Posts Tagged ‘poker’
In memory of Gary Carson
In early March poker author Gary Carson passed away. I didn’t know him personally, but his impact on my thinking about how I approached the game of poker was profound. I’m very sad to learn that he’ll never write another brilliant poker book. To adequately explain to a non-poker player what Gary Carson did, I…
Read MoreTeaching kids to play poker: lesson 1, learning the rank of poker hands
My niece Zoe learning the ranks of poker hands the afternoon before her first adult game The first step of learning poker is to learn the rank of hands. Teaching this has got to be more carefully done that shoving a list in someone’s face. You want to drill these into the child…
Read MoreTeaching kids to play poker
My niece and poker student Zoe scoops in one of many pots If you are the sort of person that thinks teaching kids to play poker will lead them to a life of depravity,consider that they will also learn strategy and tactics, psychology and the power of observation, as well as some math and statistical…
Read MoreFactors that make limit poker games entirely uninteresting
I've played limit poker ($3/$6, $6/$12, and $9/18) at all the Bay Area casinos. They all run their rooms slightly differently. I've felt that the games at Bay 101 are the most lucrative, with Garden City being slightly less profitable, and Lucky Chances and Artichoke Joe's being the least profitable. Over the last few years…
Read MoreThe only white guy at the poker table
I was sitting at Lucky Chances last night at a $3/$6 Limit hold'em table next to a Hispanic self-claimed combat veteran who chattered constantly. He was obnoxious in every way. He berated other players for losing to him. He antagonized the table by calling for time before he showed his cards, not before any decision,…
Read MoreFull Tilt Poker’s new “Rush” Poker
If you haven’t tried it out yet, Full Tilt Poker’s new “Rush Poker” is pretty cool. For people not familiar with Internet poker, it’s way faster than live poker. At a live poker table you can see 20-25 hands per hour, and you can only play one table at a time. Online you can see…
Read MorePhil Ivey on ESPN
I suppose its awesome to be the best poker player in the world, a fact agreed upon by all the other top players in the game. It's also good to have an enormous income stream from an online poker site that makes it easy to ignore the money at stake.
Read MoreVegas trip report, October 2009
Though I live near card rooms in the Bay area, I like to go to Vegas occasionally as a sort of personal poker camp. The time purely devoted to poker allows me to experiment with my game in a way that leads to deep analysis for a prolonged period of time. Also with someone along…
Read MorePlaying pairs in Limit Texas Hold’em
I caught a cold over the weekend and had just about enough energy to lay in bed, but not to get up. (Not entirely true, since on day one of the cold I painted four rooms of the house, but that's probably why I was bed-ridden the next two days…) While laid up in bed…
Read MoreWould a Buddhist bluff at poker?
I'm around a number of Buddhists, though I'm not one myself. (Or, you could say, I'm an awful Buddhist who drinks, smokes, eats meat and denies being a Buddhist.) Recently, the lead teacher at the Insight Meditation Center, where I took their meditation course and occasionally attend while practicing my own form of bad Buddhism,…
Read More