Chinese poker is a card game that has been played in the Asian community for many years. It has begun to gain popularity in the broader world of game players because it has all the features of a good gambling game:
It is easy to learn.
Anyone who knows the rank of Poker hands can begin playing after a few minutes of instruction.
There is a large element of luck, so that a beginner has a real chance of winning, even against experienced opponents. Also, it is plausible for poor players to attribute bad results to their cards rather than their plays.
There is still enough skill in the game that experts have a significant advantage when playing poor players.
Although it is basically a four player game, it plays well with 2, 3, 5, or even more players. It is fun to play. Unexpected results and interesting hands are common.
Playing a Hand
In Chinese Poker, each player receives a 13 card hand from a standard 52 card deck. He then has to divide his cards into three Poker hands, two containing five cards each and one three card hand. The only restriction is that both five card hands must outrank the three card hand (Note: straights and flushes do not count in the three card hand). The higher ranking of the five card hands, called the Back hand, is placed face down on the table in front of the player. Then the other five card hand, called the Middle hand, is placed face down in front of the Back hand. Finally, the three card hand, called the Front hand, is placed (again face down) in front of the middle hand. When all four players have set their hands, the cards are turned face up and the deal is scored.
Scoring
Many variations of scoring are in common use. Refer to the external links for more information.
I’m going to go through this part of our Poker School in basically the opposite way I did the section on playing limit games. Rather than build the Starting Hands Basic Strategy Matrix bit by bit and discussing it as we go along, here I’m going to show you the entire matrix and over a series of lessons discuss why (and more importantly), how I use it. Unlike Limit Hold ‘em, which allows you to make a lot of small errors and still survive financially, No-Limit Hold ‘em (NLHE) isn’t nearly so forgiving. It’s not like you can lose everything you own when playing NLHE, but you can – and will, at times – lose every chip you have on the table. That’s bad, of course, but remember that the same goes for your opponents and they know it. If they don’t, they’ll soon find out, especially if they play against you when you’re using this starting hands strategy.
Before we get into the matrix itself, let me give you some thoughts on playing NLHE in general. What I’m going to show you here comes from my experience at playing on-line, something I began (insofar as NLHE is concerned) in January, 2004. Oh, I had played some no-limit tournaments from time-to-time, but I typically got my butt beat, mainly because I was trying to adapt my Limit Hold ‘em play to the no-limit version. As I noted above, they are two different animals. I was happy with my earnings from the limit games (over 2.5 big bets per hour), but I was playing mainly $2-$4 games, so my earnings weren’t all that much. I suppose I could have stuck with Limit games and moved up to the $10-$20 level and (if I may flatter myself), probably done okay there as well, eventually. But the big $$$ in Poker today is in No-Limit games – especially in tournaments – so that’s when I began to develop the Starting Hands Matrix you’ll see here.
The first thing you’ll notice is that the lowest hand you’ll play is J-Qs, and even then, it’s only when you’re in late position. Believe it or not, that’s not playing “tight” – it’s playing smart because the vast majority of the time, you’ll enter the game with a raise. You’ll see a few times where calling is the correct play, but that’s usually when you’re in the blinds. It really is true: aggressive play pays dividends in NLHE and it took me quite a while to learn that. Does this mean I never “limp” when I’m in early, middle or late position? Well, no, but it’s rare and it usually happens when there’s a “maniac” at the table. But we’ll discuss that in later lessons.
