Some Questions to Consider Before Getting Started

Before I really begin going down the path of introducing my thoughts on poker, I wanted to briefly go through what I feel are some fundamental questions to consider. The answers to these questions will define your outlook on the game.

"Who Are You?... Who, who... who, who?"

So the heading did Roger Daltry no justice, but still his poignant question stands... "Who are you?"

Your background and makeup as a person will tend to flow naturally into your style as a poker player. If you are a quiet, calculating person in everyday life, your natural tendency when sitting at the poker table will be to default to a style that's in line with your personality. On the contrary, if you're a fun-loving, free-wheeling, outgoing type, you will be that type of player. In the end, it's very hard to reverse who your natural tendencies as a human being. In fact, what makes the best poker players good is they are capable of transforming their play at will to keep their opponents off their trail.

You can also expect that your opponents will also have a difficult time betraying their natural tendencies as well. One of the finest examples I can give is the Old Lady. While it may sound like an over-exaggeration, every older woman I have ever played with will only put money in play when they hold the strongest hands. Hence, most times you have much to lose when going up against them, but not much to gain. It's advisable to avoid Old Ladies like the plague!

So, for a moment, if you're just starting into the world of poker or if your a veteran player, I urge you to think a little bit about who you are. These are not questions to be answered just based on poker. Think about how you are in your everyday life and come up with your answer.

Are you patient? Are you impulsive?
Are you quiet and introspective? Are you jovial and outgoing?
Are you reserved with your image? Are you flashy and extravagant?
Do you budget your money and know where every penny goes? Do you spend your paycheck and not know where it went?
Can you take a loss with restraint? Does a big loss send you over the edge (pissed off, throw things, etc.)?
When you lose, do you quickly forget about it? Do you steam on it for hours?
Do you treat opponents with respect and dignity (after you beat them down, you lend them a hand to get back up)? Are you absolutely ruthless... when you're done stabbing them in the back, you twist the knife around?

You will probably find yourself falling somewhere in the middle of the "bookends" presented by these questions. Think about which side you favor more. If you were to think of it as a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 would be the first of each question and 10 would be the second, where do you score? Total up your numbers. If your score is less than 20, I would say you have a good makeup to be an excellent poker player. If you are over 40, you can still be a winning poker player but I think you will have a more difficult time holding yourself back and keeping from flying off the rails.

Why Play Poker?

I don't mean to go all philosophical on you, but it definitely is a question that needs to be asked. We all have things in our lives that demand our time and attention. Relationships, kids, work, school, that list of things your wife wants you to do around the house, ... or whatever else is important to you. If you take up poker, its going to pull time from those other things in your life and, if those other things are indeed important to you, there has to be some reason why you want to devote time to playing poker and not to those other things. After all, our time is finite; your poker time has to come at the expense of something else, right?

So, look over the list below. Give yourself 20 points. Assign points to the items on the list which represent your reasons for playing poker. Give more points to items which you agree with more than others. Use all 20 points.

- I play to meet new people.
- I play to pass the time.
- I play because the casino gives me free drinks.
- I play to win money.
- I play because my friends play and I like hanging out with them.
- I play to enjoy myself and have a good time.
- I play to understand the game deeper and improve.
- I play to beat my opponents.
- I play to get away from life and relax.
- I play to [insert your own reason here].

Where did you place your points? I'm going to tell you straight out that if a significant amount of your points are not in "I play to win money", you're going to have issues becoming a good poker player. I'm not the only one who says this...

"When we play, we must realize, before anything else, that we are out to make money."
- David Sklansky

This shouldn't be the only reason why you play by any means, but it should be the biggest. After all, there's other things you could be doing that won't have a risk at your bottom line. Go play a video game if you need to unwind. Play a sport if you need competition that bad. But, if you want to take a buck and make it more, this might be a good place for you.

In the end...

All the strategy and mathematical knowledge in the world will not help you if you can't help yourself from getting distracted by a horrendous loss or if you're sitting at the table sucking down free drinks and throwing away money. If you're like that, hey, go play roulette or craps. At least it will separate you from your money faster and you can go on abouts your life! You have to be able to look at yourself and know precisely what you are and what you want to be as a poker player. If you can't do that, you just might be the sucker that the rest of the table is waiting to prey on...

