Eggy's Games

For a few years of my life when I was younger I worked as a Croupier. Mostly dealing Texas-Holdem Poker. Now I'll start this article off by saying it is not recommended you gamble at all. It can become a severe addiction and I have seen many people come in and lose fortunes only to go home miserable.

However, if there is one game I think you have the best chances of walking away with money it's Texas Holdem Poker played against other players. It's a game that can only be played with one deck of cards allowing you to calculate the odds of each hand. It also means other players can make mistakes, as opposed to a casinos system like blackjack which uses multiple decks and the maths is always against you in the long run. Poker however, you have more chances the longer you play. Which goes directly against the casinos policy.

You vs Real People and Not an Automated System

This article should not be confused with playing poker against the house. This is a different game and the rules are quite different. Most people only play this to win the casinos main jackpot.

Texas Hold-em instead you will be sat down with other players at a table with a dealer (like I used to be) and you are now vsing real people, and not a system. People make mistakes. Systems don't.

When vsing people you now have a real chance of making money, because people will make mistakes and you can exploit them for money. You can learn to read bluffs, you can learn to intimidate with big bets, you can learn to play it slow and trap people, you can learn a lot about human behaviour.

Something straight off the bat I can give you advice on is judging people as soon as you play. Cocky and aggressive men tend to bluff more. So playing slow winning hands against arrogant men can lead to a big payoff. Likewise, if you meet a shy reserved man they might be easier to intimidate off pots with bluffs. Men and women also behave different. Women tend to be play more conservative and if they are in a hand till the end, there's a better chance they have a good hand. Men take bigger risks in general and like to splash money more.

Stereotype them to begin with, then get into more detail as time progressives. Every time a person bluffs you off a hand take note of it. Start counting each persons bluff ratio vs their good hands ratio. You need to be taking mental notes of every persons behaviour at the table the entire time. It can be mentally exausting if you do!

As you can see, when vsing people you can learn about them, learn their playing patterns and start to exploit them the longer you sit down to play. Leading to one of the best psychological games of all time.

Poker will always be a great game simply for the aspect of learning people and their behaviours.

One Deck of Cards Is Easy Maths

The fact that poker only ever uses one deck of cards means you can start doing the maths of every hand. There is 52 cards in a deck which means if you double any number you get an accurate %. Let's take for example a flush. If you are holding 2 hearts in your hand, that means theres 11 hearts you do not know about. Lets say the flop comes down, and on the board is 2 hearts. That means there is now 8 hearts left in the deck.

From here we can calculate. If we know about 4 hearts and there is 9 remaining. It means we double that number for each card that comes down. That means the chance a heart is going to come up next is 18%, now since we have 2 cards to come out in Texas Hold-em after the flop, this results in 36% chance you will hit a flush with 2 cards to go. That's decent odds, hence why people will bet it before they got it.

Once you know the maths behind this, you know the times to start betting and staying in the hand. If the next card isn't a heart then it's going to reduce from 36% down to 18%. If the person makes a large bet, you gotta think to yourself. Is it worth risking all that money on 18%? those are the difficult choices, but a lot of people don't know these numbers.

There are %'s for every situation in poker. Learn them, and you won't ever lose a home game again.

Learn The Game From Small Tournaments

You can find lots of small tournaments around citys in pubs. These usually are only $50 to enter and allow you to play for a good 2-6 hours depending how you go. These are the best way to learn to survive poker, you will be able to hone your chops before moving onto the cash tables and casino.

Be aware that there are sharks in the casino especially. They may know the game inside out better than you ever will. So try start by entering more local tournaments before vsing the better players that grind the casino for long hours.

You can take down a shark, but be careful they know the same tricks you do and more.

Conclusion

As you can see there's a lot to the game that makes it a much better choice than blackjack, roulette and other games that is mostly luck. Poker still has that element of luck but instead of it being 99% luck like other games, it's more like 60% luck and 40% skill. You can avoid costly hands and you can increase costly gains when needed.

If you insist on gambling, then make sure you go in fully armed with knowledge or you are just another sucker doomed to lose all his money