What this means though is that I can’t set the time for poker aside that I would like too and so, sadly, I must put this little quest on hold.

Second tourney, early on, I watch as someone else gets his kings cracked by a guy who calls down with A-3 (suited this time). At least it isn’t just me this is happening to!

Otherwise this tourney, I’m off to a good start having more than doubled up by the 2nd level. “Levels” for those wondering, are blind levels. Each time the blinds increase, you’re at a new level. Also of note, when playing micro-stakes tourneys like I’m playing, it’s important not to bluff too much, if ever. The mistake most often made at this level of play is calling too much. People will call down with nearly anything looking to hit that miracle card on the river. Also, preflop, nearly everyone will call if the pot is only limped, so you can get what I’m looking at now, which is 8 people in a hand (I folded 8-2 off). Most of these players once they’ve put money into a pot will then call crazy reraises because they’ve already put money in and don’t want to stop without seeing a flop. So when you get those big pocket pairs, RAISE! There is almost never a reason to slowplay at stakes this small. Someone will almost always call your big raise with a worse hand. You just have to able to keep from braking things when they hit one of their 3 outs and draw out on you. This is a skill I am learning.

Sadly, I again have to put this skill to use, as my trip queens get out drawn by a gut-shot straight draw. “Gut-shot” meaning a guy has 9-10 on a 8QQ board. (I have KQ in this instance btw) He pushes all in and has me covered, I call, he hits his Jack for a straight 8-Q and I’m out. Pretty disgusting.

And because I’m a sucker for punishment, I decide to try one more tourney before calling it a day. I cash in this one, but not after a friggin roller coaster of hands has me everywhere from 2nd to 11th, which is where I reside at the moment. At this point, it’s shove or fold. My least favorite position to play, though it is the easiest. But a double up will put me in 5th and in ok position to start playing at the big stacks. I shove with A-3 suited and get two folds. This moves me to 9th. One more hand and I’m at 7th. Positions move fast at 750/375 blinds. Another few hands and I’m up to 4th, though the field has only gone down to 11 players, so if I get unlucky and bust I’ll only get 55 cents. Not worth my time.

So I bust 7th, when my AA gets caught by the chip leader who plays 67 and catches a 877 flop. Needless to say I’m done when he catches a 6 on the turn for a boat. .95 cents. In poker we have a term. It’s “sick” and it’s used when something is sickening, like this final table for example.

Oh well, maybe tomorrow will bring better things!

I don’t usually see this many twits at the tables, but today it’s all that was there and I’m left steaming after some d-bag hits his k-7 and I’m busted. “Tilt” is what happens when you get so mad your play suffers. The intelligent thing to do is step back and stop playing for a while, which is what I’ll be doing now.

So how odd is poker jargon? Well, not trying to get too advanced too fast, they have something called “floating”, which in astrophysics would mean that something is literally floating. In poker, however, it’s where you call an opponent’s bet on the flop (floating the flop) with nothing, and then bet after being checked to on the turn, to win the hand before seeing the river card. Confused still? That’s ok if you are, this is a tricky little bluff that clips off “continuation bettors” and there are a great deal of poker players who don’t know what it is and wouldn’t think to do it if they did know it. “Continuation betting” is another bit of jargon we’ll get to later. But first, the cards.

Poker jargon is best known when it comes to giving hole cards silly names.

Aces are known as pocket rockets, American Airlines, or bullets. Kings are known as cowboys, Queens are known as ladies, Jacks are hooks, AK is Big Slick and Anna Kornakovia (looks pretty, never wins), AQ is Big Chick, 72 off suit is beer hand, as it’s the worst hand in poker good for nothing but time to get a beer and A8 is dead mans hand, being the cards Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot. Any two cards in numerical succession like 7-8, 9-10, 3-4 that are of the same suit are called “suited connectors”. The list goes on and on and on.  Some people have a nickname for damn near every hand imaginable. These people have no life and so when you get the “you didn’t know about that?” in reference to some idiotic nickname don’t feel discouraged. Just treat them like the people who freak out when you haven’t seen every movie ever made. The only advice I will give here is don’t be the douchebag who thinks mentioning 69 is funny.

