OK, there's been enough poker talk so I'll go ahead and kick off a poker
item.  To get things going, I'll talk about the most accessible portion
of poker -- watching poker on TV.

Watching poker on TV is, in a way, less like watching a sporting event
than like watching a reality show; instead of eating bugs, the
contestants are asked to call raises when they might be drawing dead.
Poker is rarely televised live, but instead is typically edited down to
showcase what the editors think makes an interesting or compelling
story.  You get to find out more information than any of the
participants get to have (as opposed to, say, football where you don't
know anything that the players don't know.)  Whether that makes for good
watching is a matter of perspective.

1. Best: FullTiltPoker dot net.  The main reason is because they show
every single hand, even the "boring" hands where everybody folds around
to the big blind.  The commentary is usually at least somewhat
interesting and knowledgable, and the cameras don't get overly fancy in
a way that distracts from the viewing experience.

2. Ultimate Poker Challenge.  I'm giving it good marks because it's in
high-def, which makes the watching more immersive.  Also, they can take
advantage of the size and aspect ratio to show you the hole cards with a
picture-in-picture; this allows you to watch the player's face when he
sees his hand, which adds a great deal to the viewing experience.

3. Poker Royale.  Effectively put together and paced reasonably well;
edited some but not excessively.  They usually like to have an equal
number of male and female players, and since there are so few women to
start with you'll see the same ones again and again.  If you can't get
enough of Kathy Liebert, Jennifer Tilley and Cyndy Violette then this is
likely a good place to look.

4. World Series of Poker.  Its' effectively presented and competently
commentated, but it's so heavily edited that you would think that the
whole tournament only took a couple of hours and every single hand
involved someone with pocket kings going all-in against someone with
pocket aces.  The cameras usually don't linger on the players so it's
hard to really look at somebody and see how he acts when the flop
completely missed him but he's pot-committed.

5. Celebrity Poker Showdown.  The question is really whether you like
watching celebrities, most of whom are not particularly experienced
players.  There's editing but it's not excessive, and the commenation is
a little cutsey but not overly annoying.  Because of the nature of luck,
frequently somebody who does everything wrong never the less ends up
winning, which can be frustrating to watch.

6. Worst: World Poker Tour.  Mike Sexton is shallow and lacks variety in
his presentation, but he looks fantastic by virtue of the fact that he
is sitting next to the worst poker broadcaster ever: Vince Van Patten.
Vince (son of Eight Is Enough star Dick Van Patten) knows the nicknames
of most of the hands, and he'll share them with you long after they
cease being interesting.  If a player is acting weak in order to induce
a bet you'll never get tired of hearing Vince say "he's digging a hole..
he's laying the twigs and branches across it..."

32 responses total.

 As Marc mentions, watching televised poker play is less like watching
 a sporting event and more like watching a 30-second highlight reel
 shown on some news program hours after the game.

 The awful truth (from a broadcaster's standpoint) is that most poker
 hands do not play dramatically enough to keep an audience's interest.
 And the awful thing from an enthusiast's standpoint is that editing
 the game down to just dramatic showdowns completely excises vital
 context information that's necessary for any real understanding of
 what's going on.

 So I've personally been somewhat astounded by televised poker's huge
 success in the past three years.  Poker broadcasts used to be a once-
 a-year recap of the WSOP, shown for about a week or two on one of
 the ESPN channels about six to eight months after the event took place.
 Now it seems like one can watch some sort of televised poker game
 nearly every night (although maybe it only seems that way to me because
 I don't flip on the television all that often..)

I am finding it easier to beat people at non-Texas Hold'em because a lot
of people think Poker is synonymous with Hold'em.

Case in point, my half-brother wanted to play poker. I called the game
as Five Card Draw. He's like, "Whats that?"

i tried playing poker once this summer but it didn't work out.

blackjack was more fun.

I agree. Blackjack is much more fun. 

Blackjack is best played by a computer.

More than one sense of the word 'best' is being used here.

