Infamous bank robber Willie Sutton was quoted as saying he robbed banks because 'that's where the money is.' The same statement can be made about why professional poker players spend their days in casino poker rooms.
Those poker pros are slippery characters. They wear dark glasses to hide their eyes. They chew toothpicks to give themselves a Mafia gangster look. They would check-raise their grandmother or aunt. And they have little mercy on putting a player all-in regardless of the player's financial circumstances.
Johnny Moss became famous for one of his quotes. A friend warned him to take it easy, that if he continued gambling at the rate he was going he would have a heart attack. Moss said that would be impossible.
'I don't have a heart,' he said.
Professional poker players perfect many moves to steal pots. They are not content to just win the money with best hands. They relish stealing pots when they are holding nothing.
I have seen them at work and it is not a pleasant sight.
While some casinos limit the size of a player's buy-in into a cash game, many others do not. A poker player will sit down at a table with a massive stack of chips, clearly intending to intimidate the other players. Imagine sitting down at a table with your $100 buy-in and facing a player who has over $2,000 in chips in front of him. Makes you queasy, doesn't it?
Let's say you raise the pot with a legitimate raising hand -- pocket queens or A-K suited. The poker pro will anticipate what you may have raised with and after the flop, try to baffle you with how they play the hand. This might include checking after a flop that includes an ace or a pair and waiting for you to bet, and then raising you as though they had the nuts. While some players would call the raise, many others will fold.
Or they will slow-play a big pair like aces or kings. The flop comes Q-9-8 and you are holding K-Q and come out betting. They call and when you bet on fourth street, they raise. On fifth street they come out betting, you either call or fold the hand and they win the pot.
Sometimes a poker pro and his crony will catch a hapless player between them and whip-saw him. One of the players will have a nut hand, while the other is just helping him build the pot. If you are the player caught in between, it can get very costly. That is why casinos have ATM machines near the poker room.
In a high-low game, by a person's play they can pretty much put him on a hand. If he is going low and they have just one pair they will call him to the river, hoping to grab half the pot. Sometimes they lose but more often they succeed.
Poker pros play hands that give them a lot of outs. That is why they seem to make miraculous plays that give them half the pot or a scooper in a high-low game.
Above all, when you are playing against a poker pro, don't expect him to fold. They rarely do. That is why they are considered pros.
Doyle Brunson revealed how he played against poker pros. When a person kept hammering him with raises, he just hammered back, even if his hand wasn't that good. Occasionally he would get a favorable flop and win the pot. He said when that happened, the poker pro would give him more respect and back off from the constant raises.
I have used Brunson's strategy, by the way. It works.
Author: Geno Lawrenzi Jr.
(Geno Lawrenzi Jr. is an international journalist, magazine author and ghostwriter and poker player who lives in Phoenx, AZ. He has published 2,000 articles in 50 magazines and 125 newspapers. If you want to share a gambling story or book idea with him, send an email to glawrenzi@gmail.com ).
