Over my next few blog postings I’ll share one of Mike Caro’s true and false poker question lists.  It’s not a quiz, because you don’t get to answer the questions. He does. For your convenience, he’s arranged the questions into two groups – the true group – poker facts – and the false group – poker fiction. OK, here goes on the True Group. (I will cover the list of Poker Fiction om a later blog post).

THE TRUE GROUP. Everything on this list is true.

Female poker players have psychological tools at their disposal that make them potentially capable of winning more money than male poker players. (Years ago, I even wrote a book about this. Women poker players can take advantage of male biases at the table. There is no equivalent advantage available to men.)

High-low split games require less psychological skill than other forms of poker. (Sure. It’s harder to bluff, harder to manipulate weak opponents, and harder to read tells. In fact, there just aren’t as many tells. That’s because opponents tend to think they have a way to escape, even if you have them beat. “Got me beat high? Hey, I’ll try for low.” – that sort of thinking prevails. In making their decisions, they react less to you than they would in a straight high-hand-wins game. They relate mostly to their own hand and what they think your cards imply.)

Most professional players go on tilt at least once a week. (Sad but true. The trick is to convince yourself to play your best game all the time. Years ago, I wrote a column for another publication about “Caro’s Law of Least Tilt.” It pointed out that top players seemed to observe a ritual of taking turns playing too aggressively with poor hands. In effect, they take turns going on tilt. And – among equally skilled professionals – players who waste the littlest time emotionally steaming and playing poorly, while not letting their opponents know they’re being short changed, fare the best. Thus, Caro’s Law of Least Tilt was born, speaking what was plainly true but not plainly obvious to some – that he who spends the least time on tilt earns the most money.)

Most players who complain about losing with six full houses in a session actually lost on three or fewer full houses. (Same goes for all other sympathy-seeking claims.)

If you complain to another player about how poor your luck is, citing a true example of your bad beats, your story probably will be raised by an even sadder story. (However, the story used to make this raise will never be true.)

Most poker opponents in the $50/$100 limits and up cannot easily afford to be playing that limit and could not afford to sustain four major losing sessions in a row. (It’s poker’s dark little secret. Come to think of it, most $100/$200 players could not rationally be able to afford a $40/$80 game by standards they themselves would set if you forced them to think about it.)

The majority of today’s top players have been broke at least twice in the last 15 years. (What usually breaks them is (a) not keeping a big enough bankroll, (b) betting sports, (c) going on tilt, or (d) being cheated. But the top players usually spring back. They tend to play better when they need to win – usually meaning right after going broke and while rebuilding their bankrolls.)

If you approach them away from the table, most opponents will tell you exactly how they play, if you simply ask them a few questions about imaginary poker situations. (This amazing fact has been worth possibly $100,000 to me over the years. Remember not to volunteer your opinions. The object is to flatter them. Listen attentively. They’ll think they’re teaching you something about how you should play. But you’re really just learning something about how they play.)

Big-limit players tip dealers less, on average, than medium-limit players. (I don’t know why for sure. We all have our theories about this. But the bigger the limits get, the meaner some players treat dealers. They rant, they rave, they whimper, they whine, and they seldom tip. There’s also a direct correlation between the size of the game and the ferocity that losing cards are thrown at the dealer. Bigger limits, cards thrown harder – and more words sworn.)

Most professional hold ’em players raise too often before the flop. (Still true after all these years. Although I advocate an aggressive style of play, most pros overdo aggression before the flop. They think that by raising, they’ll drive out hands that might otherwise hang in there and beat them. In truth, they often drive away hands that might otherwise hang in and reward them. The opponents holding strong hands call the raise, while the opponents holding weak hands – hands that could have been coaxed into supplying more profit had they called – are the ones that get chased out of the pot. The trouble with limit-the-field technology is that it often limits the field of the wrong opponents. You should only raise if (a) you have a significant edge, (b) your raise will confuse your opponents or somehow influence them to act to their detriment, or (c) you have a good chance of winning the pot outright without proceeding to a contested showdown.)

Ace-to-five lowball is the easiest common form of poker to teach a beginner to beat in the shortest time. (Nothing comes close.)

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“Seldom Re-raise As The Big Blind In Hold’em”
by Mike Caro

First, you need to know that I frequently re-raise as the big blind when an aggressive, blind-stealing-type opponent raises in the small blind after everyone else folds. I don’t need a very strong hand to justify that re-raise, because even if I’m beat by a mediocre hand, the re-raise gives me psychological leverage to add to my positional advantage. Remember, I’ll get to act last on all betting rounds.

