Catching the Texas Hold ‘Em Bug

I caught the bug. The Texas No-Limit Hold 'Em bug, to be exact.

After watching plenty of it on TV, and playing plenty of it on Yahoo!, I decided to give it a whirl for real money. So I read a few pointers, tips, and glossaries on the 'Net, picked a room, and laid down $25. My plan was to play them in $5 chunks, which I ended up doing in 5- and 10-cent blind rooms.

I played and lost my first $5 right away, then again my second $5 right away, and then on third $5 chunk I played, I won on a "bad beat" (you have a vastly inferior hand, but you win anyway by getting extremely lucky
card[s], the only one[s] you could pull out a victory with, on the board [the face-up cards]) and won $14.

This put me up to $29 total. I stopped playing and realized I had a lot more to learn, so I gobbled up a couple more hours of tips and info on the Internet. I started picking up on the stupid things novices like myself do, and exploited them. In a couple hours, I was all the way up to $77 in my bankroll before going down to $57. I was feeling antsy and ready to enter tournaments. And I read more. All on the Internet, all for free.

There are two basic types of tournaments: single-table tournaments, and multi-table tournaments. Single-table tournaments are pretty straightforward — each player contributes the same amount to the pot,
plays with chips instead of money, and once there's only one man left standing, he gets either all of the pot, or it's divided up between first, second, and third players, or however it's configured.

Then there are multi-table tournaments, as the one often sees on TV. There might be hundreds of people playing, and as more and more people go out (lose all of their chips), the tables are consolidated until there's few enough people left to put them all on one table.

Entry fees at the site I play at are pretty comparable, so you have to decide if you want to play for lower stakes at good odds (1-in-9 or -10) at a single-table tournament or higher stakes with much worse odds at multi-table tournaments.

Maybe it's because I'm a golf fan, maybe because I was attracted by the big bucks, but I went with the multi-tournament mode. By "because I'm a golf fan" I meant this: you don't buy your way into the first page of the leaderboard in tournament golf — you have to play better than almost all the field to get there. In short, you have to earn it. I wanted to see if I could earn a nice result or, more likely, an MC (missed cut), if you will.

I read somewhere that the early round of tournaments will usually feature a lot of wild, very aggressive betting as players try to get an early advantage, and that you should stay out of the madness and lay low. I kept that in mind.

During tournament No. 1 tonight, one guy went all in before the flop, forcing everyone to fold, and essentially buying the pot about four times. The fifth time, I called him out, and he really did have "the nuts" (an outstanding hand). I finished 87th out of 113.

Then, I decided to play in a multi-table tourney with just two tables, 18 players. Similar story as the first. (Tournaments of one kind or another start up every few minutes). On an early hand, I wanted to punish other players for being too aggressive, eventually got punished myself, and bowed out in 13th-place.

Then I took a break and pulled myself together. What I was telling myself was this: again, the last thing I read about tournament strategy foretold the precise truth: betting is wild, maniacal, aggressive in the first few rounds. Stay out of it and pick your spots. I wasn't doing that. I was diving in head first. I was calling out the wild boys with so-so hands because I was convinced the other guy has nothin', 'cause he's going all in and raising like mad so often.

To put it a finer point on it, I was getting angry that the same guys were buying the pot over and over again without anyone calling them on it.

This was stupid for a couple reasons. One thing, and less importantly, to raise, go all in, and scare everyone off the pot multiple times may work in the short run, but it is not sustainable over the course of a long tournament. You can only bluff so much, you can't really bluff your way all the way to a top of a tournament (well, anything's possible, but that would be more than unlikely).

More importantly, if you decide it's up to you to give these pot-stealers their comeuppance, to teach them a lesson, to be the sheriff, etc., you end up doing just what they want you to do: playing mad, playing emotional. That makes you do something stupid like call in most of your chips when all you have is something dicey like a pair of eights. Get the picture?

I was determined to be patient in the third tournament, an $8 buy-in game. If the maniacs want to steal pot after pot and take a big chip lead, fine. Just wait until you get a hand. Stay out of the fray.

In this tournament, I indeed folded most of my way through the early rounds, and I only played to the flop with the strongest of pocket cards (pairs of seven or eight of higher, or when both cards were a 10 or better). And it worked! I would bet conservatively, let the maniacs bet big to try to scare me out of the pot, call/raise them, and take their money.

I did get lucky with one bad beat: one of the maniacs with half the amount of chips I had went all in for the umpteenth time. I had ace and a seven, and decided "What the hell?" and called him (note: if I had to do this over again, I probably wouldn't have. It shouldn't have been worth half of my worth to try to get an ace on the "board.").

Then a guy with twice as many chips as me also called, and we checked each other. It turned out, the original all-in guy had ace-king, and the guy with twice as many chips as me had ace-ace. I was cursing at myself yet again for trying to be sheriff an punish the overly aggressive guy when the flop came down 6-8-9, then two, then five on the river. I got a straight and won a ridiculous amount of chips. I actually apologized to the room for the "bad beat." Then one guy responded, "If you're gonna do a bad beat, you might as well make it a mass murder." Beautiful.

After that, I just played conservative. I called conservatively when I had a great hand and then tried to nail the guys who raised me. I played a bit more aggressively if I was the last guy to bet and everyone before me folded. The counter of players left in the tourney, on the bottom right of the screen, would dwindle, dwindle, dwindle.

The more I played conservatively, the more I got a reputation as a non-bluffer. People would fold the second I got into a pot. So then of course I started to bluff a bit, just to steal some blinds and buffer my position.

Soon, there were 10 people left. Top nine go to the final table, and all get paid.