The Start of Something New

To think of all the positive things one could do with time in life, I have decided to join the ranks of those incessantly plugging away at a keyboard throughout the Internet blogging on poker. It's just that most of those guys don't talk to the non-poker player or someone who wants to get started in the game. In fact, most of the material on the game is in pretty bad shape or in books you need to visit bookstores to acquire. The aim of this blog is to put together a series of instructional material on the game of poker... introducing the beginner to the game and putting you in a position to think the game, choose the right places to plop your money down, and in the end, make a little coin.

Where "It" Started and Why I Can Help You
I was a junior in college when I put my hands on the book Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. I was immediately enthralled with the subject matter: the ability of a few select students at MIT to design a blackjack system so strong as to literally rip money from the casinos coffers at will. As a computer science major with a keen interest in probability and statistics, the concept that blackjack could be broken and instant money be made was mindblowing to me. I had previously read books on blackjack strategy and card counting, liked Edward Thorp's Beat the Dealer, and I had tried my hand at playing blackjack using the basic strategy. But, the concepts laid out in Bringing Down the House I would say were the principle reason why I became interested in gambling and gaming.

When my four-man senior design team was tasked with coming up with a software development idea to design and implement, we threw around several ideas. Websites? No, what fun is that. A game? Who cares anyway. I pitched the idea to the group of writing some software that would simulate millions of hands of blackjack using user-defined playing strategies and game rules, allowing users to statistically analyze the results and refine strategies. I had already designed a blackjack game for a previous class; much of that code could be reused for this project.

My team had a vote. We decided to work on the Blackjack Simulation System. In a real world sense, the project did nothing. We did not win the Nobel Prize on Degenerate Gambling. The bells, whistles, blood, and sweat that went into it won us an Honorable Mention in the senior design competition. But, the program itself limped over the finish line. While there were bugs (a plenty!), the results were enough to show you that you needed to be an absolute robot to gain an edge in blackjack. No mistakes. Make one in an hour and your whole advantage built by tediously counting cards and memorizing strategy was lost.

On a trip to Atlantic City where I completed playing blackjack, I went to watch a few friends play poker. It seemed like poker was small in 2002. I was playing blackjack at the Claridge, which had recently been bought out by Bally's. The two casinos were connected and the poker room was a small cave above the main floor at Bally's. You had to go upstairs away from the pits to get to it. For a Saturday night, there was not very many people there. I watched for an hour or so as my friends played. On the way home, we talked about the rudiments of the game (I had never played it before).

Before long, we started playing a weekly home game on Thursday nights. And that was the hook: I simply wanted to beat my friends on Thursday nights. On lunch breaks at work, I stopped by a local Borders and read the "good" books on poker that I could find in their racks:

• Hold 'Em Poker
• Hold 'Em Poker for Advanced Players
• The Psychology of Poker

I would say these books were enough, along with several others as I moved along, to make me quite a formidable player in my homegames. In 2003, the World Series of Poker (WSoP) Finals between Chris Moneymaker and Sam Farha aired on ESPN and it was like the world was set ablaze. Our home games drew more interest, we had poker tournaments springing up everywhere we went, and we drove to Atlantic City weekend after weekend. We attended poker tournaments at random peoples' homes. Games were found through the internet at dorms on campus. The Thursday Night Poker Club chugged along for almost two years of not missing a week.

In time, I began playing on the internet, studying statistical data generated from my play over thousands and thousands of hands. I tracked opponents play using a database and repeatedly stalked the weakest ones. I jumped into the world of no-limit poker. I found out what worked for me and why I should always put myself in a position to exploit my strengths. I peeled back the onion of the world of poker layer by layer... a process that still continues and will for the foreseeable future!

My foundation in poker is built in a strong mathematical background. I play because I can make decisions where, if given that decision with its associated odds of winning over and over again, I will be a winner over time. I don't play because I need a thrill, although you will certainly get more than your share when you play. I don't really even play for entertainment. I want to win. In the end, if you come to the game of poker with any other motivation than winning, in my opinion, there are better outlets for your time and money.

In this blog, my hope is to put together enough material to where an absolute beginner in poker can take my blog address and, after reading and practice, become a decent player at the game and also take pieces of my experiences to advance their knowledge of the game past their time invested in learning it. I, by no means, consider myself an authority of the game. I have no shiny bracelets or million dollar wins. But, I have logged my fair share of time and if there's one thing the 2003 WSoP Main Event results should tell you (and the 2006 results for that matter also), you don't have to be an expert to win!