Poker has always been a microcosm of all we admire about American virtue.
It is part of the very fabric Americans have spent more than 220 years weaving into a national mosaic. Call it the American Dream -the belief that hard work and virtue will triumph, that anyone willing to work hard will succeed, that right makes might. It is an immigrant's song, a mantra of hope; it is an anthem for everyone.
Poker looks like such a simple game. Anyone, it seems, can play it well though nothing, of course, is further from the truth. Learning the rules can be quick work but becoming a winning player takes considerably longer. Still, anyone willing to make the effort can become a fairly good player.
You can succeed in poker the way you succeed in life: by facing it squarely, getting up earlier than the next person, and working harder and smarter than the competition.
A profusion of western movies and gunfighter ballads has convinced the world that poker is a quintessentially American game, yet its roots go back hundreds of years. The Persians were said to play a poker-like game century ago. Germans played a bluffing game called Pochen as early as the sixteenth century; later, there was a French version called Poque.
The French brought this game with them to New Orleans and its popularity spread aided by the paddle wheelers that traveled the Mississippi. Poque soon became known as poker, and the rules were modified during the Civil War to allow cards to be drawn to improve one's hand. Stud poker, still very popular today, appeared at about the same time.
People all over the world play poker, with hundreds of versions played in home games everywhere. You can find games going on in casinos and poker rooms in most of the United States, England, Ireland, France, Holland, Austria, Germany, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Aruba, Costa Rica, and probably a few other countries too. People play for pennies around the kitchen table and professionally for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Like the American Dream, poker is good for you: It enriches the soul, sharpens the intellect, heals the spirit, and when played well-nourishes the wallet. Above all else, poker forces the player to face reality and deal with it head-on.
Oh, sure, people can ignore those realities-lots of players do. They are the ones who lose consistently, and rather than face the deficiencies in their own game, persist in placing the blame on fate, on the dealer, on that particular deck of cards, or on anything else-except themselves -that's handy.
But poker can also be bad for you if you don't know the key strategies and your own shortcomings. But don't dismay. You have us to guide you through the rough waters and jump-start your poker education.
Perhaps British author and poker player Anthony Holden said it best. In Big Deal: A Yea~As A Professional Poker Player he writes: "Whether he likes it or not, a man's character is stripped bare at the poker table; if the, other players read him better than he does, he has only himself to blame. Unless he is both able and prepared to see himself as others do, flaws and all, he will be a loser in cards, as in life."
Your challenge for as long as you aspire to win at poker is this: Be willing to examine and analyze your character and game. If you do this, and have even a modicum of talent, you can become a winning poker player.
Like a house, poker requires a foundation. Only when that foundation is solidly in place can you proceed to build on it. When all the structural elements are in place, you can then add flourishes and decorative touches. But you can't begin embellishing it until the foundation has been poured, the building framed, and all the other elements that come before it are in place.
That's our purpose here: to put first things first-to give you a basic understanding of what you need before you begin to play.
Some poker players, and it's no more than a handful, really do have a genius for the game-an inexplicable, Picasso-like talent that isn't easily defined and usually has to be seen to be believed. But even in the absence of genius-and most winning players certainly are not poker savants-poker is an eminently learnable skill.
Inherent ability helps, and while you need some talent, you really don't need all that much. After all, you don't have to be Van Cliburn to play the piano, Picasso to paint, or Michael Jordan to play basketball. What you do need to become a winning player are a solid plan to learn the game and discipline.
If you aspire to play winning poker you need a plan to learn the game. While the school of hard knocks might have sufficed as the educational institution of choice 20 or 30 years ago, most of today's better poker players have added a solid grounding in poker theory to their over-the-table experiences. You can find a slew of information to help you learn the game.
All the strategic knowledge in the world does not guarantee success to any poker player. Personal characteristics are equally important. Success demands a certain quality of character in addition to strategic know-how. Players lacking self-discipline, for example, have a hard time ever winning consistently regardless of how strategically sophisticated they might be.
If one lacks the discipline to throw away poor starting hands, then all the knowledge in the world can't overcome this flaw. Knowledge without discipline is merely unrealized potential. Playing with discipline is a key to avoiding losing your shirt -or your shorts.
