While there’s a ton of instructional info on the web to give you all the strategies and tips for playing your best, I’d like to focus on ways of getting the most fun out of playing holdem at home. Our perspective is that holdem is simply fun to play. We’re not doing it as a means of income, but we’re playing for entertainment purposes. The competitive aspects of friendly poker are no different than you’d find in your weekend golf or tennis game.

It’s simply nothing more than having a great time with friends or family at home. So, let’s look at some of the things that can make it even more fun.

Create The Atmosphere?

The first way to enhance our fun is to create the proper atmosphere. No, we’re not going to build a room that will hold the World Series of Poker or the World Poker Tour. But, without a lot of trouble and not too much expense, we can create our own poker room environment.

Before we begin, I’ll state the obvious and suggest you get some high quality poker chips. Personally, I prefer medium heavy, clay poker chips. They’re more fun to play with, add to the game, and you can do all the neat chip riffles you see on TV that don’t work with cheap, plastic chips. Plus, they’re just cool.

Next, consider getting a poker table. While the dining room table may work, you can add greatly to your game by having a genuine holdem poker table. They come in all price ranges. You can get an inexpensive table-top that you simply put on top of whatever table you’re using. They have the look of a real table but at a fraction of the cost.

But, if you’re really into your poker and can justify the cost, there’s some beautiful looking poker tables that are a genuine piece of furniture. They are not only the best way to play, but they can be quite striking as furniture in a recreation room.

Now, if you’ve got a very nice table, how about adding a neat light above it? One that’s tailor made for playing cards. All kinds of choices from Tiffany lamps to poker lamps.

If you’re going to go all out for your game room, here’s a few ideas that really add that special touch.

-Jukebox

-Popcorn machine

-Dart game

-Electronic dart game

-Pinball machine

-Foosball

-Posters of poker champions or your favorite players

-Poker wall art

Neat Accessories?

If you want to dress up your game without spending a lot of money, here’s a few more ideas.

How about poker buttons to help the beginners? You can get a set of buttons which include the dealer button and one for the small and big blind. It can help remind beginners when they have to ante up and where the play begins.

Shoes for dealing cards and card shufflers are also inexpensive, but functional items as well. Or how about a deck of World Poker Tour playing cards. It’ll give you that “official” look.

You also might want to consider a chip case. Or get the entire chip set including a classy aluminum or wood case. If you have large games, you can buy packages that have as many chips as you’ll need. How many chips are needed is covered in another article or you can do a web search.

So, these are just a few ideas to help you have the absolute most fun from playing poker with your friends. Factor in the enjoyment factor and how much you’re willing to spend, then decide which of these ideas fit best into your entertainment plans.

by Dave Cushion

* Online poker room play

* Poker tournaments

* Online poker room financial brokers (e.g., Firepay, NetTeller, Citadel and others)

* Casino poker rooms

* Game units for your TV

* Poker chip sets and dealer buttons (you can even get “collector” edition dealer buttons signed by the pros - got some as Christmas presents this year!)

* Poker tables and instructions for how to build poker tables

* Poker software (poker odds calculators, poker games, home tournament organizers, tournament director kits)

* Texas holdem poker rule and starting hand cards

* Poker schools and training courses

* Poker books and strategy e-books

* Poker hats, shirts and clothing items

* Local poker clubs

* Free Texas Holdem poker stuff of every kind imaginable.

To give you an idea of how many people are now playing with real-money online, have a look at PokerPulse.com. PokerPulse keeps tabs on the top online poker rooms and tracks how many real-money poker games are running at any point in time. Some estimates based upon these statistics suggest that online poker room companies are turning over in excess of $110 million U.S. every 24 hours, with hundreds of thousands of online players active any given evening.

So, with the worldwide inertia that poker has today, how far can it go? Will it be like the CB Radio - a brief flash in the pan and then suddenly - poof! Will it be just another fad and memory, with occasional reminders like Smokey and the Bandit? Hard to say for sure, but with the momentum, advertising and so many young people, including many teenagers and children playing across the Internet, it could be that the poker big bang has occured and its expansion has only really begun…

As with many new, controversial phenomenon such as poker, there’s the social morality aspect and question: Is playing poker gambling? Is it really just a game of skill? The question of whether online poker rooms are just as much about gambling as traditional casino games and online bookie operations is certainly one that is shaping some industries, and creating some others. Before we look for the answers to those questions, let’s explore what the actions of certain parties might lead us to believe.

