Want to sound like a professional in your weekly home poker game?  Referring to hands by their nicknames can make you sound like a big name pro like you see on television.  Some of the names are quite obvious and some need a little more explanation.  The following is a short list of nicknames for some popular poker hands:

AK- “big slick” , “Anna Kournikova”, “walking back to Houston”

Ace-King is commonly referred to as big slick and is a very powerful holdem hand.  It also called “Anna Kournikova” because like the famous tennis player it often “looks good but never wins” if it doesn’t make a pair on the flop.  The old school Texas road gamblers often refer to it as “walking back to Houston” because when most of the big no limit games were played in Dallas, players who went all in with AK and didn’t win went broke and had to “walk” back to Houston.

AA88- “dead man’s hand”

Often used to refer to the famous poker hand in which “Wild Bill” Hickok was shot in the back of the head by Jack McCall while holding “aces and eights.” Hickok was inducted into the poker hall of fame in 1979.

J4- “flat tire”

What is a jack for? To fix a flat tire obviously!

102- “Doyle Brunson”

Many people know the 102 to be known as the “Doyle Brunson” but don’t really know the reason behind it.  Doyle Brunson won the 1976 and 1977 main event of the World Series of Poker holding 102. He actually made a full house both years to end the tournaments in dramatic style.

The next time you want to impress your poker friends, win a pot with the J4 and proudly say “I have the flat tire” when you turn your hand over.
-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #213

Pot odds is a term that is heard quite often at the poker table, although often used incorrectly.  So what exactly does pot odds mean?

Pot odds is the ratio of the current size of the pot to a contemplated call.  It is usually used to determine if you are getting “the right price” to continue with a drawing hand.  For example, if there is $100 in the pot and it cost you $10 to see the river card, you have 10 to 1 pot odds.  To continue profitably with your drawing hand, your pot odds must be equal to or greater than the odds of making your draw.

In the previous example, your pot odds are 10 to 1 and the chance of making your flush with one card coming is a little more than 4 to 1.  Therefore, it is profitable to call with your flush draw and try to win the pot.  Paying attention to your pot odds is a very important part of winning at any form of poker.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #212

In the previous post, we talked about not showing your cards when you don’t have to. Your conclusion was that you should only show your cards if you will gain some advantage on the other players. So when does that happen.

1. Showing a Bluff: You should not show all your bluffs because you want players to be unsure about your hand selection. But sometimes it pays to show the bluff; remember you are not turning over the bluff to show up the guy you bluffed, save that for TV. You show a bluff, so your opponents see that you are capable of bluffing, this is often a good idea when they think you are very tight and not capable of the big bluff. Remember you want to keep them guessing and showing some variation in your play that will make them wonder about you.

2. Show the big losing hand. Either to let them see how badly you played the hand or how big the hand was that you lost with and therefore you might go on tilt and play badly. This last one helps if you really can look upset or angry or flustered after you show the big loser.

3. Show the Monster. The appearance of a big hand like full house or better can have a psychological effect on other players. I mean you won the hand because the other players folded and then you flash them the quads or the straight flush. Now they know how close they were to being trapped by you and they will remember how close you were to taking all their chips and they will remember what you almost did to them. The image will stick and you will get more respect based on a hand that is over and done with.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #211

One “rule” you will often hear in poker is: Never show your cards when you don’t have to. Now generally that is a great rule and anytime you are not sure if you should show your cards–don’t! Yes, there are times when you can gain an advantage by showing your hole cards but first and foremost, if you don’t have to show don’t.

Here is an example to illustrate our point: You watch as a aggressive strong player plays a hand against a tight perhaps weak player. The action is (pre-flop) strong player bets, weak player calls; the on the flop, strong player bets, weak player calls; on the turn strong player bets, weak player calls; finally, on the river the strong player bets and the weak player raises. The strong player thinks and says: “Well I have top pair and top kicker, so you must have me beat, I fold.” The weak player shows his flopped set and rakes in the pot.

Imagine if you will the weak player not showing his hand. Now the strong player (and everyone else at the table) is wondering. Is that guy really weak? Did he have top pair beat? By showing his hand the weak player did nothing but let everyone know that he is indeed playing only premium hands; oh and… he will weakly call you down and give you a chance to beat him. He gave away valuable information on his own play and gained nothing. In fact, he made the strong player stronger by confirming that he had made a good read on the end.

The rule should read: Do not show your cards when you don’t have to, unless showing them will gain you an edge on your opponents. Next post will talk about some situations where you can gain from showing your hand. But first remember the “almost” poker rule: Don’t show when you don’t have to.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #210

Yes pocket aces can and do lose. You will hear players in every card room in the world complaining: “My pocket aces got cracked!” But you know that players talk more about big losses than big wins, right? No one every says: “I won with my pocket aces.” Well, of course you did.

We talked about the percentages in our last post but what is probably more important is how you feel when your aces get beat. Nothing can set you on tilt like a run of big hands that all go down in blazing defeat. But you simply cannot play big pairs afraid of the chance you might lose with them. In fact, a timid approach to aces or kings will increase the odds of them losing. Particularly beginning players should raise with pocket aces; don’t get cute and try to slow play those big pairs. What you want is a limited field and you want to punish them with a bet on the flop.

Not only does betting and raising with aces mean you will drive out long-shot drawing hands but you will also be charging those players a premium to out-draw you if they choose to call. You will win more than you lose with pocket aces, so you should also win more by playing them strong.

