Low-Limit Games

Low-limit games, ranging from $0.10/$0.20 to$6/$12, are generally populated by players who are new to the game, aren't good enough to compete for higher stakes, or are playing for the sheer fun of it. As a result, you tend to see people playing too many hands and taking them too far.

Conventional Wisdom

Conventional wisdom suggests that you should be willing to lose (and thus ready to play) twenty times more than the maximum bet. However, there's more to choosing a limit than just bankroll. Limit games are generally divided into three basic categories-low, middle, and high-each with its own psychology (or, some might say, psychosis).

Scared money Rarely Wins

A poker player should always be concentrating on winning, and never not losing. "Scared money" rarely wins, especially against aggressive players who are able to recognize it.

Disaster - Howard "The Professor" Lederer

Playing not to lose any game is definitely a formula for disaster.

-Howard "The Professor" Lederer

The Poker Chip

The way an opponent handles chips can tell you a lot about his or her playing style. A quick glance at one's chips usually means a bet is on the way. Players who stack their chips into elaborate pyramids or other miraculous feats of architecture are people you should watch out for-holding onto one's chips long enough to engage in this kind of construction is the sign of a very patient player who isn't mixing it up in too many pots.

The Poker Chip

While chip tricks can look very cool, they can also be very dangerous. Literally, if you're using a heavy chip. A slightly less obvious problem-to you, but not to your more observant opponents-would be a tell. If you want to impress a table with your manual dexterity, just make sure that you don't stop suddenly when you notice you've picked up a big hand.

The Poker Chip

I once sat across the table from a player who recounted a cautionary tale. After teaching himself the basic riffle, he attempted to impress his father with a demonstration of his newfound dexterity. "That's great," observed his dad, in a tone that conveyed something short of enthusiasm. "How much did that cost you to learn?" To which junior was reluctantly forced to confess, "About $18,000."

The Poker Chip

The first chip trick most players learn is the riffle. Grab six chips from your stack and set them down on the table. With one hand, break them into two stacks of three. Push the two stacks together, gently, while pulling them upward. After a bit of practice, two stacks will shuffle together neatly, like a deck of cards, re-forming into a single stack. Soon you'll be grabbing the six chips from your stack without even looking. Experienced rifflers can shuffle stacks of two or three times that size.

The Poker Chip

Chips provide an outlet for boredom: the chip trick. The basic riffle is a good place to start. Chip magicians who have achieved a certain degree of skill can deftly shuffle a stack using only their fingers, run a solitary chip along the back of their hands, or bounce one on the table with enough torque to make it return to the top of their stack.

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Winners and Losers - Nick "The Greek" Dandalos

The only difference between a winner and a loser is character.

-Nick "The Greek" Dandalos

Antonio Esfandiari Confesses About Drinking

Most top poker players avoid drinking while they play-unless there's an angle to be exploited. "If there's a pigeon who only starts drinking if someone else starts drinking," confesses Antonio Esfandiari, "I'll start drinking with them. And as they get drunk . . ."

MY Money Out There - Amir Vahedi

When I have to put my money out there, my money's out there. Everybody knows that. . . . So if you want to mess with me, it's going to cost you. . . . You have to be willing to die in order to live in these tournaments. . . . That's basically it.

-Amir Vahedi

Game Selection

Any time there are multiple open seats at a table when you arrive, take a few minutes to figure out which will be the most profitable. Your win rate depends on it.

Game Selection

Look at what would happen with the tight rocks on your right and the maniac on your left. Every time you enter the pot, the maniac raises or reraises, while the rocks-who are no strangers to the isolation strategy-won't be afraid to reraise. Now it's you who will be facing a double raise, often out of position. Change your seat, even if it means getting up from the game!

Game Selection

You generally want the hyperaggressive players on your right and the tight-ass rocks on your left. When the maniac comes into the pot, you will reraise and "isolate" him from the tight-ass rocks, who will likely fold to your double-sized bet. You'll play for pots heads-up, in superior position, and-assuming you're not a maniac yourself when it comes to hand selection-usually with a hand that's a favorite to win.

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Poker and Common Sense - Science

The poker player learns that sometimes both science and common sense are wrong; that the bumblebee can fly; that, perhaps, one should never trust an expert; that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by those with an academic bent.

-David Mamet

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Game Selection

Almost as important as selecting the right game is choosing the best seat. A game that is eminently beatable from one side of the table may be tragically unprofitable if you find yourself in the wrong chair. This isn't about superstition-despite what you'll often hear from your fellow players, there's no such thing as a "cold" seat-but about position, which you've already discovered to be one of the most important aspects of the game.

