Posted by Dr Fro 8:50 PM
Before doing much poker advice, I wanted to share my story.

I have played poker my entire life. When I was barely old enough to see the table without the help of a phonebook under my butt, I played with my parents for pennies. Throughout elementary school and junior high, I played with my friends, sometimes for money, sometimes for candy, sometimes for bragging rights. The only games we knew how to play were 5-draw, 5-stud, 7-stud and 3-card guts. We would sometimes play all day.

In early high school, we played a little bit, but our interest in girls and cars and sports and all the things that 16 yr old boys love kept us from playing more than maybe twice per year. As a junior, I went on my first deer-hunting trip. The thought of waking up early to sit in the cold a wait for hours to kill an animal sounded dreadful. However, the girl that asked me to go was really hot, and she promised that her brother’s friends would be drinking beer and playing poker all night, all weekend. This was enough to convince me to come.

Sure enough, we played a lot of cards, and these guys were in college, so they knew all sorts of games that I had never heard of. I learned to play Chicago, Chase-the-Bitch, high-low split, baseball, and many more. This opened up a whole new world for me. I got back from the trip with no venison in the cooler, but a grand idea. I immediately called up my poker gang and organized a game for the ensuing Friday night. I promised it would be fun.

I taught all of these games to my friends and they were hooked. The wild nature and the variety made staying in a hand all the more alluring. Pots grew in size, the games lasted later into the night, and we al had more fun. My gang (Glazer, Ferruzzo, Harp, Young, Planck, and Martin) still play to this day, although not with each other.

Poker pretty much stayed the same until the last day of pledgeship my freshman year at UT. A few of us played poker for about 20 straight hours with some of the actives. We played all the games that my high school gang enjoyed, but the stakes were much, much higher. Winners and losers could see a few hundred dollars move between them every hour. I was surprised to see that the higher stakes affected the play of the game. Specifically, if people were completely rationale and did not let emotions get in the way of making the poker decisions that should maximize their chances at making profits, the size of the stakes would be irrelevant. But people are not rational. A guy with a great hand facing a $100 bet is much more likely to fold that the same guy with the same hand facing a 25 cent bet. This is intuitively obvious, but when you apply it to poker, the effects are pretty amazing.

In this game, bluffing was an extremely effective tool. It worked against me, as I folded great hands all night long and let the bullies run off with my money. Up to this point in my life, nobody (or nobody that consistently won) would bluff, because they knew that the entire table would call just for the simple fact that calling is more fun than folding, and the fun is worth the loss of a quarter.

I could have left that night depressed about the financial loss, but I was invigorated. I tend to take losses as challenges, and I swore that I would improve my game. My strategy was to play with my high school friends at higher stakes and employ the same bully tactics that worked on me. I did it, and it worked like a charm. It continued to work well until the day that Glazer realized that he should employ the same strategy (and multiply it by 10). Over time, our usual game developed into a pissing match between all of us, and I no longer made profits. I didn’t lose consistently either. I probably broke even for the 7-year period from 1991 – 1998. I didn’t care. We had a blast. We would drink beer until 8:00 am, and when I woke up the next day, I would reach in my pocket and find out if I won or lost. Winners and losers often had 4-digit successes and failures, so you could understand that I was quite curious to figure out what exactly happened the night before.

The game eventually fizzled, mainly due to the bad blood that inevitably follows the combination of drunkenness, high stakes gambling and friends. That was a shame, but the loss of my regular game sent me searching for a new game.

I called my friend Jeff Plank, with whom I’d somewhat lost touch over the years following high school. He said that he had a regular group that played and I was welcome to join. That Sunday, they were having a tournament.

I was in for way over my head.

These guys didn’t drink when they played. They used phrases I ‘d never heard of (“check-raise”, “representing the nuts”, “tight but aggressive”, etc). I initially thought they sucked because, after all, they only played for like $20 buy-ins, and I was used to buying in for $500. I was so wrong.

It was a re-buy tournament, and I don’t recall how many times I re-bought, but I was the first person out of the tournament. They were so much better than me, it was silly. Once again, I felt a challenge.

I bought my first poker book, The Theory of Poker. I read things that blew my mind. I read the book cover-to-cover probably 4 times in 1 week. I never knew that I was so ignorant on a game I had spent a few thousand hours playing. I then bought book after book and completely changed my approach to the game. I played in every game I could find and (almost) immediately became a consistent winner. John Greene started a monthly game at about this time, and I managed to leave as a winner 12 of the first 12 times we played, raking an amazing $1,038 (average $80 per contest). That is mind boggling for 25-cent poker.

At the same time, I was playing in some card rooms around town. My fortune there was not so good. I would dump a lot of money every time, but in retrospect I consider that my tuition. It took about 2 years of education and about $2,000 in tuition, but I finally learned how to beat those games, too. The people in those places have been playing several times a week for 20+ years, but 75% haven’t improved one bit over that time. I figured out who the winning 25% were, and I imitated their playing habits. I now beat those games.

The past two years are hard to label as any particular phase, because I have been playing so many different forms of poker and learning from them all. I have been playing online and in person. I have played pot-limit, no-limit, spread-limit, and limit. I have played Hold’em, Omaha, and dealers choice home games. I have played in the UK and US, in casinos, homes, and card rooms. And every second of poker I play, I learn. That is why I love the game. I am a geek that loves learning and application of knowledge. Applying what you learn is even more gratifying when it lines your pockets.

On a scale of 1-100, I would say that I am a 55 in the game of poker. Ten years ago, I would have put myself at 100, but in reality I was probably a 3. I have a long way to go, and it will take much longer than the first part of my journey. I will lose and win along the way, but I will always learn. I am looking forward to it.

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