Mark Harlan

Cheat Sheet / Updated 02-04-2022

Texas hold’em poker is everywhere these days — on TV, online, and in clubs and casinos. Before you sit down to a game of Texas hold 'em, make sure you’re in good shape to be successful — take care of non-poker issues and check your physical, mental, and financial status. During the game, you need to understand basic odds and playable hands, as well as how to bluff successfully and follow proper poker etiquette. Texas hold 'em also has its own abbreviations for online play.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Playing poker at home means you get to see your pals and you don't get chewed up by the rake. To improve your home games of Hold'em or any other kind of poker, outfit the gameroom (kitchen, basement, wherever) with a decent deck of playing cards, great lighting and ventilation; well-chosen chairs and table; and, of course, food. Upgrading your deck By far the best thing you can do for your game is getting rid of those wax-and-cardboard playing cards and moving to a deck made entirely of plastic. This is what casinos use at their poker tables and you should, too. All plastic cards last longer, are less prone to warping, and are even washable (for when your Cheetos fingers stain the cards orange). Paying $30 for a setup of two decks may make you gasp, but play one night with these babies and you'll wonder why you ever played with anything else. All plastics have an odd form of fragility and that is that they're prone to cracking if you play them on a hard surface. If you play on something like a kitchen table, put a doubled-up sheet or a blanket down first. Your deck will last longer. (Oh yeah, and don't leave them sitting in the sun either.) Chipping up Top-of-the-line poker chips are made of clay (this is what casinos use) and come in a cool aluminum case. Sets will usually also include a dealer button (and maybe blind and kill buttons). The best chips are known as clay composite and are weighed by the gram (heavier is better). A nice 15-gram set will run you around 11.5 grams (which are very playable and nice if you've been using bingo markers up until now) run around $40. Chowing down Come on, if you're gonna take the time to get together with your friends, you need to upgrade your food and grog. Seriously, get out of the generic aisle of your grocery store and quit serving that beer you stole from your parents so many years ago. If money is an object, have your pals chip in and bring something. Poker/barbecue is a surprisingly good combo. Ordering (good) pizza is never wrong. Lighting up Before you host a game, set up the table the way want to use it, complete with chairs. Deal a hand around to every spot, and then play your own version of musical chairs, where you sit in each seat looking at hole cards to check out the lighting. Don't light strictly from above (there isn't enough other ambient light to see the hole cards). An extra lamp here and there will make all the difference. Venting it all Home games get hot. Be sure you're playing in a place that has air-conditioning or windows that you can throw open to vent nicely (even more necessary if you're having a poker smoker and all the players are breaking out the stogies). Your basement may seem like a cool place most of your life, but put ten sweaty bodies in there, and stir in a few bad beats, and the walls will be sweating in no time. Your living room or the kitchen are probably better choices if you don't have good ventilation downstairs. Trashing the place The amount of raw waste that can be spawned by a poker game is truly amazing. (In fact, it seems like the quality of the game and the amount of garbage it generates are directly proportional.) Trash bags: Buy 'em, use 'em, leave 'em lying around while the game is in play. Wiping out the badness You want a wet washcloth, a towel, and maybe even a set of baby wipes, at the ready. Card tables and spilled drinks go together like kids around your car's fresh paint job — leave the two together long enough and you know there's going to be trouble. Be ready in advance, catch it when it happens. (And don't forget, you can always use the towel for those really bad beats — for chewing on or crying into.) Standardizing chairs Home games tend to have a problem in that not all the chairs are the same, almost always forcing a few players to crane their necks as they play. If you're going to start playing a lot, it's worth the time and effort to go out and get a set of common chairs for the table so everyone's sitting in the same thing. Foldables work well (especially with cushions). The funky, college-student-budget alternative is to buy white plastic patio furniture. When you get poker chairs, you want ones without arms — this lets you pack people in closer at the table (everyone rests his arms on the table anyway). Getting tabled A folding card table is a great buy because it gives you the soft surface you need for your all-plastic cards and you can store it away when you're not pretending to be a budding poker professional. You can put two bridge tables end to end. Good ones will run you about $100 each. If you want to get even more serious, you could think about buying a table that is professionally padded and liquid resistant with a low-friction surface (in the casino world, this is known as speed-cloth). One with built-in drink holders and detachable legs makes more sense, unless you want to just dedicate an area to poker in an extra room or basement. A top-of-the-line table runs between $500 and $1,000, depending on the bells and whistles you want on it.