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A
Beginner's Survival Guide
Some
of my best ideas come from readers like you. Recently a reader's
email suggested a column offering a survival guide to ease
the transition for beginners who are about to take the plunge
and play casino poker for the first time. This is an idea
whose time has come, and it probably ought to come around
about once a year, since there is a continuing influx of new
players --and new readers --who may never have given a moment's
thought to the differences between playing poker in a casino
or cardroom, and playing in a home game or across the kitchen
table with family and friends.
START
SMALL: Playing in a casino is not like playing in a home game
or with family and friends. The game is faster, for one thing,
and that takes some getting used to. And regardless of how
many truly awful hands you're apt to find played in low-limit,
"no fold'em" hold'em games, those games are usually
a lot tighter than they are around the kitchen table when
your opponents are Uncle Billy, your parents, and three or
four of your cousins. Even if you are an experienced home
game player, you will find the pace of casino poker substantially
swifter than the home game variety. You probably should figure
on losing money the first few times you play in a casino,
if for no other reason than your own unfamiliarity with the
pace of the game and a few formalized procedures, rules, and
points of etiquette that are new to you. Since you will, in
essence, be paying for lessons the first few times you play
poker in a casino, there's no reason to make them any more
costly than necessary. My advice is simple: Play small at
first. And stay small until you feel comfortable with the
environment, are sure that you can outplay your opponents,
and can afford a bigger game. Then move up.
JOIN
THE 'GOOD HANDS' PEOPLE: Playing marginal hands can be your
undoing. Play few hands, but play aggressively when you are
dealt a good hand. Actually, if you're going about it the
right way, you'll gain as much or more by watching your opponents
when you are not involved in a hand than you'll learn by vying
for pots with them. Make sure you have some idea about the
hands you will play from various starting positions before
looking at your cards. If you're playing hold'em, my books
contain suggested starting hands that can be played from early,
middle, and late position. Other authors have also promulgated
starting standards for hold'em players, and most agree about
the vast majority of starting hands. What matters most is
that you need a basis for deciding which hands are playable
and which ought to be folded. When you're really new to casino
poker, playing fewer hands will probably mitigate your losses
while affording you an opportunity to watch your opponents,
observe and mentally catalogue the kinds of hands each of
them plays from early, mid, and late position, and eventually
use that knowledge to outplay them.
DON'T
BLUFF : Low limit games are no place for bluffers. In these
games, where you typically have a relatively large number
of opponents seeing the flop and even continuing beyond it
with all sorts of hands I can't imagine ever playing, a bluff
is unlikely to work for two reasons. As a general rule, the
more opponents you are confronting, the greater the chance
that at least one of them has a hand. And he or she will call
when you come out betting. In addition, low limit games are
populated with players who sleep very well, thank you, knowing
that no one, but no one, is stealing from them. Since bluffing
is unlikely to work, don't try it -- unless you've identified
some opponents who are actually willing to throw hands away
when someone bets into them with what appears to be a big
hand.
Don't
be disappointed if you can't bluff. It's an overrated tactic
anyway. What you have going for you instead is the certainty
that you can expect to be called whenever you bet, and may
of those callers really should have thrown their hands away
a lot earlier. Moreover, whenever you make a big hand, like
a full house, the nut flush, or nut straight, you can raise
with the certainty that you will be called -- thereby winning
additional bets that you could never count on winning in games
where players will lay down marginal hands to a bluff. In
the low limit games you'll be starting out in, you'll probably
have to showdown the winning hand to capture the pot. That
makes for a somewhat mechanical, occasionally boring, but
undeniably profitable strategy: If you got the goods, bet.
If you don't, check. And if someone is betting into your hand
and you know yours is better, go ahead and raise.
KEEP
LEARNING : You'll never know it all. There is always something
more to learn about poker, and even when you think you know
all there is to know, you won't. Moreover, much of what's
learned about poker has to be relearned from time to time.
Read books. All of them. Even if you get just one or two good
ideas from a book, it's an investment that will pay for itself
in a relatively short period of time. I have a large library
of poker books, and I don't consider any of them to have cost
me money. They are investments that have repaid the money
spent to acquire them many times over. Books aren't all there
is, either. Watch videos, get yourself some software, like
Wilson's Turbo Texas Hold'em, or Turbo 7-Card Stud (which
not only lets you play against computerized opponents, it
is a terrific tool for running simulations and conducting
your own research about various hands and scenarios), discuss
poker with knowledgeable players, and avail yourself of the
advice proffered on the Internet newsgroup, rec.gambling.poker.
This
seems like a pathetically small measure of advice, particularly
when there is so much to know before one morphs from newbie
to skilled poker player. But there's a finite limit to the
number of angels I can get on the head of this particular
pin. If you take my advice, you'll get your feet wet gradually
-- there's no real need to dive into the deep water head first
-- and reinforce your experiences by thinking about what's
transpired in your game and assessing it against the theories
you've learned from books and software. Don't expect too much
at first. Setting the world on fire isn't important. Learning
and improving is. Keep moving forward. Baby steps will do.
As long as you're making progress, you'll reach that point
when you realize you're a poker player --a real one too, not
a pretender. Even then, you'll have to keep learning. But
it's much more enjoyable when your winnings are underwriting
your hobby and maybe even your lifestyle.
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