Some poker strategies to avoid and others to play....
DISCONNECTION POLICY The policy most of the big poker sites employ with regard to disconnection is quite simple. If you are disconnected during the middle of a poker hand you are counted as having gone “all-in”. All well and good because if you should ultimately be the winner of the hand you will collect the pot amount at the time of disconnection. Of course, if you think about it, this is an easy system to abuse. If you were a natural born cheat you might be tempted to use this rule in order to stay in a large juicy pot (that you didn’t want to pile anymore money into) by disconnecting yourself at the moment of your own choosing. The cheat may feel his or her cards are not premium enough to warrant more investment or that the stakes are simply overwhelming their will or financial ability to continue. The disconnection puts them all-in with the benefit they are still in with a chance of winning the pot up to the point of their illegal action and certainly they have saved themselves from further financial risk. Sounds pretty slick and plenty of players have done it. However, it has a severe backlash. The big sites have a policy now of “one disconnection per day” and they track the offender for future infractions which would inevitably lead to an account being frozen. So, corny as it may seem, honesty in poker is actually always the best “policy”.
NEWCOMER QUESTION Q: Could you please give me a simple run down of the best hole cards to hold? A: In rank order: Pair of Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks and 10’s! After that pairs become less valuable than say an Ace with a high companion card known as a “kicker”. This is because if you have Ace-King (known as the “big slick”) and the flop produces either an Ace or a King or both, you just jumped to the front of the pairs’ queue. Obviously an Ace with any reasonably high kicker card has value, the more so if same-suited, offering the potential for a high flush or even a straight if they only have a small sequence gap (example:Ace-10 of diamonds).
CHEW THIS OVER On a lighter note, apparently Armin Meiwes, the infamous 44 year old German computer technician who admitted in open court that he killed and ate a man he met on the internet, liked to play poker. A fact recently confirmed by guards at his prison. Obviously Armin was a very upfront sort of guy in that he advertised for his victim quite candidly on the web, asking for someone “available for slaughter and consumption”. So he certainly wore his heart (or someone’s) on his sleeve. One can only imagine the kind of “tells” he was giving off during social games. Perhaps the occasional thumb among his crisps and crackers? Imagine being rat-arsed with this guy in a “heads up” and have him inadvertently raise you a pair of ears?