But in all other circumstances, while you should vary your play, and you can certainly sometimes justify re-raising when you’re in the big blind position, usually you’ll make more money by waiting to see the flop. Among the many reasons for this, these important ones come to mind:

If the small blind isn’t involved in the pot, you will have the disadvantage of acting first on all future betting rounds.
With all but aces and, perhaps, kings, the strength of your hand is not usually defined until after you see the flop. You really don’t know if it is strong or weak. Unlike stud games where your strength often changes slowly, one card at a time, the three-card flop strongly defines your hand in hold ’em. Although your cards may be strong enough for you to believe that you have a likelihood of having the best hand, that edge is usually not enough to justify a re-raise and risk facing yet another raise from a rare hand that might truly dominate you. This is especially true because of your poor position.

Why announce that you have a fairly strong hand if you don’t have to? The very tiny edge of pushing a hand you think might be slightly better than your opponents’ hands is often overwhelmed by the fact that you are giving away information unnecessarily. Of course, this show of strength can sometimes work in your favor (and you CAN use it deceptively with weak hands), but it is more likely to work against you by chasing away weak callers and the long-range profit they might supply on future betting rounds. If you just call, opponents will think you might have anything, from very weak hands to moderately strong ones or better. You keep your options open on future betting rounds, and you can fold more easily, having invested less, if the flop disappoints you.

For these reasons and others, I recommend usually not re-raising in the big blind with moderately strong hands, except when isolated with only the small blind.

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Eons ago, well, in 1983, Mike Caro published a document called Poker Plan 3 (PP3). Here’s an extract from a more recent article by Caro that may be of interest. This guy has succesfully taught – and through his books and online poker university continues to teach – some of the best poker players on the planet. They’re not neccessarily the “teen idol tournament stars” but he’s helped create a huge number of good, solid profitable poker players – many of whom are now professionals… Interested?

How the missions work

I called PP3 “a structured, precise game plan for mastering poker.” The introduction explained the concept. “Each time you play, I will give you one mission to accomplish. Sometimes it will be a single thing and sometimes it will be short series of related objectives. Except for fulfilling your very specific daily goal, you should simply play your normal best game of poker.”

Then I gave a warning. “Here’s a problem: You may decide that some of the missions are trivial or unimportant. You may feel you already use some of these tools effectively, and therefore, it may seem reasonable to skip the mission. DON’T SKIP THE MISSION! You may not now understand why it’s necessary to do some of the things I instruct, but once you’ve successfully completed your 15th mission, you WILL understand.”

The point of the game plan is to force you to go out and accomplish the task of the day – even if it seems like something you already understand. Understanding and actually doing it are two very different things. There are short follow-ups that you are instructed to read AFTER you accomplished the mission. Now that you know what to do, here is another mission from Poker Plan 3.

In PP3, this was Mission 3. You’re going to like this mission. It’s fun because it deals with the most primitive nature of poker. You get to choose an opponent as your target. You will study that player and examine his weaknesses, then you’ll try to bluff him … twice.

That’s just the first part of the mission. In the second part, you’ll concentrate on just two players of your choice, observing and making comparisons. The ability to focus in poker is almost a secret art. Yet all world class professional players use this art effectively — whether they know it or not.

You can study a whole table of opponents all at once and, no matter how hard you concentrate, the information you gain about their habits is apt to be trivial. One of the most important things I can teach you is: Don’t watch too many things. Instead you must watch selectively. On this mission you’re going to try to focus on one opponent and then on two at once. You won’t excel at this right away. But the realization of the power behind this method will hit you almost immediately. Pretty soon you’ll be focusing unconsciously, isolating on what’s really important.

Something I’ve discovered while talking with professional poker players is that the good-but-not-great players try to take as much as they can into consideration. Their minds work feverishly and with great effort as they struggle to grasp everything.

The truly great players do quite the opposite. While they take very many factors into consideration, and while they seem to be aware of everything, they really spend most of their energy focusing on one goal (and no more than two players). True, they’re aware of many other things, but they usually focus on one thing. The rest comes naturally and unconsciously, as they soon will for you. In fact, each of these missions puts something new in your head that will keep helping you win, whether you concentrate or not.

You see, these missions are evidence that you should only focus on one main thing. As you undertake the later missions, you’ll be surprised how many times your previous missions will reward you — often when you least expect It. So, right now, let’s focus …

Today’s mission, part 1.

Isolate on the player to your left. Watch every hand he or she plays and study the gestures. Remember to listen for voice tells.

Don’t try to draw conclusions! Drawing conclusions is a mistake. Observation is the key. Usually the major conclusions will come to you effortlessly.

