Poker Newbs

My goal in writing is to alert new players to some traps awaiting them. I expect that most players will lose a little when getting started unless they are initially much better than I was. But new players can learn and change their situations, perhaps more quickly than they expect.

My poker career started a couple of years ago at my golf club. There was a .50/1/2 game that I started playing that could be very, very good. I quickly learned that against poor play, I could make money playing poker. I often took away around $100 for 5 hours or so of play. I lost sometimes but not very much. I have to stress that the level of play was often very, very poor.

I also started playing in another semi-private game that was more like a 3/6 game that was much tougher. I learned that I wasn’t really all that good. Against better play for higher stakes I was just breaking even, but the fact that I wasn’t losing was encouraging.

One way or the other, I had the poker bug.

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I play because I enjoy the game, and I enjoy winning at it. I play to make money, but I also have a fascination for the cards themselves. I used to play competitive contract bridge, but I would rather play cards for money than for points. I am content to win at low-stakes poker. My goal is to make enough money playing poker to take the family out to dinner a couple of times a week. I’m not trying to make a living at it.

My motivations aside, I decided to try online poker. I first tried ring game 0maha8 (O8), but I had a lot of holes in my game. I was too loose, and I would get too emotional about some maniac stealing all the time. I chased and come in second a lot. Maniacs gave me a lot of trouble.

I was a bit discouraged, so I decided to try the small stakes O8 tourneys instead of the ring games. I noticed that the play was usually different. Maniacs weren’t as much trouble because I could usually wait them out. They frequently busted early. This strategy worked better for me, but I was still losing. I managed to make $500 last for about six months.

Poker NovicesIn looking back, I believe that a couple of transitions occurred in my play during this time. I was too loose at first and then became too tight after spending more time playing in tournaments. I believe these transitions are fairly natural and that a lot of new players must go through them, because the games that are available push a lot of new players in the same direction they pushed me.

When a new player tries online poker, perhaps with a set of experience similar to mine, he wants to play. He looks at players throwing away hands and asks “How can you throw more than half your hands without seeing a flop? You gotta see a flop!”

If he has any brains he finds that playing all the hands doesn’t work and then he possibly overreacts. Too tight play is the next natural stage that new players go through because they lose their chips so quickly in tournament games if they try to stay in the hands that have a combination of maniacs and players holding good cards. Too tight play works better than too loose in the tournaments, and the tournaments tend to be a little easier on the initial bankroll. You can play longer for your money with this strategy.

Anyway, you might make the too-tight strategy last longer, but it still loses. At some point, a player has to find the sweet spot. I started playing in more ring games after giving some thought to my play and my results. After going through my too-tight phase, I started betting my better hands more aggressively. I started trying to give other players the same problems they were giving me. I found that I had better success in some types of games than others. I was winning in tight games by using solid, selectively aggressive play and I was winning in loose games by being more patient and sharing profits with good players against maniacs. I started looking for those games before sitting down. I found that games somewhere in the middle, perhaps those with too many good players, weren’t worth playing. In short, I discovered game selection and I began adjusting to various game types.

I still have some holes in my game, but on-line poker is solidly profitable to me now. I’ve gone somewhat beyond my goal of paying for nights out with the family. I’ve added games other than O8 to my arsenal, branching out to find other profitable situations.

Pot Odds

Knowing how to calculate pot odds is one of those fundamental poker skills that no poker player should be without. It is a powerful concept because the pot odds can accurately tell you whether or not it’s profitable to call bets in the hopes of hitting a draw.

Pot odds work by comparing the size of the bet and size of the pot to the chances that your draw will hit. Luckily this is an easy concept to learn and before you know it you’ll be calculating the pot odds all the time without even realizing it. In fact, you’ll often use the pot odds when you’re not even in a hand to identify the fish at the table who chase draws against the odds.

There are two ways to calculate your pot odds. One way is extremely simple and easy to use; the other way requires a calculator. The simple method is easier to explain so I guess we’ll use that one today. Besides, I don’t even know how to use a calculator for pot odds. This stuff is all memorization. It’s simple. I have no idea why so many web pages teach the complicated method.
1. Find the Pot Odds

The first step in figuring out whether or not you should call a bet is to compare the size of the bet to the size of the pot using a ratio. If an opponent bets $10 into a $50 pot, your pot odds are 60:10. This reduces down to 6:1. If an opponent bets $50 into a $100 pot, your pot odds are 150:50 or 3:1. Notice that we include the bet when counting the pot size.

That’s the first step. The hardest part is over! Do you see how this works? You just set up the size of the pot next to the size of the bet and reduce it down to simple terms. The next step is even easier.
2. Compare the Pot Odds to the Drawing Odds

What you do here is compare the chances of your draw hitting to the pot odds we figured in the last section. The only thing slightly resembling effort that you have to do here is memorize the odds for a few of the more common drawing hands.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say you have a flush draw and an opponent has bet $10 into a $60 pot. You want to know if you should call or fold. The pot is giving you 7:1 and the odds of a flush draw hitting on the next card are about 4:1. Should you call? Yes. Whenever the pot odds are greater than the drawing odds, it is correct to call. In this example the pot odds are giving you 7:1 on a 4:1 draw. You can call this bet every day and expect to profit over the long term.

What I mean by “profit over the long term” is best explained using an example. Let’s say that over the course of a year you get into the above situation 100 times. 80 times you will miss the flush draw and have to fold for a total of $800 spent chasing and missing.

The other 20 times you complete the flush draw and win the $70 pot for a total of $1,400 in wins. Subtract $800 from $1,400 and you end up with net wins totaling $600. That’s what we mean by looking at the long term.
3. Memorize the Odds for Common Drawing Hands

The only thing you have to do now is memorize the odds for some of the common drawing hands out there. Some of the most common drawing hands I encounter are flush draws (4:1), straight draws (5:1), 2-pair to full house draws (11:1) and gutshot straight draws (11:1).

There are plenty of poker odds charts out there if you want to look up additional draws. Most odds charts list the odds in two columns: chance on next card and chance on next 2 cards.

You don’t know if you’ll have to call additional bets on the next street so always base your calculations on only one card coming. The only time you would want to use the “2 cards coming” column is when you’re about to get it all-in on the flop and know for sure that you’ll get to see two cards for this one bet.

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