If you can learn to play poker at a level akin to that of a journeyman musician, a work-a day commercial artist, you will be good enough to win consistently. You don't have to be a world champion like Doyle Brunson, Phil Hellmuth, Johnny Chan, or Tom McEvoy to earn money playing poker. The skills of a good journeyman poker player enable you to supplement your income, or better yet-earn your entire livelihood at the game. If you go on to become the very best poker player you can be, that should be more than enough to ensure that you will be a lifelong winning player.
The objective of poker is to win money by capturing the pot, which contains bets made by various players during the hand. A player wagers a bet in hopes that he has the best hand, or to give the impression that he holds a strong hand and thus convince his opponents to fold (abandon) their hands.
Since money saved is just as valuable as money won, knowing when to release a hand that appears to be beaten is just as important as knowing when to bet. In most poker games, the top combination of five cards is the best hand.
Any number of players, typically from two to ten, can play, depending on the game. Most casino games are set up with eight players for a seven card game like Stud poker or Razz, and nine or ten players for Texas Hold'em.
You win hands in one of two ways:
In this case, you may have had the best hand, or you may have been bluffing-it doesn't matter. When opponents surrender their claim to the pot, it's yours.
In games like Seven-Card Stud and Texas Hold'em the best hand is a high hand. (For more detail about high hands, see the section titled, "Hand Rankings" in this chapter.) In other games, like Lowball and Razz, the best hand is a low hand. (The best possible low hand is 54-3-2-A; the next best is 64-3-2-A.)
In split-pot games, two winners split the pot. For example, in Seven-Card Stud, High-Low Split, Eight-or-Better (mercifully abbreviated as Seven-Stud/8) and Omaha High-Low Split, Eight-or-Better (or just Omaha/8) the best high hand and the best low hand split the pot (provided that someone makes a low hand composed of five unpaired cards with a rank of 8 or lower).
The worst possible low hand would consist of 87-6-54. The best of all low hands is 5-4-3-2-A (known as a wheel or bicycle). While a high hand always will be made in split-pot games, there won't necessarily be a low hand. And when there's no low hand, the high hand wins the entire pot.
Most games require ante or blind bets. If antes are used, each player must post a token amount of money in order to receive cards. As for blinds, one or two players are required to make a bet or portion of a bet before the hand is dealt. This requirement rotates around the table so that each player pays his fair share.
Each time a round of cards is dealt, players have an opportunity to check, bet, fold, call, or raise. Any time a player decides to forfeit his interest in the pot, he may release his hand when it is his turn to act (to do something related to betting: raise, fold, check, or call). When a player folds a hand, he is not required to place any more money in the pot.
If a player bets or raises and no one calls, the pot belongs to that player, the cards are collected and shuffled, and the next hand is dealt. If there are two or more players still active at the end of the hand, the best hand wins the pot.
Without betting, poker would just be a game of luck and the best hand would always win. Betting is the key to poker and minimizing losses when holding a poor hand while maximizing wins with good hands is what poker is all about.
Every betting interval requires a check or a bet from the first player to act.
Each player to the left of the first player to act may either check or bet if no one else has bet. Whoever makes the first bet is said make the opening bet. If a bet has been made, other players may fold, call, or raise.
When a player folds, he loses any chips he has contributed to that pot and has no further interest in the hand. After the final betting round a showdown among the players still active in the hand determines the winner.
If you don't have enough to cover the bets and raises, you are said to go allin, and are simply contesting that portion of the pot your money covers.
Others who are active in the hand can still make wagers, but those bets constitute a side pot. At the hand's conclusion, the side pot is decided first, then the main pot. You are not eligible to win the side pot since you invested no money in it, but you can win the main pot. You can buy more chips or put more money on the table between hands.
Few things you remember from Saturday matinee westerns happen in a public cardroom. Players don't leave the game in mid-hand, go get the deed to the ranch, then use it to cover a bet. You cannot drive someone out of a pot just by betting more money than he has in front of him. The player with the limited chip supply goes all-in-by calling with the remainder of their chips. If the all-in player loses, he either buys more chips or leaves the game.