Holdem poker is taking the country by storm as one of the most fun means of entertainment. It’s not a fad, but more of an awareness of a great way to have some fun.

While there’s a ton of instructional info on the web to give you all the strategies and tips for playing your best, I’d like to focus on ways of getting the most fun out of playing holdem at home. Our perspective is that holdem is simply fun to play. We’re not doing it as a means of income, but we’re playing for entertainment purposes. The competitive aspects of friendly poker are no different than you’d find in your weekend golf or tennis game.
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The Texas Holdem poker phenomenon has taken the country by storm. There are reportedly over 100 million active poker players worldwide. Poker’s popularity is largely the byproduct of technology and several recent trends: 1) online gaming, where players engage and socialize in real-time over the Internet, and 2) the broad publicity created by high profile TV shows like the World Series of Poker (WSOP) and World Poker Tour (WPT).
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To be successful at poker you should, at any time during the play of a hand, be able to calculate the odds of catching your hand to the odds the pot is giving you.

Knowing the probability of making a specific hand in poker can be done by calculating hand odds. Figuring out how many outs you have will give you the possibility of calculating the number of times you will hit your hand by the river.

Lets say your’e dealt A-9 of hearts in Texas Hold’em and the flop comes up showing two hearts. Your hand odds for hitting another heart by the river will be approximately 36% or 3 to 1. (you will hit your hand 1 out of 3 times)
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I’ve been playing online poker for seven months and, after having some success, I decided it was time to stretch my virtual legs and try another one of the hundreds of poker rooms in cyberspace.

My credit card company had other plans.

My first trip into an online casino was great. Seconds after giving up my credit card information I was at a table going all in against some guy from Norway.
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With the fall semester under way, college students all across the country are quickly approaching their first measure of academic rigor: midterms. Hoping to perform well on the tests, students prepare by turning stereos down low, flipping textbooks open and, for some students,playing a few hands of Texas Hold ‘Em.
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Poker can be an addiction - or a character builder

I’m over 60 years old. Three years ago when I walked into a local poker room, I knew most of the players. Their average age was probably fortysomething and three or four kinds of poker were being played throughout the room.

Today when I walk into the room I don’t recognize anybody. Most of the faces are younger than my own kids and only one game is usually being played - Texas Hold’em.

I’m mentioning this because of a recent feature article in this newspaper about young people who have become harmfully addicted to poker. Thanks to the immense popularity of Texas Hold’em on TV, poker has become the latest overindulgence craze, sometimes outranking booze or pot smoking among the younger set.

Poker addiction starts out very subtly. You see somebody on TV going “all in” on a bluff with a worthless hand, and his opponent eventually folds, giving the bluffer a big pot. It looks very cool - like something you’d like to try.

So you get together with some friends and play a little no limit Texas Hold’em - just like on TV. It gives you a rush and you want to play it again - only next time for more money. Pretty soon you’re playing all the time, and not for the purpose of learning how to win - but just for the thrill of the gamble!

All the wrong reasons: Well, the same tendencies that can get you addicted to drugs and alcohol have gotten you hooked on poker. The right reason to take up poker is to learn how to win at it - not to experience the thrill of playing. These two reasons require vastly different playing styles.

Oh, there is a side benefit to playing poker the right way, but it’s not the thrill of the gamble. It’s the development of your character.

You see, to win at poker you must use extreme self-discipline. Rationalization is your most dangerous weakness. You must remain objective enough to see what is, not what you want to be - and then act on it accordingly.

You know what that means? It means you must throw away 75 percent of your hands without even calling that first bet. And as for the other 25 percent that you call the first bet with - you’ll fold more than half of those before the hand is over. After all is said and done, you’ll play maybe one hand out of 10 to the showdown. There’s not much of a gambling thrill in that. But if you want to win - even survive - that’s what you’ve got to do.

I’d like to give the following stern piece of advice to all the new poker players out there. If saying “no” to yourself three times out of four isn’t your cup of tea, then poker is not going to be your friend. You’d be better off having a beer or two. But if you’ve got the patience to sift through all the garbage while waiting for a good hand, then can exercise the self-discipline to throw that good hand away when your clear vision says you’ve been beat, poker can be a satisfying and rewarding character builder.

All good poker players have this quality. Most weren’t born with it - they developed it. They learned how to tell themselves the truth, even when the truth was disappointing - and they can use that virtue to their advantage in all aspects of their lives.

I read my first poker book almost 30 years ago, “Poker, A Guaranteed Income” by Frank Wallace. It contained a one-page epilogue that I believe described true poker most eloquently. I’ll summarize that inspiring epilogue here:

“Poker is a character catalyst that forces players to reality. Those who evade thinking cannot escape the penalties. The winning poker player views all situations realistically. He pits the use of his mind against the unwillingness of his opponents to think. The loser makes himself a loser. The winner makes himself a winner. Poker is sheer justice.”

by Fred Renzey

After appearing in westerns for decades, the poker player kind of went AWOL from our TV screens for a while. Not anymore. Seems like every other time I flip by several of my supposed 75 cable channels, a couple of guys are staring each other down in a way that can only be the result of playing No Limit Texas Hold ‘em poker.

Though I am not much of a gambler, I love it, and apparently so do a lot of other Americans.
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Two players sit down in their country club recreation room and decide to play a penny-a-point gin rummy game. When the game is over, the loser extracts his wallet and passes a few bills to the other. At that moment, a couple of plainclothes police officers come up and say to the players, “You’re under arrest for gambling.”

John Smith has decided to run a small office pool for Super Bowl Sunday, in conjunction with a party at his house. He made up a sheet divided into squares, a 10-by-10 grid that covered where all the possible scores could fall. Players could buy a square on the grid for a dollar, and whoever had the right score numerically would win the hundred dollars. His ex-girlfriend got wind of the party and informed her new boyfriend, who was on the local police force. As the winning team began their celebration and John was about to pay off, there was a cry at the door, “Open up; police.” John was arrested for gambling, and his sheet for the office pool was taken as evidence against him.
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When you watch poker on TV, you hear the term pot odds thrown around all the time. What in the world does it really mean? Well, hopefully, after you read this column you’ll not only know what pot odds are, but you’ll also understand how to quickly calculate pot odds and apply them to your game.

A simple generic definition of the term pot odds would be - the odds the pot is laying you in comparison to the bet you are facing. In other words, if there is $500 in the pot and your opponent has bet $100, your pot odds would be 6 to 1. Why 6 to 1? Well, since there is already $500 in the pot and your opponent has bet an additional $100, that totals $600. Since you need to call $100 to stay in the pot, your odds are 6 to 1.
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I’m sick of people treating poker like any other gambling game. Admittedly, many poker players are gambling degenerates who will probably lose their money regardless of what happens, but that shouldn’t incriminate the game of poker.

Just because there are bad poker players doesn’t mean poker is a bad game.

In fact, poker is a game that, if treated as an intellectual pursuit or profession, can be profitable, and the proof lies in the fact that there are a good number of poker players making a living by simply playing the game.
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