For example, the traditional credit card processors (MC, VISA, AMEX, PayPal, and others) decided to discontinue use of their credit card services to fund player’s online poker accounts. Today, there’s a whole cottage industry that has sprung up to fill the enormous demand for transferring funds between bank accounts and online poker room accounts, processing untold millions of dollars each day.

Try advertising a poker-related item through Google’s AdWords or the Yahoo/MSN equivalent (Overture) and you’ll quickly find they have a category known as “Gambling URL” that’ll come into play. Any website that could be related to online poker rooms is considered a “gambling” site and advertising services are thereby refused. So, what happened as a result? Well, aside from these companies losing advertising revenues, it’s forced the poker industry into fierce competition for the poker-related search “namespaces”. Try searching for something using keywords like “Texas Holdem poker” and see what you find.

It’s amazing at how clogged up the search engine namespace has become, with every search engine optimization (SEO) technique and trick known to man being used by poker website owners in an attempt to gain visibility, page ranking and routing of more visitor traffic to their websites.

In my opinion, the answer to the question “Is playing poker gambling?” is - it depends. It depends on the player’s skill level. If you’re a highly-skilled player, then IMHO it’s not gambling - it’s playing a sophisticated game like chess, where you not only must defeat the opponents but you must also use strategy and play the odds in order to win.

You beat the odds by playing only certain starting hands from given positions at the table, adjusting your play based upon the game situation, understanding other players’ styles, and by developing a strategy for winning, throwing your weight (chip stack) around at the right times, and by sitting out at other times. No, it’s far from gambling for many of us. However, for those who don’t possess the requisite skills, it is gambling more often than it’s not, since skill is much less of a factor for such players. Since the basic rules are deceptively simple, people often have no idea why they’re beaten.

What makes it very different from traditional casino gambling games, though, is that you’re not playing against the house. The online poker room takes a “rake”, a percentage of the money that’s in play (e.g., 10% or so), which is how the online poker room generates revenues. It doesn’t really matter who wins or loses, since the poker operator always gets paid for hosting the game.

I’ll cover popular online poker rooms in a future article in more detail, but suffice it to say, there’s gold in them there hills and the claims have been staked by the market leaders, who are raking in fortunes providing their sophisticated online service businesses to millions of eager players worldwide.

Since these business aren’t allowed to operate within U.S. borders, they’re virtually unregulated (at least by U.S. standards) and new ones continue to pop up every month. Now I don’t want to make it sound like everyone who plays online is playing with real money - quite the contrary. There’s an enormous number of players who just use “play money” and have a real blast playing and socializing via the use of instant messaging and interactions through the online poker room site.

So, is the poker phenomenon a trend or just another fad that’s destined to take it’s place in our video library, beside Smokey and the Bandit and that CB radio wave that crested in the 1970’s? Hard to say for sure. One thing is for certain. A lot of people are having fun playing in online poker rooms, at traditional casinos and in their own home games - while an army of others are supplying that demand, and making a boatload of money in the process.

Until next time - Good Luck!

by Rick Braddy

Knowing the probability of making a specific hand in poker can be done by calculating hand odds. Figuring out how many outs you have will give you the possibility of calculating the number of times you will hit your hand by the river.

Lets say your’e dealt A-9 of hearts in Texas Hold’em and the flop comes up showing two hearts. Your hand odds for hitting another heart by the river will be approximately 36% or 3 to 1. (you will hit your hand 1 out of 3 times)

You can figure this out by first finding the number of outs that you have. Outs are the number of cards remainig in the deck ( not visibe to you) that can help you make your hand.

So if we are using the hand above as an example and you hold A-9 of hearts and catch two hearts on the flop, than you have 9 more hearts in the deck that can help you complete your flush. 2 hearts in your hand + 2 hearts on the table minus 13 hearts in total = 9 outs.

If you multiply your number of outs by 4, than you will get an approximate percentage of hitting your hand by the river (9×4=36%).