After card nicknames we have nicknames for the players themselves. The really good ones are referred to as sharks, just like in pool where the name makes more sense. Typically mediocre or passible poker players are known as assholes as very few of them can resist telling everyone else how bad at poker they are and how they themselves would have never made that play. (By the way, this isn’t a “nickname” these players are given, it’s what they actually are.) Why this is typically common among so-so players and not great ones is: great ones don’t have to tell you how good they are and don’t want you to know how bad you are (even after they have your money, because they want you to come back!). The really bad players are referred to as fish, in opposition to sharks, and also “donkeys”. “Donkey” springing from the animals long history of being associated with ignorance. This will also be shortened to “Donk” and be used by assholes to inform other players that “you’re a total donk” (except they’ll spell it “your”).

There are also different sets of players based upon the time they spend playing. These next 3 months I’ll be doing what’s called “grinding”. Same schedule, day in, day out, these players are not casual players and typically are pretty damn good. They make a slow steady profit like other average joes, they just do it in their pajamas. Or they’re the ones in the casino with a sweater on because they know it’s chilly and they’ll be there for a while (I just saved you money in Vegas. You’re welcome). Thankfully, there shouldn’t be many grinders at my level because you really can’t make a living off these kinds of tourneys. That is an advantage for me!

Lastly, there are divisions of players not regarding skill or time spent playing, but to the actual style of poker they’re playing. They’re broken into loose/tight and weak/aggressive. While loose vs. tight doesn’t really carry social connotations, weak vs. aggressive certainly does and that tells you a little something about the poker community and the game itself. For instance a tight/weak player is always going to be the worst at the table. They don’t play many hands, and it’s pretty easy to bluff or bet them off whatever hands they do play. The other end is loose/aggressive. These players can be tough to play against at times, as it’s hard to peg them on hand ranges, and they don’t make things cheap. Phil Ivey, considered the best poker player in the world, is considered Loose/aggressive, or LAG. There are intermediate styles, like tight/aggressive (or TAG), which I tend to be in the early rounds of tournaments. There are also nicknames for the extremes, “rocks” for the really tight players (typically senior citizens) and “maniacs” for the really loose ones (like young frat boys or people who simply love going all-in, like my step-father).

Once we’re past the cards and the people, there is plenty of jargon for the plays in the game itself. We talked about “floating” and hinted at “continuation betting”, so we’ll carry on from there. That particular phrase is close to what it sounds like. After you’ve raised pre-flop, making a continuation bet, or “C-bet”, is done by simply betting the hand whether you hit the flop or not. Thus, you’re continuing your betting. However, someone could “play back” at you. When someone raises pre-flop (betting more than the blind), it’s usually an indication of a strong hand. 88-AA and maybe J9-AK, depending on the player, is a pretty typical range of hands. So if the flop comes 2 6 4, all different suits (or “rainbow”), then you can be pretty sure that this person didn’t hit the flop. So when they make their “C-bet”, you “play back” at them by raising their continuation bet. These moves tend to work best against people you’ve seen C-bet after every pot they’ve raised pre-flop over a number of hands. This tells you that they’re arn’t only betting when they connect with the flop, and chances are good they’re bluffing at some point.

Semi-complicated stuff, but not rocket science. Interestingly, if you can absorb this and put it into practice, you’ll be better than the vast majority of poker players!

Other phrases you’ll hear me use are “I bet 3xBB”. What the hell does that mean? It’s actually the short hand for a typical pre-flop bet. It simply means “3 times the Big Blind.” If the Big Blind is 10, 3xBB would be 30.  Easy peasy. I’ll also “trap” people, meaning I put them in a cage and take them home for food. Ok, “Trapping” is what you do when you hit a huge hand, and decline to bet or play aggressive, (also known as “sandbagging” and “slowplaying”) only calling bets instead of making them yourself. lets unpack that. Say I’m holding AA (which I always am) and the flop comes A 6 6 rainbow (all different suits, but you remembered that!). I would now have a fullhouse (also known as a “full boat”) AAA66. Instead of betting my hand I’m just going to check and hope that someone else bets. I will then just call their bet without raising it. I’ll do this all the way to the river if possible. Trapping, psychologically speaking, is getting someone to bet big thinking they have you beat when, in reality, you have the best hand.

