I know, odd question.
I guess I’m used to straight forward card games where winning is luck of the draw and knowing which cards to keep or play.
But with poker, isnt winning based more on bluffing or figuring out who else is bluffing?
How much luck of the draw is the game?
Over the long term, the “luck of the draw” evens out. The skill is how you play both when you’re lucky and when you’re not.
The fact that in an average WSOP tournament, at the final table, half the table are pros indicates that skill does play a factor. The fact that sometimes amateurs win indicates that skill is sometimes overcome by luck.
Moved to the Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
How are you defining ‘winning’ - is it winning in one hand, winning a tournament, coming out ahead after night/weekend, coming out ahead in the long run, maximizing winnings in the long run, getting another guy at the table to freak out, getting a really cool hand, or what? Which of the dozens of games of poker are you playing - limit hold 'em and no-limit hold’em play very differently even though they’re almost the same game, and something like 5-card draw with 4-8 wild cards (common home game) is far away from either of those.
Exactly what you do to win depends on your definition of winning, what variant you’re playing, and the general setup for playing. In general winning poker in the long run is mostly math, with some psychology thrown in to a lesser or greater degree depending on the exact game. Bluffing is neat and makes good TV on ESPN and a good plot point in movies, but isn’t nearly as big of a deal as the popular image would have you believe.
I “win” when I’m concentrating on having “a good game”. Having a good evening with friends.
I play amateur poker, but a fair amount.
And I purposely play like an amateur, because it’s more fun.
If everyone gets good cards, say, 33% of the time, then for two-thirds of hands, the best pro players will fold asap.
But that means for most of the evening, a couple of people would fold right away and just pick their noses while the remaining people are playing a less fun hand with a skeleton crew.
Bottom line: I’m willing to lose a few bucks and stay in with mediocre cards (my spess’-ee-al-i-tee), because it’s a lot more fun. As a bonus, you can try out your psychic powers to try to fill that inside straight, and pull out your foreign swear words when you don’t get it.
So my advice is: don’t focus on winning, focus on having fun. And hopefully an enjoyable evening with friends.
Always keep an Ace up one sleeve, a shank up the other and keep your X-Ray specs nice and clean.
Or as put so succinctly in this classic Christmas jingle:
You gotta know when to hold 'em
Know when to fold 'em
Know when to walk away
And know when to shank a bitch.
I’ve slightly in profit as an amateur player of Texas Hold’em both in home games and a few low-level Vegas Casino tournaments.
My suggestions:
There are three parts. First is getting good hands. Although this might involve some skill (for instance, in draw, you need to know which cards to discard), it’s only a very small amount of skill, and it doesn’t particularly interact with any of the skills in the other parts of the game. If you assume that everyone at the table has that modicum of skill, then this part of the game becomes pure luck.
The second part is that you want to bet high when you have a good hand, and low or not at all when you have a bad one. Knowing what cards you have, of course, is easy. Knowing what cards you might get takes a little skill, more than is needed in the first part, but again not all that much. But of course you also need to know what your opponents have, because it might be even better than what you have. So you need to guess that based on how they’re betting, and possibly from clues like facial expression (though from what I understand, that’s not nearly as useful as it’s usually made out to be).
And the third part is that you also want your opponents to bet high when you’ve got a good hand, and low when you’ve got a bad hand. This is in direct opposition to the second part, which is what makes the game interesting.
Back in the 60s, I played in a weekly game. We played nearly always played 7 stud, hi-lo. Quarter ante and quarter limit on bets and raises, limit of three raises per round. There were 7 players. Five of them, including me, basically broke even winning or losing no more than $5 per evening. One of us won consistently, usually about $15 per evening. The last one lost consistently, also about $15. So you can see the luck evened out, but one of us was quite skillful and the other quite reckless. Bluffing played only a small part of this; it was mainly a matter of knowing when to hold 'em, when to fold 'em. Don’t bet on the come (unless at favorable odds).
