What games can compare to the skill/luck ratio of poker? Well there are games like tic-tac-toe, checkers and chess on one end of the spectrum. These are all skill based and at varying levels of difficulty. The flaw in not involving chance is that each aforementioned game can be won with a predetermined best move in every situation. We all should know how to play tic-tac-toe to either a win or a draw by now. Checkers and chess are the same only at a much more complex level–as proven by computers ability to overcome the best of us.

The other side of the spectrum? Keno is devoid of skill and a good example of how chance can quickly go too far. (Despite what Bizarro Grundy might have to say.)

So if poker is a middle ground, what other games can compare? Well, there are other card games of course…bridge, canasta, gin rummy to name a few. I am not too experienced in most of these, but without the opportunity to bluff it takes away some of the psychological element that I love so much. Of course you can bluff in “BS,” but that game lacks the gentlemanly quality.

Backgammon is a popular gateway game into poker. The introduction of dice bring chance to an otherwise skillful game. Stratego is another favorite of mine. It involves neither cards nor dice, but the mystery of the placement of your opponents pieces allow for lucky guesses at times. Man, I miss that game.

What else? Are there any other games that achieve the balance of skill and chance?

I assume all of my American readers have been affected by and/or heard about the government crack down on on-line gambling. The quick version is this: suits from major sites like Poker Stars, Full Tilt and Absolute Poker have been formally charged with fraud and all funds and transfers from US players have been frozen, which, by all accounts, sucks.

I think we were all hoping that little bill in 2006 making on-line gambling illegal would never be enforced. Now it looks like Uncle Sam just took its sweet time making a case against the big three gaming outfits. To be fair, the enforcement is justified in my opinion. Just like I feel about immigration in the US, what laws we have in place should be enforced, but I also think we should change the laws. It appears Poker Stars and the rest were laundering money, which is illegal. They may have been forced into a life of crime by the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, but “enforcement” is right their in the name, they should have saw this coming. Let’s face it, with their assurances of safety from the bill, they weren’t honest to their customers either.

As a fan of the game and the profits it allows, I’m still rooting for the gambling sites. I hope PPA lobbying and Full Tilt lawyers put this madness behind us. However, the perfect solution is now being called for not only by Bluff and Cardplayer, but also by Fortune and the Washington Post–legalize the damn game! Let the rake go to American businesses and provide American jobs. Let Harrahs and the Bellagio make sites to compete with Poker Stars and Full Tilt in a free market.

Will this happen? I thought so, but who the hell knows anymore? Color me jaded, which I think is a shade of green. At this point, I just hope their vague promise of letting us cash out our account comes to pass.
I guess I’m back to selling my body for cash. What? That’s illegal too?

Crap.

Since you are reading this blog (and thank you, Grundy, for allowing me to contribute to it), you probably aren’t too worried about playing on free sites. You’ve moved past them or never played on them from the start. However, if you are like me, you also have a lot of friends asking you for advice on how they can learn to play poker or get better at it. So, the question is, are the claims of the free poker sites true? If our friends play free poker, can they become top notch poker players? Can they even become winning poker players?

I’m afraid the answer to those questions is an emphatic “Heck, no!” In fact, these sites will probably teach your friends to become losing players if they play there long enough.

Tell your friends to avoid the free poker sites at all costs. Anything they learn from them will probably be counter-productive to being a good poker player. Worst yet, and here’s the kicker, the reasons why these sites will not teach you how to become a good player are not the reasons you may think.

Many people believe “free poker” is bad for you because players play differently if money is not involved. We’ve all seen a player comment, “I wouldn’t have done that for real money.” Don’t believe them – they would have done that for real money and they have probably done it for real money. (Similarly, I wish I had a nickel for every time somebody published a poker hand in a forum and prefaced it by saying “I don’t normally raise here, but …” Yeah, right…tell me another one.)

The truth is that you can find all kinds of players when playing free poker, and most of them are competitive enough to legitimately try to win the “play chips.” The reason to be afraid of playing for play chips isn’t that people are not trying to win; it’s that they don’t know how to win.

Not only that, but the few players on these play sites who are decent players are drowned out by the poor players who readily throw around their bad advice (and criticisms). Let’s take a look at some of the comments I’ve seen on free poker sites recently and explore why they are so dangerous.