Poker pot odds is the ratio between the size of the pot compared to how much it will cost you to call a bet from another player. The higher the ratio between the size of the pot and the cost of calling a bet, the better your poker pot odds are.

If there are $40 in the pot after the flop and a player bets $10 and two other players calls his bet then you are getting 7 to 1 in pot odds. If you are chasing the A-9 flush draw from the flop , than you are getting a 36% or 3 to 1 in hand odds to catch your card at the river, so calling or even raising this bet will be a correct decision to make.

My credit card company had other plans.

My first trip into an online casino was great. Seconds after giving up my credit card information I was at a table going all in against some guy from Norway.

But last week, when I tried to open an account at a new Web site, my card was declined. Then it was declined again at six different sites. I felt like one of those desperate guys I’ve seen at the casino ATM so many times, except that I was in my pajamas.

I called my credit card company and they told me they no longer allow deposits into gambling sites. I explained that I’m an adult and if I want to play cards in my underpants that was my business. The customer service agent told me it was company policy not to do business with Internet gamblers.

OK, fine. How do they feel about sex, drugs and guns? I decided to find out.

Getting full access to an adult Web site took less than two minutes. I won’t tell you which site it was, but I will tell you that the women at the private schools I’ve attended didn’t behave in such a manner.

While the sex was easy to get, the drugs were more difficult.

I found a very professional-looking site called anaboliczstore.com. I don’t know if it’s endorsed by baseball players, but it has both kinds of testosterone: real and synthetic. I opted for 25 tablets of Sustanon. This is a very popular anabolic steroid used to bulk up quickly, and for $34 it could be at my door in a week.

The catch was I had to set up an account at a third-party Web site to pay for my purchase. The approval process on this site was fast, and I was told I could safely make monetary transactions with other approved Web businesses. I was warned it would not complete transactions with gaming sites, but buying illegal testosterone pills wasn’t a problem.

My last test was on a friendly little site called gunbroker.com. It’s eBay for people who like hunting, militias or just blowing stuff up. Setting up an account was as easy as giving them my e-mail address and credit card number (which was instantly approved).

For $160 I won an auction for a Charter Pathfinder .22-caliber handgun apparently being sold from a hunting store in Missouri. Not surprisingly, buying a sidearm from an out-of-state weapons dealer didn’t cause any problems with my credit card company. I was relieved when the dealer said he wouldn’t send me the pistol until I faxed him over a copy of my gun owner’s license.

I wish my credit card company cared as much.

An e-mail from the credit company’s PR department said dealing with gambling sites is “high-risk” and to “protect our cardmembers from any fraudulent activity on their accounts, we do not accept online gambling transactions.” Where were they when I wanted protection from those schoolgirls? They seemed very naughty.

Poker sites deal with the fact that credit card companies think underwear-clad gamblers pose more of a threat than perverted, pumped-up sharpshooters. Just fork over your checking account number and they have full access to the place where all of your money goes. My wife didn’t even have that until we were married for four years.

So I’ll have to wait to find a new poker room, and I’m OK with that. I’m just glad I’ll get the ‘roids in a few days. The Cubs need a power-hitting left-fielder before September.

by Clay Champlin

While post-graduate poker players may lament the fact that they never received such an enjoyable math assignment during their college years, the teaching of mathematic principles and theories by some of American’s top universities underscores what we have long been saying - that part of poker’s uniqueness is that skill is needed to win, not simply pure luck.

Even folks who are now debating over whether to call poker a “game” or a “sport” have little disagreement with the fact that it takes talent to play poker correctly and winningly.

Strategy, observation, cleverness, memory, tactics and acting are all the unique demands of poker, and Americans seem to be in high pursuit of these talents. Bookstore tables and shelves are groaning under the weight of poker manuals, guides and brochures, as more than 70 million Americans play poker today.

All across the country, grandfathers are being rejuvenated with spirited challenges from grandchildren.

Folks stream to play for charities. They play in tournaments with television cameras, klieg lights, boom mikes, $10,000 entry fees and $7.5 million payouts.

And there are players in basements, barnyards and backyards. There are even celebrities, complete with the lights, cameras and action to make the game hot and in the spotlight.