I always thought 7 cars stud (which, if I'm remembering right, was Texas 
Hold 'em with two more hole cards) was the ultimate poker game. Does 
anyone play it anymore?

Seven card stud is played with no community cards, three downcards, and four
upcards.

It used to be the ultimate game, but hasn't been for a few years.

The four hole cards one is OMAHA, which is like Hold 'em except that you have
to use exactly TWO of your hole cards and THREE of the community cards to make
your hand, and it's often played for LOW as well as HIGH hands.

I don't know what it is, but I am addicted to watching poker on TV.  I 
mean, I don't watch it all the time, but when there's nothing else on, 
I do find it very fascinating.

Seven card stud is traditionally dealt in five rounds, and there are no
common cards (eash player is dealt her own hand of seven cards).

The first round is two cards face down and one card face up.  The next
three rounds are one card face up, and the final round is one card face
down.  Betting follows each round.

The group I play with most Friday evenings typically plays a small
variety of games including some we've made up, depending on the number
of players (range seems to be 3-9).  The games are: 
     Five card stud (four rounds, 1 down and 1 up, 1 up, 1 up, 1 down,
no common)
     Seven card stud (see above - 7 players or fewer)
     "Hedge" (one round, five cards down)
     "Coquilles" (pronounced "ko-kee" - same as Hedge, but add two
rounds with 1 common card per round)
     "Johnny Two-Hole" (five card draw plus two rounds of 1 common card
per round - generally good only for 6 players or fewer)
     Texas Hold-Em
     
Last night we added a new game, "Little Indian" (one card, dealt face
down to each player, who then - without looking at the card - holds it
up to their forehead where all the other players can see it. Players
then bet that their own card, which they cannot see, is higher than the
other cards that they can see. Last better has a significant advantage,
especially if the players are a little drunk.)

why don't you play hold 'em that way?!

 I'm not sure to what extent the current television hold'em craze has
 eroded this, but until recently there were some definite regional
 preferences in poker play (and here I'm talking not about home games
 but about the sorts of games dealt in legal and semi-legal casinos
 and card rooms..)  The east coast, particularly Atlantic City, was
 known for favoring seven-card stud.  Hold'em has been the default
 game for national play for some time -- 30 years or more.  And for
 what originally started out as legal reasons but became established
 in their poker culture, Southern California has a regional pocket
 of draw lowball players, a game that's not commonly played seriously
 anywhere else that I know of.  I've never seen five card draw (high) 
 dealt anywhere in the country except for Deadwood, S.D., and that
 seemed more like a concession to tourists enamored with the Wild Bill
 legend than a real devotion to the game.

 As for myself, in my poker playing years I mostly played limit-bet
 hold'em (which is dealt according to the same rules but proceeds
 substantially differently from the no-limit-bet tournament version
 favored on television, since the betting has such a huge effect on
 strategy..)  A few years ago I started playing more Omaha, which,
 as was already mentioned is a flop-card game variant like hold'em
 where the players are all dealt four cards instead of two and (in
 the variant I played) is played high/low.  It's a less familiar
 game for many players and some find the increased possibilities
 from four cards confusing, leading to more exploitable mistakes
 from beginning players, which is why I found it attractive. 

An easy way to make a few dollars is to play blackjack at online casinos.

Due to stiff competition, online casinos tend to offer large bonuses (100%
is common) on the first deposit players make, under the condition that the
player play through the money several times before cashing out.  The idea is
that people will play and lose all their money, including the bonus, but, for
players with the small amount of disipline to cashout as soon as they fulfill
the playthrough requirements, the odds can be hugely in their favour.  For
example, Starluck Casino offers a 100% bonus on a $100 deposit with an eight
times play through requirement, i.e. you have to wager $1600 in total to
cashout.  However, playing the lowest house edge game -- 'Vegas Strip'
blackjack -- with perfect basic strategy results in a house edge of 0.41% and
a payout of $193.44.  That's a player edge of 12.09%!  Not all bonuses are
this good -- many, for example, have higher playthrough requirements for
blackjack than they do for other games or prohibit it entirely -- but there
are many bonuses out there that can be played profitably!

