This and That About Poker

Hi. Come on in. I've made beef stew in my crockpot. It's my grandma's recipe, but she used a big iron pot.

We've been talking about poker skill – and random luck that can either add to or take from our winnings. Along with this comes a fact of poker life that many players (many, many players) are unwilling or unable to accept. That unwillingness leads to frustration.

Listen up. Bungling, maladroit, unskilled poker players have high possibilities of winning more pots in limit poker than you do as a skilled player. Sounds bad, doesn't it?

Your skill in a game of limit poker won't prevent them from picking up a lot of pots, especially since there are more of them than there are of you. It not only sounds bad, it seems abjectly unfair. Skilled players should win, and not be beaten up by unskilled players. But let us continue.

The quick-minded will already have noticed my careful choice of words. One of those carefully chosen words is "limit."

What we are talking about today relates to limit poker as opposed to no-limit, with its power of the big bet. The game of limit poker is structured so that the best hand wins, not necessarily the best player. Often the best player is not holding the best hand, so he doesn't win. You've seen it happen a jillion times. And the lower the limit, the more this applies.

But high or low, limit is limit. A bet of $500 instead of $5 doesn't make it much easier to buy a pot in a higher-limit game. The amounts of money are relative. Those who can afford to regularly play $500 limit view that bet much the same as a player whose bankroll fits the $5 bet. The simple truth is that most of the time, in limit poker, you must show down the best hand to win.

A player who is considered to be among the best limit players in Las Vegas told me that he lost steadily for more than a month. Why? How could a very skillful player book such consistent losses? Easy – he wasn't catching cards. Probability had deserted him, just as it sometimes abandons each of us. "Sure, I was able to use my skill to steal a pot here and there, but it wasn't enough to turn losing sessions into winning ones. There is just no player that skilled at limit poker. If you have a run of bad cards, you're going to lose – period," he said.

What, then, is the advantage of possessing skill if the best hand, not the best player, wins? Hopefully, I'll provide an answer in a moment.

Put this thought into your memory bank: Oftentimes it doesn't take a big hand to win – it takes the best hand. If four players competing for a pot are drawing to flushes and they all miss, but one of them makes a pair of sixes while no one else pairs up, the sixes will win. It's not a big hand, but it's the best hand – and it may or may not be held by the best player.

Here's another thought for your memory bank: Sometimes the best hand is four of a kind, and sometimes four of a kind is beaten by a straight flush. If you're holding four aces against a straight flush, you're going to lose your whole stack, and there is very little you can do about it. If the straight flush is held by a player whose skills are vastly inferior to yours, the cards don't care – you're still going to lose.

It's time now to point out another of my carefully chosen words: "pots." Now are you beginning to see where I'm going? In a single playing session, or in a single hand of poker, winning doesn't have as much to do with skill as it does with the way the cards fall.

Well, then, should you just rely on luck – on the good fall of the cards – to make you a winner? Indeed not! Poker is an ongoing game. It no doubt will continue to be played long after you and I have departed for the great beyond. So, your goal should not be to win every session, but to maximize every session. By maximize, I mean that when you win, win as much as possible. And when you lose, lose as little as possible. And therein lies the "skill" of poker.

To win with the best hand does not take a lot of skill. Maximizing that win does. Start maximizing.

Crockpot or iron pot, the stew tastes great. Take a baggie full, and kill the light on your way out.

Editor's note: Roy West, author of the bestseller 7 Card Stud, the Complete Course in Winning, available from Card Player, has a toll-free 800 number and continues to give his successful poker lessons in Las Vegas to both tourists and locals. Ladies are welcome. See his ad on page 93.