GENERAL POKER STRATEGY

Card players who want to become excellent poker players have much to learn. If they have played other card games, they also have much to forget because poker is totally different from most other games. Bridge, for instance, is mathematics and analysis, psychology, and personalities, plus money management.
Before the introduction of high-low hands, wild cards rolling cards, six-and Seven Card poker, and dozens of other such variations, it was a simple matter to formulate a set of rules for improving one’s poker game. The odds and chances of being dealt and improving a five-card hand could be figured exactly and most subsequent developments were easily calculable. Since poker today has countless variations and playing gimmicks, it would take a book this size to cover throughly all the strategic aspects of the game.
There are 20 fundamental poker rules, however, which a player should remember. They are general rules, many of which apply not only to Poker but to many other card games as well. Here they are:

1. The first rule is: don’t try to beat the other players; let them try to beat you. This isn’t just an introductory sentence; it is probably more important than all the tips and hints that follow. Do yourself a favor by memorizing it.
2. Be sure you know the rules of the game. The player who knows the rules has a decided advantage in any game against players who are vague about them.
3. Study the Poker probability tables that follow this section. A player who knows the Poker probabilities in drawing and improving hands has a decided edge over the player who only thinks he knows. But, don’t become a slave to Poker probabilities. They are probabilities, not laws; and they do not supply a sure-fire recipe for winning.
4. Observe your opponents; learn their Poker mannerisms. Are they loose or tight players? And avoid giveaway mannerisms of your own.
5. Play as often as possible; experience is the best teacher.
6. Always remember that in a poker game the average hand become less valuable the more players there are.
7. Treat every round of betting as though it were the first. Forget the previous betting rounds and the money you have contributed to the pot.
8. When you hold a cinch hand, wait till the last round to raise.
9. Fold a doubtful hand at the start rather than in the middle or at the end.
10. Call your opponent or opponents when you believe your hand is good enough to win, not merely because you suspect a bluff.
11. As a general rule, don’t try to steal a pot by trying to bluff a poor player, a heavy winner, or a heavy loser.
12. When you’re in a losing streak, don’t let yourself get panicky. The more reckless you feel, the wiser it is to get away from the table at once. As excited player or a player plunging to recoup losses is a player at his worst.
13. You must expect to lose the pot unless you believe you have the best hand going in.
14. Most Drw Poker players would win instead of loses if they never tried to outdraw the opener.
15. Bet your big hands to the hilt and make every active player pay to see your hand.
16. Vary your playing strategy. The player whose game is always the same becomes an easy mark for smart Poker players.
17. Try to keep a Poker face. Don’t complain when losing or show elevation when winning. The emotional aftermath will prohibit clear thinking and proper evaluation of succeeding hands.
18. Try to sit with your back to the wall and try to avoid kibitzers who watch your hand. Many good hands are tipped off by onlookers who don’t keep Poker faces.
19. Trust no one at Poker; it is a game for blood. If you want to play a good game you must forget friendship and bet your hand for what it’s worth. Top money winners do.
20. When you play poker, give the game all you’ve got, or get out. That is not only the best way to win at Poker; it’s the only way you and the rest of the players can get any fun at all out of what ought to be fun.

Poker Probabilities

The relative values of Poker hands were not just conjured up by some rule maker not arbitrarily assigned by the first poker players. They were discovered by finding out, through the use of permutation and combinations of formulas, the exact number of possible five-card Poker hands in a 52-card deck, a total of 2,598,960.
These hands were divided into groups or ranks such as no pair, three of a kind straight, fluss, full house, four of a kind, straight flush, and royal flush. The ranks were then arranged in relative value according to the frequency of their occurrence. The hands which can be expected to appear most often have the lowest rank; those which appear least often, highest rank. A good poker player must have a fair idea of Poker odds and probabilities. Without such knowledge he has no good way of deciding on his course of action in the various situations which arise, no way of making any mathematical analysis on which to base a decision. This information is given in the poker tables in this chapter. These same tables can also be used to prove the relative value of poker hands and to settle disputes that arise regarding the chances of drawing certain valuable hands in Five–Card Draw Poker, Five-or seven card stud Poker, or in the first five cards dealt in any other form of Poker.
It would be simple if all one had to do to become a winning player was to memorize the following Poker tables. But knowing the exact strength of your hand or the exact chances of bettering your hand on the draw will not always help you, because the playing habits of your opponents will often throw a monkey wrench into your best-laid mathematical plans. Examples: A big raise from a habitually tight player means quite a different thing from the same big raise from a drunk who has already been caught trying to steal (bluff) the last half-dozen pots.
Although Poker is a game of skill, the judgments and decisions to be made by even the average Poker Player involve a general knowledge of the game’s probabilities. The chances of being dealt any certain pat hand are the same, regardless of the number of players in the game. The same holds true in drawing cards to try to improve a hand.
The following pages contain the most informative and comprehensive tables of Poker mathematics found in any card book. They apply to Draw Poker, Five-Card Stud Poker, Seven Card High–Low Poker, and many of the Poker variants found in this book. The tables list the names of each different possible hand in order of rank starting from the top, the possible number of ways each can be made, and the chance of being dealt such a hand in the first five cards dealt, such as the original five cards dealt in Five-Card Stud or in Five–Card Draw Poker before the draw.