White Belt Poker

After succeeding in my quest to gain a party poker baseball cap and $25 bonus, I now need to get my PokerRoom.com bonus by 13th Jan. This is going to be trickier than the party poker bonus because I need to gain player points which depend on the rake.

I’m going to have to play about 250 hands where the rake goes over $0.50, which at my current $0.50-$1 limit is not easy. You’ll pretty much need a showdown for a pot to go over $10 to give you a 5% rake of $0.50.

I’m not finding it that easy to work out the quality of the players that I’m up against, but one thing I’ve noticed which separates people is the ability to check-raise.

I think it shows that that person has made the effort to learn about the game to some degree and at the low limit tables I’m on, I’ll instantly give someone respect. I won’t run away from the table, but I’ll be careful not to mess with them and I’ll put it in the notes section for that person.

And what a powerful weapon the check-raise can be.

That pause that you get when someone unexpectedly walks into a check-raise is exhilirating. They don’t know what to do. They feel as if they’ve been tricked, but they’re not quite sure how. What are they supposed to do now? Most will eventually fold if they haven’t been in that situation before. Then they’re frightened of you. The pauses get longer if they’re thinking about betting after you because they don’t know what you’re going to do.

This is my first real glimpse of how a little bit of poker knowledge can really elevate you beyond the people who are just playing for fun.

My copy of “Internet Texas Holdem: Winning Strategies from an Internet Pro” by Matthew Hilger arrived yesterday.

The book looks even more dense than Lee Jones’ book. The layout is a little bit strange. There are questions on real hands, but the answer is right below the question, so you can see it straight away.

I’ll have to go into more detail once I’ve read more of the book. I don’t think there’s a great deal in here that isn’t covered in Lee Jones’ book though. But I could be wrong.

Deposited $40 at Party Poker last night and within 20 mins of sitting down I had an ace-high flush beaten by a straight flush made on the river! I posted the hand on the pokertips.org forum to see what people thought.

http://www.pokertips.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2193

Not much else I could’ve done I think. I couldn’t throw away an ace-high flush. It was my first real experience of a bad beat.

I’ve been spending some time reading this in my lunch hours and it’s really interesting stuff.

I thought my dabbling with with games on my PC had me prepared to play against live opponents, but now I’m beginning to see how I can improve my chances of winning. It feels as if there’s a lot of information in here though. I can’t see how I can take it all in. I’ll have to read a chunk at a time and then try to play a little bit, then come back.