A wide choice of bets can be played on craps, some of which are better value for the player than others. Before betting it is best to compare the difference in house advantage (the profit made by the casino) for each bet. The best-value bets are the pass/don’t pass and come/don’t come bets. These allow the player to make an additional bet called odds. By playing the odds bets, the house advantage is reduced to less than one per cent. Read the rest of this entry »
Baccara, the forerunner of baccarat and punto banco, is played mostly in European casinos. It is particularly popular in both France and Germany. High minimum stakes are the norm in baccara and it is not unusual to find games with a minimum stake of US$100. Some games even start as high as US$1000 minimum. Read the rest of this entry »
Poker conjures up images of saloons in the old West where hustlers and gun fighters did battle. It seems that no Hollywood Western is complete without a gunfight over a poker game, but this way of life was often the reality for professional gamblers in the Wild West. In 1876 one of the west’s most famous lawmen, James Butler ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok, lost his life in a poker game in Deadwood, South Dakota. To this day his last hand — a pair of aces over eights — is known as the ‘dead man’s hand‘. Read the rest of this entry »
Each player receives five cards face down. When all the cards have been dealt, the players look at their own cards. After an initial round of betting they have the opportunity to exchange any cards in their hand for new cards from the deck. Cards that are being discarded are returned to the dealer before the new cards are drawn.
As a general rule, if you get nothing from the initial deal you should fold (that is, if you are unable to make a ranking of at least a high pair). Only a hand with a pair of at least six or more is worth playing. Read the rest of this entry »
Each player receives two cards face down. Five cards are placed face up in the centre of the table. These cards are called community cards and are used by all the players. Each player uses a combination of the two cards in his or her hand and the five community cards to make the best possible five-card hand. Read the rest of this entry »
These are played on smaller tables and are dealt at a faster speed than baccara. Minimum stakes are around US$5, which is considerably less than the high stakes normally played for at traditional baccara tables.
Baccarat and punto banco differ from baccara in that the casino acts as the banker, paying out winnings and collecting losing bets. In American casinos, baccarat players take turns to act as the dealer, but in punto banco that role is fulfilled by the casino. Read the rest of this entry »
Roulette is one of the most popular casino games in the world due mainly to the large odds that it pays. A winning number on roulette pays 35 to 1, which means that a small stake can potentially turn into a fortune if a player has a winning streak. By reinvesting winnings, a player with a $1 initial stake could accumulate $46,000 in just three spins of the wheel. Read the rest of this entry »
Casinos use a variety of subliminal practices to ensure they get the maximum amount of money from visitors before they get anywhere near a gaming table.
Casino design is no accident. Almost every feature is built in with profit in mind. Exteriors are lavish and use every marketing trick to get players to walk through the door. This is taken to the extreme in Las Vegas, where shows put on outside the casinos get people to stop and watch, and, hopefully, go inside. Read the rest of this entry »
Casinos offer a choice between games of skill, where the player can affect the outcome; and chance, where players have no input and rely on luck.
Games of chance include roulette, slots and punto banco. Once players have decided what numbers to play there is no further action to take.
Poker and blackjack are games of skill. As players make all the decisions about taking cards, they are able to use their intelligence to win. With games of skill, a combination of knowledge and experience can make the difference between winning and losing. Read the rest of this entry »
How much money do you need to keep from going broke if you’re a professional and poker is your paycheck?
A professional poker player should realize that every dollar she wins will not be added to her bankroll. After all, she has to pay rent and buy groceries just like anyone else, and her only source of income is her winnings. Lose, and she pays her bills the only way she can: by dipping into her bankroll. But there’s a limit to how deeply she can dig without putting herself in jeopardy. Read the rest of this entry »
At one point Ungar raised seven hands in a row. No one called. Was he bluffing? Of course he was — some of the time. Everyone knew that. But no one knew when. Every contestant hoped one of his opponents would be eliminated first. It didn’t matter which one. Every time someone was knocked out, the surviving players climbed another rung on the pay ladder. Ungar knew that.
Ungar’s mastery of the table seemed palpable. He was a shark among a school of fish, and he sensed blood in the water. Bao, short on chips the entire day, was the first to fall — eliminated by Judah. By 1:30 p.m. Ungar had more chips than his remaining four opponents combined. Read the rest of this entry »
The main event is what draws the crowds to Las Vegas, and the 1997 and 1998 World Series of Poker were more dramatic than most. One event is the thrilling yet ultimately sad tale of an incredible comeback, the other a quintessential American success story.
Stu Ungar: The Comeback Kid
A dozen former world champs competed in the 1997 event, including two- time winners Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, and Stu Ungar, along with 27-yearold defending champion Huck Seed. Formerly an engineering student at Cal Tech, Seed took a year’s sabbatical to play poker and never returned. Read the rest of this entry »
A change in breathing patterns is not an act. This unconscious tell is one of the strongest in poker. If you’re seated near the opponent, you often will be able to hear this tell. But even if you’re seated across the table, you sometimes can see it by the movements of the person’s diaphragm.
