Category: Articles

The ideal number for a game of poker is probably between five and eight players, but tables often hold ten players, and just two people playing "head to head" can be breathtakingly exciting. Home games have been played on kitchen tables for centuries, so throw a piece of green baize (or some felt, a rug, a carpet, even a towel) over your table and we can begin – almost.

Get hold of a full deck of cards, take out the jokers and give the pack a good shuffie.
 
You are going to need some chips. You can buy these easily over the Internet or from shops. You can use pennies, or play for cash or even, when following these pages, use matchsticks or sweets or ball-bearings. But remember, when the game really starts, you will be playing to win or to lose. You don’t get to collect your chips back again at the end of the evening and laugh about what good fun it all was. The chips are your money, and you must play to win. So, give each player about thirty chips, and that will do for the moment.

Now, a word about the dealer:
Dealing is either performed by a staff member provided by a card club or casino, or it is done by the players themselves. This might be done by drawing for seats: everyone chooses a card; the player with the highest is the dealer, the next highest on his right, and so on. If the players perform this task, the first person shuffles the deck thoroughly, asks the player on his right to cut the deck and then deals the hand. Then the role passes to the next player, in a clockwise rotation. If there is an appointed dealer, then there will be a "dealer button" (a white plastic disc with "dealer" printed on it) placed in front of the player to indicate for whom the cards are being dealt.
 
At poker, everything moves clockwise from the dealer. At Hold ‘Em, your position at the table in relation to the dealer is absolutely crucial. As you will learn, to be the dealer can be very advantageous – that is why the role must move around the table after each hand.

The dealer shuffles the cards and offers them to his right-hand opponent who lifts off a portion of the deck and places it face down next to the remaining cards. The dealer then puts the remaining cards on top of the portion cut off. This is called the "cut" and it ensures that the dealer hasn’t stacked the deck in his favour. Before the dealer begins to distribute the cards, there is still one task to be undertaken.

The player to the left of the dealer must make a Small Blind bet, let’s say one chip, and the player to his left must make a Big Blind bet – usually double the amount of the small bet – two chips. These bets are called the Blinds (because you have to make the bet "blind" – without having seen your cards) and they are used to set the action going. So, with the Blinds placed, the dealer deals one card to each player starting on his left and going around the table. He then deals a second card to each player and stops.
The players look at their cards, ensuring that their opponents cannot see them or the player’s reaction to them. There is now a round of betting, based on the strength of these two hole cards.

Now, the purpose of the Blind bets becomes clear. If players wish to stay in the hand, they must match – or exceed – the bet placed by the Big Blind (in this example, betting two chips).

This is a key part of poker betting. To stay in the hand, you must match (or, if you think you have the best hand, exceed – by raising) the largest bet currently made, If you choose not to do this, then you must fold (or muck) your cards, discarding them face down in the direction of the dealer. You now take no further part in this particular hand.

5-Card Draw was similar to Stud Poker but with a crucial twist. After the five cards had been dealt, there would be a round of betting. Then, each player in turn could exchange one or more of the cards in his hand, for new cards from the deck, to try to improve his hand. Then there would be a further round of betting. The result was that players made better hands and there was twice the opportunity for betting, meaning twice the opportunity to try to bluff, bully or seduce your opponents. Some players consider 5-Card Draw Poker the purest form of the game, but it is nowhere near as popular as many other versions.

As the third millennium dawned, the popularity of poker was beginning to expand from the millions who played it regularly in the USA, to hundreds of millions throughout the world. Inspired by television coverage, featuring secret cameras which revealed the players’ cards to the audience, the huge sums of money at stake for the most subtle of decisions and the sheer human drama of the game, poker’s universal charm became irresistible. Moreover, the Internet became the preferred venue for playing, especially amongst those starting out in the game. The ability to practise anonymously, to enter free tournaments and to play against really good players from aIl over the world, without leaving home, has bec orne a fine alternative to watching mindless television or sitting in gridlocked traffic.

In the twenty-first century, there is an abundance of different poker games: 5-Card Stud and Draw, 7-Card Stud, Hi/Low variations, Omaha and, the "Cadillac of poker games", Texas Hold ‘Em. There are also the many home-spun variations with jokers, wild cards, strange betting rules and topsy-turvey last-minute turnarounds. However, most poker players in the world today favour Texas Hold ‘Em. It’s the version which best combines skill with luck, which involves just the right amount of action, and the one which produces the most excitement right down to the very last card.