Game Selection

Remember that you'll likely make a lot more money in a lower-stakes game that you can run over than you will in a higher-stakes game where you have to fight for every chip.

Game Selection

You have compare the tone of the game with your personal style of play. If you are someone who just loves to bluff, you're not going to do very well in a game of loose, passive players who will call you all the way to a showdown. If you are a patient, calculating sort, you're going to do best against those Type As who will raise your nut hands on the final street.

Game Selection

As the cliché goes, if you can't spot the fish, it's probably you. Make sure that there is at least one person who is stupid, exhausted, desperate, irrational, and/or drunk enough for you to outplay.

Game Selection

Imagine being the ninth best poker player in the world. It would feel pretty good, right? Sure it would, unless you're sitting at a table with the eight players who are better than you. Perhaps the most important decision a poker player has to make is whether or not to sit down at a particular game.

How To: Texas Hold'em Poker - Review

Texas hold'em poker is a card game. It is played with a typical 52 card deck. You can find it in countries all around the world in casinos to cardrooms, online and in home games. Hold'em can be played with as little as two players (going "heads up"), up to a max of eleven players. Regular poker hand ranks apply to this game. For example a flush beats a straight. A straight beats three of a kind and so on. You can review the hand rankings for poker here. In some home poker games you'll find a joker in the deck, but in casinos and cardrooms you'll rarely find that. You can also use the joker as a cut card, or the bottom of the deck dealing card as well. Just tape the two faces of the joker cards in, leaving the outside of the backs showing!

The typical hold'em game goes as follows and is broken down into five categories. I have intentionally simplified betting and the blinds so not to over complicate the article. Betting structure can be read more about here:

Preflop:
Starting with the dealer button, each person is dealt one card. Then a second card. Both cards are face down. After everyone receives their pocket/hole cards (the two cards face down just dealt), then betting occurs.
Note: the dealer button is a actually a button that says "dealer" on it or "d" that is passed around the table after each hand. It signifies where the dealing is done from.

Flop:

The dealer turns over three cards in the middle of the table (called "the flop"). These are community cards that each player can use to create the best hand possible out of. Once again betting occurs.

Turn:

The dealer turns over another card making four community cards. This fourth card is called "the turn" or sometimes "fourth street". Betting occurs again.

River:

The dealer turns over the fifth and last community card. This is called "the river" or "fifth street". Betting occurs for the last time.

Showdown:

The remaining players in the hand show their cards in order from the person who bet first. Each player uses his two cards, and the five community cards to create the best hand (5 cards total). A player can use any combination so even if one card from his pocket cards and four of the community cards creates the best hand, it is fine. When all five of the cards in the community make the best hand then everyone splits the pot. This is called "the board plays". Also note that in any time during the game a player can fold and get out of the hand. All bets will be lost at that point.

One Dollar, One Chip At A Time - Stu Ungar

See, in my world-the world of high-stakes gin and poker-we play for cold, hard cash. It's all business, pure and simple. Anyone who thinks card playing is a game-I'll show you a loser. Money . . . M-O-N-E-Y. That's how you measure success. One dollar at a time. One chip at a time. That's how you keep score.

-Stu Ungar

Why Las Vegas Casinos Offer Free Alcohol

There's really a good reason why Las Vegas casinos offer free alcohol to their players: Those drinks aren't really free. Alcohol generally impairs judgment and inspires recklessness, a double whammy when you're making critical decisions about your money.

Everything Is Zen

When asked what it feels like to lose $100,00 in a single session, Jennifer Harman offered this reply: "The first time I lost $3,000, I went home and cried like a baby. . . . When I lost $10,000, same thing. When I lost $30,000, I couldn't sleep for four days. When I lost $100,000, for the first time in my life, I couldn't sleep for a week. But then, the next time I lost $100,000, and the next time I lost $100,000, you know, it's like your pain threshold just goes up."

Poker at the Movies

"I try to keep the gambling to a minimum."

"How do you do that?"

"By being good at it."

-From the 1990 movie Havana. Robert Redford plays Jack Weil, a 1950s professional poker player who heads to Havana to set up a game, only to fall in love and get mixed up in the whole Cuban Revolution thing.

Everything Is Zen

The great poker players know that bad beats are an inevitable part of the game. Examined from a slightly different angle, most of your beats should be bad beats, as you're generally pouring money into the pot in those situations when you already have the best of it, or at least have the right pot odds to hang around for a draw.

Everything Is Zen

There's a poker adage that goes something like, "If you can't play with a smile, then don't play at all. " Whoever originally said this obviously was miraculously enlightened, utterly insane, or benefiting from some very effective medication. No one can play happy all of the time.