Online poker rooms also offer bonuses, though those tend not to be as generous
as the casinos.

So you make $93. How long does it take to play through $1600?

It depends.

Ideally, you want to play with the lowest possible wager -- $1 -- to reduce
variability.  That'd take maybe four hours, though that depends entirely on
how fast you can play.

If you increased your wager to $4, it would only take... an hour!

ALSO< UH< AN INTERESTING THING IS THAT THERE ARE MANY ONLINE CASINOS THAT
OFFER THE S_O_CALLED "MICROGAMIONG VIPER" SOFTWARE< WHICH AUTOMATICALLY PLAYS
PERFECT STRATEGY BLACKJACK FOR YOU>

IT MIGHT BE A BIT OF A HUMP GETTING OVER THE WHOLE *HEY< SOME COMPUTER IS
BETTING $60 OF MY MONEY PER MINUTE*< BUT IT"S REALLY NO DIFFERENT THAN YOU
DOING IT YOURSELF< EXCEPT THAT IT TAKES A LOT LESS TIME AND REQUIRES MUCH LESS
INTERACTION>

This item is linked as Grex agora:128 (and sports:128
(Hey, what are the odds on that?)

I object to the linking.

Why?

Because it was done without consulting me.

 On the same basis, I object to your objection.

If the author of this item wishes, I will remove the link.

I'm not a sports fan in general, nor am I a regular participant in
the sports conference.  Moreover, I recognize there's some degree of
controversy whether poker is a sport and whether a poker player is an
athlete (I think it's only if he is good at rippling chips.)  But I
don't have any objection to the linking.

what !

jep ! 

how come ric isn't FW of the sports cf over here ?>!

jep is a bad man.

a boring, intolerant coward.


i object to the linking because i don't think anyone like him, with his
history, should have the capability to have control over items, especially
if he hasn't first asked for it.

Anyway, I will now proceed to list some of the benefits of playing poker
online:

1) Selection.  With many online poker rooms running more tables than there
are in Atlantic City and Vegas combined, as well as the nifty statistics (such
as hands per hour and the number of flops seen, indicators of roughly how much
money one can expect to be able to make) easily reported with modern
electronic poker technology, it's much easier to find any table running any
popular game you want for all sorts of stakes.  As well, you can play for
stakes (all the way down to $0.01/$0.02) and with numbers of players (as low
as two) that wouldn't be feasible in a real life casino, where the cost of
running another table is prohibitive.

2) Portability.  You can play anywhere you have an Internet connection:  on
the train, on the can, wherever.  No need to search out silly regulated
casinos.

3) Bonuses.  Because of all the competition, online cardrooms are willing to
offer you large bonuses in exchange for your business.  Typically, the most
generous of these bonuses are the ones you make on your first deposit:  these
are frequently 100% of your deposit or more.  You can also get bonuses for
redepositing and for referring friends who deposit, though these bonuses are
generally less generous.

The bonuses are generally released based on how many hands you play at a
certain level.  Sometimes the bonus is 'trickled out' as you play, and
sometimes it's released in one lump sum.  (Trickling?  Lumps?)  Still other
sites release the bonus to you immediately, with the condition that you have
to play a certain amount before cashing out the bonus.

4) Rake.  Because there isn't as much overhead, online cardrooms can offer
much lower rakes than you would find in real life.  10% is typical in real
life, while most online cardrooms offer a 5% rake (THE AMOUNT THE HOUSE TAKES
OUT OF A POT IN EXCHANGE FOR ITS SSERVICES) with a $3 cap.  The rake is even
lower the fewer people are playing.

5) Rakeback.  Again because of stiff competition, there are third party
referral services that allow you to sign up for cardrooms through them and
receive a percentage of the amount you contribute to the rake back.  Getting
30% of your rake back is a VERY significant boost.

