plays tight. He must be
waiting for the perfect hand to come along».
If you took a survey, though, you would find this is not what most low-
level opponents are thinking at all. Here is what they are really thinking
when you are doing a lot of folding:
1. Nothing.
2. You're a player who must be getting pretty lousy cards.
3. Great “you're out of the way“ let the action commence without
you.
4. They really don't care (or even notice). Frankly, there are enough
other opponents in the game to worry about, and the fewer
opponents, the better.
5. You must be a fairly «tight» player may be a «rock».
Notice that the thing you were most worried about came in last –
which it probably would in a real survey.
Free rules for poker 34: In the best players there is a streak of simple common sense.
If we put things in these terms, the game seems pretty simple.
Strategies are somewhat different than this at higher, more sophisticated
levels of play, of course, but for most players this common sense aspect is
something to keep in mind. It is possible for a player to get lost in
convoluted scheming and overlook this simple truth – that a good portion of
the game is simply common sense. And this trait is also present in the great
players. In fact, the vast majority of plays in the game of poker are not
fancy, sophisticated plays, but obvious ones. But these have to be done right
too.
Free rules for poker 33: Don't go on the offense against a large field of players with a weak hand.
Here's a poker secret: When you don't have good cards, someone else
usually does. Don't go into the aggressive/offense mode in a situation where
you're weak and they are a mystery. Remember, the good cards have to be
somewhere.
Monday, 3 March 2008
Free rules for poker 32: You may as well bet if you intend to call.
It is a generally accepted idea that if your hand is good enough to call a bet with, then you are better off betting. (And this is a situation that occurs very often in poker.) The thinking is that if you're going to call a bet, you might as well be the one driving the betting. It's going to cost the same amount anyway at least this way you're in the driver's seat. There is an intimidation aspect that also accrues from doing this whether in the individual hand, or cumulatively, over many hands a general aura of aggressiveness.
Free rules for poker 31: Once you commit to a hand, you should play it strong.
From this rule we can see the problem that occurs if you start a hand with marginal cards. You've already got yourself in the middle of a conundrum, forced to play a bad hand forcefully and aggressively.
Free Rules for poker 30: Staying more frequently in a poker game offers you greatly increased chances of winning here's why it's a mistake.
One or two players every hand are likely to have a great hand. If you are going to play almost every hand, then you're going to have to beat a great and every hand. If you think about it this way, it becomes obvious why it is foolhardy to «stay» on a large number of hands. The challenge you're giving yourself is insurmountable trying to beat a great hand every time.