The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold’em Poker

As my readers may have noticed I have taken a few days off from Blogging. Actually apart from reading industry related information to Internet Marketing, I have taken the past week off from reading my normal subscription magazines and staying on top of the news (although as I am posting this, I am catching breaking news on North Korea’s missile testing but this blog post wont be about that).

Over the past four days I’ve done nothing but drink beer and eat meat. I do have some small things to talk about which I thought were interesting. I’ve had the past four days off to really do nothing apart from hitting the gym lifting weights and playing far too much poker on the internet.

I was luckily enough to be able to take a private tour of a company which manufactures baby and pet products. I can’t mention the name of the company but what I can say is that it is always a treat for me to tour other peoples companies and see how things work. You can get a real sense of how the founders think just by looking around each department and seeing how they have laid out their environment.

It has been over 100 degrees here during the days so I tried my best to stay indoors. I did manage to bang out a poker strategy book,
“The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold’em Poker”.

The past few times I have gone to a casino I’ve spoken to a few good players and they have all mentioned this book to me. I really have been looking for a book which could help me fine-tune my game and help me see the game in multiple dimensions. This book does offer some cool scenarios and ideas on how to change your games around and discusses 4 common types of games to look out for.

1. Loose-Passive Games
2. Loose-Aggressive Games
3. Tight-Passive Games
4. Tight Aggressive Games

I’ll summarize these below. I have already put to test a few of their recommended strategies while playing online last night and I did really well. We will see how these hold up when I go to Vegas in three weeks. I am off now to watch some fireworks and see a concert in my local park.

Excerpts taken from “The Intelligent Guide to Texas Hold’em Poker”.

Loose-Passive Games

If you go to a casino cardroom on a weekend, at the lower betting limits you will find games that are close to fitting the loosepassive definition. Tourists, beginners, and people out to have a good time populate these games. Money is not the main issue-entertainment is the attraction. The stakes are small compared with the costs of most entertainment/social activities. Loose-passive games are actually the easiest ones to beat. To win money, you must become antisocial: that is, not play every hand through to the end.

Loose-Aggressive Games

Play-money poker is a good approximation of loose-aggressive games, because for loose aggressive players, money is something they play with. Part of the thrill is unnerving the other players with their lack of caution towards money. Often it only takes one or two loose-aggressive players to turn an entire table into loose-aggressive play. Everyone starts throwing money around to show that the aggressive player does not intimidate them. Soon the whole table is on a tilt.

Tight-Passive Games

Typically in tight-passive games, there is not much money on the table. An extreme tight-passive player buys-in for the table minimum and guards the chips, putting money in the pot only when they have a lock. You cannot win money that is not in play and you certainly can’t win more money than is on the table. If you see three or more players at a table behaving in this manner, consider finding another game. Your profit potential is limited and if you do fall behind, you have no hope of catching up.

Tight Aggressive Games

Not only must you rethink what it means to have a good flop, you must also rethink what it means to have a good hand. You may get away with stealing pots by betting marginal cards, and then lose with strong cards. The difference is that your opponents won’t challenge you unless they have strong cards. When your opponents are weak, they will back down. The attitude, “1′11 call to keep him honest,” that pervades loose games doesn’t exist in tight-aggressive games. If your opponents call or raise, don’t become confident just because your cards are good this hand, and in a prior hand that you won, your cards were weaker. Your strong hands may be losers if tight-aggressive players are not respecting your bets.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 4th, 2006 at 4:05 pm and is filed under Poker. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.