I first began my NLHE play like I did for Limit; at the play-money tables and I urge you to do the same. But, you’ll quickly see that most of those games are a circus, so get yourself a bunch of play-money chips as you become familiar with the Matrix, but don’t think what’s happening is anything close to “real” games. Games played for $$$ are a lot tighter, which will suit the strategy presented here just fine. My suggestion is to begin your real-money play by entering Sit & Go (SnG) tournaments. These are one-table tournaments where each player is given a certain number of tournament chips in return for your entry fee. The poker room takes a portion of those fees (usually 10%) and the balance makes up the prize pool, which is typically paid to the top three finishers; First Place getting 45-50%, Second Place getting roughly half that and Third Place getting back the entry fee and a small profit. SnGs begin when the required number of players sit down (usually 9 or 10) and the blinds increase relatively rapidly – anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes per level – so an SnG will often be over in an hour or an hour and a half. I’ll have a lot more to say about SnGs in future lessons, but remember two things about them: You may watch SnGs at any level of play for free and all you can lose in an SnG is your entry fee. Yet, you’ll be playing honest-to-goodness, genuine No Limit Texas Hold ‘Em against players who want to eat your lunch and that’s a good thing. If you start like I did, you’ll lose most of the time, but it won’t be long before you’re starting to get “ITM” (In The Money), which will defray your expenses.
I have kept precise records of my NLHE play on an MS Excel worksheet and I see that the first month where I played more no-limit SnGs than limit SnGs was April, 2004. I was ITM in 15 of 36 no-limit SnGs, but ITM 20 of 29 limit SnGs that month. The limit games were paying for my no-limit experiences and that’s what I wanted to do. I never expected to show a profit at the beginning of my no-limit play, but it sure was nice to have a way to at least pay for them. Limit Hold ‘em can be played a lot like Blackjack; you have “X” as a hand in “Y” position (EP, MP, etc.) and that has an expected value which is fairly easy to calculate, so it should be played in a certain, almost non-changing way. That “rote” style of play will work to a degree in no-limit games, but only at the lowest levels of play, like inexpensive SnGs and micro-limit tables.
The real fun part (to me) of playing no-limit SnGs is moving up in “class”, so to speak. You start at $5 +$.50 SnGs ($5 goes into the prize pool and $.50 goes to the poker room), then work your way up to $50 + $5 or higher SnGs. Along the way, you finish OTM (Out of The Money) most of the time and must drop back down to get some cash, but you suddenly find that you’re a lot better player in that lower level than you were before. Consequently, it doesn’t take too long to refresh the old bankroll and up the ladder you go again. In May, 2004 for example, I played $10+$1 SnGs for the first time – 14 in all (my other SnG play was limit games) – and I got ITM just 4 of the 14 (28.57%). Well, since 30-33% of the players are ITM in 10- or 9-player SnGs through luck alone, I was running just below that level – average, at best. (Small sample size, of course.)
Anyway, I pretty much stayed with $10+$1 SnGs in June, but I ended the month ITM in 16 of 34, which is a 47.05% ratio. Along the way, I had basically given up on limit SnGs altogether because my no-limit play was now paying for itself. The next month, July, saw me playing mostly $10+$1 SnGs, with some trips up the ladder to $20+$2 matches. My ITM percentage dropped to 10 of 28 (35.70%), but I actually made a profit from my play. Only a few bucks, but that’s still fine with me because I knew (and still know) that I can make a profit from SnGs, if that was what I wanted to do. I can spend the day playing $10+$1 SnGs, get about 5 or 6 of them in and end the day with a profit. Certainly not enough $$$ to live on, but when you consider that my bankroll is never more than $500, forty or fifty bucks a day is a darn good return. I don’t want to encourage anyone who can’t afford the risk, but after an initial loss of less than $200, I’m at the point where I can be fairly certain that I’ll make a profit each month if I stick to SnGs in the $20+$2 or lower range. That’s not what I do, because I’m constantly challenging myself by playing at higher and higher limits, plus I enter a lot of multi-table tournaments (MTTs), which is where the BIG $$$ are. But that’s another topic for another time.
The Fundamental Theorem of Poker applies to all heads-up decisions, but it does not apply to all multi-way decisions. This is because each opponent of a player can make an incorrect decision, but the “collective decision” of all the opponents works against the player.
This type of situation occurs mostly in games with multi-way pots, when a player has a strong hand, but several opponents are chasing with draws or other weaker hands. Sometimes such a situation is referred to as implicit collusion. Experts disagree on the prevalence of implicit collusion in particular games, as well as the extent to which implicit collusion might be unethical.
