Poker World Series Online

Saving the Best in Poker

In social games, especially Poker privately organized or not much of what has been said about this game is likely to go by the board.

If you are playing club Poker you will do well to bear in mind all the considerations and various handy rules that you have been made aware of. You will also need to pay attention to conventions which, though they flout the rules that the winning player should follow are tacitly accepted in your club.

There are many clubs where 'sandbagging' is frowned upon; it is considered bad form to check on a winning hand and subsequently to bet. If you are playing in one of these clubs, accept its convention and don't sandbag. You won't lose many chips by doing so; and it is far better anyway to lose a few chips than to lose your reputation in sportsmanship.

If everyone at your table is playing a 'liberal' game, play a liberal game too. Or, at any rate, play a game which has its moments of liberality. Get yourself known as a Rock of Gibraltar, and the only players who'll see your bets are players whose hands may be better than yours.

Betting may be on a very liberal scale, i.e., each successive bet may be half the rapidly-mounting total in the kitty. The tactics appropriate to club play will, in these circumstances, need considerable observance.

One bit of advice is to bet fairly freely as long as you hold what seems to be the best hand in the long run that policy can't lose.

But never, if you can help it, throw good money after bad. After all, it's a gamble. And part of this is betting the odds, the best a Poker player can.

Once again, this is a reminder that once you've made a bet, the money you've staked isn't yours; it's the tables. You aren't defending your own property when you make another bet; you're venturing new money in exactly the same way as the other players are.

In these games, too, the etiquette rigidly enforced in clubs may go by the board altogether. Bluffing by word of mouth, for example, may be recognized as part of the fun.

Or players may take up and examine hands that have been thrown in; or, having thrown in, they may peer at their neighbor's hands and suggest what discards they should make, or how many chips they should bet.

Well, if that's what everyone else is doing, don't take offense or behave like a spoilsport, just follow what is the norm for that location.