But the requirement of skill is important not just in deciding whether it is a sport or a game. When governments recognize that poker is a game of skill, then poker players can play their craft without worrying about being the targets of confused law enforcement officials or politicians who see the new interest in poker as a way to boost the arrest tally or collect unexpected revenues.

Now, as public support and interest in poker grows through televised celebrity matches and other events, several states and localities are making changes to laws that encroach on poker players’ abilities to play online, at home, in bars, taverns and even at charity events across the country.

Also, some at the federal level have dedicated themselves to putting an end to interactive poker, while at the same time portraying all poker games in a negative light. Opponents have seen the growing popularity of poker and have tried to obscure the commonly accepted notion that poker is a game of skill, not a game of chance - a word change aimed at stripping longtime legal protections for poker.

These changes would mock the long-standing historical significance of the game. From presidents to generals, Americans have looked to poker and the skills they have acquired from the game to help think clearly and make tough decisions.

For example, after several defeats at the hands of aggressive Southern generals, President Abraham Lincoln put the hard-drinking poker player Ulysses S. Grant in command of the Union Army. Using his well-honed poker skills, Grant succeeded in the ultimate bluff by misrepresenting his troops’ position and strength, divining his opponents’ intentions and countering with devastating effectiveness.

President Dwight Eisenhower is said to have courted his future wife, Mamie Doud, with his poker winnings. And his future running mate, Richard Nixon, won enough pots playing stud in the Navy that he was able to finance his first congressional campaign.

As a game of skill, poker is designed so anyone can win. In this match of intellect, the true underdog can prevail, causing average poker-playing women and men everywhere to dream of being the next poker superstar. And they all learn a crucial variation of knowing when to hold them and when to fold them: It is better to be skillful than lucky.

by SAM GOREWITZ

I’m over 60 years old. Three years ago when I walked into a local poker room, I knew most of the players. Their average age was probably fortysomething and three or four kinds of poker were being played throughout the room.

Today when I walk into the room I don’t recognize anybody. Most of the faces are younger than my own kids and only one game is usually being played - Texas Hold’em.

I’m mentioning this because of a recent feature article in this newspaper about young people who have become harmfully addicted to poker. Thanks to the immense popularity of Texas Hold’em on TV, poker has become the latest overindulgence craze, sometimes outranking booze or pot smoking among the younger set.

Poker addiction starts out very subtly. You see somebody on TV going “all in” on a bluff with a worthless hand, and his opponent eventually folds, giving the bluffer a big pot. It looks very cool - like something you’d like to try.

So you get together with some friends and play a little no limit Texas Hold’em - just like on TV. It gives you a rush and you want to play it again - only next time for more money. Pretty soon you’re playing all the time, and not for the purpose of learning how to win - but just for the thrill of the gamble!

All the wrong reasons: Well, the same tendencies that can get you addicted to drugs and alcohol have gotten you hooked on poker. The right reason to take up poker is to learn how to win at it - not to experience the thrill of playing. These two reasons require vastly different playing styles.

Oh, there is a side benefit to playing poker the right way, but it’s not the thrill of the gamble. It’s the development of your character.

You see, to win at poker you must use extreme self-discipline. Rationalization is your most dangerous weakness. You must remain objective enough to see what is, not what you want to be - and then act on it accordingly.

You know what that means? It means you must throw away 75 percent of your hands without even calling that first bet. And as for the other 25 percent that you call the first bet with - you’ll fold more than half of those before the hand is over. After all is said and done, you’ll play maybe one hand out of 10 to the showdown. There’s not much of a gambling thrill in that. But if you want to win - even survive - that’s what you’ve got to do.

I’d like to give the following stern piece of advice to all the new poker players out there. If saying “no” to yourself three times out of four isn’t your cup of tea, then poker is not going to be your friend. You’d be better off having a beer or two. But if you’ve got the patience to sift through all the garbage while waiting for a good hand, then can exercise the self-discipline to throw that good hand away when your clear vision says you’ve been beat, poker can be a satisfying and rewarding character builder.

All good poker players have this quality. Most weren’t born with it - they developed it. They learned how to tell themselves the truth, even when the truth was disappointing - and they can use that virtue to their advantage in all aspects of their lives.