The Fundamental Theorem of Poker is simply expressed and appears axiomatic, yet its proper application to the countless varieties of circumstances that a poker player may face requires a great deal of knowledge, skill, and experience.
Kuhn poker is a simplified form of poker developed by Dr. Harold W. Kuhn, it is a zero sum two player game. The deck includes only three playing cards, for example a King, Queen, and Jack. One card is dealt to each player, then the first player must bet or pass then the second player may bet or pass. If any player chooses to bet the opposing player must bet as well (“call”) in order to stay in the round. After both players pass or bet the player with the highest card wins the pot. Kuhn demonstrated that there are many game theoretic optimal strategies for this game.
References
H. W. Kuhn, Simplified Two-Person Poker; in H. W. Kuhn and A. W. Tucker (editors), Contributions to the Theory of Games, volume 1, pages 97-103, Princeton University Press, 1950.
If you have never played Hold ‘em poker before, you first need to understand just how it proceeds. Fortunately, it’s one of those games, like Blackjack or backgammon, that’s easy to learn. Unfortunately, it takes a fair amount of time and effort to become really good at Hold ‘em, but don’t worry because it’s not nuclear physics and if you do as I say, I’ll turn you into a winning player. After all, that’s why you’re here, right? And, I should mention (as a little motivator) that the rewards can be considerable. Setting aside all those fabulous multimillion dollar tournaments for the moment, it’s not unreasonable for a very good player to generate a profit of 1 to 2 “big bets” per hour off a minimum total bankroll of 400 big bets, all on a reasonably consistent basis. To use an example, most limit poker games are described by their small bet/big bet size, like a $10/$20 limit Hold ‘em game. What this means is that the minimum bet is $10 in the early part of the game and it goes up to $20 in the later part. Of course, raises are permitted (also with a limit; usually 3 or 4), so you might find yourself betting as much $200 or more on a single hand, which is why you need a bankroll of at least $8000 to play a game like that. But, if you’re good, that $8000 bankroll might very well generate an income of $600 per week, or $30,000 per year, if you play 20 or so hours a week.
I’ll cover bankroll requirements, standard deviation and all that math stuff in later lessons, but let me clarify something about “minimum total bankroll” before we get too far. What I mean by that term is the amount of $$$ you should have set aside as risk capital for this adventure, just like I recommend for playing Blackjack. The reality is that most of you probably won’t set up a separate account for your poker play because you have an alternate form of income (a job) that allows you to “refresh” your bankroll, should it become depleted. If that’s the case, what you need is at least 100 top bets ($1000 for a 5/10 game, for example) on deposit in your casino account and available to you at all times, especially if you’re playing on a regular basis. If you’re nervous about leaving your $$$ at the casino and prefer to deposit before you play, then 50 top bets should (but won’t always) suffice for a 3-4 hour playing session.
These “return on investment” numbers may impress you, but if they also scare you, don’t worry because there are plenty of games where you can play for much less. Naturally, you’ll earn a lot less, but you’ll be learning at the same time, so it’ll be a decent investment. There are plenty of limit Hold ‘em games in the $.25/$.50 format that’ll need a bankroll of only $200. Probably the most popular on-line limit Hold ‘em game is the $1/$2 version, which requires a minimum total bankroll of only $800 and a “session” bankroll of just $200 or so. The beauty of Internet poker is that the casinos have very little overhead, so a low-limit game can be offered at the same cost as a $100/$200 game. And, as you’ll see when you get more into this, the casinos are making a fortune by offering these games. On a recent Saturday night, one poker room had almost 1000 tables in action, so at a rate of, say, 60 hands per hour, and an average rake (percentage of the pot) of only $1 per round of play, they were taking in (literally “raking” in) $1 x 1000 x 60 = $60,000 an hour! And believe me, that’s a conservative figure. Of course, Saturday night is also a peak time for them and I’m sure they don’t do nearly as well on a Tuesday morning, but you get the idea: there’s a lot of $$$ to be made at poker on both sides of the fence, so why not get your share of it?
