Mad Man Poker

In order for a regular poker game to stay alive it needs a couple of things:

It needs a spot to play. If your game has to move too much and you never know when and where the next action will be, there is no chance in hell you can keep it running.

It needs quality. Without players that have some advanced tricks up their sleeves the game will generally degrade to a once and again type of happening. People will start getting frustrated about tough decisions and will need more time to reload their appetite for poker.

It needs commitment. Without players that are actually prepared to worry whole night about poker hands, your game will slide into some kind of gathering where there happen to be some poker hands.

It needs material. Sure you can play on the kitchen table with pennies and cents, in your hand a cardboard deck that has more cringes than George Burns’ face, but for enjoyment reasons it is more fun to actually have some quality cards and chips in hand while you are sitting at your genuine poker table.

But most all

It needs players!

And that’s where it goes wrong most of the time.

Why?

Simple! Have you ever heard about a “consistent loser”?

Ok, Ok, Laliberté isn’t exactly winning, but he has so much money he hardly notices he’s losing.

Furthermore I don’t think anyone will be able to come up with names of active players who have been down in the trenches for a while now, but have nothing to show for themselves.

Players like that get lost along the way.

This makes for one of the biggest anomalies in home-game poker.

You start playing out with a bunch of friends and soon notice that there are consistent winners, people who win less often, but win big when they do, people who need to catch up a bit after a cold streak, and then you have consistent losers.

This type of player will leave the group, eventually, because there is no more fun in playing with the rest of the group.

Therefore you always need fresh blood in a poker game.

But what when you run out of friends who play?

Casino? Making new friends? Playing with people who are not your friends?

The solution is actually far more simple than this.
You need diversity in games.

From the original 9 players in my group 5 are to be considered nothing less than action-junkies. They play all games, and usually pick up on standard game strategies in card games quite fast.

Guys like this are not amused by No Limit Texas Hold’em alone anymore. They want PLO, Razz, deuce to seven, seven stud. But also badugi, blackjack, Chinese poker, gin rummy, heck, even coin flipping. In that very diverse list of games there is bound to be a source of pleasure for everyone. It is almost impossible that a player is consistenly getting beat in all these games.

The world is maybe centred around No Limit Hold’em, but it is sure not limited to that.

It’s a shame that new blood is usually only a bit experienced in NLH and has never played any of the other games.

It’s even more of a shame that when people ask me “hey, do you want to teach me how to play poker”, they are talking only No Limit Hold’em and look at me in utter disbelief when I start out “with the basics”, Limit 5-card draw, or try to explain that there are 3 major types of poker, community, stud and draw. Let alone I try to tell them what antes are.

In my experience it is not always the best idea to teach new players NLH from the start. I play a small pot of poker every year with my parents, aunt and uncle on Christmas eve. For 2 years I tried to lure them into the wonderful world of Texas Hold’em. It failed! The different types of hands where not to difficult to learn, and sure they understood the concept of the community cards, but their insight in pot odds was a disaster and they had no idea how to play pre-flop. And then I got an amazing idea! These 4 people are not idiots! They have a pretty decent level of intelligence and should be able to grasp a basic idea of gaming theory. Especially my mother likes to understand the deep underlayers of what she is playing and them not being able to catch up was beyond me.

I decided to cut out the No Limit part and give them a basic idea of information from the moment a hand started.

So, what game gives at least some information about the other players from the start and is generally played limit?

Yes, Seven card stud! My uncle fell for this game as a comet drawn to the gravity of the sun. My mum, finally rid of the pre-flop psychology part flourished in stud and found a type of poker in which she had to allow only me to consistently beat her. My uncle now wants to play whenever he sees a chance and because he feels he is getting beyond the point of the nit player he is really taking an interest in the game and is starting to show interest again in NLH, a game he was never drawn beyond the point of “throwing chips around” in.

So, in the end, they learned 2 games, in stead of 1, are more involved in NLH and have a far better understanding of the whole theorem of poker.

Mission accomplished, it seems.

Especially since it turns out that my dad, who’s not half bad at NLH doesn’t seem able to handle the draws and the swings that come with it in seven stud.

My uncle on the other hand likes chasing a drawing board in stud, but is not able to recognize a losing hand in Hold’em.

As long as we keep playing both games in a nice mix none of these two will lose interest in these evenings.

If we had stuck to 1 game (NLH) we would have lost my uncle after a couple of sessions and the game would probably have died out.

In fact he is now the motor behind us playing and even bought a small chip set of his own.

When you are playing another game than Hold’em, not only do you train your capacities of handling different situations, also, you might be keeping a player in your home game that otherwise would have been lost a long time ago. Think about that the next time you find yourself playing a game you’re not so good at.

Untill next time, try to broaden your horizon.

Should you come across some difficulty, come see us, we’ll show you all corners of the room.

The Mad Man