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There is no physical contact between the players. You cannot see them and they cannot see you. This means you do not have to worry about keeping a poker face and paying attention to your body language. This also means that you cannot assess other players’ body language and look for tells. As technology improves, games may be introduced where the players can see each other via web cameras.

As you cannot see the players you need to develop a different strategy for playing. The strategy used needs to be based more on probabilities, betting patterns and knowledge gained from previous games with players that you may encounter in the future. If you regularly play on the same site, you may regularly play with the same players and build up a body of information about the habits and betting patterns of these players.

Internet tournaments

Online card rooms offer lots of poker tournaments. Internet tournaments are much shorter than traditional tournaments.

Single-table tournaments are where nine players compete. There is usually a prize for the top three finishers with the prize being divided as follows:

In multi-table tournaments, you will compete against hundreds of other players. The players will be randomly located seats and may play several rounds. As players get knocked out, the remaining players are re-seated until just nine players remain on the final table. The winner is the player who wins all the other players’ chips. The advantage of multi-table tournaments is that you can win a large prize for a small entry fee.

Speed tournaments

With speed tournaments, the value of the blind increases every few minutes. This ensures that the tournament is quickly finished. Speed tournaments can be played both as single table games and multi-table games.

Many sites offer regular freeroll events to attract new players and encourage existing players to return to the site on a regular basis. These may be either ‘true’ freerolls with no entry conditions whatsoever, or perks for players who have already provided the cardroom with a certain amount of patronage (typically measured by the number of raked hands in which they have participated).

The challenge for the cardroom is to structure these freeroll tournaments in such a way that they are attractive enough for players to visit the site, but not so attractive that their clientele will spend all their poker sessions playing freerolls at the expense of raked ring games or buy-in tournaments! Undoubtedly, some players who play in freeroll tournaments do so with no intention of ever depositing any cash to play in real money games, but even these players have some value to the cardroom, since they may encourage their friends to join the site, and those players may then make deposits and in turn encourage their own friends to sign up. A true freeroll tournament at, for example, PokerStars will attract 250-500 players, offering newcomers an ideal introduction to online tournament play.

There are two contrasting ways of approaching a freeroll event – you can either try and play your best game, treating it as a serious exercise, or you can decide to take lots of risks early on, figuring that you could get lucky and amass a ton of chips, but if you bust out you haven’t lost anything anyway!

Although collusion and all-in abuses are the most prevalent problems, there are other security issues which discourage some people from playing online. One common fear is that someone may be able to see your hole cards. This may be either because the original programmer has revealed the ‘key’ to the encryption algorithm to a cheat, enabling him to see everyone’s hole cards, or because someone has somehow managed to break into the server and bypass the code. (Players are recommended to provide themselves with an extra measure of protection by installing firewalls on their PCs.) Alternatively, the programmer may have disclosed the shuffling algorithm, enabling a cheat to determine which cards are likely to come next. Finally, the programmer may have left a backdoor into the software to enable him to insert hidden code to enable certain designated players to win. Although these means of cheating are possible, there has never been an instance in which anything like this has ever actually happened – it would be so damaging for any cardroom to fall victim to this kind of cheating that it is hard to believe that adequate security measures would not be in place.

Clamping down on the Cheats
Although they are in business competition with one another, if the major sites were able to get together and share their information about known cheaters, and even discuss methods of tracking down cheaters in future, they would undoubtedly be doing a great service both to themselves, and to the online poker-playing community as a whole. A firmer, across-the-board approach to the problem of cheating would encourage new players to participate and give existing players the confidence to compete for higher stakes. Indeed, according to Paradise Poker’s head of marketing Bruce Davidson (quoted in an article in the New Yorh Times from November 2001) one reason why the site has been reluctant to raise the maximum stakes, is precisely because they are concerned that this would attract more sophisticated cheaters and hackers.

Furthermore, it is not sufficient that cheaters be barred; each site should adopt an open policy of refunding losses to players who have been the victims of proven cheating. Although both PokerStars and Planet Poker, for example, have refunded cheated players in the past, this does not appear to be a universal policy among cardrooms at the present time. Short-sightedly, some sites may prefer not to admit that any specific acts of collusion have arisen, whereas a more open treatment of such instances would demonstrate not only that they hold a powerful stance against collusion, but also that they possess the resources to detect and combat it. In this way, they would not only reinforce public confidence in their commitment towards honest games, but also discourage potential cheats.