So, study that opponent to your left. Try to find an opportunity to bluff him. Keep these things in mind:

Most players are easier to bluff after they’ve come from behind and have just gotten even – especially if forfeiting the money they have in the current pot will not put them behind again.

Most players are easier to bluff after you’ve made some friendly gesture. If you’ve shared a joke or let the player share your hand while he’s out of a pot, it could be a good time to bluff. If you’ve accepted coffee from or bought coffee for this opponent, it could be a good time to bluff.

Most players are easier to bluff when they’re conspicuously looking at you or at their chips.

You can get away with a large share of bluffs if you bet decisively while a player is reaching for his chips as if to call. That’s because the player is usually just trying to prevent your bet.

Also, keep in mind that it’s much easier for your bluff to succeed if you make a sizable bet in a no-limit or pot-limit game than if you are confined to betting a fixed limit. You have two hours to run two bluffs against your target to your left.

Today’s mission, part 2.
Simply try to focus on two players at the same time. Pick these players at will, but don’t include the one who figured in your bluff exercise.

—STOP READING THIS UNTIL AFTER YOU’VE ACCOMPLISHED TODAY’S MISSION —

Follow-Up: Don’t worry if your bluffs failed. In limit poker, because the pots can be many times the size of the bet, your bluffs can fail most of the time and still be profitable. The point is, in Part 1, you became very familiar with one player, and you learned things about him that would otherwise have escaped you. You tried to bluff, and whether or not you succeeded, you took that action with a better understanding of your opponent’s behavior. You might have gotten unlucky and targeted an opponent who was difficult to bluff. That doesn’t matter, either. The value is in having accomplished the mission and knowing how to apply this type of observation to your future games.

Let’s talk about part two. Answer these questions about the two players you focused on: (1) Which was more conservative? (2) Which had the better emotional control? (3) Which would be easier overall to bluff? (4) Did either player seem to dominate the other? That’s all.

The main thing that PP3 taught with this mission is that you need to learn to focus on one thing at a time. You can learn to be conscious of other things going on at the same time, but this should happen automatically. Your focus should be on one thing. When you try to monitor many things, you usually fail. You’d be surprised how many more things you will be aware of, when you concentrate on one thing at the poker table. It’s magic.

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You should always adopt a poker table image that’s most comfortable for you. Fine. But I teach that in most games, a quiet conservative image doesn’t extract the most profit. That’s because the biggest mistake most opponents make is that they call too often. And the money that excellent players earn is directly related to this one overwhelming mistake by your opponents.

Sure, you can play against other solid opponents and still win sometimes, because you’ll find weaknesses in their games. Maybe they’re easily bluffable in key situations or maybe they don’t get maximum value from their hands. But when your try to earn a living from other players who are also trying their best to make rational decisions, you’d better be exceptionally talented. And even if you are, I believe you still won’t average as much profit as you would against non-analytical players who simply make too many calls.

That’s why I teach that the biggest secret to winning poker is to create a wild and playful image. You image can even be bizarre, one that encourages opponents to think you’re playing much worse than you really are. That way, they’ll be less likely to exact full advantage when they have you beat, because they’re worried about what you’re going to do next. And, at the same time, they’re going to reward you with even more weak calls than they give other opponents, because you’re fun and playful, and losing against you is less painful.

ONSTAGE
If you’re uncomfortable being onstage, this isn’t the right image for you. There are other demeanours you can bring to the poker table, and I teach these too. But the wild image remains my favourite. It’s a very dangerous image, and you can easily get caught up in the chaos and end up playing a losing game. I know: I’ve done that.

PROBLEM
The problem is something I call FPS (Fancy Play Syndrome). It’s the disease that presents itself when you believe you’re so superior to your opponents that you need to prove it. So, you choose the fanciest and most unusual play, rather than the one that is apt to earn the biggest profit. Beware of FPS! You’re not going to be able to prove you’re the best player in a single session. No matter how good you are, your opponents may never acknowledge that you’re the best. Now, it’s true that the best players might not win the most money. They may be capable of winning the most, but – instead – they choose to play exhibition poker, as I did. They become to poker what the Harlem Globetrotters were to basketball – playing for the show, rather than the points. The Globetrotters still won – and I still won – but not by the big margins I should have!

