“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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“But to answer your question, one of the things that you need to watch out for are the angle shooters. They will try all sorts to get your money”

“Like what”

“Steal your chips when you are careless stacking them up, ask to borrow money from you, pretend to pass to see what you do, hide their cards from view so you think that the action is on you, hide chips to prevent players from knowing how deep they are, pass chips to one another, soft play each other and I could go on all night Dave”.

“Slow down a bit Carl, your saying that players actually steal chips from you”

“Not all of them Dave but it only takes one. The world is full of thieves and cheats, do you seriously think that people suddenly become angels once they enter a card room. I know of one professional cheat who used to be a pick pocket who earns a thousand pound a week stealing chips and doing other moves”

“Jesus, I never thought playing poker was that dangerous” said Dave.
“Depends who you play with, I have been in games with gangsters where there have been rival gangs pointing guns at each other and I have witnessed lord knows how many fights where people have ended up in hospital”

“I must say Carl that you are doing an excellent job of putting me off going”

“I am not saying that you should never play live poker because you will probably have a great experience and it would be a shame to miss out on that because live play is a much bigger buzz than online poker play”

“So why don’t you play more live poker then”

“Because online play pays me more that’s why, I end up getting three times the action online. But live play still has a much bigger buzz to it”.

“You mentioned about players passing chips to one another, how do they manage that?”

“When I say pass to one another I don’t necessarily mean physically passing chips although it is certainly possible that they could do it this way. I mean two players betting and raising and then one of them dropping out and letting the other player take the pot”.

“Why would they do this?” asked Dave.

“Well firstly this is much more frequent in poker tournaments than cash games but it does sometimes happen in side games as well. It can be very advantageous to have an accomplice have more money on the table. You can use this other player to assist you with trapping another player in the middle”. Look out for the third and final part of this series coming soon.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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I basically told him what I could in the short time that we had together. He was doing rather well in the poker games that he was playing in but he had now got it into his head that he wanted to try “real” poker in a proper card room.

I didn’t have the time to go with him as I don’t play much live poker these days myself. Nearly all of my time now is spent either playing online or teaching and writing about poker. I did not like the thought of Dave going off on his own without me.

I sort of felt a responsibility towards him because he used to listen to my stories of how well I was doing and this must have spurred him on to actually playing the game because Dave had never been a gambling man.

“So are you saying that I should never play in a real card room Carl?”
“No Dave I am not, it’s just that it won’t be like playing poker like it is on TV which is all gentlemanly and straight up”.

“So your saying that people cheat in real card rooms”

I smiled and told him not to be so naive. “People cheat in life Dave and poker is no exception whether it is played online or in a real card room. It is just that online poker the site does actually go some way towards protecting you and the other players cannot get hold of the cards which is important”

“So what do I need to look out for then” he replied.

“Well for a start, make sure that you are playing in a cash game that has a house dealer if at all possible. Some of these players can be very slick when it comes to cheating and there are still card mechanics out there plying their trade”.

“What else do I need to look out for?”

“Watch out for players communicating with each other, some of them will blatantly talk in their own language and they are not always talking about the weather either. If you see this then inform them to speak English only and if they refuse then take the matter up with the card room supervisor and if you get no joy from them then a casino manager”.

“Have you ever cheated Carl?” said Dave with a rather cheeky look on his face. I avoided the question by saying that it was a terrible thing to say to a “gentleman” like me. Seriously though, I will take the fourth amendment on that one.

“So are there any specific moves that I need to look out for?”
Look out for part two of this series coming soon.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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Number of outs X 2 + 2 = %

So if you have a flush draw and you want to know what the percentage is of hitting it in the next card, just count the total outs which in this case is 9 and times it by 2 and then add 2. So 9 X 2 + 2 = 20%, quickly converted to odds, this is 4-1 against hitting it on the NEXT card.

Percentages for hitting your hand if you go to the RIVER

If your outs number 1-8 then simply times that figure by 4 to get the percentage. So a 6 out poker hand would have a 24% chance of making it if it went all the way to the river like if you went all in and an 8 outer like a straight draw would have a 32% chance or near as damn it 2-1.

If your outs number more than 8, then simply times by 4 again but then SUBTRACT 1% for every out above 8. So if you had a massive fifteen outer, that would be 15 X 4 = 60% – 7  = 53% or in odds terms, slightly odds on and better than Even money.

A very simple formula which is not mathematically exact but it does not need to be because I use it. So now you know how to calculate outs and percentages in poker to within a couple of percent difference and can amaze your friends if you did not already know this. Someone famous once said that “Simplicity is the true genius” and I think that this applies to poker perfectly and to Texas Hold’em poker.

