CHRISTMAS PRESENTS I’d like to wish every one of you a Merry Christmas and I’ve set out below some of the year’s best questions in order to gift you with what I hope are useful answers.
Q: What is a “hostile flop”? A: Let’s say you are holding Ace-King as hole cards and the flop comes Six-Seven-Eight. That flop is screaming out a warning that someone at your table is probably able to draw to a straight at the turn or the river. However, with your Ace-King the community cards aren’t saying anything you want to hear. It’s a “hostile flop” from your point of view. Time to fold.
Q: Is there any truth in the rumour that the way a player stacks chips in front of him or her betrays what type of player they are? A: It’s an old chestnut among professionals that a beginner who stacks his or her chips in an ordered and conservative manner is a tight player and that someone with a sloppy stack is a loose player. Our personal experience of years of social play is that it appears to be true in a majority of cases. Certainly it’s something to watch for when you sit down with someone you don’t know for the first time.
Q: This is my first week observing online poker from the sidelines. I think I’ve understood the basics of Texas Hold’em. I’m ready to play. What’s your best tip? A: Wait for the best position to start. If you can sit to the immediate right of the dealer button at the outset of a game this will enable you to see the first hand for free, because you will be the last player to act apart from the dealer. All betting rotates from the dealer’s left in a clockwise rotation.
Q: What does the term capped mean? A: Capped describes a game where there is a maximum number of permitted raises. Clearly this is a term which applies to pot-limit or fixed-limit games. The game is described as capped when the maximum number of raises has been reached.
Q: What does drawing dead mean? A: The term applies to a situation where there are community cards still to come but none of them will assist your hand. Where this is the case, the player is said to be drawing dead.