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Like all poker games, Hold'em has a very specific order in which the cards are dealt and played. Hole cards At the start of a Hold'em hand, after the two blinds have been posted, all players are dealt two cards facedown. These are known as the hole or pocket cards. Players then make a decision to call the blinds (match the big blind), raise the blinds (increase the bet) or fold (quit playing and throw their cards facedown to the middle of the table). In the form of Hold'em known as Limit, the bets have to be of a certain specified amount. In No-Limit, players may bet any amount of their chips on the table. If you're a newbie to the game, you might consider this: If both of your hole cards are not 10s or greater (Jacks, Queens, Kings, or Aces), fold. Yes, it sounds harsh, but it'll keep you pretty much only playing the cards that you should — and about the right frequency of hands. Make sure not to show your hole cards to other players at the table (even if those other players are no longer in the hand). And after you've looked at your cards, you should protect them from being collected by the dealer by placing an extra poker chip (or some other small object) on top of them. The flop After the betting action is done on the round with the hole cards (also known as pre-flop), three cards are displayed by the dealer simultaneously to the center of the poker table — this is known as the flop. At this point, each player at the table has a unique five-card poker hand consisting of his two hole cards and the three community cards. Because of the raw number of cards involved, the flop typically gives you the general tenor of the poker hand and definitely gives you a good idea of the kind of hand to look for as a winner. For example, an all-Spade flop (especially with a lot of players still in the hand) will be hinting at a flush as a strong possibility for a winner. Betting begins with the first person still in the hand to the left (clockwise) of the dealer button. As a general rule, you want your hand to match the flop, and you should fold if it doesn't. In Limit play, the size of the bet you can make on the flop is identical to the amount you can make pre-flop. The turn After the flop betting round is completed, another community card is placed, known as the turn (or sometimes fourth street). Each of the remaining players now has a six-card poker hand made up of his two private hole cards and the four community cards. Hold'em is a game where only five cards count toward a poker hand, so everyone has a theoretical "extra" card at this point. In Limit, the betting is now twice the amount that was bet pre- and post-flop. Poker wags like to say, "The turn plays itself," meaning your hand gets better and you bet it, or it doesn't and you start giving strong thoughts to folding. This is more or less true. The river After the betting round of the turn, a final community card is exposed, known as the river (sometimes called fifth street). Each player left in the game has his final hand consisting of the best five cards of the seven available (two private hole cards and the five community cards). Players may use two hole cards along with three community cards, one hole card combined with four community cards, or just the five community cards (known as playing the board). Again, poker hands are made up of the best five cards — the other two available to any given player don't count. There is one final round of betting. The showdown The showdown is what happens after the final river bets have been placed. Although it isn't formally required, typically the person who initiated the final round of betting is first to show her hand. The action then proceeds in a clockwise fashion with players either mucking their hands if they can't beat the hand exposed, or showing a better hand (at which point the dealer mucks the old, "worse" hand and continues around the table for any remaining hands). Winners and losers are determined by the standard poker hand rankings. If you're ever unclear about who is winning a hand, just turn your cards face up and let the dealer decide. Never take a player's word on what she has in hand until you've actually seen her cards with your own eyes — when you muck a hand, it's officially dead.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