I read my first poker book almost 30 years ago, “Poker, A Guaranteed Income” by Frank Wallace. It contained a one-page epilogue that I believe described true poker most eloquently. I’ll summarize that inspiring epilogue here:

“Poker is a character catalyst that forces players to reality. Those who evade thinking cannot escape the penalties. The winning poker player views all situations realistically. He pits the use of his mind against the unwillingness of his opponents to think. The loser makes himself a loser. The winner makes himself a winner. Poker is sheer justice.”

by Fred Renzey

Though I am not much of a gambler, I love it, and apparently so do a lot of other Americans.

The phrase “poker revolution” is making the rounds. Part of the credit for the surge has to go to the Internet. Playing poker (legally) once meant a trip to a casino, which can be expensive, intimidating and a far piece to drive or fly for most of us. Now that almost all our living rooms are connected by cable and/or satellite signals, anyone can play anytime.

In our underwear or less, if we want to. “Online cardrooms” also allow a player to play some free games and learn the nuances without losing his proverbial shirt.

PokerPulse, an industry research group, reports online poker grew from a $300 million a year industry in 2003 to a projected $2.9 billion this year. The number of online players has reportedly increased to 1.8 million per month, with up to 100,000 people playing online during peak hours.

The year 2003 was a big one for both the online poker industry and the traditional casino game. That was the year an accountant and amateur poker player named Chris Moneymaker put $39 down to get into an online poker game and won the right to enter the World Series of Poker (WSOP) tournament against the best professionals out there. A Knoxville native, Moneymaker traveled to Binion’s Casino in Las Vegas and won the entire tournament - a $2.5 million payday.

The World Series of Poker main event of No Limit Texas Hold ‘em is a live-action tournament that welcomes anyone older than 21 who has valid proof of age (and money). The number of entrants in the event has grown 1,000 percent since 2000, when 512 hopefuls anted up. Moneymaker beat out 839 entrants in 2003.

His amazing “kid from outta nowhere” story inspired more than three times as many people (2,576) to pull up a chair in 2004. There were 5,662 entrants this year.
While eventually these numbers will level off, I think poker is here to stay. For one thing, it is a sport of personalities.

I have a favorite player - Chris “Jesus” Ferguson - and know enough about him to know that he has won five WSOP titles and is a doctoral student at UCLA who already has a degree in computer science. Artificial intelligence is his specialty.

I also have players I hiss at on a regular basis. Chris Hellmuth, known as the “Poker Brat,” is a favorite target of my derision, though he is one of the best players to ante up.

Ages ago my psychology professor lectured on operant conditioning and rats in cages. I remember him saying that rats trained to push a lever for a treat would respond strongest to a variable rate of return. For example, a pellet of food might appear after the rat pushed the lever only twice, but not again until he pushed it eight times. Poker, and gambling in general, is a lot like that.

Players (and vicariously, those of us spectating at home) do what it takes to get their treat - play their best - but never know when they will get a reward. Three kings and a 90 percent chance of winning the hand can turn out a loser when the last card (known as the River card in Texas Hold ‘em) turns out to be a two of clubs, giving your opponent a flush.

How far away from casinos and smoke-filled backrooms has poker come? CBS Sports will televise parts of the upcoming ProJo Poker tournament at the Tropicana Casino and Resort in Atlantic City, their press release calling “‘Average Joe’ Poker players to come play against other recreational poker players for a shot at the world’s top poker pros and nearly $40 million in prize and bonus money….” Absolute Poker joined other online casinos in organizing tournaments to raise relief funds for the victims of Hurricane Katrina.

Poker may not challenge baseball, football and basketball for primetime anytime soon, but I don’t think it is just a fad, either. Fads come and go; gambling has been here since Eve bet nothing bad would happen if she took a bite of that apple.

by Dave Russell

John Smith has decided to run a small office pool for Super Bowl Sunday, in conjunction with a party at his house. He made up a sheet divided into squares, a 10-by-10 grid that covered where all the possible scores could fall. Players could buy a square on the grid for a dollar, and whoever had the right score numerically would win the hundred dollars. His ex-girlfriend got wind of the party and informed her new boyfriend, who was on the local police force. As the winning team began their celebration and John was about to pay off, there was a cry at the door, “Open up; police.” John was arrested for gambling, and his sheet for the office pool was taken as evidence against him.