I’ll also talk about having the “nuts”. Take a second to make the requisite comments. What the “nuts” simply means is “the best hand”. So back to my AA’s with the A 6 6 flop. The nuts on this flop is actually 4-of-a-kind (four 6′s). I have what is known as the “nut fullhouse” or the best possible fullhouse. If I had A-6 instead of AA’s I would have the ‘second nut fullhouse” (666AA as opposed to the better AAA66). Still with me? Being able to pick out the nuts on any given board is a pretty valuable skill. Knowing what could beat you and if the people you’re playing against would 1) play it pre-flop and 2) are acting like they have it now, can save you a lot of money in the long run!

Lastly you’ll find me “check-raising” people. This is a pretty easy idea that involves me making a big hand and instead of betting ,I check. Someone after me bets and then when the action gets back round to me, I raise. It’s the kinda play you make when you don’t think people will call the combined betting amounts right off the bat. Say I check my big hand, and some guy bets 100. The action comes round to me and I raise to 300. If I don’t think 300 will get called right off the bat, and I want more money, I may check-raise assuming my opponent will call 200 more after already having put in 100. Sadly, because a check-raise is such a strong play, many people fold, which then in turn makes a check-raise an expensive-but-tricky bluff play.

After this is all the fun math! Which I’ll spare you for now.

A full poker table, shaped kinda like the Daytona 500, typically holds 9 players. The dealer typically throws each player player a card in order to determine who is on the “button”. High card takes it.

In Hold’em, ‘the button’ or ‘the dealer button’ (a small plastic disk) indicates which player is the nominal dealer for the current game. Before the game begins, the player immediately clockwise from the button posts a forced bet, known as the ‘small blind’, and the player immediately clockwise from the small blind posts another forced bet, known as the ‘big blind’ (which is usually twice the size of the small blind). Depending on the exact structure of the game, each player may also be required to post an ‘ante’ (another type of forced bet, usually smaller than either blind, posted by all players at the table) into the pot. Antes usually kick in at the middle levels of tournaments.

Now, each player receives his or her two hole cards, also known as “pocket” cards. These are dealt face down and you want to keep them secret. The object of the game is to make the best 5 card hand out of the 7 that can possibly be dealt (your 2 hole cards and the 5 possible community cards, more on this later) or to get all opponents to fold.

Player Betting Options

In Hold’em, as with other forms of poker, the available actions are ‘fold’, ‘check’, ‘bet’, ‘call’ or ‘raise’. Exactly which options are available depends on the action taken by the previous players or the round of betting. Each poker player always has the option to fold, to discard their cards and give up any interest in the pot. If nobody has yet made a bet, then a player may either check (decline to bet, but keep their cards), or bet. If a player has bet, then subsequent players can fold, call or raise. To call is to match the amount the previous player has bet. To raise is to not only match the previous bet, but to also increase it.

Note: The first round of betting “Pre-flop” no one can check because the blinds are considered live bets.

Pre-Flop

After seeing his or her hole cards, each player now has the option to play his or her hand by calling or raising the big blind. The action begins to the left of the big blind, which is considered a ‘live’ bet on this round. That player has the options to fold, call or raise. For example, if the big blind was $2, it would cost $2 to call, or at least $4 to raise.  Action then proceeds clockwise around the table.

Betting continues on each betting round until all active players (who have not folded) have placed equal bets in the pot.

The Flop

Now, three cards are dealt face-up on the board.  This is known as ‘the flop’. In Hold’em, the three cards on the flop are community cards, available to all players still in the hand. Betting on the flop begins with the active player immediately clockwise from the button.  The betting options are similar to pre-flop, however if nobody has previously bet, players may opt to check, passing the action to the next active player clockwise.