In order to start betting in Hold'em, forced bets (known as blinds) are made by the two players immediately clockwise from the dealer button. The person immediately clockwise from the dealer has the small blind, and the next player clockwise has the big blind. Making blind bets is known as posting and this is done before any cards are dealt. The size of the bets are determined by the limits of the game that you're playing and the small blind is nearly always half of the big blind. So a $2/$4 Limit Hold'em game has a small blind of $1 and a big blind of $2. Blinds are forced bets. The players in these positions must make these bets or they aren't dealt cards in the hand. These blinds, in turn, force betting action on the table after everyone has been dealt their hole cards. At a casino, when you first sit down at a Hold'em table, the rules vary as to whether you have to post blinds (even if you're out of the normal blind positions for that hand) in order to be dealt a hand. In Las Vegas, you're dealt a hand as soon as you sit down and have shown that you meet the table's minimum buy-in. You're not required to post a blind in order to get hole cards. Conversely, in most California card rooms, you're required to post a big blind in order to get your starting hand. In cases where you're required to post a big blind before you're dealt cards, you're mildly better off just waiting until it would normally be your turn to get the big blind anyway, rather than jumping straight into the hand. Waiting like this keeps you from making an extra forced bet and gives an added bonus of being able to case the players at the table while you aren't actually playing. Dealers are used to this behavior and will probably ask you if you want to sit out (that is, wait until it's your turn to post the big blind). How soon you post is a fine point, though, that doesn't really make that much difference. If you're itchin' to play, or if you have a very limited amount of time to play, go ahead and jump in. The dealer will tell you whether you're required to post a big blind.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Everybody makes mistakes as they play cards. The wise learn and get better. The rest pull out another bill and feed everyone else at the table. Playing too many starting hands This is, by far, the biggest mistake that beginning and intermediate Hold'em players make. Sometimes there's a sense of passion behind it: like being on a losing streak so you start steaming and play more hands; or maybe you're on a winning streak and just want to rack up even more chips. There may even be a vendetta involved — you hate that idiot at the end of the table, so you start playing whenever you can to beat him. Whatever the reason, the more hands you play, the more money you're putting on the table. And this ultimately means that you need to win more (or bigger) hands. The law of averages will tell you that you will hit your limit of how much you should expect to win way before you play a huge number of starting hands. If you start getting desperate, don't play so many hands. Instead, concentrate on putting more firepower behind the hands that are legitimately good. Playing tired Don't underestimate the raw toll that fatigue takes on your game. Poker can put you in a zombielike state where you play for hours on end. If you find that you're having trouble thinking, stop and play later. Ignoring what you know about players at your table You should be keeping a close eye on all your opponents and as you do, you'll pick up tricks, hints, and characteristics about them. If you know something about an opponent that's warning you that the hand you have is a loser, you should fold. Make sure to consider any or all of the following: The way your opponent is betting in a given situation The types of cards she tends to play at his current table position The way the board will interact with the cards he tends to play Yes, it's hard to drop a good hand, but it's much harder watching your money walk over and sit in front of someone else. Becoming impatient In Limit games when you go card dead, you may sit for several orbits before playing a hand. This makes the little demon on your shoulder say something like, "Hey man, you're here to play poker not to watch everyone else play," and the next thing you know you're in a hand that you shouldn't be playing. There's an added impatience problem these days, too, and that is that a lot of players learn and play on the Internet where games are extremely fast. When they fall into the brick-and-mortar world, it feels like playing in a swimming pool filled with molasses to them. Action, action, action is what they want, want, want. Don't always try to make the big plays happen. Let the cards come to you first. Staying too long in a tough game You are not the best poker player in the world and you probably never will be. When you buy that, it shouldn't take you too long to agree that some of the better players in the world may be sitting at your very poker table. If you're up against a hard table, or a particularly bad combination of players, find a better game. In a professional card room, you can always ask for a table change (it won't weird them out — people do this all the time); online you can always just click on another table (or go to another site). If you're playing at a single-table joint, just pack it in for the day. Losses are hard on your bankroll as well as your poker playing self-esteem. Don't torture yourself. Letting your emotions get the best of you Q: How can you make a bad beat even worse? A: By letting it get the best of you psychologically, going on tilt, and destroying your bankroll hand after hand. Yes, you will lose poker hands by someone drawing their highly unlikely outs. Yes, someone will call with some hand he should have dropped and flop some monster five-card hand. It can, does, and will happen. (And no, it doesn't mean the online poker site you're playing at is rigged.) When you hit a big loser like that, you have to psychologically let it go. A bad beat is hard enough on your bankroll for that single hand; don't let it carry you through the rest of a session. If you don't have the personality that will let you just shrug it off and play the next hand, just take a quick walk around the card room. It'll help you adjust and deal with what's happened, and then you can sit back down, settle back down, and play your best game. Treating your Internet money like it's fake When you buy in online, you lose the association you have with your money. It's very different from a brick-and-mortar card room where you pull out a roll of greenbacks and hand 'em over. In the online world, you fill out a couple of electronic forms, type in a couple of passwords and you're off and running. Lose a little here? No problem. Buy in again over there? "Sure, why not, I already transferred the money from my bank account anyway." Stop. That money you're playing is real, honest-to-goodness cash that could be going to taking your sweetheart out to dinner, buying that jacket you want, or investing for the down payment on a house. The moment you get cavalier about the cash you spend online is the very point that you're in danger.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Texas Hold’em is a game of strategy, like any poker game, but where you’re sitting in relation to the action becomes part of your strategy when playing Hold’em. If you bet early, you generally need better cards than you do if you’re one of the blinds. The following table offers sound advice on what hands are playable when you’re sitting in different positions.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Playing online poker in general, and Texas Hold’em in particular, is a very popular pastime. When you’re online, you may encounter abbreviations specific to the world of poker. To understand what other players are saying, get familiar with these online abbreviations: Abbreviation What It Means Abbreviation What It Means 86 To remove or ban ne1 Anyone brb Be right back nh Nice hand gc/nc Slightly sarcastic phrase meaning good catch/nice catch gg Good game lol Laughing out loud gl Good luck nl No-Limit ty Thank you n1 Nice one :) Smiley face (view sideways)

