Anyone here love to play poker like me? Tonight is our monthly game, and I am PSYCHED. I wish we could play more often, but we’ve just got to be patient until we can get a regular group started.
Now, I’m not saying that I’m any good, I just like to play. I guess that means I like throwing money away once a month. When I was Vegas last month, I played casino poker for the first time and can’t wait to go back. I sucked hard and slowly got killed, but it was so much fun. Man I love poker.
Ahem,
“… like I do.”
“Poker”? I don’t even know 'er! snarf
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
Are you a turtle?
I too love Poker. Or any type of cards, board game, etc. We used to have a bi-weekly game when I lived in Texas (every other Thursday). A core of five people, with one or two extras brought in per game. Everyone but the host would chip in for pizza. We usually played quarter/half dollar. At worst you would lose about 50 bucks. We all thought it was worth that in entertainment expense. We had one unwritten rule… no wild card games, no jokers! Geez, that’ll suck up a good poker game in a second, IMHO.
Ahh yes, I would really enjoy another poker group.
New and Improved
Enright3
I love poker, too. That post made me want to arrange a game. Perhaps tomorrow night! Hmmmmmm…
Zette
(rooting around for her poker chips)
“If I had to live your life, I’d be begging to have someone pop out both my eyes. Just in case I came across a mirror.” - android209 (in the Pit)
Zettecity
Voted “Most Empathetic”- can you believe that?
I’m a huge poker fan. I play with some guys from work, and I try to get to Bullwhackers (no joke!) in Blackhawk at least once a month. They have a great poker room with good comps, excellent dealers, and a good mix of regulars and tourists.
I’m actually getting fairly good; I’m up $200 for the year at the casino.
I highly recommend David Sklansky’s books “The Theory of Poker” and “Seven Card Stud for Advanced Players”.
You bet your sweet ass I am.
Oh, and if you don’t play that well, I most certainly do not love to play poker like you…
I just took my poor sucker med school buddies for a ride last night, in fact. We play dime ante/quarter max bet, and I left about $25 richer. We’re not a very serious group, and we play a lot of crazy wild card type games, but we have fun. (And, most importantly, none of them are very good. 
)
The best way to play some Vegas poker without losing your ass is playing in tournaments. There’s a Hold 'Em tourney every day at the Luxor at noon–$22 buy-in, pays out to the top four depending on how many players are in it, usually about 20. (I placed fifth last time I was out there–dammit!) There are others at the Sahara, and at many other casinos.
I’ve always thought that an All-Nite Doper Poker Fest would be one hell of an experience.
Dr. J
I’m an ex-professional poker player, and I still play 20-40 hours a month, mostly 10-20 to 20-40 Texas Holdem and Omaha.
I’m an ex-professional because as soon as you turn your fun avocation into your job it becomes really, really boring. 150 hours a month of staring at the same faces across a card table got old pretty fast. I played for quite a long time because the money was pretty good, but I was happy to get back into industry and do something creative.
I love poker! Ever seen Rounders? I host a poker night roughly every 2-3 weeks with a bunch of guys from work. Quarter minimum ante. Dealer calls game, any game goes.
My question: there are about 4 core players in our group (me included) with 1 or 2 additional players each night. One of the core members never, ever walks out a loser. He claims its conservative betting. “I know when to get out”, he says. However, I believe that he is no more conservative than I am (when I’m down). He is the luckiest S.O.B. I’ve ever met. The type of guy that beats your 4 Kings with 4 Aces. And this happens all the time. Anyone else have a player like that in their group? At this point, its alsmot no fun to play with him because of this. Just wondering…
Yes, I have read Sklansky’s Theory. Another book I would recommend is Thursday Night Poker by Peter Steiner.
I understand all of the theories and rules and I’m beginning to be fairly adept and calculating pot odds and and the like - my problem is that the game goes so fast I can’t follow the cards well. I beginning to learn, but it’s tough going.
Oh, and Malaka, he might be cheating. You just never know…
“Five card stud, nothing wild, and the sky is the limit.”
Count me in… I love Poker. Being a foreigner, I’m sure I don’t know all the varieties to the game, but I play a pretty mean 5 card stud…
Bring it on!
(Bonus points for the one who gets the reference)
Coldfire
Voted Poster Most Likely To Post Drunk
WallyM7 on Coldfire:
"Yeah, he knows a little about everything because they have a good prison library."
I played at Bullwhackers – also at Harrah’s up at Central City. Fun little place – in fact, one of my fondest memories is making the drive back down the mountain towards Boulder… and it began to snow. For some reason, the scene that is locked in my mind is the rental car crawling along the road at about fifteen miles per hour while “Bubba Shot The Jukebox” played.
Sheesh.
Fun times, though!
We have a poker game on the first Thursday of every month that’s been going on for almost eight years now. I’ve never missed a game, nor has the host and we’ve got a few other core players and enought third stringers (one guy from out of town comes to one game every year - same month, but I can’t remember now). After about a year, the host came up with the attached efficiency apartment on his house vacant and decided to just knock a wall down and make it the poker room. He’s got a nice bar, a nifty fancy brass low chandelier and a circular green felt covered table.