Without question many people are reluctant to play on the Internet for fear of being cheated, either by the cardroom or (more likely) by other players. Barely a week goes by without some anonymous poster on one poker forum or another telling how he was ‘cheated’ online in some way or another. Invariably the thrust of their argument is something along the lines of ‘I’ve been playing for 20 years and I’ve never seen so many bad beats. I know I’m a good poker player, so if I’m losing then the game can’t possibly be on the level.’ Although on occasion these complaints do turn out to be perfectly valid, in the vast majority of cases the players involved are almost certainly victims of misfortune (or their own bad play) rather than cheating. Furthermore, since there are plenty of other players who claim that they do win at online poker sites without having to resort to cheating – are we to assume that they do so only because they are such brilliant players that they can overcome stacked decks and collusion teams? It is true that most players lose when they play poker at an online cardroom, but then again most players lose when they play poker in a brick and mortar cardroom as well (the mathematics of the rake practically guarantees that this be so).

In July 2002 pokerpages.com published an excellent article by Andrew Glazer on this very subject, entitled ‘Ten Reasons Why You’re Not Getting Cheated Online’. His argument was not that cheating does not go on (indeed he stated that he was sure that in certain instances players had colluded with one another), but that there are alternative explanations for poker losses that players often ignore, preferring instead to blame someone else rather than themselves. Glazer offered the following possible explanations as to why players might experience (or appear to experience) worse results online than they do in a brick and mortar cardroom:
–    Players are forced to keep better records online. When you receive your monthly credit card bill it is pretty hard to fool yourself that you have had a winning month when you have actually lost, whereas live-action players who don’t keep accurate records may imagine that they are winning players even when they are not. As Glazer says, ‘Many players who think they are break-even players in live games are actually losers, and many players who think they are winning players are actually break-even or losing players.’ Thus some players may only be imagining that their results are worse online; better record-keeping would reveal that their live-action results are comparable.
–    Online play removes much of the skill involved in reading people from the game. Those players for whom tells and other people-reading skills are a vital element of their game will not be able to achieve such good results online. For such players Glazer eloquently suggests that ‘when you play online you have two arms and one leg tied behind your back.’
–    Many players don’t concentrate as hard when they play online as they would in a brick and mortar cardroom. By engaging in multi-tasking while you are playing online, perhaps watching TV, answering e-mails or surfing the Internet, you will not collect as much information about the other players as you would in a live game, and this will inevitably have a negative effect on your results.
–    Many more hands are played per hour online than in a live action game (perhaps giving the misleading impression that more bad beats are occurring). If you are already a losing player, then faster games will inevitably cause you to lose more every hour you play online (although this may partially be offset by the lower rake and the absence of tipping).
–    The nature of the online game sometimes encourages players to play more loosely than they normally would. The simple physical act of clicking on a mouse rather than counting out chips and placing them in the pot may cause players to enter and stay in more hands, often calling to the river with hands they would fold in a live-action game. Furthermore, there is no peer pressure to play ‘properly’: if you play an online hand badly and still somehow manage to win, you don’t have to endure any muttering or dirty looks from the other players, all tacitly censuring you for playing so poorly.
–    If the game is indeed looser than a normal brick and mortar game, then more players will stay to the river and more miracle, bad beats will arise as a result.
–    If the game is already looser than a normal game, then it may become even looser as additional players are sucked into every hand by the prospect of winning a large pot if they hit a big hand.
–    Players are more prone to going on tilt online. We have already discussed the phenomenon of cybertilt, whereby players are more likely to lose their composure and steam off their bankrolls when there is no-one watching them.
–    Players can run into more problems when they play two tables simultaneously. Again, we have already discussed this concept. It is harder for multi-table players to keep track of their opponents’ tendencies, while playing two or more tables at once can be particularly dangerous for players who have a tendency to go on tilt.
–    Players may play differently because they are paranoid that they are being cheated, making detrimental adjustments to their decisions merely because they fear the worst.

One of the most fundamental issues for any online business is security – unless clients can trust that the software is providing them with complete security then they will be reluctant to engage in any online transaction, gambling or otherwise. Major online poker sites offer the same protection against hackers that banks do. At PartyPoker, for example, your playing cards, name, address, credit card details, password (and everything else that is transmitted to and from the cardroom) are protected from ‘packet-sniffers’ by the internationally accepted industry-standard SSLv3ffLSv1 encryption algorithm system. Furthermore, your own playing cards are sent exclusively to your computer – no-one else has access to your downcards.

