ABC Poker is simple, straight forward and safe poker. Raising with your big pairs, folding nearly everything else in early and even middle position and not getting into big pots with drawing hands. ABC Poker is what defines players who we call “rocks”, but there is more to ABC Poker than simply a very conservative style, which involves a lot of fold, fold, fold.

Many professionals will tell you that ABC Poker is what you should play on Day One of a big multi-day tournament. You know the saying: “You can’t win the tournament on Day One, but you sure can lose it!” ABC Poker keeps you out of trouble and it is so obvious that you are playing this way, you actually can get away with stealing the blinds a couple of times because everyone at the table will respect it when you make your “once an hour” raise.

ABC Poker is also the default mode when you are on tilt. You just shut down, collect your thoughts and play ABC. Players will also revert to this basic game in the wee hours of a 14 hour tournament day, just keep your head down and make it to tomorrow.

Finally, ABC Poker is what every beginner should learn; not only because you should know the ins and outs of ABC but you also need to recognize this type of game when other players resort to it. You can’t play against it, when you don’t recognize it.

-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #122

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 9:55 pm and is filed under Poker Basics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.