• “Never raise pre-flop in Omaha Hi/Lo.” – Are you kidding me? Who knows where this kind of crappy logic originated, but the scary thing about it is that many players on at least one particular poker site not only believe it, but get right down angry when other players raise pre-flop. Players who do not believe in pre-flop raises (they not-so-affectionately call it “pre-flopping”) often stall when deciding to call the raise (presumably to punish the “pre-flopper” for raising), call players who raise pre-flop idiots, and often ridicule players when they raise pre-flop and don’t win the pot without ever realizing it’s not the number of pots you win, but the number of chips you gain or lose. These types of players are the worst you can encounter. Not only are they wrong, but they are so convinced they are right, they freely give out their bad advice to unsuspecting players – very dangerous, indeed.

• “You should never bet after somebody is all-in.” – This may be my favorite online tournament fallacy. Again, this is something that many, many players who play free poker believe to be a cardinal rule of poker. As we all know, there are times it is unwise to bet when another player is all-in in a tournament. There are also times when you should bet into a dry side pot. Unfortunately, players who play the free poker sites like to create hard and fast poker standards so that they can play more “formula” poker and use their judgment less. This is a bad lesson to learn since there are no hard and fast poker standards in a game in which no two situations are ever the same. (NOTE: This comment also seems to occasionally rear its ugly head in cash games, too. How anybody can believe this in a cash game is beyond me.)

• “I’d rather not get pocket aces, they are a losing hand.” – I was amazed at the number of times I saw this comment. What I noticed was that people who play free poker simply do not play pocket aces (or other strong starting hands) very well because they simply do not understand poker odds or choose to ignore the odds. A hand that is a 3:1 favorite still loses 25% of the time and will lose even more often if you misplay it. It’s amazing how players remember the one loss twice as long as any of the three wins and assume pocket aces are simply not that good.

• “This game is mostly/all luck.” – This is what losing players say to justify their losses. Their ego can’t handle their incompetence. So, they convince themselves that they play well, and they are just unlucky. The second a player buys into this theory, he/she is a losing player. Don’t subject your friends to this nonsense.

Overall, free poker sites are just not what they are cracked up to be. You’ll get bad advice, see players trying to remove judgment from their decisions, see players ignore poker odds, and fail to take responsibility for their own incompetence instead of trying to better themselves through self-analysis.

If you want to give a friend a good start in learning how to play poker, I’d suggest buying them a good poker book or two, and then taking their money in some good home games. They’ll learn more and you’ll profit (for awhile, anyway).

This has been a post by amateur poker journalist Ken Carlson. If you like the article, please let him know in the comments.

St. Patrick and Irish culture has contributed much to the poker community. Just look through a deck of cards. The suit of clubs is nothing more than a three-leaf clover. So drink you Guinness and rub your lucky charm for a favorable river card, Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Amazingly they never share my favorite pocket pair, which is an ace followed by another ace. I’ve heard all the reasons why suited connectors are so great and why people cling to a hand they’ve had success with in the past. Really though, would you rather have the hand that holds a special place in your heart over pocket rockets? Does anyone believe any other two cards hold up as well?

It has gotten to the point that when I go out to play cards and am dealt AA, I’ll hesitate slightly and announce that I have my favorite hand when deciding what to raise. With this simple comment almost everyone rules out pocket rockets!

Would Doyle pass up A-A for 10-2? I think not.

Theory: The experience of a highly skilled poker player is equivalent to the experience of a moderately skilled player of any given sport.

Say I’m good, not great, at basketball. I go to make my shot and it may or may not go in the hoop. Conversely, if I was Kobe, I would almost certainly score. The less skilled I am, the more I rely on luck to cover my inconsistency. If I was Kobe–nay, better than Kobe–I would never need luck. The whole of my career would be nothing but net.

I’m saying poker is the same, only it hits a wall. If I am a bad card player, I require ample luck to make up for it. If I am moderate, I need less luck. If I possess flawless poker ability, I still require some luck to win any given hand.

My theory compares experiences, not performance. This is completely independent from the skill of your opponent.

Sorry if this post seems a little stream of consious and poorly worded. I haven’t really fleshed this out. So what do you think? Is luck as used in sports at all like the luck used in poker? Is it downshifted? Am I crazy?

Seems hard to believe, but if you want to follow
the tournaments ahead you can check it out here,
www.pokerlistings.com/live-tournaments/wsop

Scotty Nguyen Quitting Poker? from PokerListings.com

Friendly Fire

The Secret Life of Pocket Pairs

And for more Grundy insight, check out two interviews done on yours truely:

On PokerPlasm

On PokerTweet

Hope you like, and may the cards be with you.

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