These accounts are fictional. They never happened, and would be extremely unlikely to occur. They were constructed to illustrate the types of activity that a person could be arrested and jailed for in my home state of Michigan, according to state law. Of course, gambling laws are not strictly enforced. The approach is to make all gambling illegal, and leave it up to the chief of police to determine what gambling activity is enforced and what is ignored. Since that job is an elected office in my county, the chief would be a fool to use his meager resources to conduct a crackdown on the type of activity described. The chief is aware of the local gambling mores, and some people on the force are avid poker players, so he uses discretion in enforcing the law.

There is a lot of pressure these days on judges to “follow the law instead of make the law,” but people seem blissfully unaware that there is a high degree of discretion in enforcement of certain laws. By far the biggest area in which police are supposed to think for themselves is in enforcing the gambling laws. Police are relied on to use their own judgment regarding the law (even though judges are not supposed to do it).

Of course, no one is perfect. There have been some infamous lapses in judgment by police from time to time; like when a Dad’s Doughnut Shop in California was raided because the patrons were playing chess for 50 cents a game; or when a senior citizens trailer park in Florida had a poker game raided, and the police confiscated $22 that had been in the pot as evidence of illegal gambling. (The arrested players subsequently became famous as the “Largo Seven,” and appeared on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show to tell their story.)

These lapses in judgment by police are almost laughable; others have not been quite so funny, like the time in the ’70s when a SWAT team in the Detroit metro area followed a “suspicious character” to a poker game in an apartment, then decided to raid it. The poker players turned out to be a group of Oakland County deputy sheriffs, who understandably thought they were being hijacked. In the resulting gun battle, three men were wounded and one died.

My home state of Michigan may not be as sophisticated as some of the coastal states like New York, Massachusetts, or California, but it is hardly considered to be a hick state, and it is not located in the Bible Belt. Why does my state have such draconian laws? In fact, about half the states in our nation have the same stringent laws on gambling that Michigan does.

These state laws specify what gambling is legal; any other gambling is illegal. Gambling is legal if the state does it. We of course have a state lottery. Gambling is legal if a casino does it. We have casinos, both on Native American land and off it. We have our share of racetracks, where gambling is an innate part. But you cannot gamble at such potentially sinful locations as your home, office, or country club. If you and I make a private wager on a round of golf here, we have broken Michigan law.

Where do such stringent laws on gambling come from? They certainly were not written in the 21st century. Most of them were not written in the 20th century. In fact, nearly all of them were drafted in the 19th century. That was a long, long time ago. That was the century when slavery was legal in America, and the U.S. Supreme Court said a runaway slave had to be returned to his master. That was the century when a British seaman could be given 50 lashes or more with a cat-o’-nine-tails if the ship’s captain was displeased with him. It was a totally different era in our society. It does look a bit peculiar now to permit branding and whipping people, but disallow all gambling. Yet, a vestige of that rather morally skewed time period continues in our gambling laws.

The spread of state lotteries, tribal casinos, and the popularity of our game of poker all indicate that modern society is far removed in action and attitude from the age when our gambling laws were enacted. Nearly everyone is aware of this immense change in our attitude toward gambling as our society has evolved, but our state laws do not reflect this change. Yours might not, either. It is high time that they did.

by Bob Ciaffone

A simple generic definition of the term pot odds would be - the odds the pot is laying you in comparison to the bet you are facing. In other words, if there is $500 in the pot and your opponent has bet $100, your pot odds would be 6 to 1. Why 6 to 1? Well, since there is already $500 in the pot and your opponent has bet an additional $100, that totals $600. Since you need to call $100 to stay in the pot, your odds are 6 to 1.

Simple enough, right? So how exactly do you apply this basic knowledge to a poker hand? Here’s how to figure out your pot odds, compare them to your actual odds, and then assist you in making an informed decision as to whether or not you should continue playing the hand.

Step 1 - Figuring the Pot Odds

This is the easy part. You count what’s already in the pot and add it to the amount of the bet you are facing. You then compare that sum to the amount your opponent has bet. So again, if there was, for example, $200 in the pot and your opponent bets $20, your pot odds would be 11 to 1 ($220/$20= 11 to 1).