Apart from providing customer security, the other main interface requirements of an online poker site are speed, reliability and an intuitive and attractive design. In the early days of online poker, games were often slow, with players experiencing frequent disconnection problems and having to cope with clunky, poorly designed, unfriendly interfaces. Thankfully, most (but not all) major sites nowadays offer their clients a fast, reliable and intuitive gaming experience. Incidentally, you may notice that sometimes when one site is experiencing Internet problems, several other sites also suffer downtime. There is nothing untoward about this – many poker sites have servers located in the same facility, so connection problems affecting one site are likely to be affecting other sites as well.

Although UltimateBet is one of the only sites to offer its clients the choice of two entirely different interfaces (Standard View and the innovative and attractive MiniView™), most sites do offer drop-down menus to enable you to adapt some elements of the interface to your desire. For example, you may find that for some sites the speed of your connection is improved if you remove the ‘animation’ features using the tabs in the lobby. In addition, some players (myself included) prefer to utilise the ‘four-colour deck’ option where this choice is available. This may enable you to identify the suits quicker and more accurately, especially if you are playing multiple tables and need to be able to distinguish the suits of the cards at a very brief glance.

Nearly all online sites have been designed primarily for the Windows environment. However, Apple Macintosh and Linux users can either choose to play at a site such as Pokerroom.com, where no download is required, or invest in an emulator program such as VirtualPC for Macintosh, which will enable them to access any online site.

Nowadays every major poker site provides the facility for players to chat with one another. Most players enjoy making conversation from time to time, since it helps reduce the isolation of playing online, adding a social element to the game that online poker would otherwise lack. Sometimes players use the chat boxes to praise or berate opponents, sometimes to help iron out any issues that may have arisen at the table, and other times just to catch up with friends whom they have met through the cardroom. Of course, it is forbidden for anyone to use the chat function to even hint at what their hole cards are or advise other players on how they should play a hand that is in progress!

Very often players use common abbreviations when they are chatting to save typing time, the most common of which are:

 
It has already been mentioned that some of the best opportunities in online play arise when all the other players at the table are chatting to one another, enjoying the camaraderie of the game instead of focusing properly on the game itself. If everyone is relaxed and having a good time, it is much more likely that the game will be played in the kind of gambling spirit that you are looking for in a game – everyone playing looser than they normally would and the bad players staying at the table even if they are losing money. If you are fortunate enough to find yourself at such a table, then it is not at all in your interests to jeopardise the spirit of the game – if you don’t wish to participate in the banter yourself, that’s fine, but if you want everyone to keep playing in the same fashion, then it is better to hold your peace rather than to say anything that may cause a change in the atmosphere of the game.

By the same token, you should avoid criticising another player for playing a hand badly – by embarrassing another player in public you will either cause them to leave with their bankroll still intact, or more likely encourage them to pay more attention to the game, tightening up, playing better and perhaps learning some valuable lessons for the future. As the saying goes ‘Don’t tap on the glass!’

It is sometimes argued that the best way to part a bad player from their money is to try and set them on tilt by verbally attacking them. However, this is a somewhat short-sighted strategy – if you come across a player who really is that clueless, they are probably easy to beat anyhow. Surely you want them in your game on a regular basis? Why spoil their gambling experience and cause them to go elsewhere in future?

Occasionally you will have the misfortune to find yourself at a table where a player is ranting and raving, and possibly even being extremely abusive to other players. Invariably that player is on tilt, steaming through their bankroll. In these circumstances there are three non-exclusive courses of action:
•    You owe it to yourself (and all the other polite players at the table) to play your best game against the abusive player, helping to relieve him of his bankroll and sending him off with his tail between his legs. Don’t get involved in an argument with him and allow his bad behaviour to put you on tilt!
•    Just as in a brick and mortar cardroom where you can report abuse to the dealer or floorperson, so you can report chat abuse to the online poker room’s customer support team, who will often relieve abusive players of their chat privileges for a designated period. If you file a legitimate complaint and the cardroom fails to act, this may tell you everything you need to know about whether or not you should be providing that particular site with your future business.
•    Finally, you can always switch off the chat feature if you wish, although this is rather an unsatisfactory solution if you like to use the chat yourself or enjoy trying to gain clues about the other players through their chat messages.

It is important to remember that in Internet poker you are completely anonymous. No-one knows anything about you except your online name, and what they may or may not have been able to glean from the way you play your cards. As soon as you start to chat you risk giving away information about yourself, which other players may be able to use in forming strategies to beat you. For example, if you moan about a couple of bad beats, the sharks may identify you as a frustrated and mediocre player, and start regarding you as a target of their upcoming play. Players who mark themselves as potential victims are inevitably likely to be victimised.

