Your J-J Looked Good Until a 5-6-7 Turned Up on the Flop, a 3 Walked Down Fourth Street, And a 4 Came Down the River.
Did we lose you already? Then it’s time you learned to play no-limit Texas Hold ’Em. Everybody else has.
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BET SMART As important as knowing when to fold is knowing how to manage your chips. “Two factors are important here,” says Addington. “The value of the stack held by the novice and the value of the stack of any player who might play a hand against the novice. Since a novice can’t rely on the tactics and skill of an expert player, he must rely on aggressiveness.” His simple rule: When you are up against a player with a short stack—in other words, someone desperate to stay alive—your play should be more strictly dictated by caution. But you may do better to let your artistic (that is, less predictable) impulses run wild against a player with a lot of chips, lest he pick up on your tendencies (see below) and whittle down your stack.
LAY OFF THE SAUCE Novice players get nervous entering tournaments, so knocking back a couple of drinks can seem like a good way to loosen up. And you’ll certainly be tempted: Selling alcohol is the only reason bars sponsor these events. But players who drink, Brunson says, “have a disadvantage. You need to be clearheaded and very alert.” Addington agrees: “I do not favor drinking while playing poker. Poker players must be able to count on all the messages from their senses.”
You’re Bluffing! I’m Telling!
Stick to our rules, and chances are you’ll be folding in early rounds waiting to get a strong starting hand. But the time you spend until the next hand is dealt can be put to good use. By observing how the players who stay in the hand play and looking for unconscious behaviors that expose what they’re really thinking, you can gain a strategic advantage. Here’s what to watch out for.
THE BLUFF Ask people to free-associate about poker and the word “bluff” will inevitably arise. This tactic comes in two basic flavors: Playing a hand as if it is better than it really is and playing a hand as if it is worse than it really is (known as slow playing). As for the first kind, I mentioned earlier the example of raising on the first betting round with weak hole cards when you’re seated in the dealer position. If no one has the guts to call your raise, congratulations. With what is probably an inferior hand, you’ve just bluffed the other players into folding and “stolen the blinds.”
Slow playing, meanwhile, is a kind of bluff in reverse; a player thinks he has a hand that can make him a lot of money, so he plays it with false trepidation—only calling bets or making meek raises—hoping to keep other players in the game so he can milk more bets out of them. Just when you are wondering why this reticent player has remained in, he’ll start raising you, because he has you and your not-so-great hand trapped.
A word of caution: Just because you know what a bluff is doesn’t mean you should try it. Novices should be especially wary about bluffing in the early rounds of a tournament. One reason is that bets tend to be smaller in the early rounds and the chips are more evenly distributed. So even if a player thinks your hand may be as good as your raise would indicate, the cost to call you, on the chance that you may be bluffing, is relatively low. And if you try to bluff an experienced player, he will gain something, win or lose. Even if you’re lucky enough to take him to the showdown and win, he will observe that you are willing to play aggressively with a weak hand and factor that into his future thinking.
Another reason not to bluff in the early rounds of a tournament: The weakest players are still in competition. Think about it. If these numskulls are too dumb to fold on bad hands, more often than not they are going to be too dumb to fold to a bluff that might give a more experienced player pause. In fact, even if you have great cards, you can get beat in the early rounds by a novice who should have folded his hand before the first bet. In a recent private tournament I played, my 10-10 lost to a 5-7 when a 6 came down the river, combining with the 3 and 4 on the flop to give my opponent a miraculous straight.
THE TELL While a bluff is conscious communication that reveals falsity, a tell is unconscious communication that reveals truth, such as that you’re holding a pair of aces. A tell can be almost anything: a physical tic, profuse sweating, a quaver in the voice, the way someone peeks at his cards (hence all the poker players in sunglasses). The most observant players pick these signs up quickly, because tells tend to be associated with consistent patterns of play. For example, Brunson may notice that whenever I bluff, I don’t look at my cards as much as I do when I have a strong hand. The next time he notices me not looking at my cards, he’ll be ready. Reading tells is a highly specialized skill, and with so much else to think about in your first tournament, you’re better off making sure you’re not giving away your own. You look cool in sunglasses, anyway.
