Poker face

I have started to watch poker on TV more nowadays and beginning to understand the game. This is my two cents on it. Poker is very popular here in the US and it is considered as a game (not gambling). It is scientific and you have your tactics/strategy and you play with chips (not money), unless of course, you go to the casinos and play for money.

There are different types of games in Poker and the one I love the most is “ No limit Texas hold’m “. I don’t know much history about the name, but it has started in Texas I suppose. Let me just give a brief overview of the game. A table can have a maximum of 9 players and you have a dealer who deals the cards. Two cards are dealt to each player and there are 5 common cards on the table. The best 5 cards out of the seven win the hand. There are 4 stages of betting.
Two cards are dealt to all the players and you can start betting from here. If you cant match the bet, then you fold.
· Next three cards are dealt on the table and is called the flop. There is another round of betting here.
· One more card is dealt and is called the turn. There is another round of betting.
· Last card is called the ‘river’. There is the last round of betting.

The person who has the best hand after the rounds of betting wins. It might happen that a person bets at the flop and the rest folds. At any point in the game, you can bet all your chips and is called ‘all in’. This is the real thrill of the game. At this moment, it is your tournament on the line. You need a lot of acumen, courage and poker experience to call it correctly. Some of the other words constantly used are ‘check’, ‘raise’, ‘fold’,’flush’, ‘three of a kind’, ‘two pair’ and so on.

People say that you need a ‘poker face’ to play poker. I don’t completely agree with that though. You need to control ur emotions and don’t give anything up when u get a nice hand or a crap hand. But, there are players who keep smiling and act in different ways. There are crazy varieties of poker players than you can imagine. Each person has his unique mannerisms, a guy called ‘Sammy Farha’ has a cigarette in his mouth always although he does not smoke, there is an other guy who always plays with this jacket on, there are tons of guys who have their sun glasses on (most common), most of them playing with the chips in their hand, some guys who keep talking and trying to stir things up. There are some nice nick names as well, ‘Assasin’, ‘Professor’, ‘Joker’,’mathemetician’ and so on. One of the players I like is Howard Lederer (professor). He has a long face, always serious and people are afraid of his stare. When he bets on a hand, people are scared to call or re-raise. This does not mean he wins every tournament, but his style of play is amazing. He has been a US poker champion before. There is a guy called Johnny Chan who has acted in movies.

It is really a very open playing field and anybody can win a tournament, although there are some favorites (similar to a tennis tournament). 2004 US champion was the CEO of a company. 2003 US champion was ‘chris moneymaker’ who was an amateur came through by playing on the internet. The prize money is really good and a normal tournament has a 1$ mill for the top place.

I became really interested and thought of learning the game more. What better way to learn a game than to actually play it. This game is really accessible and you can play for free. I registered with partypokers.net and downloaded their software and started to play over the last couple of weeks. It has been a roller coaster ride so far and I can see that there are thousands (if not more) who play the game as well as I do. I would have spent about 5 to 6 hours in total and it has been good fun. Highlight so far is that I won more than 10000 chips in one hand when I got an ‘ace high flush’. Losses are ok, but when a loss hits you the most is when you have a good set of cards and then you lose. It has happened to me a few times that I have a ‘two pair’, but lost the hand to a ‘three of a kind’ or a ‘straight’. Once I lost with a straight, can you believe that. I also noticed that most of the players who play online are pretty good (or am I so bad J).

Key takeaways are
It is not easy at all
You need tons of patience
Dont play too many hands, play only when you are sure of something
Bluffing does work in some cases, but overall it is not productive.
Understand the betting pattern and you can get a fair idea of what cards the other person has. I am beginning to learn this and it is working now to my advantage.

It has been a really nice 5-6 hours and some more hours of TV time to learn a new game and get a new perspective on life. It keeps your mind on razor’s edge, helps you take up more challenges, helps you to take some tough decisions and you can always fight back (don’t give up hope). Hoping that some of this rubs off on my work or personal life as well.

Note : Did you guys know that there is a world darts championship that happened in England last month.