Mastering Texas Holdem, line
mastering any competitive activity, requires three kinds of knowledge: factual
(Chapter 4), tactical (Chapter 5), and strategic (Chapter 6).
Factual
knowledge includes the vocabulary, basic concepts, and sought-after goals that
define the activity. Without the facts, you cannot make sense of the game. A golfer must know the
difference between an iron, a wood, and a putter, and why all three are in a
gold bag. Facts are learned by committing them to memory.
Tactics
are the various actions taken to achieve the goals. Tactical knowledge is
acquired through practice. You play the game and, through experience, gradually obtain the skills
necessary for success. Golfers learn to swing their clubs and read the
greens by repetitive practice.
Strategic
knowledge is obtained after the facts are memorized and the tactical poker skills
are acquired. Strategy is learning to see the game in a broad
context. Once you possess strategic knowledge, your actions are no longer
a direct response to individual events, but are considered in the context of a
broad purposeful plan. Only after you reach the level of strategic
thinking can you truly master a game. Great golfers don't play individual
holes. They think about the course as a whole.
While
I have used gold as an example, any activity that involves performances
requires these three kinds of knowledge. Musicians have the factual
knowledge of how to read music, the tactical knowledge of how to play their
instrument, and the strategic knowledge of how to interpret the music.
The facts, tactics, and strategies must be learned in order. It is not
possible to shortcut the learning process by skipping ahead to strategy without
learning facts and
tactics, nor is it possible to learn music, golf, or poker from reading
alone. You must play.
This
section of the book presents that facts, tactics, and strategies of texas holdem. The underlying
theme is that you win at poker by making better decisions than your opponents
make because over time, cards (and hence situations) are equally
distributed. Poker decisions are based on five factors: you're cards,
your position, the number of opponents, the cost, and how your opponents
play. The factual basic for each decision factor is presented
first. How these facts enter into tactical play will then be
discussed. Strategy is learning to give some factors more weight than
others, depending on the game conditions. To play strategy, you must
learn to analyze the reasons and motivations for a poker game. In
essence, poker is a social game. The competitions for a poker game. In essence, poker is
a social game. The competition for money takes place within a social
context that must be understood before a correct strategy can be formulated.
Facts :-
The
key to making intelligent poker decisions is to understand that successful
poker is not about winning hands, it is about winning money.
Since everyone has the same chance of being dealt a winning hand, winning hands
are, in the long run, equally distributed among the players. Over
time, money is accumulated by the players who make the best decisions.
Poker decisions require
knowledge of mathematical probabilities, but the game is far more complex and
cannot be completely described mathematically. In blackjack, where the
dealer always plays the same way, it is possible to calculate the best decision
for each hand. No such calculation is possible in poker because you are
competing against different players, each of when plays their own way.
Not only do individual players differ, but each poker table develops its own group
dynamics that changes as players enter and leave the game. The
replacement of a single passive player with an aggressive one can instantly
alter the mood of a poker table and necessitate changes in decision making.
The
combination of mathematics, psychology, and social dynamics makes poker a rich and
fascinating game. Mastering poker requires
hours and hours of playing in different settings with different
ethological aspects of the game. They think poker is all about bluffing
and reading body language. The fact is, poker has an underlying strategy
that must be followed for there to be any chance of survival let alone
winning.
Correct strategy bases
decisions on the knowledge available to you of the cards and your
opponents. You never have perfect knowledge of your opponents, their
cards, and the cards to come. Given imperfect information, you must assess
what is most likely to happen. Decisions must be based on the most
probable outcome of a hand, not on what you hope will happen.
Before discussing the
actual play of hands, it is necessary to have the facts intelligent decisions
are based on. This section, which is meant to be used as a reference,
contains tables, graphs, and summaries of important information and
concepts. There are five factors to consider in every poker
decision. After summarizing the five decision factors, each one is
discussed in detail. How knowledge of these factors translates into
actual play is the subject of the next chapter.
