Poker: Know when to fold'em
I got introduced to Texas hold'em poker a few months ago. I had played rummy, 29 (simplified bridge!) and a few card games before. But poker is a unique game in many ways.
The basic principle of playing good poker is to play the odds. There are a few rules / combinations of cards which one can get, basic rules can be found at a website. In world-series poker TV telecast, a small display shows the percentage of the player winning the game, which gets updated after every round. But we are not playing against the computer or a slot machine, and the opponents make the game complicated? The amount of psychology involved is striking. In the game of rummy one can pack/fold at the start of the game and loose 20 points. But one doesn't analyze the facial expressions of all the other players, before folding (bad Rummy face, huh!?). From what I have learned so far, the trick in poker is to play the odds, while making sure the opponents don't realize it.
Poker is as much a mind game, as it is a card game. There is another game called bluff/challenge, where the objective is to trick other people by slipping in a bluff. The player (say A) throws cards and claims what they are (say four Queens). If the next person (say B) takes the challenge, it’s a showdown. If A had truthfully stated his queens, then B picks the stack of cards, else A picks them. Similarly in poker, one can raise stakes to scare opponents into submission, good cards being incidental. All-in poker is a altogether different story in itself, one I don’t know much of.
However, poker does have a lot in common with other games. Aggression in poker, as in any other game may or may not always be good. One can scare or be stung. We know that the cricket teams go about these days with cartons of footages from previous matches, to figure out the opponents better. One does the same thing in poker too, analyzing the opponent’s style of play. Also, sledging in cricket (wiki page), correlates to a lot of patterns in poker.
The unanswered question for me is, which is the more important attribute of a good poker player: analytical skills or guile?
The basic principle of playing good poker is to play the odds. There are a few rules / combinations of cards which one can get, basic rules can be found at a website. In world-series poker TV telecast, a small display shows the percentage of the player winning the game, which gets updated after every round. But we are not playing against the computer or a slot machine, and the opponents make the game complicated? The amount of psychology involved is striking. In the game of rummy one can pack/fold at the start of the game and loose 20 points. But one doesn't analyze the facial expressions of all the other players, before folding (bad Rummy face, huh!?). From what I have learned so far, the trick in poker is to play the odds, while making sure the opponents don't realize it.
Poker is as much a mind game, as it is a card game. There is another game called bluff/challenge, where the objective is to trick other people by slipping in a bluff. The player (say A) throws cards and claims what they are (say four Queens). If the next person (say B) takes the challenge, it’s a showdown. If A had truthfully stated his queens, then B picks the stack of cards, else A picks them. Similarly in poker, one can raise stakes to scare opponents into submission, good cards being incidental. All-in poker is a altogether different story in itself, one I don’t know much of.
However, poker does have a lot in common with other games. Aggression in poker, as in any other game may or may not always be good. One can scare or be stung. We know that the cricket teams go about these days with cartons of footages from previous matches, to figure out the opponents better. One does the same thing in poker too, analyzing the opponent’s style of play. Also, sledging in cricket (wiki page), correlates to a lot of patterns in poker.
The unanswered question for me is, which is the more important attribute of a good poker player: analytical skills or guile?
posted by Mohit Gupta at 11:48 PM
1 Comments:
From his years in the game, Mr. Gordon has mapped out qualities that he believes make a great poker player — qualities like aggressiveness, courage, patience, observational brilliance and open-mindedness. He also asserts that an ability to assess opponents' psychological makeup is far more important than mathematical dexterity. In fact, he says in his poker primers, all that any player needs to succeed are fourth-grade math skills and emotional discipline.
Is Poker Losing Its First Flush? NYTimes (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/business/yourmoney/16poker.html?_r=1&oref=login)
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