Dave looked puzzled, “What do you mean Carl?”.

“Well lets say that I have aces in Texas Hold em poker and I communicate to you that I have them. You are first to speak and you have junk but you limp in to assist me later on in the hand. Because you have not raised, your limp will encourage other players to limp along with you. I raise with the aces and you re-raise to drive out all of the limpers who may have called a single raise.”

“Your re-raise has helped to protect my aces because the other players have implied weakness by merely calling and I do not want to play my hand in a multi-way pot”.

“Yeah but would it not be better if you only raised a little to entice them in to call and then do the raise and re-raise thing on the flop and trap them for more money?”

“That’s possible but you run the risk of somebody flopping something and wiping both players out” I replied.

Dave listened for a full hour on everything that I had to say about cheating in card rooms and he was like a sponge as he was taking in all of the various bits and pieces of information. Some years ago, I actually had a full blown argument with a gaming manager after no action was taken regarding stopping local players from speaking in their own language.

I was not a local and neither was I a regular poker player so my complaints fell on un-sympathetic ears. I have not played in that casino since and will likely never play there again. You really need to look after yourself whenever you play poker and this even applies in online poker games and especially as you start to move up in limits.

Sometimes it is possible that you can just feel when something is not quite right. This “feel” is very difficult to explain and I think that it is the subconscious mind reacting to all of the data that has been processed from past games and experiences and eventually coming to a decision. We sometimes call these thoughts and feelings “instinct” and “sixth sense” but how many of us actually listen to that little voice in our head.

I would just like to point out here that many poker games are entirely straight and played by honest respectable people and I am certainly not encouraging people to be paranoid about playing poker. Otherwise you just start seeing Indians behind every bush and you just end up not playing at all. But be advised that there are Indians out there and they are far from friendly.

So if you are contemplating playing in a poker game irrespective of where it is, it pays to do a little bit of research first and check the game out and the players as well if that is possible. Armed with a little knowledge, your journey into the world of live card room poker can be both an enjoyable and a rewarding one. For the record, Dave had a great time and actually won a bit of money.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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