Through a Beginner's Eyes

For those of us who have been playing poker for a long time, it's always interesting to see the game through the eyes of somebody who hasn't grown up playing cards in general or poker specifically. I have a friend by the name of Eugene who is learning to play hold'em. Eugene is a stunningly bright guy – he has a master's degree in electrical engineering and designs computer network routers for a large networking company. But he hasn't spent much time playing cards during his life, and in poker, he's only recently advanced beyond the stage of, "Does a flush beat a straight?" This combination of brain power and unfamiliarity with poker makes for some fascinating behavior that is instructive to all of us.

Sometimes I'll sit with Eugene when he's playing online poker and critique his play between hands. But just as importantly, I get to listen to his thinking as he plays the hand. Here are a few things he's said that are worth noting:

When he has suited pocket cards, he says, "Cool – flush draw." No, ugh, that wasn't a flush draw. It would have been a flush draw had two more of the same suit hit the flop. This is a key distinction that even we veterans occasionally forget. Suited cards flop a four-flush only about one-eighth of the time, which is similar to a pocket pair flopping a set. So, when Eugene would call with J-3 suited, I'd have to tell him (after the hand) that he was making a reasonably large mistake. Furthermore, his hand had no other real value than the long shot of a flush. And finally, if the flush did come in, it was vulnerable to bigger flushes.

Eugene also overvalues aces, a problem that is not limited to hold'em newbies. He seems to want to play any ace with any kicker from just about any position. I've had to explain to him the theory of dominated hands. That is, playing big cards with little kickers gets you into trouble when you flop just top pair (which is the most common "successful" flop for such hands). You have flopped top pair and are inclined to go to the river with it, but you routinely run into somebody with the same pair but a bigger kicker. As I said, Eugene is an extremely smart fellow, so having gotten burned by this a few times, he's now much more sensitive to the quality of the aces that he plays. That's a lesson that many of us should remember.

But the most telling conversations happen immediately after Eugene plays some hand that he has no business playing (and generally, he's aware of it). They go something like this:

"Why did you play that piece of cheese?"

"I was bored – I haven't gotten a playable hand in forever."

"So, you thought you'd wade in there with 10-4 suited?"

"Hey, it was just a dollar."

There are two salient issues within that short conversation (and rest assured that I covered them both with my friend):

1. Sometimes it's boring to play good limit poker. You simply don't win money if you routinely get bored and play hands that you know should be dumped.

2. It's not a dollar. It's a small bet. Within the confines of a poker game, the dollar value of the chips involved has no meaning. Of course, it would be very different to Eugene if he were playing $100-$200 hold'em instead of $1-$2. But the only way to be successful at the game is to think completely in chip units. It's a small blind, it's a big blind. It's a small bet, it's a big bet. The odds are there or they're not. The color of the chips is immaterial.

I'll probably be telling you some more stories about Eugene and his hold'em exploits – they're a learning experience for me, and also for you, I trust.

Thanks for reading.