At that point, we started playing a bizarre game. If everyone's betting, raising, bluffing, etc., that's called a loose game (or, a loose player). If every hand is a big fold-a-thon because everyone's too paralyzed to act, that's a "tight" game.

With 10 guys remaining and nine getting paid, the game got tighter than a nun suffering from constipation sitting in wet cement. No one wanted to be the last guy out not to get paid, so a 40-minute-long war of attrition started. I used everyone's fear to steal a couple of pots, including a big one, but I was pretty much as tight as everyone else. I wasn't as concerned as others, though, because I had enough chips to play around a bit.

Finally, it got to the point where one guy couldn't keep up with the blinds. He was forced to go all in on a mediocre hand, and we were all ready to call him. He went out, and then there were nine. I had made the final table. I had guaranteed a prize.

At the final table (nine guys), I was in sixth-place, if you will, in terms of chips, and play remained conservative, for the most part. I scored a few good hands, forced a couple of players who barely qualified for the last table out of the game, and eventually, I found myself with jack-nine. The flop was turned, and it was jack-seven-eight. I had high pair, so I was happy to call when I was raised. Then I was raised again (called) and again (called).

Before I knew it, I was in over my head. I was betting against a guy who hadn't been particularly aggressive yet, and all I have is a pretty good pair, and I can either call his latest bet with 90% of my chips, or fold and lose 75% of my chips. I chose the former. I should've never let it get that far, but I lost focus for a minute and it cost me. He had a straight (eight-nine hand) and played it, and me, beautifully.

Epilogue, I finished in fifth-place and won $62. As great as it was to make the final table, I was even happier to end up improving my position (started at sixth at the final table, finished fifth) against these guys.

What an exhilarating experience. I'm bursting with pride right now, just bursting.

Does it seem silly that I'm so giddy right now? Presumably, everyone here is a sports fan. You can't really be a sports fan unless you have a thirst for competition. I think a lot of us play sports and games in search of that competitive event we are naturally good at, or we find the competition we are willing to bust are tails at to become good. We do it because we want to find something to compete at, something to win at.

Ninety-seven people paid $8 apiece to play in this tournament. Ninety-two of them finished behind me. I made it to the final table — victory enough — and didn't embarrass myself once I got there. I made the first page of the final leaderboard. And there will be more. I'm not going to spend big money on poker, but I'm going to continue spending little money and earning it back and a little more. So far, so good — even before I entered a tournament.

If I've piqued your interest in competitive poker, let me tell you what worked for me.

* Watch it on TV until you have the basics down, if you haven't already. In the U.S, you can find poker on FOX Sports, ESPN, Game Show Network, and the Travel Channel.

* Once you understand how to play, start looking up strategy and tips (and glossaries — know the lingo!) online.

* You'll read a lot of math wonkery about staying in a hand only if you have a "positive expected value." Let's say you have a 10 of diamonds and an ace of diamonds, and the flop is jack of diamonds, queen of diamonds, and four of clubs. You don't have a great hand (ace high), but you have a lot of possibilities for great hands: (you're one diamond away from a flush, one king away from a straight, plus an ace or a 10 would give you a high pair). So you might try to "draw" or fish for one of those great cards.

The math wonks will tell you to compare the percentage of how likely it is one of the cards you need will turn up vs. the percentage of your chips you will need to stay in the hand. If the card odds are greater, go for it. If the percentage of your chips you will have to bet to see the cards are greater than the card odds, fold.

But I'm terrible at math and here to tell you don't have to do all that. Just use common sense. Think about how much you are being asked to call, and whether it's worth it to bet that and stay in the game. Be honest with yourself.

* You only have to be a tiny bit good to be way better then a lot (most?) guys online. Take advantage of that. Be patient. Play non-tournament games with small blinds (again, I did five- and 10-cent blinds). I highly recommend doing it just like I did: $25, played in increments of $5. By the third or fourth increment, you will be surprised at how much you have learned, and you will probably have more than $25.

Let me isolate one sentence from the last paragraph. When entering any kind of game, tournament or not, be patient. Be patient, be patient, be patient. Be patient. Then sit back with some popcorn and watch what happens to guys who are impatient.

* This is the most important thing: PAY ATTENTION TO HOW YOUR OPPONENTS PLAY! The biggest favor your can do for yourself is to figure out how each guy at your table plays, and play him accordingly. If a guy folds 99% of the time and then he calls big, he probably has a great hand. If a guy is betting, raising, going all-in all the time — invite him to dance if you're playing for low stakes (and you have a decent hand), or fold and let him burn himself out in high-stakes game (unless you have an outstanding hand).

If you pay attention to how your opponents play, and pay especially close attention to what they bet once the flop is revealed, you'll be surprised how well you can actually make a pretty good guess at what at least one of their cards are.

* By the same token, try to stay unpredictable and hard to read yourself, and find the balance between being unpredictable and not putting yourself too much at risk.

* Low pocket pairs aren't really that great, but it seems like the lesser players treat them like gold. If you have two threes and I have four and a six, I actually have a pretty good chance of beating you, since I've got five chances to get one of the six cards I need (the remaining fours and fives) to pull ahead of you, and there's only two cards out there (the remaining threes) that will help you, and that's not even counting the (small) possibility of a straight, which I have a much better chance of hitting than you.

* My favorite poker phrase is "Don't tap the aquarium." Sucky players are called "fish" and will do things that will make your jaw drop. You will be tempted to call them names, and tell them just how stupid you are. Don't do it! They're your primary source of income! They're giving you money! If they stop having fun, they'll stop playing. TREAT BAD PLAYERS WELL. You will be surprised at how many people can't follow this rule, because their arrogance compels them to belittle his inferiors, and boom, a good thing (a player giving his money away) is gone. DON'T. TAP. THE AQUARIUM.

* Have fun yourself!

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