I’d rip up $100 bills at the table, and sometimes I’d burn them. I did this in bigger games, because it got attention. The first $100 bill burned may have been profitable advertising. It suggested to the opponents that I didn’t care about them money, and made them more likely to call and to make mistakes against me. But I overdid it. Sometimes I’d destroy many hundred dollar bills in one sitting. If you’re in the retail business, it often pays to advertise, but you can buy too many ads and not be able to sell enough merchandise to cover the cost. That’s what I did. Often I made too many bizarre plays and didn’t have enough legitimate hands to sell and overcome the expense.

I remember playing all my hands open heads up – showing them face up on the table – for half an hour. And I’d almost always play like a maniac the first 20 minutes I entered a game. I wanted to establish an early image and then tighten up and reap the profit. I’ve often joked that opponents could have gotten rich just following me around and sitting down for the first 20 minutes wherever I played.

Showmanship can win money. It’s the image I advise for those who have keen psychological skills. But too much showmanship can ruin your bankroll.

Why am I telling you this? Because I do not want other players who follow my advice about poker image to get caught up in the act. Remember, the object isn’t to get attention. Getting attention is only a tool for making money, which is the object.

So advertise, but be stingy with your budget.
MC

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Knowing for certain when not to bet can save you thousands of dollars! On the more esoteric side I teach:

You shouldn’t bet into frequent bluffers, because you’ll average more money by checking and calling.

You shouldn’t bet with small advantages if your image is dominating, because your opponents will respond more rationally and get maximum value from their hands when they have you beat.

Closely related, you shouldn’t value bet when you’re losing, because opponents are inspired by your suffering and play better, making otherwise-moneymaking bets unprofitable.

There are other more complex reasons not bet to, but here’s a simpler situation – pay attention…

You simply lose money when you bet poker hands that have average prospects of being best. Don’t do that!

Mike Caro (extract from ‘What Not to Bet in a Nuclear Winter’)

Mike Caro “The Mad Genius of Poker” is a world-class professional poker player, renowned poker trainer and fanatic on poker strategy, the role of psychology in poker and statistical analysis of poker games.

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In gambling you can’t beat many games, because the odds are fixed against you. So, you need to stick to the ones for which your skill is sufficient to win – such as poker, private wagers, gin rummy, and sometimes blackjack. Avoid roulette and craps. These are games with odds that are permanently on the casino’s side. There is no way you can overcome this disadvantage, so you shouldn’t play. But life’s different. You’re in that game, even if you sometimes wish you weren’t – and your decisions always matter.

Gambling games are merely formalized, simplified ways of experiencing exactly the same risks we experience in everyday life. Formally or informally, you gamble.

Not surprisingly, many of the same strategies I’ve lectured about and analyzed with computers apply just as powerfully to everyday life as they do to formalized gambling. Here are some useful examples of gambling tips and philosophies I hope you’ll successfully be able to adapt to the world around you.

1. The cards probably won’t break even–not in gin rummy, not in poker, and not in real life. There’s a common misconception that if you play poker long enough the cards will break even. Fat chance! Maybe, if you could play forever, never stopping, never sleeping, eventually you’d break even on luck. But not in just one lifetime! Early on you’d probably break even on, say, the number of full houses you were dealt, but it would take much longer to break even on circumstances surrounding those full houses.

You might lose more hands than you should lose on average. On the other hand, sometimes opponents might have nothing to oppose you with, and you’ll win nothing. You might get many full houses when you’re sitting in big-limit games, or you may receive most in smaller games. You might be against weak opponents, you might not. On and on. And the more factors you consider, the broader the range of luck, and the longer it will take for you to break even.

Does this mean some people are luckier than others for their lifetimes? You bet! But there’s good news. You can still win, year after year, in gambling games requiring skill, even if you’re not lucky. How? Simply by making the best decisions again and again without fail. Then, instead of being a break-even big-money player who may win $100,000 one year and lose $100,000 the next, you might win $250,000 in a lucky year and win $50,000 in an unlucky year. In this over-simplified example, the $200,000 swing from lucky year to unlucky year isn’t enough to cause you to lose. At seminars, I teach that you should go to the poker table day after day on a simple mission. That mission is to make the best decisions always, and never worry about whether you’re lucky or unlucky. You can’t control your luck, but you can control your decisions.

Same in life. Some people spend half their lives in hospitals. Others are healthy. All your belongings might be swept up in a tornado. You might discover a million dollar painting in you attic. Stop expecting life to be equal for everyone. It won’t be. Your mission is simply to make the best decisions with the “hands” you’re dealt.