By the way, the method by which the Internet poker rooms earn their profit makes them a totally disinterested party to how well you do, because any $$$ you make doesn’t come from them, but from the other players. As such, you just don’t hear all the whining, “this game is rigged”, etc. ad nauseum, that you hear about Blackjack and other games at Internet casinos. The on-line poker rooms have a vested interest in seeing to it that you play in an honest game and, while I have no doubt that there are players out there who can and will cheat if possible, the poker rooms claim to have a handle on it, particularly collusion between players, like one being at the same table with a cohort while talking to each other on the phone. In any event, this isn’t likely to happen at a $1/$2 game, but it has to be a concern as you move up in your level of play and protecting yourself is something that I’ll cover as we move on.
Also known as “Newmyer’s Seven Nuts”, named for its inventor Chris Newmyer, East Village is a modification / bastardization of Omaha high-low split. Each player is dealt seven hole cards. The player then discards two of these cards, never to be seen again. Then, with 5 hole cards left in his hand, each player “donates” one of his cards. All the players “donation” cards are kept face down, and the dealer “shuffles” these cards with a scramble. These cards will then make up the three card flop, the one card turn, and the one card river. All betting takes place as in omaha, and the game is played high-low split with the 8-or-better qualifier. Each player plays the best five-card hand he can make from exactly two of his hole cards plus three of the five community cards. This game is best played with seven players (it cannot be played with more). If it is played with two, three, or four players, extra cards must be pulled from the stub to be added to the community cards, so that there are always at least five community cards. Note that there are no “burn cards” used in this game.
A big area of growth in the online casino business is, without a doubt, poker rooms. When I say “poker”, I mean the type of poker played at a table with others, not video poker, although as you’ll see they both have a lot in common, not the least of which is the fact that a player can gain an advantage if the conditions are right and you know what you’re doing. Perhaps you’ve played some poker at home with friends or have given it a go at a brick-and-mortar casino or even on-line. I have done all of them, although not extensively, especially when it comes to playing in the poker rooms at the casinos near me. The big drawback for me has been that “live” games are slow, there are a bunch of rules that I’m unfamiliar with (stuff like “no ‘string’ bets”, “don’t splash your chips”, etc.) and I’m not one for looking my opponent in the eye whilst I try to take their $$$. Of course, I sort of do that when playing Blackjack, but I really don’t consider the dealer my “opponent.” He or she is just an employee of the casino, which is my real opponent and, truth be told, most Blackjack dealers are rooting for me to win because then I might tip them.
But my big problem with table poker has always been the fact that it’s so damned slow. A table poker game may proceed at a rate of 35 to 40 hands per hour, versus a Blackjack game that will go maybe 60 hands per hour at a minimum and 200+ hands per hour when I’m alone at the table. I can usually play Video Poker at 500 or more hands per hour, so any game in the 40 hands per hour category does nothing for me in terms of satisfying my urge for “action”. With me, it’s simple: if I have an edge, I want to play as quickly as possible, so long as the speed doesn’t affect the accuracy of my playing decisions. Another consideration has also been the basic fact that it takes a fair amount of skill to make $40-$50 per hour at table poker but that’s fairly easy to do at Blackjack, if you have a big enough bankroll.
On the flip side, the nice thing about table poker is that you don’t have to hide your skill from the casino, because they earn their profits from a “rake” of the bets at a table, so they really don’t care who wins. In fact, skillful poker players are hailed as some sort of folk hero, judging by all the publicity that tournament winners receive at events like The World Series of Poker that’s held every year in Las Vegas. It should be the same for skillful Blackjack players and, to a degree, that’s the case when it comes to tournaments, but I’ve always felt that the casinos are a little leery about hosting such events because of the fear that hoards of card counters will descend upon them, when in fact, card counting is of limited value in a tournament. However, I will say that a good portion – probably a majority – of those who enter the “high stakes” Blackjack tournaments are counters and what else are they going to do in between tournament rounds?
