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he Guardian Poker Column |
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Victoria
Coren |
Friday Sep 1st, 2006
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How to play poker (How to play has been running from issue 16) |
In Las
Vegas, I took the chance to practise no-limit Texas hold 'em cash games.
Pot-limit (my favourite structure) has never been big over there; the most
popular American format used to be limit betting, and now it's no-limit.
Playing the preferred local format, different from your regular home choice, is
as much a part of travelling as using curious foreign money and eating quirky
local dishes. Or, at least, it is if you're crazy enough to spend your holidays
playing poker.
But no-limit cash games are gaining ground over here,
too. And they're all the rage on the internet. I wish they weren't; my own
tastes and skills chime better with the subtle, calculating spirit of pot-limit
poker than the fearsome, get-rich-quick rollercoaster of no- limit; but you
have to move with the times. A good player should have a decent understanding
of every poker variant (stud and draw as well as flop games; hi-lo and wild
card varieties; limit, pot-limit and no-limit betting structures). |
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For the moment, however, all the action
centres on no-limit hold 'em. Devotees of seven-card stud are wandering round
the world like lost souls, many of them turning to drink. Draw players are
slumped in front of daytime TV, wondering whether to take themselves along to
The Antiques Roadshow and ask for a price.
There are two broad
approaches to making money in no-limit cash hold 'em. You can sit like a sneaky
sponge, letting other players make the action, calling them down with your
superior hands, mopping up the money that these crazy kids want to throw in
with any cards at all. Or you can dominate the table, forcing the action
yourself, using the unlimited nature of the betting to bully people away from
pots and wipe out players with marginal hands. This is the strategy described
by the brilliant British player Tony Bloom, while he was playing the World
Series this year, as going in "to pummel and destroy". (In tournaments, it
works better than the first method.)
The best players can turn your
head upside-down by swapping sharply between these two lucrative strategies.
What you don't want is a vague middle ground. The danger with no-limit is that,
because the pot might transform from tiny to enormous at any moment, you often
feel "priced in" to call with almost anything. Losing players get dazzled by
"implied odds" and let opponents run the game. We can't all pummel and destroy,
but maintaining control (of yourself, the action and the pot size) is the most
important no-limit skill.
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