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

The etiquette tips in the following list apply to Texas Hold’em and to any other poker game. Sure, you can have fun while you play poker, but you can have all the fun you want without being impolite to the other players or the dealer. Basic poker etiquette includes these tips: Always play in turn. Be aware of when it’s your turn to post the blinds and do so promptly. Any time there is a discrepancy at the table, talk to the dealer — not the other players — about it. If you’re not able to get satisfaction from the dealer, ask for a floorperson. Talking with other players about the problem you perceive may generate ill will among people who have no authority in the situation in the first place. Place your bets in front of you. Do not splash them into the pot. Do not show your hand to other players at the table while a hand is in progress. Tell the dealer when you intend to raise. In No-Limit, gather the amount that you’re going to raise and either announce the total, or move it all forward with one motion. This prevents being called on a “string raise.” Don’t forget to tip your dealer. Dealers work for minimum wage and rely on tips for their livelihood.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

What makes any poker game exciting, and Texas Hold’em is certainly no exception, is that players can bluff at any point. Sometimes half the fun of a game is seeing whether you can successfully bluff an opponent out of some money. But, even as you’re misleading your opponents, make sure you bluff in the right circumstances. Heed these bluffing tips: Only bluff where it makes a difference to your standing — either in a tournament or to your stack of chips. Be careful bluffing someone considerably worse than you are. He may call just to see what you have, or on some probabilistically low draw when he already has you beaten anyway. Bluff in situations where the board hints at the great hand you do not have: straights and flushes being hinted at by the board, the turn of an Ace, and so on. Don’t try to bluff players who only play the most solid of hands if they’re still in the pot. Don’t bluff people who are extremely likely to call. Do bluff the timid or people who are likely to fold. Remember that it’s easier to bluff in No-Limit than Limit because the bets (both implied and real) are bigger.

Article / Updated 03-26-2016

Whether you’re playing Texas Hold’em for fun or money — make that whether you’re playing for high stakes or low stakes — make sure you’re in a position mentally, physically, and financially to enjoy the game and make the most of your chances. Ask yourself these questions before you sit down to a game: What is the purpose of my playing this session? Whether it’s to learn more, win money, or just hang with friends for a good time, make sure you know why you’re there and that you’re doing everything you can to accomplish that goal. If I were to play an opponent who’s exactly the same as a well-rested, un-stressed version of me, would that person have an advantage? If the answer is “yes,” hold off on playing until you’re in a better psychological and physical state. Can my bankroll handle this level of play? If not, play a lower level. Are there any distractions in my life that I need to get rid of before I play? Pay your rent, walk your dog, call your significant other — whatever it is, get it out of your head so you can focus. Do I know if the house I’m playing in has any bonuses for players such as bad beat jackpots, high hands, free food and/or drinks for players, or freeroll tournaments? If not, ask a floorperson before you start playing and find out about the details of how you can qualify. Is there an aggressive person at the table I’ll be playing at? If so, try to get yourself seated to his left so you see the raises before your action and not after. What do I know about the people sitting at the table? Whatever it is, use it to your advantage.