Okay, let’s drop the philosophical stuff and get back to the topic of making $$$ at table poker. I don’t know if you’ve experienced an on-line poker casino, but it was a revelation for me when I downloaded the software of a couple of them. What I found was poker in an automated format. It’s literally click and play with all types of nifty features that would be impossible to incorporate at a brick-and-mortar version: no sweating over the “etiquette” of the game because you can’t break a rule if you tried; the total of the pot is displayed and updated bet-by-bet (helpful when figuring the odds of a play, which I’ll get into later) and you are basically anonymous, beyond displaying your “handle” and, most of all, the game proceeds very quickly, at least twice as fast as most games in a brick-and-mortar casino. I’m constantly fascinated by the technology that is developed for the Internet and on-line poker is no different.
Think of the possibilities. Not sure if a Flush beats a Straight? No, problem, just tape one of those “cheat sheets” to your monitor and you’re set. In fact, you can have all types of helpful information right next to you as you play, which is something neither of us is likely to do at a “real” table. Well, that got me thinking maybe the world needed a “GameMaster’s Poker School” that was designed to teach people how to play a winning game of poker – Hold ‘em poker, in particular – just as I have tried to do with Blackjack. Also, because of the very nature of the on-line games, poker played on the ‘Net is less of a “people” game and more of a “mathematical” game, although I won’t rule out the human element entirely. That said, it’s still a game of probability, expected value and return on investment, just like Blackjack and Video Poker and, like those other games, it’s relatively easy to calculate what can happen when there’s only 52 cards in a deck.
Because all of the on-line poker rooms that I’ve visited up to this point allow you to try out their software in a play-money mode, the opportunities to practice your game against real, live opponents are plentiful and instructive. By their very nature, the play-money games aren’t necessarily a reflection of how things will go for you in a real-money game (the play-money games can best be described as “loose”, in the sense that raises come quick and often and you cannot bluff very effectively), but they do have considerable value. First of all, if you can’t win at a play-money game, you simply aren’t ready for the real-money version. Plus, playing for “fun” gets you familiar with how the software works and it’ll give you the opportunity to not only test out my ideas, but to get organized so that you have the information I’ll give you set up in a way that it’s quickly and easily available.
I should mention that although I’ll be focusing primarily on Hold ‘em poker as it’s played on-line, much of what I’ll show you will apply to “live” poker games as well. In time, if you do as I say, you’ll memorize most of the information you need to win and that should enable you to do well at your local, friendly brick-and-mortar casino, not to mention a poker night with “da boyz and/or gurlz.” And yes, poker has been – for quite some time – a male-dominated activity but the Internet changes all that. Don’t want people to know your gender? Fine, pick an ambiguous handle (“golfnut”, “9 iron” and “wingnut” are some players I met recently) and the world won’t know (or care) whether you’re a man or woman, or something in between; all that matters is how you play. Of course, if you’re “Sexylady”, “Hooters” or “Psychoboy”, people are going to make some guess as to your gender, although they may be totally wrong and I don’t know if that’s a good thing or a bad thing. In my case, I use “Aceten” as a handle and I really don’t care what people think I am; I’m there for the $$$, period.
Okay let’s get started. Just like my Blackjack School, this will unfold as a series of lessons that present various concepts, show you how to learn them and, as always, will include some “homework” that’ll reinforce what I’m teaching. Just how many lessons this will turn out to be remains to be seen, but my guess is that it will be much bigger than the Blackjack School, which currently stands at 24 lessons. But for starters, here’s what I intend to cover:
The Basics of Hold ‘em Poker
Limit Hold ‘em
Pot Limit Hold ‘em
No Limit Hold ‘em
The Mathematics of Poker
Money Management
Playing Strategies
Poker Tournaments
I’ll begin with limit Hold ‘em because that game is, in my opinion, the most popular and is the easiest to learn, plus it’ll form a good base of reference for the other types.