THE TENDENCY Tells are strictly unconscious indicators; tendencies refer more to someone’s style of play. In other words, an opponent of mine might think, “When Rich thinks he has a strong hand, he often tries to slow-play.” If you play in a neighborhood game, you can pick up on these clues and use them to your advantage. I’ve played poker with the same group of friends for close to ten years now, and while I’m sure all of us have our own tells, I haven’t learned to read any of them. But sorry, fellas, I do know many of your tendencies.
Bone Up
A review of the terminology we’ve covered—plus a few key phrases that’ll make you sound like a shark.
- all in:
- to bet all the chips or money in front of you on one hand: “My night was over when I went all in with three aces and lost to four of a kind.”
- big blind:
- a required bet usually twice the amount of the small blind. The bet is placed by the player seated two positions to the left of the dealer (i.e., immediately to the left of the small blind).
- board:
- the five community cards on the table: “I was holding a pair of jacks, and there were a jack, two kings, a seven, and a nine on the board.”
- button:
- the person seated in the dealer position, or, literally, the marker used to designate that position, often a chip or a token.
- buy-in:
- the amount of money required to enter a game or a tournament: “The local restaurant hosted a charity tournament with a one-hundred-dollar buy-in.”
- complete hand:
- a hand involving all five of your cards, i.e., a straight, a flush, a straight flush, or a full house.
- fifth street:
- the fifth and final community card turned over by the dealer following the third betting round. Also called “the river.”
- flop:
- the three community cards turned over by the dealer after the first betting round.
- fourth street:
- the fourth community card turned over by the dealer following the second round of betting. Also called “the turn.”
- pocket:
- the two cards dealt facedown to each player. Also known as hole cards.
- raise:
- to match and then increase the amount bet during a round: “I’ll see your five dollars and raise you one dollar.”
- re-raise:
- to raise someone’s raise.
- showdown:
- the moment after the final betting round when all bets have been called and players reveal their hands.
- slow-play:
- to play a strong hand weakly to entice more players to stay in and build up the pot.
- small blind:
- a required bet of a set amount placed by the player seated to the immediate left of the dealer.
- split pot:
- a pot shared by two or more players because they have hands of equal value. In other words, a tie.
- trips:
- three of a kind. As in, “I had two pair but was beat by trips.”
Hold Your Own
Can we offer a few parting words of advice?
IN THE END, you can eat right, get plenty of rest, avoid alcohol, hide your tells, bluff judiciously, fold when you don’t have good starting cards, bet correctly when you do—and still go home empty-handed. “The best way to explain it,” says Brunson, “is that with these tournament fields being so big now, it’s just like hitting the lottery. The difference is, good players have more tickets.”
How do you get more tickets? Brunson says that online poker games offer a relatively safe and inexpensive way to pay your dues. “There’s a hundred of ’em now,” he says of the Internet games (he has his own at doylesroom.com). “You can even play without playing for money. But even with the play-money games, you can get the concept, at least.” He believes it’s no accident that the two most recent winners of the World Series of Poker championship event won their seats in the tournament in online games. The 2003 champ, Chris Moneymaker (yes, it’s his real name), had never even played in a live game prior to the WSOP.
But Moneymaker is the exception. No matter how well you do in your first couple of tournaments, don’t get any ideas about purchasing a home in Vegas. Making a living at the poker table, says Brunson, is comparable to making it to the professional level in baseball or football. And there’s no guarantee that online gaming will prepare you for sitting across the table from a squinty-eyed pro like Addington who is ready to take your last penny. “When I was younger,” he tells me, “I could smell fear emanating from some of my opponents. It was an odor like wet, rusty steel.” Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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