2. If you’re a winner–in formal gambling or in life–you should never try to get even “for the night.” By doing this, you’re perverting your practice of making meaningful decisions while pursuing a meaningless goal. The mistake is in looking at each gambling session, or each financial venture, as a game to be won or lost. Don’t! In poker, it’s better to win $10,000, lose $2000, and lose $500 than to win $4,000, win $998 and win $2. In the first case, you won $7,500, but you only had one win and two losses. In the second case, you won only $5,000, but you won all three times. Oddly, most gamblers and most people in real life unconsciously feel better about the second scenario than the first. Such feelings are natural, but they’re also dangerous.

If you agree with me that $7,500 is better than $5,000, then you should clearly see that it doesn’t matter where the profits come from. The next two points are closely related, and they demonstrate how most people diminish their overall success.

3. Never make anything worse. Sure, it sounds obvious? But guess what? I’ve never met anyone who didn’t make things worse sometimes, including myself. People get angry, and they make things worse. They lose at business or at romance, and they make things worse. It’s because they’re feeling so miserable that those extra losses don’t seem to register. In gambling, I call this dangerous practice crossing the threshold of misery. Here’s how it works.

A player sits down at blackjack thinking that the worst that can happen is he’ll lose $500. Everything goes wrong and suddenly he’s losing $1,000. He has now crossed the threshold of misery and maximized his ability to register pain. Losing $1,114 doesn’t feel any worse than losing $1,000. That extra $114 doesn’t matter, and so he concentrates less and plays worse. It happens all the time in life. Romance does this to you. Unexpected misfortune does this to you. Decisions that would normally matter (like that extra $114 in blackjack) don’t seem to matter by comparison. But these decisions all add up. In life people who are heartbroken sometimes make the worst business decisions imaginable. Those decisions don’t seem to matter much compared to the heartbreak. And those decisions all add up, and eventually they will matter.

In poker, many lifelong losing players would actually be lifelong winners if they simply never made things worse. Worse out of anger, worse out of exasperation, worse out of apathy, worse out of self-pity, worse out of temper. If it doesn’t matter now, it will matter tomorrow. So from now on, promise yourself you will never make things worse. You will never make things worse.

4. What you’ve already invested doesn’t matter. Too many poker players damage their bankrolls by calculating how much they personally “invested” in the pot before making their decision about whether to bet or fold. Don’t do that. The pot, all that money you’re competing for, is simply there. It doesn’t matter where it came from or how much of it you invested. It wouldn’t matter whether it had originally been all yours or whether the players just happened to find it forgotten on the table. The pot belongs to no one right now.

Same in life. It doesn’t matter how much money, how much time, how much effort you have invested in a project. Say you purchased land for $50,000. One morning you wake up and it’s only worth $25,000. That same day, someone offers you $40,000. You should accept this offer, because you’re not losing $10,000, you’re gaining $15,000. That’s because what the land used to be worth doesn’t matter, and what you’ve invested doesn’t matter. You don’t need to win on this investment. The trick is to make winning decisions again and again and let lifelong success take care of itself. Ignoring taxes, write-offs or anything else that will complicate this example, the land is worth $25,000 now. You can get $40,000 by selling. Selling is the right decision, and it has value–in this case, $15,000.

5. Never seek sympathy. I teach gamblers never to complain about bad luck. First of all, nobody really cares. Their own exaggerated memories of personal bad luck dwarf whatever you’re complaining about. And if you complain to opponents–such as in a poker game–they’re inspired because you’re unlucky. They’ll think you’re not a force to be reckoned with, they’ll play better, and they’ll cost you money.

It’s the same in life. There’s absolutely no reason to tell tales of misfortune. You’ll inspire life’s opponents, and you’ll lose esteem among life’s allies. So, if your luck is bad, keep it to yourself.

6. Keep your hand secret. If you habitually exposed your poker hand before the showdown, opponents would know what you had, and they’d know for certain whether to play against you, whether to raise you, whether to pass. It would be stupid to play poker that way, but people do that everyday in real life. How? They don’t keep secrets. Listen: Never volunteer personal information to anyone who isn’t a friend, unless you know specifically that you have something to gain by volunteering the information. Sound heartless? Well, OK, it’s all right to volunteer useful information if it can’t harm you. It’s also all right to give information sometimes if you’re getting information in return.

But think back. I’ll bet for every time you regretted keeping secrets, there are many more times you regretted telling secrets. People simply give away too much information, and it eventually haunts them. Secrets can seem insignificant at the time they’re shared, but later the sharing turns out to be an important mistake.

Like it or not, successful people keep secrets much better than unsuccessful people, just as successful poker players conceal their hands better than unsuccessful players. Repeating: It’s a fact that people who succeed keep secrets. Never reveal important information about yourself unless you have a specific reason for doing so. Starting now, practice telling yourself mentally why you’re giving information before you give information.

