BLOOD ON THE FELT I recently touched just briefly on immature players who over-bet a relatively small pot. It’s a point that needs to be well made because in observing many online games most evenings I can see it’s becoming extremely common. Obviously, everyone loves to steal a pot from time to time but you have to scope out the joint you’re going to take down and be sure you’ve done your homework. You can’t expect to just blast your way in with a ton of chips. Here’s a scenario I spotted a few nights ago. An inexperienced player heavily over-bet an unraised pot pre-flop and managed to intimidate the whole table into folding. The pot was stolen. Job done you might think. But, oh dear. With only one game in between to catch his breath, young upstart came again with the same kind of muscular bet for an unraised pot and pulled the same rabbit out of the hat to take down a second weedy pot. After half an hour, away we go again but this time Mr. “Lying-in-Wait” calls young upstart who instead of cutting and running decides to keep firing chips all the way down to his crucifixion at the river when three Kings gang up to kick the guts out of his pair of Jacks and bust his bankroll to zero. Big bets to steal small pots will almost always end in this kind of blood bath because the risk reward ratio of the play is infantile. Six pots of the size of the initial two steals wouldn’t have amounted to the loss inflicted by the experienced player simply lying in wait for the right hand to come along with which to slice, dice and neatly fillet the fish. Lesson learned one would hope.
LOOK FOR SHOW-OFFS There’s a lot of money about these days in certain quarters. Some folk like to waste it on cars, expensive dinners and others enjoy playing cards for large sums. The latter spawns a type of amateur player who really only enjoys himself when he has a big win he can talk about to his pals. He will generally be a loose, loud and flamboyant player, who will, by the very nature of his game, hit the occasional jackpot. The important issue is he will lose much more along the way than he’ll ever end up winning. This isn’t important to him because he wants the thrill of a big win. Buying the most expensive bottle of wine in a good restaurant isn’t the best way to quench your thirst but it’s an attention-getter and that’s the point here. Look out for this guy. Befriend him. Laugh at his jokes and enjoy his attitude. Most of the time he’s going to be a cash machine for a reasonable player.
POKER TIPS OF THE DAY For a change I thought I’d allow a guest pundit to offer his “quick tips” today. A very clever player down here in Marbella known as “Mike the Psyche” offers the following: Never ever use the auto-button and look out for players who do. Don’t give bad players opinions or lessons. It’s like lending enriched uranium to Iran. You never know how or when they might let you have it back.
