October 28, 2005
There is now enough in the pot that I can bet $100 on the flop. I have two red queens and the flop comes K x x of Diamonds. I'm trying to deny 'the steamer' pot odds if he picked up a draw. I put him on something like middle pair. If he has A K, I think I still have outs with the second nut flush draw. I know I'm in trouble when the guy reraises me, going all-in for an extra $50. I figure I'm beat, but the raise is too small an amount to fold for.
Pokerparty is a game of mistakes. The player who makes the least misjudgments, misreads and downright DUMB plays is most likely to go home with the cash. I'm going to give you an exercise that is quite advanced for a change. Every once in a while you should be given a chance to go to another level of play. If you are like most players (myself included), you won't be able to complete this exercise for long. At best you'll only be able to manage a few minutes of the exercise before failing.
Lefties in Poker
In the game we designed, there was no make up of blinds. If you ha to leave the Pokerparty table for a while, you got a hand when you return at no charge. No one has ever abused this policy and it keeps everything friendly. Also, anyone sitting down at the table gets a hand. There is no posting. At only $1 and $2 the blinds are insignificant in comparison to the potential pot size so there is no need to keep hassling players for extra money.
The World Series will be almost half over when I write to you again. That will be a good place to take a breath and see how far we've come. Good luck and I hope to see you at the Final Table. But if you can't get to the Series this year, Poker Pages will be running my daily reports for the greatest poker tournament of the year, The World Series of Poker.
You should know, going into tournament play, that the game may be the same but the strategy is so dissimilar that playing Pokerparty tournaments may affect your live play. Live poker is all about patience. Tournament poker is creative impatience. Live, you have to wait for quality starting hands. In tournaments, that exact same strategy will get you an early exit.
Baseball Players
You won't see a top player draw for a flush that will only be filled one out of three times unless the pot is offering more than that in return - though weak players make this kind of mistake all the time. But the key skill that world-class poker players all possess is this: They know how to play their opponents. At the lowest stakes games, cards rule. In the middle levels, money counts.
Many, maybe even the majority of players, take untoward risks and play longshot Pokerparty hands because they want to get out for the day. In their heart of hearts these players realize poker is a game with an extremely long horizon, yet many seemingly lack the resolve and the will power to play that way. But they may not realize that in addition to hindering themselves, their actions make it much easier for their opponents to keep beating them.
After all, most of us are going to lose most of the time we're dealt hands like 9-7, and there's not much we can do about it except muck those puppies at the first opportunity. What's more, if we lose while playing a big pair or big connectors, there's nothing we can do about that either, unless we're playing incorrectly. But for the sake of this discussion we'll assume we're playing these Pokerparty hands perfectly and still losing. What then?