Let us repeat: You will win more often with pocket aces than you lose with them. No really, it’s true!

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #209

You wait and wait to get those big aces dealt to you in hold’em. There is no better starting hand than pocket aces. So they should be easy to play, right? Well not always. You are ahead with those aces but by how much.

AA vs. KK 81% to 19% (win percentage)

AA vs. AK 92% to  7%

AA vs. 78s 77% to 23%

AA vs. 72o 88% to 12%

Yes, you are ahead but you will not always win with those aces. The best you can hope for is 9 out out 10 against AK. Play against middle suited connectors and you will lose almost 1/4 of the time. Even the lowly seven deuce offsuit will win 12% of the time when you are loaded up with pocket rockets.

So when you do get those aces (approximately 1 in every 212 hands) what to do?

First, you need to win some chips with those big pairs; don’t scare away the fish by over betting them. On the other hand, all big pairs play better heads up or against at most two opponents. So, you need to make them pay to outdraw your monster aces. Aces don’t come around any more or any less often than any other pair but when they do, it certainly is better to be raking a pot of any size than seeing a big pot pushed the the other guy and your aces going into the muck.

The key to playing pocket aces is how you bet. You want to maximize profit and to do that you often need to minimize opponents in the hand. Good luck and may the flop be with you.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #208

#1 Poker Do: Play Fewer Hands

Probably the biggest mistake beginning poker players make is that they play too many hands. When you’re just starting out playing poker, you want to play, folding is no fun. This often means you will stay in hands when you cards just aren’t very good. You want action!

But playing more doesn’t mean winning more, just the opposite is usually the case. What you need to do to fill your time is to work on reading your opponents, that is what you do when you are not in a hand and that will make you a winning player a lot more quickly than playing that Q10 offsuit from under the gun.

Now if you really are an action junkie, what do you do? Well in a live game you can just try out the “maniac” style. Play nearly any hand, raise almost all the flops. You may find you are a naturally uber aggresive player, on the other hand you may just lose and lose. But fear not there is another solution.  Get yourself an online account and play four tables at a time but only at micro-limits. You will nearly always be in a hand with halfway decent cards and you can’t lose a lot of money. Eventually you will get over the need for action and decide to learn to play some good solid poker.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #207

When you are playing in a cash game, you may bet the chips you have on the table at the beginning of each hand. In some card rooms, cash also plays, if you have it on the table at the beginning of a hand. But follow this scenario: a hand ends and while the dealer is shuffling a player tosses out and bill and says to the dealer: “Chips please.” Now sometimes the dealer will change the bill from the chips the dealer has in the table tray, but more often the dealer calls the chip runner, who takes the bill and goes to the cage for chips. But the game does not stop and wait on those chips. The dealer will say: “The player is playing behind.” and the dealer will call out the amount. “The player is playing behind 100.”

This means that the player may bet those chips even though they are not physically on the table at the start of the hand. It is assumed the other players were paying attention and heard or saw the chip transaction and know that the player has more chips to play that hand. Any disputes will be in favor of the “behind” players increased stack, as long as the other players were made aware of the behind status.

The assumption that players at the table are paying attention to such actions or other floor rulings is always to be assumed. If a player misses such a call and in this case assumes the “behind” player is short stacked, the floor will always support the announcement if it was clearly made to the table. The bottom line is pay attention or potentially lose more than you intended to a player who is “playing behind.”

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #206

This is not a trick question: How many community cards are there in Texas Hold’em or Omaha?

Yes, five is the right answer, but to be absolutely correct, the answer should be “usually” five. Because there are times when you can have more than five community cards. This situation is called Running It Twice. In a cash game, never a tournament, when two players get involved in a large pot and one of them is all in, the may agree to run it twice. This means that whatever community cards still remain to flopped, turned or rivered; they will be put out twice. So if the “run twice” is agree to after the flop, then a turn and river are put out and then another turn and another river. The players are in effect playing two hands. If one player wins both, they win all the pot. If the players each win a hand, the pot is split.

This really is just a form of insurance when players get involved in a big pot. Not all poker rooms allow players to run it twice and some only allow it in their high limit games, so check with the floor or the dealer, if you want to run it twice.

If you want to discuss this interesting poker idea, head over to the online poker forum

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #205

In the previous post we wrote about making a laydown, which basically refers to any folded hand that “may” have had a chance to win the hand. Sometimes we get bluffed out with the best hand and other times some other factor like chip stack or position contributes to our laydown. A read on a player might lead us to play a hand or lay it down. This is just one more of the factors in making good solid decisions at the poker table.

But we often hear about a professional poker player making a Big Laydown. Of course, there are the television ads where the pro easily tossess away pocket kings when an ace comes on the flop. “You gotta lay’em down when you are beat.” Or so we are told.

The key skill in making the Big Laydown is an overall complete poker game. It is one thing to lay down a big overpair on an “all small” flop but the reasons why you make the laydown is what is key for a beginning player. A good read or a tell on your opponent will often give you the information you need to get away from a second best hand. And that is the key to any good Big Laydown, you are willing to muck a good, even a very good hand because you know you are second best this time. Sometimes you will be wrong, sometimes you will get bluffed, but if you never make a Big Laydown, you will never win the big event. Sometimes knowing when you are the loser is more important then knowing you are the winner.

-this is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #203