The Help Tabloid

Your presence at a poker table can have a lot to do with how the game progresses and how the chips fall at the end of the session. I’ve written before about the different moods that a table can have. You can have a loose gambling mood where people aren’t playing competitively at all but are just there to have a good time and throw money around. Winning and losing aren’t objectives but they’re more of part of the thrill.

Or on the exact opposite end of the spectrum you can have a table with a bunch of serious players, not talking and there to play cards. This can be a dangerous table for you to play at if you’re like me and like to win and have fun at the same time.

What you’re looking for is a online poker table where the players are in good spirits and you’re in good spirits too. You want to keep the mood of the table up. You don’t berate the bad players since they’re giving you money. You should be glad they’re there, not telling them about how bad their play is. You should also be humble in your wins and honorable in your losses. It makes people more comfortable playing with you. Sure you’ll catch a bad beat every now and then when a fish catches a miracle card and beats your trips with a gutshot straight when you gave him almost no pot odds. But if that didn’t happen, the fish wouldn’t bite and we wouldn’t make any money off of them. So congratulate them on their win, don’t go on tilt or get angry, and just play solid casino games. You’ll win your money back in no time.

I know it sounds as if the mood of a table is arbitrary, but on the contrary, if you’re playing at a happy table, and you’re winning, you’re playing with players who are less likely to be playing as serious as you, and thus you are able to have fun and win at the same time.

If you’ve ever been to a Brick and Mortar casino as opposed to an online poker casino, you’ll have realized something immediately if you’re an astute observersationalist in terms of poker and gambling in general. The majority of players that come in have a certain mindset. That mindset: “Ok, I have x amount of money to lose.” And you’ll run into these people on the poker casino tables, on the blackjack tables, and on every other game at the casino. People there just to lose their money. Hell they’ve budgeted it so they won’t miss it when it’s gone. So what does this mean for you at the card table? Well if you can wait for the premiums and the nuts, you only have to play about 3 or 4 hands to gain a few stacks in your bankroll. These games are soft.

I use the term tourist to refer to people who play recreationally. There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just that more serious players love to see them because they can’t really find them playing poker online. When someone has the mindset of losing, then they usually lose.

Here are a few ways to spot a tourist. They love to get involved in a lot of hands. They live to call, calling stations to the nth degree. And they don’t fold. No, it’s all about that miracle card that busts your AA or your nut flush with a straight flush. But don’t worry if you run into one of these, they can be very profitable. All you have to do is wait on that premium hand, raise, hit the nuts on a safe board, and push. They’ll love to call. And you’ll love the newly OPM you’ve gotten. Oh, OPM, that’s other people’s money.

There’s nothing quite as impressive in a poker game as when a guy puts his opponent on a stealing move at the casino and calls down a large bet on the turn and/or river with nothing but a bare ace. Many times in poker hands, when the draw misses, an ace high can turn out to be the hand that wins, if you realize your opponent is on a busted draw, but can you always be that sure of yourself. It’s one of the most fickle questions in poker: will you look like a donk or a genius when this all washes out?

One very famous story regarding this kind of situation spotlights Stu Ungar playing heads up for the World Series of Poker championship. All the cards were out and the board read 3-3-7-K-Q. Ungar had raised preflop with a 10-9 offsuit on the button and his opponent, Monsour Matioubi, had called. The flop helped no one and Ungar continuation bet out nearly twice the pot, which Matioubi called. After scare cards on the turn and river, Matiboui goes all in. Ungar famously insta-calls, flipping over his unpaired 10 high hand, saying, “You have a 4-5 or a 5-6, I’m going to call you with this.” And sure enough, Matiboui had 5-4 offsuit, and Ungar won the bracelet.

A lot of this play comes from knowing your player’s style and reading the board, but it seems like much of the thinking comes from the fact that in poker it is much harder to make a winning hand than it is to miss.

By the odds, a nonpaired hand will make a pair on the flop 32% of the time. That means more than 2/3rds of the time playing online poker your opponent will have no pair. That’s 2/3rds of the time that well timed aggression alone can win the pot. Knowing the difference of when to go and when to not is what separates an Ungar from a donkey.

Anyone who’s played poker knows the frustration of playing with a bully. A bully is a super-aggressive poker player, someone who always raises huge amounts and will never let you see a card for free. These guys can be tough to play with simply because of the amount of chips that they’ll throw around. Most of the time, they’ll eventually make a raise at the wrong time and someone with a good hand will be able to cripple them, but in the meantime, it can be infuriating to let a bully steal your blinds and make you fold what may very well be a winning hand. I know a player who habitually tries to buy pots, and will often raise ludicrous amounts of money on hands that are not worth checking. I used to hate playing against him just for that fact, but eventually I caught on to his game.

The best way to keep a bully in check is to hit him back. Watch a bully’s tendencies, and if you ever catch him raising with rags, re-raise him and show him who’s boss, and if he’s unlucky enough to try to bully you when you’ve got the nuts, sucker him with a check or two and get him to throw his poker chips away.

What is it that drives poker players to play? A recent survey done by the swisspoker.ch says that out of 100 players who are asked why they play, an overwhelming majority would say they play poker to win money. But how true is that?

Sure, we all like to think we’re playing to win, but if we really meant it, would so many people still play so badly?

I’d go out on a limb here and say for the majority of the poker players, it’s not so much about playing and winning. It’s simply about playing. There’s a social camaraderie on in the ring on the felt.

And it’s for this reason we have the fish, the rich business men who throw away money, and the plain bad players. They’re not there to win, they’re there to play.

And it makes sense, and perhaps in some way we do have a want to win, only too many players don’t have the will to prepare.

Pros like Harrington, Brunson, and the likes didn’t start winning just because they wanted to. They started winning because they prepared, they learned and evolved and got better. This is what separates the pros from the general player.

They understand the game, and they understand that’s it’s not enough to just want to win. Instead, they took it to the next level, mastered the game, and learned what it took to win.

This is something to take to heart for all you budding players out there. You can want a million dollars so bad you actually convince yourself you have it. But can you convince me that you have it? The same goes for winning.

Often when playing Texas hold em, you don’t see many people raise in the big blind. Now of course there’s a reason for that; a raise from the big blind sets off alarm bells to all the other players at the table, or at least the good ones. A raise from the big blind is not common, and often signals a big hand.

So while there’s no reason to do it often, it still seems surprising that it happens rarely when playing online poker, or at least when I’m playing online poker. You often see people just call from the big blind when they end up having a big hand; while I can understand the strategy of trying to entice more people into the hand so you get paid off, the fact remains poker is still a game of luck and the more people involved in the hand lessen your chances of winning. And you’ll be kicking yourself if you limp in with that big hand and lose to a 3-10. Consequently, even if you have a middling hand, a raise from the big blind if often enough to get a few limping callers to throw their hands away and take down a nice little pot before the flop.

Either way, there is something to be said for a strategic raise from the big blind every now and again, so consider doing it when the time is right.

Many people who have an interest in online poker stop themselves because of the question of security. This is a valid concern, after all almost everyone has heard a story or two about someone getting their credit card information stolen. Yet of all the industries online, online poker is perhaps one of the safest places to trust your credit card information. Online poker depends more on repeat customers than virtually any other online industry. If online gambling was not a safe place to use a credit card, most people would not continue gambling online. This is a basic fact.

Another thing that can give you peace of mind about using your credit card for online gambling is that the online gambling industry has invested massive amounts of money on security in an attempt to make sure that their customers don’t have to worry abut online credit card theft. These attempts have actually made not only online gambling a safe way to do business, but most online businesses have benefited from these actions as well. There is always a chance of your credit card information stolen. From using it at the local grocery store, to loosing it and not knowing it for several days. However online gambling is as safe a place to use your credit card as anywhere.