Okay, so now that you know what your pot odds are, it’s time to figure out if you are getting the right price to continue playing the hand.

Step 2 - Figuring Your Actual Odds

This can be a little more difficult depending on the situation. You can find a table of actual odds in almost any poker book on the market. Another option is to pick up some simulation software that will calculate the odds for you. But since you obviously won’t have access to a book or software right there on the spot, here’s how to figure out your actual odds while seated there at the table.

The first thing you need to do is count your outs - meaning the number of remaining cards that will improve your hand. Then compare that number to the total number of unseen cards still in the deck. Here’s an example.

Let’s say the board reads Kc 7s 6d 2h, and in your hand you hold 8h 9h. Now with just one card to come, you have eight outs - the four remaining 5’s and the four remaining 10’s - to make your straight. There are 52 cards in the deck, and since you already know what your two cards are, as well as the four community cards on board, that leaves 46 unseen, unknown cards. Of those 46 cards, eight will give you a winning straight, while 38 will miss. So the actual odds of making your straight then are 38 to 8, or 4.75 to 1 (38/8= 4.75 to 1).

Since you know the pot odds are 11 to 1 and your actual odds of improving your hand are 4.75 to 1, you can see that you’re getting a great return for the investment and should call.

If, however, there were only $20 in the pot and your opponent bet $20 then the pot odds would be only 2 to 1, and you wouldn’t be making a good investment at all by calling the bet. In this example, even though you have eight outs, the correct play would be to fold the hand.

The goal in poker is relatively straight forward and simple. It’s not about how many pots you win. It’s about making good investments, much like you would in any business venture.

By understanding pot odds, you can make educated decisions as to whether calling or folding would be good long-term investments. As is true in the stock market, if you make good decisions in the short-term, you’ll make a decent profit in the long run.

by DANIEL NEGREANU

Just because there are bad poker players doesn’t mean poker is a bad game.

In fact, poker is a game that, if treated as an intellectual pursuit or profession, can be profitable, and the proof lies in the fact that there are a good number of poker players making a living by simply playing the game.

The main reason poker is a much better gambling game than others, such as roulette or slots, is that you don’t have to play against the house. When you play against the hous,e you are bound to be playing with the odds stacked against you, and for the average person, beating these games is next to impossible over the long run.

Most casino games are luck games, and the people who play them accept that they are playing a game they have little chance of winning. The people who play these games have a lottery mentality, which means they want to take a chance of winning big, should they win.

On the other hand, poker is a game in which you match wits with the other players instead of competing against some preconceived, mathematical scenario that virtually guarantees you will lose if you play long enough. This means that as long as you can outplay most of the players at your table, you can win. This is not as hard as it sounds. Poker games are divided into limits, and if you can’t outplay the guys at the high-limit games, you can always go to the low-limit games.

Most people who look negatively on the game of poker don’t understand it. They think gambling is a disease and any game that involves gambling automatically falls into the category of evil. For example, after I covered a story about the U preventing a poker tournament from happening on campus last winter, an angry father e-mailed me. He told me his son had lost everything playing poker. For this reason he was proactively lobbying for stronger enforcement of anti-poker laws in Utah.

I can sympathize with the plight of a father whose son has a problem, but I think addressing his son’s problem would have been more constructive than trying to stop poker games from being played.

If his son had a drinking problem, I guess he would try to remove all alcohol from the world so that his son couldn’t get drunk anymore. Maybe the angry dad should have bought his son a poker strategy book.

In fact, many states in this country do not even classify poker as a gambling game; it is classified as a game of skill, like bowling or golf. California, for example, has casinos devoted entirely to the game of poker while casino gambling games classified as games of chance remain illegal.

Don’t get me wrong. Just because poker is a game of skill doesn’t mean everyone who plays it will win. What it means is that the better players have a better chance of winning. Even the best players in the world lose sometimes, but they win more often than they lose.

It takes courage and intelligence to be a good poker player, so if you are either naturally stupid (no condescension intended) or if you have trouble asserting yourself in large groups, my advice for you is to quit the game of poker. But if you have some guts and are willing to learn, this game could change your life.

by Tye Smith