How To Win At Poker With Friends
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This week I’m dipping back into my “Casino Poker for Beginners” series to warn about a practice that is common among players new to poker, who engage in it innocently, not realizing that it is both unethical and a violation of one of the most important rules of the game. That practice is collusion.
A typical example is two friends heading to the casino to spend a few hours playing poker together. They’re worried that the cutthroat nature of the game — a game in which the whole point, after all, is to win the other players’ money — may cause hard feelings and damage their friendship if they really go at each other hard. So they make a deal to prevent this.
The deal may take any of several forms.
- Maybe if one of them puts in a raise, the other has to drop out of the pot.
- Maybe they’ll never bluff each other, so that a strong bet always indicates a strong hand.
- Maybe they’ll never slow play each other when dealt a monster hand.
- Maybe they’ll use a secret hand signal to indicate “I’ve got the goods this time, so you should fold and let me take these other people’s chips.”
- Maybe if they end up as the only two in a hand, they’ll always just check every street rather than betting and raising each other.
For our purposes, all of these agreements, plus many other forms they might take, are equal — and equally wrong.
How To Win At Video Poker
Poker is not a team sport. It is an intensely individualistic, dog-eat-dog game. In fact, poker doesn’t even work right if the players don’t approach it with that attitude. Over the last ten years of the “poker boom,” many organizations have tried to put together forms of poker that use teams, often for the purposes of making exciting television. None has been that successful. Introducing collusion, wherein a player tries to help or at least not hurt specific other players, tends to distort the essence of the game so much the result is often barely recognizable as poker.
I think it’s important to state this bluntly: Collusion in poker between two or more players, in all of its many forms, is always cheating, pure and simple. You should never engage in it, never agree to it, and actively warn others against it if they propose that you join them. Furthermore, if you suspect that collusion is occurring at your table — whether the culprits are friends or strangers to you — you should report it to the poker room management. Both your personal integrity and the integrity of the game require these things of you.
As Mike Caro once correctly pointed out in an article on the subject, “when you soft play friends at the table others get hurt in the crossfire.” In other words, trying to make things easier for a friend often amounts to making things unfairly difficult for others at the table.
“Aggressive opponents, who are playing honestly, especially suffer,” Caro continues. “That’s because they mistake what’s happening through secret alliances as tactical traits exhibited by the group of friends. This causes those honest players to make poor decisions for the wrong reasons on future hands.”
There is only one kind of agreement you should make with friends before sitting down at a poker table with them: You will all do everything in your ability (and within the rules, of course) to win all of each other’s money, just as you will do against all of the other players. However the cards and chips may fall, there will be no hard feelings about it, and you will leave the game just as much friends as when you sat down, regardless of who won or lost.
If you can’t make and stick to that kind of deal with your friends, then you cannot play poker with them — period. And that’s perfectly fine! I understand and appreciate that, for example, some married couples just can’t stand to play hard against each other, because each finds it too stressful to inflict pain and loss on his or her partner. There is absolutely nothing wrong with having that kind of relationship. It just means that you can’t play poker against each other.
If you’re playing cash games, you can decide simply to be at different tables — problem solved. In a tournament, however, you don’t get to control table assignments, which means that you can’t enter a tournament with any other person against whom you cannot agree to compete full-bore.
It has been said that there are no friends at a poker table. I understand the point of that aphorism, but I’m too literal-minded to approve of it. Of course you can have friends at the poker table — both ones that you came with and ones that you make while playing. In fact, friends make poker more fun.
The only requirement is that you not play compete less fully against them because they’re your friends.
Robert Woolley lives in Asheville, NC. He spent several years in Las Vegas and chronicled his life in poker on the “Poker Grump” blog.
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Mike Caro
Poker, or five card draw
Five card draw is one of the oldest forms of poker, which emerged in New York salons with the outbreak of the Civil War. Today, it remains popular with all on the internet, thanks to our version of 5 card draw online, recommended especially for novice poker players.
Five card draw is only up to two hands
Some admit that the short duration of an entire game now means that they play five card draw extremely rarely in casinos. Some other poker games have probably contributed to a reduction in the number of players and fans of the game. However, nothing is lost! The younger brother of these cult card games has moved to another more fertile and progressive ground of online games. Fans from all over the world constantly return to play the game. Short games are in this case the advantage of five card draw online, because many people are looking for uncomplicated fun, and have no time to play an extended an nerve-wracking game of ordinary poker. Five card draw is simpler than today's popular poker variations and known to many people in the amateur game, from playing at the table in their homes with family or friends.
In five card draw online, strategy counts
Another advantage of five card draw is the emphasis on strategy. Here you can forget about the myth of lucky cards, and count only on your skills and mental acuity. It is possible to win chips from the table with a weak hand, or to lose holding a strong one. Therefore it is worth familiarizing yourself with the basics of poker variants, for against more experienced opponents there would be no chance of winning. However, any beginner is recommended to play five card draw as often as possible. After all, as the well-known saying goes, 'practice makes perfect', and tricks gleaned from better players can help you to win. Contrary to appearances the rules themselves are not that difficult, and the action takes place very quickly, so even the most demanding five card draw online player will not be bored. In addition, online practice is the best opportunity to learn to play poker safely, without the risk or fear of losing your money.
How to play five card draw?
The key to winning is to have five cards that make up the best combination among all the players, known as the best hand. The trick to playing five card draw is to have a good strategy alongside the ability to bluff perfectly. It is not only the person with the best cards who can win – but also the player who can confuse their opponent effectively.
Before the cards are dealt the player on the immediate left of the dealer is required to pay the the small blind, and the next player the big blind. This determines the stakes on a given table. For example, if the small blind is $1, the big blind will be $2. Once each player in the game has been dealt five cards, the first round of betting starts. Each player from the big blind onwards must bet a higher amount to stay in the hand, call, or fold. The player who posted the big blind makes the last move. Later, everyone has the opportunity to exchange up to four cards. After betting, the players who remain at the table reveal their hands. The winning hand consists of the strongest cards. In the hierarchy of poker hands, the royal flush is the highest. This is made up of five cards: ten, jack, queen, king and ace of the same suit, for example diamonds.
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Try your hand at five card draw online
How To Win At Poker With Friends Without
Interested in the game? On GameDesire, don’t be a fish – a well-known term in the poker world for a beginner, just starting their adventure in card games. Experience in five card draw can bring you a lot of respect from other players, as well as sizeable winnings.