Be Excellent To Each Other

So I'm back playing a fair bit of online poker again due to having to take a 20% pay cut at work, and hoping that if I log enough hours on the single table tournaments then I should be able to make most of it back. And I am now realising how poker-starved I have been lately, having not played since my trip to Vegas in June; also, my regular internet forum at http://www.cardplayer.com seems to have died a death recently (hence my uprooting to Beex on a more permanent basis), so I can't even get much of a theoretical poker fix.

In order to remedy all this, I am starting a thread for people to talk about poker playing and strategy and where I can answer any and all questions on the game as best I can. I know there are a few of you who enjoy it and play it to some degree, so my brain is at your disposal. Although obviously I will lie to you and give you deliberately bad advice if you were one of the people who lynched me in the Ghostbusters game

If it gets slow, I will post a few hands for discussion and FORCE you to participate

How do I get a look at Sam Fox's numnums quickly?

google with safe search off or look at the ascii art thread that Grim... posted a few weeks ago

What's a flush?

I wondered why your place was quite so fragrant.

Do you mean you want to get the look quickly, or you want the look itself to be quick? It affects the answer.

And to no-sell myp's tongue-in-cheek question, a flush is a hand with 5 cards of the same suit

If I have two cards, how do I tell what the other three cards will be?

You turn them over.

Does this result in "much win"?

It doesn't matter what the other three will be, you make your judgement based on the two cards you hold and other ancilliary factors since that is all the information you have to go on, and if you make better judgements than your opponent then you will win monies

Ok, ok, I get that. What about three-of-a-kind?

Is this thread going as well as you imagined?

Poker, she'll love it.

A woman is just like your favourite saloon. Liquor in the front; poker in the back.

A little known fact: Poker was invented in wild west thing times, when cowboys used to bet how many woodlouses would be under each rock they turn over. An earwig was called a jack in those days, with an slug as the queen, obviously, and an.... oh I don't know.. centipede is a king. Aces didn't exist then.

The third series finished in '83. Right Chinny?

Bullets were aces, obviously.

And yes Matt, about as well

You don't find bullets under rocks! You can't just add random words to History!

Tell us some interesting things about poker. I play a bit, but am pretty rubbish. I don't have any questions, though, because I don't know what I should be asking.

Let me try: which hands would you tend to raise pre-flop (or call if someone else had raised them)?

Cadmium?

Similar question as myp.

Are you an aggressive player, would you say?

When you get your cards, what would make you think, "Yes, I have a hand worth playing here" before you see what other people do. AJ? or lower? Obviously this will be affected by seeing what other people bet.

Also, what are your opinions on pocket pairs? Again, this will vary with how many people are on a table. Say you are on a table of 6, which pocket pairs would you play? What about on a table of 12?

What's the best way to unsettle your opponent? Would you recommend dressing as Pennywise, but naked?

Is dealing the cards face-up generally frowned upon?

What's the average amount worldwide that is won on/at poker? Taking today's conversion rates as a baseline.

The clown, or the US punk band?

It varies greatly depending on the type of game, the number of players at the table, your stack size and most importantly, your position in the hand relative to the blinds. However generally, if you are first to act (Under The Gun) and the stacks at the table are deep (ie. each player has more 50 big blinds or so), you should only be raising AQ, AK, and pocket 10s upwards probably. If however you are seated to the right of the small blind (On The Button) and everyone folds before you, you can raise a much wider range of hands profitably... probably any two face cards, any pair, any ace, and even some other suited stuff, depending on exactly how tight the players in the blinds have been playing and how your own playing image is perceived. This is because a) you are more likely to just win the pot outright when they fold, and making 2 players fold is easier than making 7 players fold, and b) being immediately to the right of the blinds means you will be last to act on every street throughout the hand, and this makes your decisions much easier. Obviously it is then a sliding scale in between those two extremes for all the seats in between UTG and OTB, with a few variations thrown in when other players have already called or raised.

As for hands I would call with, I very rarely call. Your poker game should be very heavily weighted towards raising or folding, it is only really in multi-way pots that calling becomes a reasonable option, with hands that you might not ordinarily play such as the smaller pocket pairs (hoping to flop a 3rd of the same) and suited connectors... hands that you can get in with cheaply and likely win someone's stack when you hit, while having an easy fold on the flop if you miss.

It's always the same with Poker talk, I try and follow it then I hit a wall of complete 'what the fuck are you talking about?'.

See, it's the 'depends' aspect of that whole post that stymies me.

