“In the game of life, women are the f—n’ rake.”
You can’t ever quote Rounders enough. At least I can’t. And while I’d love to spend this entire article talking about women, I think the better choice is to focus on the rake.
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Online, people go all-in like it’s going out of style. Really, sorry for the upcoming rant, but where are these people coming from? The low-stakes, limit games and the sit n’ goes are just havens for these poisonous players who seem to have no regard for losing their money or the purity of the game of poker whatsoever. Bitter? You could say that.
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Everyone has that friend that’s dying to get them to play poker with them. They’re very good, and you’re…passable. They’ll sweeten the deal by offering handicaps, rule changes, anything to get you into a heads up matchup with them, because they know that no matter how much of an advantage you think you have, the end result will be all the chips in his pocket.
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Do you check on the turn? Are you ashamed of it? Just kidding. Like anything, whether you check on the turn depends on the situation. I can’t count myself in the camp of those who say “if you’re not raising, you should be folding.” I’ve said before it’s not always that black and white, and this is one gray area I’m proud to take part in.
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When you think about poker, what’s one of the first things that come to mind? All-ins? Not really. Raising and folding? Eh. Vodka on the rocks? Getting warmer. I’m talking about bluffing. How to spot it, how to master it. Bluffing and poker go hand-in-hand like …uh…vodka and rocks.
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Poker is all about difficult decisions. What to bet, deciding whether the other guy is bluffing, making a call on an opponent’s range…hell, even pulling out a chair and sitting down in the first place. However, one of the largest decisions, the one that pulls at you long after you’ve made your call, is whether to fold a potential huge hand early on in the game.
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I’d like to dissect the phrase “if you’re not raising, you should be folding”, especially as it pertains to making decisions on the River. Many experts and pseudo-experts alike will swear by the strategy that calling is the wrong move at any point during a hand, but especially here – saying if you have the best hand, you should raise, and if you have the worst, it’s time to fold.
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I love going to back to the absolute basics of poker. Sometimes you get so caught up in betting strategies, ranges, positioning, flux and reading your opponents that you almost forget how to actually play the simplest of hands. So here’s a refresher course for those in a similar boat or a stepping-stone lesson for the new players out there.
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Appearances appearances. So deceitfully clever. So much thought that goes into something make to appear so random. They play to our most hidden stereotypes and prejudices. After all, you can’t lie to yourself. And they’re one of a poker player’s worst enemies. After all, how tough an opponent could that 55-year-old nice lady with the gray hair really be?
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I tend to give online poker a bit of crap, knocking its stature in the world of poker venues and such, but the truth is obviously its a wildly popular form of enjoying poker and making or losing money at the game. Still, a heated debate continues to rage about the validity of the game online. Not only for the reasons I talk about, but for the trust factor, as well.
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