How to Practice Poker Correctly pt 1

By Nick Laurrell

I went to Long Beach Polytechnic High School. Ranked by Sports Illustrated as the number 1 high school sports program of the 20th century, the alma mater of both Snoop Dogg and Tony Gwynn was quite a spot to see almost-NFLers work their ways from wanna-bes to gonna-bes.

I’m a Jackrabbit.

One of my high school buddies was this giant Samoan guy (of course named Junior) betrothed to UCLA or USC (since age 8 in all likelihood.) Not only was he a nasty fellow and a behemoth, but he had a tremendous work ethic as well.

It is my big buddy Junior’s off-season workout regiment that brings me to poker.

Junior was on the line, both defense and offense – he was a big boy on the line. But for those 6 or so months out of the year where he wasn’t practicing smashing people, Junior pursued a surprising enterprise – ballet.

First of all, there was nothing remotely resembling that scene from Fantasia to be seen when Junior did ballet (if he would let you watch;) no no, this was like watching the Terminator work on himself in a room of mirrors. Dude worked mercilessly on his flexibility, balance and lower body explosiveness – he neither wore tights nor put together a routine.

He was using ballet to get better at football.

So too can you use any number of non-Poker activities to improve your poker game. In that spirit, here is a look at five activities that you can pursue to improve your poker without sitting and grinding micro-stakes all day (which is in my opinion, barely poker – learning how to “play poker” by playing $.01/$.02 stakes is like learning how to deal with the opposite sex by watching porn, you may pick up a trick or two but don’t expect to re-invent your game through Ron Jeremy:)

1. Hearts: Hearts is a card counters obstacle course; along with Solitaire (which we’ll get to in a moment) Hearts generally comes pre-installed on any and every personal computer (or Mac) that you purchase. This is a tremendous gift for the open-minded poker player, as the game of hearts is built upon the idea of learning how to keep track of all 52 cards in the deck. If you are able to focus on playing Hearts for any sort of a prolonged period of time (either with people or alone on your own computer) then you will begin to develop a habit of cardcounting. Cardcounting is both beneficial to the poker player and the blackjack player (so beneficial that it will get you kicked out of casinos.) Pay particular attention to mastering the art of shooting the moon.

Read pt 2 of How to Practice Poker Correctly to get a poker view into other games like Solitaire, Magic: The Gathering and even baseball.

How to Practice Poker Correctly pt 2

In part 1 of How to Practice Poker Correctly we examined the role of the classic game of Hearts in developing your poker skills. In part 2, we will look at two other games: Solitaire and Magic: The Gathering

2. Solitaire: Solitaire is the other game that comes on every computer and can pay enormous dividends for the thinking poker player. Solitaire may at first seem like a mechanical game - you just make whatever move you can and call it a game. But if you begin to look at the probability of each card showing up then you will start to understand the choices presented to the solitaire player (and thus, get a more fluid idea of probability as it relates to the 52 card English deck.) Try this solitaire variant if you are a community card poker player: deal out your board and your first card off the deck. Then you are going to bid on the board (like, “I will pay $30 to play this board” you get $5 for each card that you put up; so an Ace is $5 followed by the appropriate 2 which would be another $5 and so on and so forth.) What you are doing here is learning how to interpret the probability of exposed cards and apply a monetary value to it (the essence of gaming,) invaluable for identifying flop textures.

3. Magic: The Gathering: In all honesty, I’ve never gotten that deep into Magic: The Gathering. But world famous pro David Williams was a Magic champion before trying poker, and look how well he’s doing. Though the basic difference between a deck of Magic cards and the 52-card English deck is profound (the 52-card English deck is a hard and fixed number so it establishes the same relative probabilities for every player, Magic decks are a player-constructed entity so they are all different) the concept of following what your opponent has and how to counteract that is as valuable as any other poker lesson I can think of. And if all else fails, you can sell those Magic cards for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars (to a comic book store or online.) So I guess the real reason behind learning how to play Magic is the most basic of all poker lessons; how to make every bit of money that you can.

Read part 3 of How to Practice Poker correctly for more tips on finding the poker in other activities including the stock market.

How to Practice Poker Correctly pt 3

In parts 1 and 3 of How to Practice Poker Correctly, we analyzed the roles of Hearts, Solitaire and Magic: The Gathering in developing specific poker skills. In the third and final installment, we will investigate two non-card activities: baseball and the stock market.

4. Baseball: No, you are not going to learn when to check-raise because you learn how to check your swing but there are some fundamental similarities between the great American pastime and the great American game. One of the differences between a good poker player and a great poker player is a thing called steam control – basically, good players consistently get themselves in statistically favorable positions to make money but are still prone to emotional swings (particularly after a nasty bad beat.) On the other hand, great players never get too high at the poker table, never get too low. They’ll lose $100,000 with AA against KK without cursing God, his opponent, the dealer or pit manager (season 1, episode 1 of GSN’s High Stakes Poker features such a hand with the great Barry Greenstein.) How? Because they know that at best, you’re generally never more than an 80% favorite pre-flop. While that may sound like a ton, that means that 20% of the time you lose. In the baseball world, 20% is a .200 hitter, a pretty good hitting pitcher. Or a 35% chance of victory (close to something like QJ v. AK which seems horrible to the QJ) is a .350 hitter –you may not be the favorite, but if you can equate your hand’s chance of victory with Barry Bonds’ hitting ability then you may find yourself controlling your emotions at the poker table a lot better.

5. The Stock Market: The stock market = poker without cards. Some investors place everything in product, only backing companies with strong product while others look solely for market share and the direction of the wind so to speak. These two types of investors could easily represent two types of poker players; one prone to getting involved with strong cards looking for consistent profit and the other looking to take advantage of the situation and find a mega pay day. Like poker, virtually everyone is a combination of both poles, and certainly the tops of each field are able to succeed through a mix of product evaluation and market share analysis. This is one of the best ways to understand position not just as a physical circumstance but a combination of factors like total assets (stack size,) trading volume (how often they are in pots,) market share (chip %,) patience (patience) and any number of additional factors.

Hearts, Solitaire, Magic, baseball and stock; these are five non Poker activities that you can put to use in developing your poker game. Certainly there are more than these five – the trick is learning to recognize what it is that you are learning and applying that lesson appropriately. Don’t forget to get your money’s worth with a good holdem bonus when signing up at a poker room.