The Turn

When the betting action is completed for the flop round, the ‘turn’ is dealt face-up on the board. The turn is the fourth community card in Hold’em (and is sometimes also called ‘Fourth Street’). Another round of betting ensues, beginning with the active player immediately clockwise from the button.

The River

When betting action is completed for the turn round, the ‘river’ or ‘Fifth Street’ is dealt face-up on the board. The river is the fifth and final community card in a Hold’em game. Betting again begins with the active player immediately clockwise from the button, and the same betting rules apply as they do for the flop and turn, as explained above.

The Showdown

At the end of the final betting round, if there is more than one remaining poker player, the last person to bet or raise shows his or her cards first. If there was no bet on the final round, the player immediately clockwise from the button shows his or her cards first. The player with the best five-card poker hand wins the pot. In the event of identical hands, the pot will be equally divided between the players with the best hands. Hold’em rules state that all suits are equal.

After the pot is awarded, a new game of Hold’em is ready to be played. The button now moves clockwise to the next player, blinds and antes are once again posted, and new hands are dealt to each player.

(Big ups to pokerstars whom I lifted most of this off of!)

So, what the hell am I doing?

Here’s the deal: M-F, from 8am-4pm, I’ll be playing poker on Pokerstars under the handle n00by B (o’s are zeros). I’ll have a $50 dollar bankroll and I’ll begin playing $0.25 90 player and 45 player sit and goes, 2 at a time (Sit and go, or SNG, for my non-poker friends, means that the game starts after 90 people, or 45, or however many, register). I’ll do this for the first week and if my bankroll improves, I’ll move up to 1.10 SNG’s.

I’ll post daily, M-F, about my progress, thoughts, and any other random crap until my 3 months are up. When that day comes we’ll see how I’ve faired. There are numerous ways to check on my progress. The first is to simply see if my bankroll has increased. But this isn’t the only way. Right now I’m listed on a number of ranking sites (here and here. Click “Sit & Go’s” for the correct graph on the 2nd link). These sites don’t simply keep track of my winnings, they also track the percentage of times I cash, and my “ROI” or return on investment. I’ll be looking to improve these stats too. Hopefully, I’ll be able to put all this technical mush into an engaging narrative for not only those who know the game, but also those don’t.

Thankfully, I won’t be going this alone. I’ll have a small library of books (this ones a good starter book for those interested) and many poker training websites where I’ll also spend time sharpening my skills and plugging what poker players call “leaks” (“Leak” is just another way of saying “holes in your game” that people can take advantage of).

I will, however, be doing this with as few poker program add-ons as possible. And by “few”, I mean zero. Let me explain. Online poker has the ability to give you tons of info, via poker programs that record all sorts of data, that playing live doesn’t. So if I had a PC, I could install numerous programs that could give me a HUD on certain poker sites that record and display info like: how often this person raises pre-flop, how often they play hands at all, how many times they’ve beaten you in a showdown, etc, etc, etc; basically every stat you can imagine. This gives many players a HUGE edge. And I’m not going to use any of it.

This, on first glance, is lunacy. If you want to make money then you should use these programs, obviously. But, I’m not doing this to make money, I’m doing this to get better at poker. When playing live, you do not have a heads up display of any particular players habits. It’s on you to make your own notes, and play your own reads without the help of any programs that do the work for you. And therefore, I’m going into all these games comparatively blind. Thus, the name of this blog, Calling Blind. If I can increase and improve my game without any crutch (and write about it in a way more interesting than watching paint dry), then I will be able to say definitively that I am a better player than I was. That is my goal.

Next post, I’ll break down the game itself, including most of the common jargon, so that everyone can follow along, poker player or not. In the mean time if you wanna drop by and root for me, or try to take my money in a tourney, feel free! Otherwise, bookmark me here, and lets get ready for a wild 3 months!