Because I am also a game theorist, I am constantly seeing comparisons with other fields. There is a famous Zen Buddhism quotation that really struck a chord with me. It goes, “if you are hungry then eat and if you are tired then sleep and if you are thirsty then drink”.

I apply this principle to poker, what I like about the Zen quotes is that they force you to think about the answer or in some cases answers. The connection that I choose to make in poker by applying this saying is this…..when there is weakness then attack and where there is strength then defend. This could easily be a Zen quotation but it isn’t. It is simply something that I have made up or at least I think that it was my idea.

It actually simplifies an awful lot in poker. If your opponents are betting and raising, it amazes me just how many people show signs of paranoia and start thinking that their opponents are trying to pull one on them. I am a very aggressive poker player when I decide to enter the pot but I time my entries to coincide with apparent weakness. If it has been folded around to me in the cut-off in a six handed online poker game and I raise with a 5-5 and the guy on the button has AA then that is just my misfortune….that is part of poker.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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For instance, because you can see all of the cards on the screen at any one time then you are always aware of just who is exactly in the hand at all times. You also know whose turn it is to act, how long that player has left to act and how much they have on the table in terms of money.

But the sheer lack of this built in facility in a live poker game opens up all kind of avenues for unscrupulous players to exploit it and believe me when I say that certain poker players would not think twice about doing such things. Certain players will try and disguise the fact that they have any cards on the table, either by obscuring them with their hands or possibly with chips.

They do this to try and prompt a reaction from someone (either betting or checking) that they otherwise would not have got had they realised that they were still active in the pot. Some poker players deliberately attempt to cause ambiguity by checking in a manner that could easily be mis-interpreted. Then if you check after they “check”, they can then claim that they never checked at all and had intended to bet themselves.

There are all types of possible angles for the poker opportunist to exploit and it only takes the novice and inexperienced poker player to be the victim of one such trick on only one occasion to be on the receiving end of a serious financial loss. It is for a similar reason why certain players like to disguise how much money that they have on the table either in cash or chips or both.

Imagine for a minute how destructive it would be if a player who was playing No Limit Texas Hold’em poker tried to bully what he thought was a short stack out of the pot with a big all in bet of say $1000 only to then find that his opponent had four one thousand dollar chips concealed at the back of his stack.

If the all in player had declared himself “all in” then his bet is binding but he only made that bet because he believed that his opponent only had a further $1000 on the table.

Concealing your hand

This might seem very obvious but it is surprising just how many players in card rooms are careless when it comes to exposing their own hand. Once again this is something that the online player never has to worry about because the software does this for him.

But there is a certain amount of technique involved when attempting to look at your own hand and doing this badly or perhaps carelessly can end up costing the novice live game poker player an awful lot of money.

At the end of the day, it is your responsibility to look at your cards in the securest way possible and any information that you carelessly give away to the other players is even more ammunition for them to use against you. While most poker players do not go out of their way to get a sneaky peek at an opponents hole cards, others do and the card room rookie needs to keep a keen eye out for this.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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So you start with $500 then and you play six tables of NL25, the plan is to drop down to NL10 if your poker bankroll drops to $300. It initially drops to $380 after you start but a good run of hands and situations sees you rising to $550 after the first week. You are also getting a good rake deal as well.

You are playing tight-solid and are merely looking to take advantage of the weak players at these levels. In week number two then you are really starting to feel out this level and you win a further six buy-ins which takes your poker bankroll up to $700. This equates to 14 buy-ins at the next level up which is NL50 but you want to get some more experience at NL25 first.

Week three sees you go up and then down several times and basically break even on the week. You are still $200 up on the month which is eight buy-ins and that increases hugely in week four when you go on a heater and win a total of fifteen buy-ins which sees your stack increase by another $375 and you now have $1075 in your poker bankroll.

You get another $75 in rakeback so you now have $1150 in your bankroll. You are seriously tempted to withdraw the $650 in winnings but you fancy having a shot at NL50. Both are viable options and you do have 23 buy-ins at the higher NL50 level which is a good bankroll to have for that level as well.

But you cannot just jump into any level with your whole poker bankroll and stay there for the simple reason being that this new level could be too tough for you. Caution is definitely advised when you move up. So you try your hand at NL50 with ten buy-ins safe in the knowledge that if you lose the $500 then you still have $650 to play NL25 with again. This is still more than you started with but if it does go wrong then this could be an indication that NL50 is too tough.

Of course there is a third option and that is to keep on playing NL25. Your sample size is still very small so you have not proved that you can beat NL25 yet. You change your mind and decide to wisely continue with your education and play NL25 for another month.

