CAR-D-NAGE! As exclusively revealed in the Daily Star a while ago, Paris Hilton lost her Bentley GT in a Las Vegas poker game. I’ve been trying to find out who won the car and have so far drawn a blank. The perfect outcome would have pitched her into a heads up with David Jason pitting her £120,000 Bentley V12 coupe against the famous Trotter Reliant Robin. However, television sources inform us the famous three wheeled Reliant was written off several years ago in a motorway collision with an overweight moth. There is a serious lesson in all this. If you begin to use your gambling activities as a way of showing off there will be painful consequences as Wayne Rooney has also demonstrated recently. There’s a difference between cool, clear-headed aggression and showing off. The “difference” in question is usually between winning and losing.
TAKING A TRIP New players are often asking in the chat rooms about how to play mid-pairs like sevens-eights or nines. The classic mantra is “fit or fold”. In other words if you don’t “hit the trip” with the flop the only thing you should be pairing is your losses. You are very unlikely to win a full ring game with a middling pair but you may get the “feel” you can win occasionally in a short-handed game where the odds of a big opposing hand are considerably reduced. Basically with a mid-pair you’re looking for a cheap flop with lots of players piling into the pot with small bets to create a nice potential reward if you hit the trips. The final and most important thing to keep in mind with this kind of starting hand is to muck your cards right off the bat if there’s a lot of big value pre-flop raising and re-raising. Obviously, playing mid-pairs from late position will give you a huge tactical advantage and allow you to employ all the above advice to perfection.
POKER TIP OF THE DAY When you first start playing poker, it is understandable that you get excited if you land premium hole cards like a high pair. The problem is you can be seduced by what’s happening to you and miss important developments that are taking place during the deal. Try to get the habit of looking at your own hole cards at the very last minute before you have to act. Watch what’s happening to everyone else ahead of you before looking down at your own cards. That way you’ll have all the available intel from the table and be better informed to judge the real value of the hole cards you’ve been given. If there’s already a hefty pre-flop raise going in ahead of your turn to act it may well take the shine off the pair of jacks under your hand.