If you do enjoy chatting then it might be worth considering using an online handle which sounds approachable – if you use a name such as Andrew73 other players may be more inclined to chat with you than if you call yourself something like hgtmvshmr.

Most sites now offer the facility to take notes on other players, which are then stored on your computer and can be retrieved the next time you run into them at the tables. You can write whatever you like in these private notes – what kinds of hands the player is showing down, what their pre-flop raising (and calling) standards are like, whether they are aggressive or passive, tight or loose, whether or not they always defend their blinds, whether or not they always launch an attack on other people’s blinds when they are first in from late position, whether or not they are prone to going on tilt after a bad beat, whether or not they are capable of running big bluffs etc.

When an unfamiliar new player enters a hold’ em game it is often worth noting whether they wait for the big blind (or let it pass and then post next to the button) or post at the first available opportunity, even if they are shortly due for the big blind anyhow. In the latter instance, it may be that they are an ‘action’ player, impatient to start gambling.

If you do not wish to take detailed notes, it is still worth recording who the big winners and losers were at the table, so that over time you can develop a feel for who the best and worst players are at the limit you play, and can subsequently select your opponents accordingly.

For Paradise Poker, PokerStars and PartyPoker, you can actually edit your notes when you are not actually online – simply open up the ‘Notes’ text file in the local directory in which your online site is stored and all your data should be there. It may be as well to take a backup copy of this file before you make any changes, so that you don’t lose it if something goes wrong. Of course, if you change computers this text file can be copied across to your new machine to save you having to start from scratch all over again. (N.B. At Paradise Poker the file is called ‘Player Notes’ rather than ‘Notes’.)

Online note-taking facilities are not available at every site (and are not portable from site to site), so some players prefer to store their notes either handwritten in a notebook, or on their PC in a wordprocessing document or spreadsheet. Of course, the latter approach has the important advantage that it is easier to store and sort your notes. If you wish to keep notes in this format then you may choose to layout your notes in the following columns:
•    The player’s name.
•    The player’s location (most sites provide this information nowadays).
•    The date.
•    The type of game and limit at which you encountered the player.
•    An approximate rating for that player (on a scale of 1-5 or 1-10).
•    An indication of their general starting hand requirements and pre-flop style – Loose? Tight? Passive? Aggressive? (You could even add specific examples to help jog your memory.) What kinds of hands did they steal and defend blinds with?
•    An indication of their post-flop style of play. What kinds of hands did they bet or raise? Top pair with good kicker? Top pair with bad kicker? Bottom pair? Flush/straight draws? Outright bluffs?
•    Any other points of interest. For example: Did they vary their play? Did they go on tilt after a bad beat? Did they trap with very big hands? Did they reveal anything about their playing style in any chat messages? Were they playing at more than one table? Do they regularly play at a different limit to today’s game? etc.

It is sometimes argued that unless you are playing at limits of, say, $10/$20 or above, note-taking can hardly be worthwhile, since below that limit there are so many players that you will not run into them often enough to justify the time invested. However, others believe that note-taking is an important skill which you should constantly try to develop as you progress through the limits. Furthermore, it will encourage you to focus properly on your opponents’ play, whereas otherwise your attention might be diverted away from the game. Even at lower limits, you will find that from time to time your notes on another player will help steer you towards the right path in a tricky situation. If nothing else you may wish to keep a notepad by your PC listing the best players whom you have faced; and the ones whom you figure might form part of your ‘dream-team’ of potential opponents!
At the end of each session you should also strongly consider taking notes on yourself! Typically this might take the form of a wordprocessing or spreadsheet document and include the following information:
– The date
– The length of the playing session (measured either in minutes, hands played or both).
– The site at which you played (assuming that you have accounts at two or more sites).
– The form in which the game was played (assuming that you play more than one form of poker).
– The limit at which the game was played (or the buy-in level in the case of a tournament).
– The amount won or lost.

You may also like to keep a note of how many flops you saw, the percentage of games you won and other such statistics, if this information is provided by the site at which you play. Once you have built up a series of such records, you should be able to develop a good feel for the type of games in which you fare best, which will greatly assist your game selection in future.

In a recent edition of Online Poker News, Andrew Glazer even recommended taking notes on specific plays you make that save or lose you money, and adding these up at the end of the session to see what these plays have earned or cost you. That way, if you keep making the same mistakes from one session to the next, the cost of these should be plain to see!

Another important means whereby you can analyse your own play is through hand histories.