The key here is that players who make strong hands tend to become excited and need to breathe faster. Players who are bluffing, on the other hand, tend to disguise their breathing and sometimes stop entirely. They fear that anything they do might trigger their opponent’s calling reflex, so they become extremely unanimated and scarcely breathe. Read the rest of this entry »
Poker is a brilliant blend of strategy and psychology — there is really nothing else like it. When compared with strategy, however, how important is psychology in poker? Well, you can beat poker without understanding psychology, but you can’t beat poker without understanding strategy. Therefore, it’s important to learn the fundamentals first. But wait! Now we’re going to say something that — at first — seems to be contradictory:Psychology can account for the majority of profit you will ever make in poker!
That statement is true because after you master the fundamentals of poker, you’re most of the way to becoming a good player as far as strategy goes. Read the rest of this entry »
Poker is the only popular game of skillful human interaction where it’s possible on any given day to play against the world’s best players. At any of the hundreds of major poker tournaments held in the United States or Europe every year, you could find yourself face-to-face against former world champions such as Scotty Nguyen, Phil Hellmuth, Jr., or Huck Seed. Ever heard of them? How about T. A. Preston? Name sound familiar? He’s better known as “Amarillo Slim.” If No-Limit Texas Hold’em is your game, you might get raised by none other than Johnny Chan, who appeared in the film, Rounders. Chan won two World Series of Poker titles back to back! Read the rest of this entry »
You will succumb to all of your flaws as a poker player during the period you are struggling, growing, and reaching for a higher level of skill. Just because you’ve read all the books by all the experts, don’t deceive yourself into believing that you’re going to play as well as they do. Every top-notch player struggled to reach the level of success they’ve achieved. You’re going to have to do the same. Golf videos won’t turn you into Tiger Woods, chess monographs won’t turn you into Gary Kasparov, and Poker For Dummies will not turn you into Doyle Brunson. The best poker books will teach you how to talk the talk. You’ll have to walk the walk on your own! Read the rest of this entry »
To most recreational poker players the idea of playing professionally seems like a dream. Get up when you want to, work when and where you choose, and ply your trade almost anywhere. From London to Las Vegas and California to Costa Rica, casino poker awaits you there. So what’s stopping you? Only the answer to this critical question, “Can I make a living as a poker player?”
For one thing, if you’re a poker player, you won’t have a steady salary coming in. Even commissioned salespeople don’t lose money if they fail to make a sale. But poker players do lose money whenever they have a bad day. It’s one of the few jobs where you can go to work and lose money. Imagine that. An entire day of poker — under stressful conditions — and all you’ve got to show for it is less money than you started out with. Not a pretty picture, is it? Read the rest of this entry »
Do you want to become a better poker player today? Right now? Here are ten specific things you can do today, and each one of them will improve your game.
If you don’t learn, understand, and use poker’s mathematical parameters, it will prove difficult to be a consistent winner in the long run. For example, if you’re playing Hold’em and flop four cards to a flush but don’t know the odds against completing that hand, what will you do when it’s your turn to act?
How will you ever know whether calling, raising, or folding is a play with a positive expectation? Finding positive expectations is the essence of winning poker, and it’s no more complex than recognizing those situations that will show a profit if they could be replayed time and again. Read the rest of this entry »
Ali offered little resistance. Outside of a few seemingly futile jabs, he looked as if he wasn’t even trying to fight back.
But that was Ali‘s strategy. After a few rounds, the heavily muscled Foreman grew tired. He had punched himself out and was spent. Ali, by comparison, was fresh. He was also unhurt. Ali then began a counterattack. He came off the ropes and danced in the center of the ring. Ali, who was faster, peppered Foreman with jabs and stinging overhand right hands. Now it was Foreman who had nothing to offer. “What’s the matter, George,” Ali said as Foreman launched a slow, tepid punch in his direction, “Is that all you got?” Read the rest of this entry »
Is there a player out there who hasn’t observed that poker is a metaphor for life? That metaphor is probably one reason why poker is so popular. Not only does it frequently mirror life, poker models it. Poker is life in a nutshell. The entirety of our existence compressed into a single hand of poker is a compelling thought.
A metaphor and a model for life! If true, there should be important life lessons everyone can take away from the poker table. When learned and applied, these lessons should make it much easier for a poker player to survive in a world where most people haven’t been force-fed these life-lessons across the poker table.
Being Selective and Aggressive
In the real world you do have to pick your battles, just as you must in poker. Sometimes you have to draw your proverbial line in the sand (”You’ve gotta know when to hold ‘em“); other times you have to carefully choose when to retreat (”Know when to fold ‘em”). Read the rest of this entry »
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