MEL’S TEXAS HOLD’EM

About ten years ago a youngster by the name of Daniel started playing poker with me at the Charity Casinos in Ontario. He was good, brash, young and daring. This made for an excellent poker player, especially since most of the opponents were virtual beginners. Today Daniel Negreaneu is rated as the best player in the world, at 28 years old.

It is fascinating to see his meteoritic rise in such a short period. It is no easy feat to reach the world's best, no matter what it is in. I hope that he feels as strongly as his home town friends and acquaintances, that he remembers his roots and is still part of Toronto. The last time that we played together at the same table was in Vegas, at the Mirage. I guess that he was bored at the $40/80 table and left for the bigger stake games as soon as they started up. We all wish him good luck way up there with the stars.

This week’s poker tip

The most important advice that I will ever give.

Small cards are poison.

Keep repeating this to yourself and learn to throw them away immediately. Those who play them seem to get awful unlucky so often. The truth is they lose because they are playing small cards. Remember they are POISON. You may miss out on winning a few hands but the losses will certainly outnumber the wins. Examples are plentiful but perhaps the most often occurrence is when the holder of small cards gets counterfeited.

Let us look at an example. You are holding 7, J and you flop 7,J,8. You have two pair and think it is a pretty good hand. The turn comes, 8 and you bet out thinking that you now have the top two. When you are raised you can pretty well be sure that you have been counterfeited, that the raiser has a higher pair, or even better, trips.

Small cards expose you to this all of the time. Plus even if you hit your high card, your kicker may not stand up to anyone betting into you. Lesson 1. Don’t play small cards. They are POISON.

Tournaments

Just a few words about tournaments. Initially when The Horse Shoe started the World Series of Poker Tournament, there were probably around 100 players willing to put up the $5000 entry. Things have changed. I had dinner a number of years ago with a gent that called himself Satellite Sam. His claim to fame was that he introduced satellites to Binion and the game grew to over 300 players in just a few years.

Now with the proliferation of on line poker, thousands are playing every week of the year to win as their prize a seat to one of the tournaments. Last year there was close to 6600 entries in the WSOP. I would guess that over 75% won their seat in a satellite.

Tournaments are heaven for the professional poker player. I will explain this in my next article. Read it and it may save you a ton of chips.