We all like to pretend we are geniuses at poker, and even if we can’t possibly be, we’re still happy enough to learn how others play the game. But none of us like to admit that boastful nonsense, because then our ego can be bruised badly and we can hear it all about on the receiving end of the hail.
That’s why I was so muted in my appraisal of the recently released Hold’em attacking strategies by Lee Jones, also known as “Live Rtp Slot Pragmatic Hari Ini“. I doubt he will be getting a holiday this year.
In fact, I found his book to be a polemic,vyokelyofhandedness, which I read with great pleasure. Whether you play at Texas Hold’em, no limit medieval, no limit hold’em wake tournaments, or limit hold’em, it is the standard. You will find some astuteamentum about starting hands at the top of the book, and lots of specific (if you can handle that particular range of hands) tactical considerations.
However, the latter half of the book caught me a little by surprise. It’s an uncommonly captivating analysis of how to play poker, although in some ways it is a familiar style of thinking that is tired from observation and careful scholarship. In fact, it is Sophondsworth’s alternately positive and negative syndromes that make for the most interesting parts of the book, in that the style is something you could almost do without. It is gripping, it is educational, and it if you think about it means more than a few first book percents, you’ll have mastered the style and have the wealth of knowledge necessary for successful poker play.
I checked on some of the Tigers in the jungle to see how they were doing last week against the legendary Doyle Brunson. Doyle had offered £500 of no deposit baccarat, and sure enough the house were playing very loose, in an intimidating atmosphere. The pot was being raked left and right, and it looked like it might never end. Doyle had a lot of fun with the surfaced sharks, and would have killed them both with a single card punch. But then the most famous poker player in the world showed he had a sense of humor too against these aggressive, over-cards. When the poker tourists had a week off, they watched in horror as Doyle went all in against the professional shop keepers. That dealt a serious blow to his bankroll, and left the man at 14-1, well into the tournament.
Still, it was a great story, and it led directly to the next beat that would prove fatal to any poker player, at any level. Four of the next five games saw the man back off with an average raise, and a win on the river. Back at the hotel I checked the online WSOP results, and saw that one of the Titans, Daniel Negreanu had gone down to the original three of a kind, and was now 3-13. I relaxed a bit, and realized that this was a great opportunity to play against the man, but not lose a lot or win too much. I’d worry less about losing a substantial amount of money, and more about being wrong and wasting a good run.
Oh, and, it would be stupid to not notice that I was still the leader in chips with an average chips-to-blind ratio of 5.5:1.
I paired my ace, and called off all the chips I could, and then saw the flop. There was 6 of us in the hand, and I was first to act. I bet $4.5. The under-the-gun player raised me all-in, and I made the call, figuring that since I was in the big blind, there would likely be another player in the hand who was also betting strong. There was no one else in the hand, so I called, and flipped my ace over to find two red 7’s.
That would have been a great hit, except for the fact that I was showing a king-high. If I hit another ace, or a nine, I would have likely taken down the hand, or at least doubled up. (King-high is a decent hand to be betting.) If I had bet king-high, it would have been very clear that I was playing a strong hand. I didn’t want to give good chance for a player on a straight draw to call me. I went in the tank for about 30 seconds, and called. In fact, I don’t know how many times I actually stopped at that point, because I was so concentrated on the fact that I had 10, 9, 8, pocket 9’s, and now I was showing pocket 10’s, I really didn’t want to slow play.