People talk about their lives and their opinions, giving information that may later be damaging. They do this because they want to seem friendly. But, there’s a special way you can be just as friendly and, instead of putting yourself in jeopardy, gain an advantage. How? Instead of giving information about yourself, use the same time to ask other people about themselves. If you’re talking to a potential competitor, don’t volunteer information; ask for opinions. I do this at the poker table. After a hand, I ask an opponent how he would have played. Usually, the player is flattered and offers a sincere answer, such as he would have bluffed. I remember that answer, and weeks later–long after the opponent has forgotten our conversation–I call and win the pot. It’s the same in real life. You remember the information, and you use it later.

By the way, when I consult with businesses, there seems to be one recurring problem that comes up again and again. How can supervisors best smooth up relationships between themselves and employees who don’t like them. The answer is simple. Ask the employees for their opinions. In life, you can patch up most relationships simply by softly asking a person: “What do you think?”, “What would you do in this situation?”, “How would you handle this?” People are universally flattered when you ask for opinions. It works with enemies, it works with employees, it works with children. Trust me, and try it. And it’s consistent with the powerful poker technique of concealing your own hand while learning as much as you can about your opponents.

One of life’s most important goals is to gain as much useful information from others as possible, while guarding your own secrets wisely.

7. Don’t humiliate your opponents. Always allow opponents to save face, no matter how tempting it is to gloat. When you make it painful for opponents to lose, they play better, but you want opponents to play worse . Additionally, life is complicated enough without motivating people to get even with you. So, always give those you conquer a chance to save face–unless you’ll never have to confront them again.

In poker, it’s the same–unless your opponent is permanently broke after losing this pot, don’t humiliate him. Angry players often return to harm you. Don’t gloat; win graciously.

8. Don’t even the score. This one’s hard on your ego, but listen anyway. In life you don’t need to get even with the person who did you wrong. Similarly, you don’t need to get even with the person who bluffed you in poker. You shouldn’t care where your next opportunity to gain comes from. You don’t have to get even or break even with anyone. Play the opportunities as they arise. Success stacks up the same, no matter where it comes from. Some people are so busy getting even, they never have time to get ahead.

In gambling and in life, a few people are going to get the better of you. So what? If you won a bet on a basketball game, would you be upset that the other team’s center scored more points than your team’s center? Of course not! You won the bet, so what do you care? Same in life. If you win overall, don’t fret over a few lost skirmishes, and never waste energy trying to get even with those who beat you.

9. Act last. Almost no one realizes the importance of acting last. At my poker seminars, I teach how important it is to understand your position at the table. Players must act in turn, and those who act after you have an advantage because they get to see what you do before they make their decisions. So, I teach that you should use psychology and make friends with players who act after you. They’ll then be less motivated to exploit their advantages. This works in life, too. Befriend those who have an advantage, so they will be less motivated to make it difficult on you. That’s important, and I’ll repeat it: In life, make friends with those who could do you the most damage.

And there’s more. You should usually strive to gain advantage by acting last. If you’re sure that everyone will have an equal chance to act, it’s better–with few exceptions–to wait to see what your opponents do, then adapt your strategy accordingly. In poker, we call it a positional advantage. Let’s call it the same thing in real life.

10. Save your fancy moves for when you’re running good. In skillful gambling, when your luck is running bad, opponents often become inspired and play better. You’re no longer a force to be reckoned with in their minds. Most of your fancy plays won’t work because you’ve lost the intimidation factor, which is fundamental to many aggressive strategies. At these times, you should become a more timid player. In life, do the same thing. Sometimes in conversations or in business, things aren’t really clicking and you’re losing ground. You can feel it happening. Play defensively. Your image is wrong for asserting yourself, so–if possible–just lurk and don’t take a stand yet. Many people desperately try to prove themselves when they are at a disadvantage, but they ought to just sit silently. As a bonus, this silence often seems like strength to others. Repeating: When you’re at a disadvantage, or you’re just not in sync, don’t try to prove yourself immediately. Wait it out. Sooner or later an opportunity will come, and then you can be profound or assertive.

11. Cheer for your friends. I want to warn you about envy. Many people don’t want their friends to succeed. In gambling, I never feel envious of friends who are winning more than I am. I want my friends to succeed so they can share their secrets, so they can tip me off to better games in the future, so they introduce me to rich novices looking for a game–all sorts of benefits. If your enemies win, you don’t get any of these advantages. It’s the same in life. You should want your friends to succeed always. The more friends you have succeeding, the more opportunities you’ll have. It’s just plain crazy, but common, to be jealous of your friends’ successes.