Hoyle’s rules (for Xmas one year the host gave us all our own copy) generally, although one of the infrequent out of towners favors low hand poker, which we let him get away with.
It’s a friendly game, so the stakes are not high. I hold the records for both biggest winnings and biggest hosing (~$80 both times). That was before we settled on a $10 maximum for match the pot games. Usual initial cash in is $5, with 50¢ being a hefty bet. Everybody chips in for the pizza and it’s BYOB until you run out, then the host’s bar is open (and well stocked).
Our host got married 3½ years ago and the continuance of this tradition was a part of the prenuptial agreement.
Almost of us had learned to play in high school or soon thereafter so it was a bit jarring to see what Hoyle’s had to say about some of our favorite games. With some hindsight, I’ll say I think I enjoy those games more now that some of the extremes have been moderated by Hoyle’s and we concentrate a little more on probability and strategy. And there is a final arbiter.
We do have one regular who’d never played before he joined us ~6 years ago. His beginner’s luck has got to start fading some time soon.
malaka mentioned the guy who never loses…; we had a reg who left the game years ago who tried a strategy that appeared to work (he explained it to me later). This is a game that people attend expecting, for the night, to spend ~$25 including the pizza kick in and whatever booze you bring along. This guy would bring $150 and just keep betting heavily; it worked because he was able to drive everyone else out of most hands. It wasn’t a lot of fun, but as soon as I knew what he was doing, I countered him for a couple of months until he backed off.
I’m in…
Damn I miss playing poker. We used to play every month and then everybody moved away after they closed the company.
One of the guys, Al, he’s dead now, but he used to bring a fifth of Canada House whisky to the game and drink the whole thing in 4 hours and then play really sloppy cards. I could always tell when it was time to clean him out when he’d lick the cards before he dealt. I’ve gotta get a game up soon.
“If it’s free, it’s for me !”
Sam Stone–what would be your best advice to a fairly serious amateur?
Dr. J
“Seriously, baby, I can prescribe anything I want!” -Dr. Nick Riviera
What games do you play? What limits?
The first thing I’d recommend is that you get the ‘canon’ of poker books. That would be “Theory of Poker” and “Hold’em Poker” by David Sklansky, “Holdem Poker for Advanced Players” by Sklansky and Malmuth, “Seven Card Stud for Advanced Players” by Ray Zee. All of these books are published by twoplustwo publishing (www.twoplustwo.com). There is an excellent poker discussion board there, and one of the best ways to improve your game in a hurry is to take part in those discussions.
For more books,you can add “Super/System” by Doyle Brunson (although it’s a bit dated), and anything written by Bob Ciaffone. If you’re new to Texas Hold’em and want to get started playing low-limit games, “Winning Low-Limit Holdem” by Lee Jones is very good, although his understand of the math is weak, and that’ll get you into trouble if you take his advice and apply it to the bigger games.
Stick to ‘real’ poker games. No offense, but “5-card draw, pregnant 3’s are wild” home games are strictly for the amateurs. Pros like playing games that have a good balance between the various mathematical aspects of the game. And that usually means Texas Hold’em, 7-Card Stud, or Omaha. You’ll rarely find anything else in a casino or cardroom.
As for general strategy, the first rule of winning poker (after you have the basics down) is game selection. In poker you usually don’t win money by being a great player, you win money because the other players are terrible. You want to make fewer mistakes than your opposition, so you want to find games where lots of mistakes are being made. The best player in the world playing in a game full of intermediate players will make less money than an intermediate player in a game full of fish.
My advice for going pro: DON’T. Poker is a great and lucrative hobby or second-income source. It’s a terrible career choice. I can give you a million reasons why. I have seen poker ruin the lives of a number of intelligent young people who quit school or quit their new careers because they thought they found the gravy train to big money and easy work. Almost all of them wind up miserable.
Sam–thanks. I’m at about the “Winning Low Limit Hold 'Em” level. I played some 3-6 Hold 'Em the last time I was in Vegas, and in the Luxor tournament, and held my own in both (although I didn’t win anything). Do you have any particular tips on spotting fish?
I will look into the books you mentioned. Don’t worry–I don’t have any designs on going pro. (Med school doesn’t suck that bad–yet.)
Dr. J
I’ve the funniest feeling that the Game of Poker and The Poker Game occupy different realms in the lives of Sam and myself.
Fish bet almost every hand. Watch someone and try to figure out what hands they play on third street (in 7-card stud) or on the deal (in hold-em). If it looks like they’re consistently playing weak opening hands (even if they’re winning on miracle draws), they’re fish.
There’s another class of players: the overconfident. These players think that they play so well on the later hands that they just run up the first round of betting. Against these sorts of players, you just sit back, wait for the nuts, and then check-raise 'em on round 2. You only have to get out of line about 5% of the time (according to Malamouth) to beat them. It’s kind of boring, but you will pick up a few big pots.
No matter where you go, there you are.