Read “Getting Started In Hold 'Em” by Ed Miller.
That explains the basics, really.
Seriously, the OP’s question is the subject of a lot of theory, study, and ongoing discussion.
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But with poker, isnt winning based more on bluffing or figuring out who else is bluffing?
[/QUOTE]
Absolutely not. Not at all.
In most poker - so I’m talking about home games or low level games in your nearest casino - poker (which is usually Texas Hold 'Em) is very, very little about bluffing, and very much about playing mathematically sound poker. If you play straightforward, logical poker, you will probably win. (I stress probably. You can just be unlucky.) Bluffing is a great way to lose money.
Rudimentary strategy for the beginner:
Play very few hands. If you are dealt a strong hand you should play, but otherwise fold. You should be folding most of the time. The earlier your position the more conservative you get; if you’re “under the gun,” the player who acts first, you should play maybe the 5-10 best hands in poker and fold everything else. You’re under the gun, look at your cards, and find the king of spades and the jack of diamonds? Fold. It’s a terrible hand to play in early position. Seriously.
If you think you have the best hand, bet or raise. If you don’t, don’t.
Calling other people’s bets should be done if you have the pot odds to win and shouldn’t if you don’t. I won’t explain “pot odds” in depth here, look it up. It’s not that hard to figure out.
If you’re calling way more than you’re betting or raising, you are probably doing something wrong. If your hand is stronger, raise. If it’s not strong, why are you in there?
Do these things. Forget bluffing and fancy play and picking up tells at the Horseshoe Wherever Casino Resort’s $1/$2 game.
But go read “Getting Started in Hold 'Em” first.
Luck determines what hand you have to play. After that it’s a betting game, it’s a hardball negotiation between the players creating a win-lose-lose-lose-lose scenario. In addition to understanding the odds, it’s not just the frequency of particular individual combinations but the odds of competing hands in one game and knowing how the cards you can see affect those odds for the other players hands. And then there’s reading your opponents, do they have a tell to let you know when they are bluffing? And how well can you hide that yourself?
I don’t know any big time poker players but the best guy I knew worked his way through college playing backroom card games and he gave me several useful tips, one good one was that you shouldn’t bluff unless you have good reason to think everyone has a bad hand. He also told me about ways the dealer could collude with the player on his right (assuming dealing to the left). And patience is a big one too, the impatient player can end up losing by betting too much on the second best hand.
Beware sunk costs.
The money you’ve committed to the pot isn’t your money anymore. If things take a bad turn, don’t stay in the hand just because you’re already however-many-dollars deep.
This is how experienced players fleece rubes (like me) for easy cash. Amateurs will stay in a hand because they feel like they’ve ‘invested’ and can only get value by staying until the end. But the better player has already read you, has a good idea of what you’ve got, and is stringing you along to inflate his payout.
When you see good players staying in with bad hands, it’s (usually) not because they think they’re going to get lucky and something amazing will happen. It’s because they think they have a better bad hand than the other guy.
Excellent advice from RickJay, a guy who started off as a casual player asking the same sort of questions here and who became a knowledgeable, winning player. Read his post again, and read the book he recommends.
About bluffing in low-limit games: Bluff just often enough that the other players know you might be bluffing – my general strategy was to bluff fairly often when first joining a game, making sure everybody knew I bluffed when I first got caught, then not bluffing at all after getting caught the first time. Only bluff one player; if there are multiple players in the pot, forget about it.
RickJay mentions playing hands like KJ under the gun – a good case can be made for playing only AA and AK under the gun – you only play a few more hands so players who are paying attention won’t automatically know that if you raise UTG you have AA or AK – you aren’t playing those hands because you expect them to be good, you are playing them to keep others from being sure of your hand when you play from that position.
Way I think of it is that bluffing is, for one round, deliberately playing like an idiot. If you do it once in a long while, everyone will know you sometimes play like an idiot, so they can’t rely on signals from you about betting.