12. Don’t fret over each injustice. In gambling and in life, there’s always injustice. Bet on it! Poker’s worst starting hands often win. And bad players sometimes get lucky. In life, the same. In fact, there’s so much injustice that we couldn’t possibly devote ourselves to setting things right.

Next year there will probably be 246 unbelievably unjust things that will happen to you personally. Cashiers will hand you too little change. People will spread falsehoods about you. Someone will misunderstand what you say. Crooks will scam you. On and on. And we’re guessing that this will happen 246 times next year. If it only happens 230 times, you’re having a good year! So, you can either just going on to the next thing, or you can damage you chances of success by dwelling on each injustice, talking about it, fuming over it. All that fusing, all that fuming, all that waste of mental energy really doesn’t make sense. Why should you get aggravated, especially if you’re having a good year? So, simply, learn to overlook injustices unless you’re prepared to act on them. Yes, It’s noble to act against injustice, but it’s wasteful to dwell on personal injustices you’re not willing to act on.

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ACCEPTING A GIFT

“Don’t accept a gift in the big blind in hold ’em,” Kelly told me years ago. He was wrong.

In hold ’em there are no antes. Without antes or something to replace them, there’s nothing to fight over, and if you’re against wise opponents who are playing perfectly, you should sit hand after hand, badly bored and mumbling mantras about your cattle farm. Finally one hand you’ll find a pair of aces. Logically, only then can you play, because you can defend aces against other intelligent players with equally perfect patience. Against such players, you shouldn’t even start with the second-best hand – a pair of kings. The only time you’d get action would be against a pair of aces and you’d be a decided underdog. All other times, you’d win an empty pot and gain nothing.

That’s why the ante was invented: to give poker players a motive for war. Human nature being as it is, I believe that most players would find reasons to play inferior hands sometimes, even without incentive. They lack patience. But, poker would be a pretty pitiful game without something in the pot to fight over. Well, in hold ’em there isn’t an ante. So what motivates players to enter pots?

NOT OPTIONAL

It’s the blind bets. There are two of them in the seats to the dealer’s left, a small one and a big one, usually twice as large. You must make these bets before seeing any cards. They aren’t optional.

In most hands, there’s going to be a raise before the action gets back to the big blind player. Whether to call or not will be a matter of judgment. But there’s a time when players, like Kelly, often misjudge. And that’s on those occasions when there’s no raise at all. If  opponents just call the big blind, there’s a special rule in hold ’em that can get you in all manner of trouble. Normally in poker, if you’re just called, then the betting ends. You move along. But in hold ’em if the player in the big blind isn’t raised, there’s a peculiar option. That player – who’s been merely called – can continue the wagering by doing the raising himself. It’s called the “live blind” rule.

FREE GIFT

My lesson today is that you should usually treat this situation as a gift when you’re in the big blind. You’re about to see the flop that happens next for free. Yes, it’s sometimes tempting to raise your opponents right out of their chairs, and that sort of aggression is in my nature. But usually, I decline. I accept the gift and see what happens at no cost.

It’s often bad to try to bully the game when you’re in the big blind with the opportunity to see a free flop, because on all following betting rounds, you’re going to act first (unless it was the small blind who called you). That’s a big positional disadvantage, making it harder for you to take charge. Another caution is that players who just call are frequently laying traps. They’re hoping you’ll raise.

Put it all together and you’ll fare better ignoring Kelly’s advice and following mine. Unless you have a powerful hand in the big blind, whenever you’re merely called, think, “Thanks for the present, buddy,” unwrap the flop, and see how you like it.

Doyle Brunson

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I suggest you check out an online article in the Economist titled “Poker is getting younger, cleverer, duller and much, much richer“.

Its like, way long, but it’s a good read, compiling quotes from top pros over the years and portraying the good, bad (and ugly? nah!) side of poker. It covers but does not dwell on the US anti gambling luck vs skill debate (and irony), but is really all about the changing environment for poker.

The article compares still-going-strong legend, Doyle Brunson, with savvy Internet players like annette_15 (a 19 year old Norwegian, Annette Obrestad) plus has plenty of colourful input and comment on other pro poker players along the way.

(…modern-day poker luminaries as Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, a hirsute scholar of game theory, Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott, a somewhat less cerebral but wily British professional who wears diamond-encrusted knuckledusters, and Phil “Poker Brat” Hellmuth, arguably the most celebrated (not least by himself) modern player…)

Here’s a few more quotes from the article:

Today poker is the third most watched sport on cable television in the United States, after car racing and American football, trumping even NBA basketball…while Britain has its own poker channel.

