Archive for the ‘Play Poker’ Category
Poker Room Tips
Here is some good advice that applies before you play your first hand of Hold'em in a casino poker room:
1. What's a Low Limit Game?
Keep in mind that what makes a low limit game is the skill level of the players themselves, not just the limit that is being played. If you walk into a poker room and you see ten high limit players playing in the smallest game in the house, then this is not a true low limit game and you should avoid it like the plague.
You will often see this situation when there is a list for a high limit game but there aren't enough players to actually start the game. So these players will sit in a low limit game while they're waiting for their game to get started. On the other hand, if you see ten of the worst players you know playing in a $10- $20 game, you'll know that that's not a true high limit game either.
It's the skill level of the players that determine the true characteristics of a game. Keep this in mind if you have your choice of more than one low limit game to get into.
2. What Limit to Play?
If you've never played before, or if you have very little experience at Hold'em, you should play in the lowest limit game you can find. There are some excellent $l-$2 games out there but I recommend you move to a higher limit as soon as you're able to. The specific advice contained in this book is geared for that limit and this structure has big advantages for the serious player that will be explained later in this book.
• Many early Oriental playing cards were actually sticks that were later widened and shortened and designed with images.
• Playing cards were most likely invented in China in 1120 A.D.
• Playing cards were introduced into Europe in the 1300's.
• When Columbus landed in North America in 1492, his men plucked wide leaves from trees, drew images on them and played cards.
• Due to French influence, Spades represents nobility, Diamonds represents merchants, Clubs represents the peasants and Hearts represents the clergy.
• Edmond Hoyle lived to be 97 years old but he still died 150 years before poker was invented or played in America.
• Hoyle's book, A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist, was about Bridge, not poker.
• In the 1800's, 2,000 to 2,500 riverboat gamblers played poker on America's waterways. By contemporary accounts, no more than four of these poker players were honest all the time. A straight beat a flush at this time.
• Historians generally agree that Wild Bill Hickock was a lousy poker player.
• Dead Man's Hand, is two pair, Aces and 8's, the hand Wild Bill Hickock was holding when he was shot. Contrary to popular belief, the exact suits or colors (black/red) he was holding when he was shot in the back is just not known today.
• Jack McCall killed Wild Bill Hickock because he thought he had been cheated out of a twenty-five cent pot (he probably had been). That's equal to $26.25 in 1996 dollars.
• Groucho Marx got his name from carrying his poker money in a "grouch bag".
• A fifth suit of cards, called Eagle, was introduced in 1937 but never caught on. The reason for it was to force the public to buy new decks of cards.
• Former President Richard Nixon won $6,000 playing poker in his first two months in the U.S. Navy during WWII. That's equal to $42,640 in 1996 dollars. He used that money, and more poker winnings, to finance his run for the U.S. Congress in 1946, which he won.
• Returning from the Potsdam Conference in 1945, President Harry S Truman played pot limit poker sixteen hours a day for a week with the press corps.
• At least 65,000,000 Americans regularly play poker.
• Las Vegas casinos are not legally obligated to pay off their gambling debts.