When The Action Stops

331
February 3rd, 2018
Back When The Action Stops

I have a good friend who ran a poker game in San Juan, Puerto Rico for years. It was a home game that attracted some of the wealthy residents of San Juan and it was very popular.

Joe cut the pot which gave him a nice profit over a year's time. He also noted that there were some nights -- make that many nights -- when there were no winners except the House.

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'Amazing,' he told me. 'I had all the money and all the players had was the excitement of the game and the action.'

Excuse me for saying this, but that is what seems to be happening in poker games around America and across the world.

Americans, especially those who gamble, seem caught up in a frenzy for action. They have lost the ability to relax. Action is something that is hard if not impossible to resist. Even I have fallen victim to it.

When you play poker night after night, there are those evenings when you will end up a loser. And when you analyze what happened to cause you to lose, you can only come up with a legitimate reason.

They play too many hands.

There are 52 cards in a deck and they represent many different mixes and outcomes whether the game is Texas Hold'em, Omaha High-Low, stud or some other poker game.

Almost anyone can play the solid cards well -- the pocket aces, kings, A-K, or another high pair. But too many players are playing in nearly every pot and therein the problem lies.

A player wins with his pocket aces. In the next three or four hands, he plays K-J, A-9, Q-10 or some other combination and loses. That takes away the money he won with the aces and removes some chips from his stack.

Add it up and over the course of an evening you can see why a player finds himself visiting the ATM machine, not once but several times.

You can improve your poker winnings by the simple process of restricting the number of hands you play. It's hard, especially when everyone else is playing, but you can do it. If you can't, I feel sorry for you and your bankroll.

A player sits down at a cash game and buys $200 worth of chips. Whether the game is limit or no limit, the blinds can eat up those chips. Playing too many hands will eat up more chips and before you know it, you need to replenish your stack.

The secret to playing winning poker is to limit the number of hands you play and to push your solid hands to gather as big a win as possible.

In Omaha High-Low, the objective is to win the whole pot. A split is nice but winning it all is better.

In a tournament, of course, players receive a lot more chips and can take more chances. They provide an excellent opportunity for action. But even in a tournament, those chips will eventually run out and you need to be selective in what hands you decide to play and how far you will go with them.

I want to thank my friend Joe Pizza for the insight he gave me into this. Joe is working on a book about how to win at dice and has promised to gave me a sample chapter to publish on this website. I can't wait to see what he sends me.

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