When I first started playing poker, I didn’t understand that. I thought it was all about bluffing. Which meant that on about half of my hands, I played like an idiot. I lost all the time.
I hardly ever play poker, but I think this one revelation would make me a significantly better player than I was before.
This is logically sound advice, and I’d definitely recommend showing a crappy hand early in a session, especially in a limit game where it won’t cost you much and, hell, you might win by limping it with something stupid like 7-5o.
However, I’d be damn careful about this tactic; it only makes sense in a small pot where you can make your bluff for very little money and not get raised. If you’re playing fun poker at the casino for $1/$2 and your $17 bet is raised to $40, suddenly you have to show your hand while you fold it (which is something of a giveaway that you’re showing it for a reason) or you’re just paying too much of your stack for a demonstration.
They key thing I have to stress is that the OP is not going to be going to the Bellagio to play $200/$400 against Daniel Negreanu, Jason Mercier and Liv Boeree. Against those people ABC poker will get you creamed. They will take all your money and beg you to go get more chips. He’s either playing against friends or playing against amateurs in a $1/$2 or $1/$3 game at some regional casino.
Especially in a low limit casino game, if you’re playing ten-handed, three people will notice what you’re doing, three will kinda sorta notice what you’re doing but will forget or let their emotions run wild or overthink it, and three will either not notice at all or will play as if they don’t. The starting player should remain tight and avoid trickery. The fish will still pay up. You don’t have to beat everyone at the table. You just have to beat the fish. (Well, in a tournament I guess you have to beat everyone, technically. I would advise against starting in tournaments.)
I would not suggest being stupid about it and just playing pocket aces and kings; the blinds will eat up all your money. The new player should certainly be playing a wider range of hands in later position and trying to see a flop for one bet with all small pair. (Sets = $$$.) But still, keep it simple.
The first good trick I starting working into my game was the strong semi-bluff, which doesn’t come up a lot but is a powerful tool and will win big, big pots when you hit. I think that’s a good first “trick” for the new player (if it even counts as a trick, which, arguably, it doesn’t.)
That post sounds awesome, and I don’t know nearly enough poker lingo to understand it :). The thing about bluffing is about the only thing I ever figured out about poker. It always sounds fun to me, but I don’t have a group or disposable income to play poker with.
Another here who rarely plays. I agree with this about the bluffing. Don’t make a habit out of it(unless you are very, very good at the game) but once in a while is fine.
I would also say never bet/bluff while waiting for that final card needed for your winning hand. That Queen of Diamonds you are patiently waiting for never comes up. Also, bet big on your good hands and get out as quickly as possible on your poor hands(Yes, I realise this advice is not exactly profound). You soon recognise which hands have potential and which hands are worthless. The dangerous hands are the hands you think you may win if that one magic card comes up.
A hand that may win if that one magic card comes up is trash. On the other hand, a hand that might win if any one of a large set of cards comes up might be worthwhile. Extreme example, if you’ve got KQJ10 of hearts, you can get a straight from any ace, or any 9; you can get a flush from any heart; or you can at least get a pair (and probably a decently high one) from another face card or 10. That might be worth putting some money on, because you’ve got a lot of outs.
You get better cards than the other guy.
Or you do a good job of convincing him that you have better cards.
Which ties right back to the “semi-bluff” mentioned by RickJay.
You may actually want to bet/raise with this hand rather than straight call, since you get both the “pot equity” (the amount of money you will win if you hit one of your outs) but also the “fold equity” (the likelihood of winning by getting your opponent to fold). Sometimes you may not have enough pot equity to call but against a tight enough player and a scary enough board (that is, someone at least somewhat likely to fold) a bet/raise might work.
I think the advice that most helped me be at least a semi-successful low-stakes player (back when I played) was that if you find yourself doing more calling than betting and raising you are doing something wrong (also mentioned by RickJay).