Flop.

That would be zero, since for every amount won there is a corresponding amount lost. Although obviously the sites and poker rooms both charge a rake, so if you add all those up then I suppose you could find the world's net loss that way.

Curio> I tend to play single table tournaments with a fast blind structure, so while I am naturally a tight player the structure makes me a lot more aggressive... and when it comes towards the money bubble and I have some chips then I'm an insaniac As for the rest, I hope my answer to myp covers most of what you are asking... pocket pairs vary mostly by seat, most of them are an easy fold from early position (Under The Gun and the two seats to the left) but an automatic raise from the Button or the seat just right of it (known as the Cut-Off usually)... but if there's more you want to hear then pipe up.

I cannot stress enough how situational poker decisions are. The cards are only the starting point, the stack sizes and game type are crucial. Junk hands can be automatic all-ins in certain situations late in tournaments, while hands like pocket 8s can be easy folds in the early stages of the same tournament. So the more detail you provide in the question, the more useful the answer will be.

It boils down to just a handful of key things, I will post on it in more detail when I get home because I've already typed far too much for one afternoon (although I'm sure I will type some more, obv).

He never came over here, did he? His poker talk was absolutely fascinating, even if I didn't understand a single bit.

What's the best kind of game to play for someone who is extremely conservative (I wasn't dubbed the Foldinator in the Beex games for nothing)?

The house always wins, Dimmers!

Draughts

His hatred for Comical was legendary.



Take that, ace four! My first (and only) straight flush!

I vaguely remember that. How did it start?

My first ever poker hand was a four of a kind. I've been utterly shit ever since, and I don't suppose not knowing any of the rules helps that at all.

Straight flushes are frustrating, as unless someone else around the table also has a damn good hand (a high flush) then you won't win much of anything. Unless the other player's a spoon.

I don't know. It was the reason he gave for not coming over, though.

Can't see the intermediate forum, but I do remember him appearing on it and having what could only be refered to as a bit of a mental that we were splitting away having not read anything of what had happened to cause it. What with Stu having deleted/changed a fair bit.

All styles can be productive in all games; tournament poker is inherently easier to master than a straight-up cash table though, although it does possess certain dynamics that aren't present in a cash game.

If you are a tight player then fine, but you have to know how to exploit people's perception of you. You will have more opportunities to bluff and steal pots than a loose aggressive player, so you need to be on the lookout for them. There's no problem with folding a lot though. Most hands you get dealt you should be folding, after all.

Also, can I just say that the 9-7 hand is horrible, on first appearance. I suppose there is just about a scenario where it could be ok, but I'd be straining reality somewhat to think of one.

This could be a good example hand actually, if the details of it are known?

I know I won a shedload of money. Does that help?

Not without the dimensions of the shed, no.

Is there any decent on-line places to practice without paying money before I go to Vegas and lose?

They're no good, apparently. People don't play the same way when money is on the table.

Best thing to do is play some low blind money tables.

Cam has his own blog about poker, it is the Poker Moth:

http://pokermoth.wordpress.com/

Become a subservient lesbian who is 10 years older than her.

Because there's nothing duller than a bad beat story - $10 SNG last night, all 10 players left in, 10 chip antes and 50-100 blinds. I'd been playing fairly tight but had had some great pre-flop hands that hadn't connected with the flop and had ended up folding when my continuation bets were raised, so I probably looked a bit looser and weaker than usual at what looked like quite an aggressive table. I'd been up and down and was sitting on about 1200 of my 1500 starting stack.

AA under the gun. Consider the flat call but decide to go with a standard 3xBB raise. Folds to 4th position, an aggressive player who I've seen make moves before, who re-raises another 300, and the rest of the table folds round to me. A call puts half my chips in the middle and means that I can't put the hand down even to the scariest flop so I want to get my money in while I'm ahead or failing that to just win the 1200 or so chips that are already out there. I push for my last 600, and the fucking monkey calls with K10s before proceeding to hit runner-runner-runner for his straight.

To coin a phrase - DAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMN.

Thankyou. I feel better having got that off my chest.

All the major sites (Full Tilt Poker, Pokerstars, Absolute Poker, Bodog) have play money tables. While what Malabar says is absolutely true, they are still very useful if you are totally new and want to get an idea for how the game works; what the order of action is, what the button means, how the betting works etc, which can be very useful in helping you not feel like a complete n00b when playing live for the first time and helping you understand what is going on around you. But yes, take the actual strategy and tactics there with a pinch of salt.