After a break even two week stretch you then win a total of sixteen buy-ins over the second half of the month which is a nice $400. You also get another $75 in rakeback which now takes your poker bankroll to a nice healthy $1550. You seem to be beating NL25 and now decide to take a six buy-in shot at NL50 to see how that goes.

Moving up and down through the levels like this can be your best weapon when it comes to making money in any online poker game.

Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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In this hand our hero had the 10c-9c and it was limped by three players in a full-ring $5-$10 texas hold’em game. In this instance then the call is pretty automatic given the hand type and the pot odds which are very good. Then when you consider the implied odds as well then we have a profitable situation. The big blind raps the table and there is $25 in the pot.

The flop comes Qc-4c-2d giving our hero a flush draw. He is now the first to speak and rightly checks. There is little point in semi-bluffing here into four opponents or pumping the pot. If one of his opponents has flopped top pair and they raise then he could find himself heads up with the worst hand trying to outdraw the only player left in the hand with reduced implied odds.

If you bet and it gets raised then that raise can prevent other players from calling. Here is a situation where you really don’t mind other players staying in the hand if you check and someone else bets. Everyone checks to the final limper who bets and now it is back on our hero.

Once again the correct play here is to call, folding is not an option simply because of the pot odds so the choice is between calling and raising. But raising presents our hero with a similar problem as before. If his opponent is betting a hand like top pair with something like Q-J then a raise will simply thin the field against the one hand that they have to outdraw to win the pot.

It is simply better to call and let other players come along for the ride so to speak. Our hero calls as does one other limper and there is now $40 in the pot and three players left in the hand. The turn card is the 8h which misses our hero so he checks and so does the first limper. The final limper bets $10 making a $50 pot and our hero rightly calls getting 5/1 immediate odds and some implied odds as well so he cannot fold even though the limit has doubled.

The other player folds so the hand is now heads up with $60 in the pot. The river card misses our heroes flush draw but pairs his ten. He checks and the final limper bets again.

This now puts $70 into the pot. Despite the fact that he is almost certainly beaten here, pot odds of 7/1 coupled with a hand that does have some potential to be the best hand then a fold is simply out of the question here.

Raising is a poor play as if our hero has the best hand then he will win the pot by calling as any weaker hand wouldn’t call the raise anyway. Our hero called and lost the pot to a K-Q but he can be commended for playing the hand well.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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Are there any sites you could recommend to me? I’ve heard there are some non-secure sites out there on the web stealing credit card numbers and the like. Is this true? By the way, I’m far from any casinos so I guess playing online would be my last best resort.

Also, are there sites which categorized their players? I hope you understand what I mean, separating experienced from inexperienced, or the like. In some of my home games and on play money tables, I’ve tried to play with players of little knowledge in poker and I almost left the table because of boredom.

Great site by the way. Thanks in advance!
Lester
Lester,

I would recommend that you play on sites such as Full Tilt or Pokerstars. They do not classify their players, but they do have very low stakes games. Usually the lower the stakes, the worse the players are. Granted, there are exceptions, but that is usually the case.

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Together with my friends on the other hand, we’ve played with 3 or 5 dollar buy ins and so far we have also won some tournaments. In fact, we won nine tournaments and I’m 80 dollars richer now.

However, I noticed that my friends are playing not that good, so I’m wondering if I should try then playing other tournaments with buy ins of 10 dollars. I’m not sure with this totally.

Mike
Mike,

When you raise the stakes, you also raise the risk of loss. If you can raise the stakes with your friends without objections, there is no reason why you shouldn’t try and win more money. However, if they object, keep the game where it is and continue to take their money. They either will improve their game, or they will continue to fund yours.

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Just like everybody else here I guess, I drop by because I wanted to ask a question. By the way, I’m 21 years old and for about a year now, have been playing poker. I love playing with my friends; usually about 9 of my friends at a time.

Normally, we play tournaments by which buy-in is roughly 10 dollars and the winner is usually the one who takes everything, but leaving out 10 dollars for the owner of the house we are at.

Just an information, for the past 6 months, I am down 20 dollars. Typically, I play full tilt poker but I’m not using real money. I consider myself very good at buy-in plays, but I found some things boring because I am just using play money. At a certain point, I thought of playing real cash games but I am not confident enough that I could really play well.

Any advise? By the way, it usually takes me about 2 hours to make 10 thousand and when I advance in the table stakes from 25/50 to 100/200 for an instance, I usually lose track.

Do you think I can manage to play online with real money? And if so, how much money should I put at risk?

Thanks!
Carl
Carl,

I think you should take a shot at playing live, but I would play lower stakes to start with. I would deposit about $100 to $200 to start with and see how that goes. Don’t base your ability to win or lose on play money stakes alone. They usually are really reliable as many people play ultra loose and will stay till the end chasing junk.

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