Poker Articles

I love to play games, most any game.  Checkers, chess, backgammon, Go Fish, whatever.  I really love to play poker, mixed poker games specifically.  The 2007 WSOP offers a greater variety of games than any year in recent memory (three HORSE events!); this is a good time to branch out from NL Hold’em and play every variety of poker you can.

Virgin Territory for Bad People
Every day we hear scare stories about ‘bots playing online cash games or colluders in SNGs and MTTs.  The ‘bots are focused on limit, colluders play No Limit, but the game is always Hold’em.  I promise you won’t find anything but flesh-and-blood opponents in an online stud or mixed game.  Cheaters look for the weak and the trendy to take advantage of.  They want the most people around, to blend in with the masses and try to steal from the biggest pool of money.  If you want 100% confidence that you’re playing on the up-and-up, expand your horizons off the beaten path.

Reinforce Your Weak Areas
Every poker game requires different skills to master.  Stud forces you to pay attention and remember every opponent’s cards and actions.  Pot-limit Omaha is a game of betting draws and getting away from big hands on later streets.  Split-pot games involve twice the math involves in determining outs and calculating pot odds.  Draw games mean you have to rely solely on betting tendencies to determine the correct course of action.  Razz teaches you how to take beats and bang your head against the wall in creative ways.  Each of these skills also applies to Hold’em, and may very well be the biggest holes in your Hold’em game.  There is no better way to plug those leaks than to jump right in and force yourself to do it in a sink-or-swim environment.

Get Away Without Leaving Your Keyboard
Everyone knows that even the most fervent player needs a way to refresh their mental batteries and refocus their attention on playing the best Hold’em they can.  This is especially true of the multi-tablers, the SNG and cash game grinders who are seeing hand after hand, hour after hour, day after day.  The best way to do this is to completely get away for several days.  Unfortunately, for many of us, that’s like asking the junkie to give up smack or the bag lady in the park to give up cheap wine.  By the thousands, we have tied into the poker lifestyle.  For some, it’s a profession that is simply unprofitable to leave for any extended period of time.  If you are incapable of getting away physically, changing your regular game can have the same effect.   You will be thinking about new strategies, viewing hours of new situations, and experiencing the joy of learning a new game all over again.  Glorious stuff, if you ask me.

New Schools of Fish
At the same stakes that are often dominated by strong Hold’em players, you can often find a split-pot or draw game half-full of clueless goofballs.  You know the type, people who will call three bets pre-flop and all the way down to the river with rags, chasing 4 outs for half the pot.  Hold’em has been around for long enough that the $300-$1000 buy-in games (5/10 to 15/30 limit games) are populated mostly with sharks that end up eating each other.  Even the low buy-in games have people who mostly know the rules.  Percentage-wise, there are far more bad players in the mixed games.  Even if your opponents know Hold’em well, they will likely be donators in the split-pot or Stud rounds of a HORSE rotation.

The Pinnacle of Love and Respect
If you’re looking to be recognized as truly great at anything, you can’t be a specialist.  Harold Miner was a great dunker coming out of USC, but he didn’t have the rest of the skills to warrant being compared to Michael Jordan.  The same goes with poker.  In the grand scheme of things, poker is more than just No Limit Hold’em.  When Daniel Negreanu called last year’s gala at the Rio the “World Series of Hold’em”, it wasn’t a compliment.  The professionals advising Harrah’s for this year’s WSOP wanted more contests that were a true test of a player’s overall skill for a good reason.  I have a ton of respect for how Annette_15 or ActionJeff play No Limit Hold’em.  I have more respect for how Ari, Gank, PearlJammer and the Vegas pros play poker.  To be the best, you have to be the best at everything.  I believe that’s true in the chaos of online poker as much as it is in the rarified air of Table One at Bellagio.

As a kid, and into adulthood, I’ve played a lot of different games with friends and family members.  I believe that I take gaming lessons and strategies from canasta, Monopoly, Risk, you name it, into my current game of choice, poker.  Within the varieties of poker, you can do the same thing.  Train your brain to think in new ways.  Grow with each poker game you learn, and apply your new strengths to improve at your preferred area, be it a cash game, MTT or SNG.  It’s a great big beautiful world of poker out there.  With your nose stuck on the same grindstone every day, you might miss some of the game’s beauty.  Expand your horizons and you just might expand your bankroll.