The decisions you make
during the course of a hand should
always take the following five factors into consideration:
Betting
in poker means you wager that, as showdown, your hand will be ranked the
highest. Unless you believe that to be a likely possibility, you should
not bet. Statistically, in a ten-handed game, you will only have the
highest hand 10% of the time. Knowing when it is your time to
have the best hand is of course the difficulty. When you have a strong
hand, bet aggressively and force the other poker players
to chase you. It is rarely correct to slow-play; that is, not bet a
strong and hand. If you don't have a strong hand, fold. In poker,
money saved is the same as money won. and staying out of the 90% of the hands
you are destined to lose is an important as being in the hands you win;
Is
an extremely important factor in Holder since it is a fixed -position
game. When you are in an early position (close to the blind) you have no
way of knowing how large the pot will be at the end of
a betting round, and how many players will be contesting it. To
compensate for this disadvantage, you need to play stronger cards than
you would from later positions.
Contesting
a pot determines the kinds of hands that are playable. The irony is that
you can play weaker starting cards when many players contest the pot, but you
must have a stronger final hand at showdown. A high pair is a strong
favorite to win against one or two opponents, but if ten players enter the
hand, someone is likely to beat a high
poker pair with a
flush or a straight. Conversely, drawing hands (weak initial cards that
may give you a flush or straight) are playable against a large field since
the final pot will be large, but drawing hands are seldom worth playing for
small pots against one or two players.
Pot-Odds
Are the costs of staying in hand compared to the pot
size. In each betting round, you decide if the amount of money it will
cost you to finish the round is worth the size of the pot being contested.
The cost to play can range from nothing (if everyone checks) to three large
bets (if there is a lot of raising late in the game). Like any sound
investment decision, riskier plays must have greater rewards for success.
Opponent's-Playing-Styles
During the hands that you don't enter, observe the playing card style of
each player and of the group as a whole. Does a certain player only bet
when he has good cards or does he bet with anything? Does a player buy-in
for a small amount of money and carefully guard it, or does she buy new chips
from the dealer frequently? For the table as a whole, are showdowns
frequent or rare? A big mistake beginning poker players make is playing only
their cards and not considering how other people are playing theirs. Your
opponents' actions are a source of information that must be used.
Over the course of a hand, some of these factors become more important than
others. Early in the hand, your position, the initial strength of your
cards and the potential number of opposing players are the most important
factors. Later in the hand, pot odds and the playing styles of the
remaining players are more important. What follow is a detailed discussion
of these five factors.
Your Position:-
You must play starting cards appropriate for your position. In an early
position, you are forced throughout the hand to make decisions with the least
amount of information. For example, if before the flop you call the blind
with a drawing hand, you could be faced with a raise from one or more players
with premium pairs. Since you don't know what raises you will be faced
with, don't play cards from an early position that are too weak to justify
calling a raise.
Compared so Seven-Card Stud, the importance of position in Holder is one of the
key differences between the games. Position changes throughout the hand
in Stud. The critical factor in determining a playable stud hand isn't position,
but rather, how "live" is the hand. if your first three cards
in Seven-Cards
Stud are A, J, J and you look at the board and see the other two Jacks
and one other Ace, you have a "dead" hand. the Jacks with
Ace-kicker may look pretty, but your action should be to fold.
However, in Holder, only three cards initially appear on the board and they are
your cards. To know when your hand is "dead" is more difficult
in Holder because fewer cards are exposed. To judge if your Holder hand
is "live," you must observe the bets from the other players.
Therefore, position matters, and since your position stays fixed throughout the
hand, you know ahead of time the betting order for the entire hand.
Associate the value of strength categories of starting hands with your position
as measured from the big blind.
Position
Seat Relative to Button
Playable
Hands
Early-position
(seats
1-3)
premium hands
Mid-Position
(seats 4-6)
premium and strong hands
Late-position
(seats 6-9)
premium, strong and drawing hands
What the position chart tells you is that the later your position, the more
kinds of hands are potentially playable. Drawing hands increase in value
with later positions, because more information (number of players, potential
pot size) is available. The chart does not mean you should always play
poker a drawing hand from a late position. It means that if other
decision factors are favorable-factors that are only known from having a late
position-a drawing hand is playable.
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