“It doesn’t take most young people long to realise they won’t be the next Michael Jordan. But they can all aspire to be the next Phil Hellmuth, and they don’t even have to work out,” says Mr Hellmuth, slurping a full-cream mocha.

After two weeks of poker, with daily sessions lasting up to 16 hours, Jerry Yang, a psychologist, went home $8.25m richer

Thomas Bihl, winner of a recent HORSE tournament, in which players have to show mastery of five different styles of poker, thinks the game has more in common with finance than it does with basic forms of gambling, because it requires the constant pricing and repricing of risk.

Ms Coren: “Cash is nothing more than chips, just the tools of the trade, like fishing rods to an angler. The game is all about money, and nothing to do with money.”

It blends with skill to produce a game that is “much like life, full of incomplete information and second-guessing,” says Mr Lederer. Poker is certainly more exciting to most than chess, a game of complete information and limited psychology where the better player always wins.

Ms Duke sees other ways in which poker teaches “life skills”. It taught her, for instance, how to be a good loser (“Even the best lose most of the hands they play. If you let that get to you, it will kill you”). She says she even uses poker theory when dealing with her children: “I always bet the minimum when making a threat. If you say no TV rather than no Disneyland, you can always raise later.”

A recommended read! Check it out here at The Economist.

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Poker wouldn’t be poker if players didn’t get to exorcise their bad beats in public afterwards. Here are some examples of bad beats – those unlikely little twists of fate – from WSOP play.

Doyle Brunson versus Jesse Alto (1976)
Brunson won a big pot, he called a raise from the steaming Alto with 10s-2s to see a Ah-Js-10h flop and called a bet on the flop. When the 2s fell on the turn, Brunson moved all-in with two-pair, but Alto already had that on the flop with A-J in the hole, and it took the 10d on the river to seal it for Brunson (he also won a year later with the 10-2, making two pair on the turn to beat his opponent’s flopped two pair).

Hal Fowler versus Bobby Hoff (1979)
Hoff raised with A-A and Fowler called. When the flop came J-3-5 rainbow, Hoff bet half of his remaining chips and Fowler called again. The turn fell a seemingly innocuous 4 and Hoff bet the rest, only to be called by Fowler who had stayed the whole way with 7-6 off-suit and got a lucky straight!

Chris Ferguson versus TJ Cloutier (2000)
When the two great players got heads up, Ferguson had a 10-1 chip lead, but Cloutier chipped away, and eventually managed to take the lead away from Ferguson, who went slightly on tilt after suffering such an onslaught.

Cloutier sensed it was time to go for gold, and moved all-in with A-Q after a raise from Ferguson. The move paid off, as Ferguson made a slip and called with A-9. A flop of 2-K-4 was no help, nor was the turn, (another K). However the river came a fateful 9 to seal the victory for Ferguson.

TJ Cloutier was philosophical afterwards: “He thought he had to beat me in a major pot, so he just decided to go with the hand. Obviously, Chris thought that if he caught the Ace, he’d have a hand, but he was in horrible position…and you know what? O saw that nine coming before the dealer even peeled it off. It was as though I was looking right through the deck”.

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Many poker fans know that the 10-2 is known as the “Doyle Brunson”, and some will also be aware that it’s the hand Brunson twice won the World Series of Poker with – but do you know the exact details of how those mediocre starting cards made him a two-time champion? (He’s now a ten-time champion…)

The first time, in 1976, Jesse Alto made a sizeable pre-flop raise with As-Jh and Brunson made a loose call with 10s-2s. The flop hit Doyle a little bit, but it hit Alto big. It came Ah-Js-10h, Alto bet with top two pair, and Brunson called. The turn brought the 2c, making Brunson two pair, and he moved all in. Naturally, Alto called. Doyle was in terrible shape – he had only a nine percent chance of winning the pot. But as they say, it’s better to be lucky than good, and the 10d on the river made Brunson a full house.

The next year, Brunson was heads up with Bones Berland, and neither had great pocket cards. Berland held 8s-5h, while Brunson had 10s-2h. And just like against Alto, the flop hit Doyle, but it hit Berland better. It came 10d-8s-5h, and both players checked. Berland was trying to trap, but he himself fell in on the turn, when the 2c (the exact same card that came on the turn the previous year) made Texas Dolly a superior two pair. Brunson bet, Berland moved all-in, and Doyle called. He didn’t need any help at this point – he had Berland dead to an eight or a five – but he got help anyway, the 10c on the river making him a full house once again.

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