FUN TIP OF THE DAY Ok, you’ve just had a competitive evening of Texas Hold’em at your local poker club and it hasn’t gone well. You’re down a few hundred pounds and you need to get some of it back before you lose your cab fare home into the bargain. What you need is a couple of “sure things” to bet on now that everyone is in a gambling mood and you are perceived as the night’s loser. Take tenner bets that nobody at your table (or anyone in the club) can lick their own elbow (It’s actually physically impossible for 99.9% of the population, but as Michael Caine is fond of saying, “Not a lot of people know that!”) Right. With luck, that’s got you seventy or eighty quid back. There’s bound to be a percentage drop off with your next “fun bet” as your fellow players will have by now woken up to the fact that you’re not as dumb as they thought you were. Here’s your last gamble which you pitch as “much easier than the first. It’s not my fault I’m at a table of short-tongued people etc.”
FUN BET NUMBER TWO Now offer to take tenner bets that nobody can fold a piece of paper more than eight times. (Again this is actually physically impossible 99.9% of the time). These are good odds you are getting on facts that are little known. Good. Now you’re confidence is up, you’ve got a big chunk of your stack back and you’re ready to kick ass for a last few games of Hold’em. They’ll all be folding to you now (maybe even eight times). At last you’ve gained respect or a punch in the mouth. All depends on the kind of club you’ve joined.
HOW TO SIT AND GO! Getting seated for a Sit and Go online tournament is an important issue for a beginner and rather different to getting seated for a rolling cash game. Tournaments commence only when all seats have been taken and all the competitors have posted the stated buy-ins. Click an open tournament listing and you’ll be given the usual aerial view of the playing table with certain seats marked: Open! As seats for tournaments tend to fill up quickly you need to be fast with your mouse. When you click on an open seat you’ll be asked to okay the buy-in amount before you are taken to the table. Do everything as fast as you can as seats are often snatched from under you by players with swifter responses. The slower you are the more your choices for seat position are reduced and you are disadvantaged. Now that you are seated you just have to wait for the table to be full before the first hand can be dealt. Table stakes are already established and each player starts with exactly the same amount of chips. That’s how you Sit and Go! The great thing about tournaments is that you have already established your downside with the buy-in and you know in advance what you stand to win. It’s a fair deal.