6) Speed.  The automization of the dealing and the shuffling of cards,
combined with the ability for players to make their decisions before the
action comes to them, leads to MUCH faster play than is possible in real life.
Estimates I've read say that online play is generally twice as fast as real
life play.  If you're a winning player, this means you'll make more money.
If you're there for entertainment, it means you can have more fun.

7) Safety.  A large problem in poker is collusion, that is, two or more
players secretly working together to fleece the rest of the players.  This
is something that happens both online and offline, but online there are many
more ways to detect it and combat it, since every action a player makes can
be recorded and analysed.

One form collusion is chip dumping, that is, one player in a tournament
purposely losing all his chips to another player, giving that player a huge
advantage.  If this happened in real life, it's fully possible that the losing
player would have mucked his cards before anyone could investigate -- if
anyone even thought to raise the alarm.  Online, though, every hand is
recorded.  Sites could be programmed to automatically be suspicious of certain
actions:  "Hmm.  He called the guy's all in bet with ace high and four flush
cards on the board when he knew he was in late position and so wouldn't have
to show his cards?"  Even if the software weren't sophisticated enough to
catch all such problems, if a player suspected trouble he could alert the
room's operators who would investigate, if they were at all reputable.

8) Quantity.  Online, you can do something that simply isn't possible to
elegantly do in real life:  play more than one table silmultaneously.  Again,
if you're a winning player, this can dramatically increase your profit without
forcing you to play for higher stakes.  You're likely to lose some profit PER
table, since you can't pay as much attention to what's happening at each
individual table, but being able to play more than one table can more than
make up for this.  I've read blogs of people who play eight tables at a time,
though I'm sure there are people who play even more.

whoa.

Whoa!

SPEAKING OF POKER,

I had just made a reasonable amount of money playing positive expectation
games (i.e., games that I'll win at in the long run), so, uh, I decided to
play a few dollars at a SLIGHTLY NEGATIVE expectation game, i.e. Jacks or
Better video poker!

I was playing Euro 1.25 hands, and, uh, stayed around even for ten or so
hands, but then got trip treys on the first hand, and another trey on the draw
for quad treys... or, in other terms, about Euro 30!

I stopped playing after that, 'cause I figured that was enough!

Re resp:1: You can thank the hockey strike.  ESPN suddenly had a lot of
time to fill, and they filled it with poker.  That seems to have been
what triggered all the interest.

I'm in the casino industry, now, and everyone is sort of wondering how
long the fad will last.  It's been a mixed blessing because poker
doesn't generate as much revenue for the house as house-banked games
like blackjack.  This is especially true in Washington, where the size
of the rake is strictly limited by gaming regulations.

Why don't you make a game like Let It Ride, except each player and the dealer
get two pocket cards and there's a flop, a turn, and a river?!

Sure, I wouldn't play the game, but wouldn't some people?!  Isn't it worth
trying?!

Why not try "side" bets, like a GUESS THE COLOUR (RED OR BLACK) OF THE FLOP
BET that pays eight to one?!

Sure, I wouldn't play the bet, but wouldn't some people?!  Isn't it worth
trying?!

At least one casino I know offers remote consoles for playing roulette.  That
is, there's one central table people play at, except they play SOMEWHERE ELSE
in the casino and watch VIDEO of the table and junk.  Why not something
similar to allow people to play other games while they're out of the action?


Why not offer people who play poker a $5 matching bonus to play blackjack or
some shit?!

Wouldn't any of these things help?!

There are various house-banked poker variants, but right now everyone 
wants to play Texas Hold 'Em. ;) 
 
Also, at least in Washington, casinos can't just make up their own card 
games on the fly.  It's all pretty highly regulated. 

I play all the time out here, and one thing I'd like to say...
 
 A lot of the pro player's advice is good.  But some of it is not so good.
They eventually figure that if you end up good enough, you'll run into them.
And then they'll steamroll you.

Is that so?

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