6 Card Poker

I haven’t played live poker for a few years now or at least not in a casino setting anyway. It is clear now that the easiest games to beat on a technical level are live games. The players in these games on average lack the sophistication of the average online player at the same stakes.

But I have both played in and heard of others playing in some live games that nobody in their right mind would want to sit down in. One of the big differences with regards live games to Online Texas Holdem poker games is that the casinos in question basically do not police the games and many casinos only have cardrooms as a way of getting punters onto their table games in the pit area.

Most casino owners and managers wouldn’t know a poker cheating move if one dropped onto their head and could hardly police the poker games that they have in their clubs. This is normal and is replicated in most casinos and certainly in the UK. But when you have a situation where the actual players themselves are left to police the game, then what happens if most of the line up is involved in a scammed game?

You then have a situation where new players and new faces and especially the new faces basically get calved up for lunch. The new faces lose money and cannot understand why so they are left thinking that they were either unlucky or they are not as good as they think they are.

A few years ago I was aware of a team in England whose leader was dubbed “Dr Death” by a few people. If someone asked me how can you tell that someone is cheating if you cannot see what they are doing then my only answer to that is “because something didn’t feel right”. That is hardly a scientific explanation but it will have to do because that is all that I have.

I know or more to the point knew live games that were crooked and I knew more or less what tactics they were using. But yet in all that, it was still very difficult to actually spot them doing anything and this is how professional cheats operate at poker. The signals and the tactics are subtle but it is a case of “you scratch my back and I will scratch yours” in many instances.

Before anyone jumps on my back here and says that I am claiming that all live games are crooked, simply re-read the article! But when you know full well that numerous live games have been crooked and you have even known the cheats personally in many instances then no one can ever tell me that what I am saying is wrong.

The amazing thing about all this is that many of these players are cheating out of simple necessity and many don’t even believe in their own minds that they are cheating. Many of the tactics that they use are deemed just that….. “tactics” in the minds of many players. In live poker there is no online casino to check the hand histories for you or to police the game.

The online card rooms have far more interest to police their games than live casinos do. Quite often, casino managers don’t even like poker players anyway and especially the types of players who do not get involved in any action in the pit area. So beware the next time you play live and if you are playing live for the first time, better watch your back.

As the average poker player improves year by year, then table selection will increase in importance. But there are many misconceptions with regards table selection that I feel that I really ought to redress the balance here!

Careful table selection will assist you greatly in making more money than you are presently making. But even that statement is misleading because if a losing player who was say losing at a rate of $10/hour at the level that he was at suddenly reduced that to $3/hour by selecting games against weaker players then he still wouldn’t be making money.

Although saving money is a way of making money I suppose so they are interlinked. There are many techniques with regards table selection that this is really a topic in its own right. For instance I know several serious players who avoid all of the major sites and networks and play only on the smaller sites.

Most serious players dodge the small sites with their clunky software, poor or no rakeback and small player pools. But if you think about this for a minute, the serious players are going to go where the best rakeback is, the bigger player pools and the best software. So what this means is that the best players or the better players tend to congregate together.

Some of the small sites that most players wouldn’t give the time of day to can be very profitable and the fish population can be considerable! Another clever tactic if you are a good player is not to sit at waiting lists but to also start new poker games yourself. If you think about this for a minute then it makes perfect sense to do this.

Firstly if you want to catch a fish then you have to learn how to think like one. Fish don’t have the time or the patience to sit at waiting lists like serious players do. But what you also have to remember is that the players who are on those waiting lists may be using table finder programs so they are more likely to be serious players. Plus whatever weak games there were at the outset will have dried up by the time that you get there so going out and actively finding your own fish is a good tactic.

Most players who attempt to select tables in online Texas Holdem poker use the same methods of looking at the average pot size and also the number of hands per hour. These indicate loose games where lots of players are seeing the flop with marginal hands. This knocks on to the low number of hands per hour as more hands are multi-way and going to the river.

Although with some sites you have to be careful with these statistics as they alter after every few hands so you can get a very skewed picture of what game you are about to play in.

Another factor to look for if you are a good player is the stack sizes of your opponents. While this isn’t always a strong indicator of skill, it is an indicator of many things including the amount of money on the table that you can possibly win and the tactics that you will be able to use. If say you are looking to play at NL50 and you have two tables each with $290 in total cash on the table.

One table has five players with $50 stacks and the remaining four have $10 minimum stacks. The other table however has seven players with $30 stacks and two players with $40 stacks. The latter table will be by far the most profitable table of the two on average. Strong players tend not to let their stacks dwindle like this below the maximum so seeing nine players all of which have stacks that are substantially lower than the $50 buy-in indicates a potentially good game.