Playboy on Poker

Poker is a Game played by men for blood. There are variations, of course, because anything so democratic and universal is bound to take many forms. But the basic game is the blood game. And by this I mean that the stakes must be high enough to cause pain to a heavy loser. This may sound cruel, but it is absolutely essential if the game is to supply the tension and excitement which poker alone can provide. If you can't afford the stakes, don't play, because the knowledge that you can't stand to lose is sure to affect your play unfavorably.

Good poker players are made, not born--so there is hope for us all. And if you ask what are the qualities of a first-rate player I would reply by describing the poker-personality of a man who has won entirely too much of my money--Dave Garroway.

Garroway's outstanding characteristic is self-discipline. He never does anything without a reason. Calculating, unemotional, a realist, a convincing dissembler--he never beats himself. Like every player he has his bad nights (if you know a man who never loses, avoid him: he's cheating), but he is never the cause of his own downfall. With Garroway you have the sense that everything is going along just fine and your queens-up are going to win with ease, and then about the time you're counting the pot for the third time and imagining yourself sweeping it in, there's Dave with a neat little straight he had on the first five cards.

It wasn't modesty that kept him from raising. He waited until his fourth up-card seemed to wreck him and everyone was relaxed. Then he was set. Then there was the bland, casual, slightly bored, slightly confused manner and the harmless, diverting small talk--all designed to soothe you, quiet your suspicions, rock you to sleep--and the next thing you knew Dave was dragging in your pot.

Garroway is evidence of my argument that the best poker players are amateurs. The pros play a cold, precise mathematical game, taking no chances, but their play lacks boldness, flavor and imagination--the very qualities with which Garroway's game abounds.

If you want a fast, foolproof rule-of-thumb for spotting a good poker player, try this: a good player never loses heavily on bad cards, but the average player invariably does. The night the good player dreads is the one when he holds good cards that just aren't good enough ... because skill cannot lessen the disastrous consequences of running second-best all evening. But the good player can and does protect himself when he holds poor cards.

The average player, on the other hand, loses on both occasions, and when it is his night to win he never leaves with as much as he should. He is an intelligent, sensible chap in other respects, you may be sure. He would never dream of undertaking anything involving that kind of money in some other line without knowing what he was doing. Yet he blithely plays poker, losing too much too often, and consoling himself with the thought that poker is largely a matter of luck and he just isn't lucky.

And this is his first mistake. Poker is not largely a game of luck, as he believes, but a game of skill in which the element of luck is of no importance. On any given night a player may indeed be lucky. He may draw to a pair and fill, time and again. He may catch in the belly and hit two card flushes all night long. But you can depend on it, the next time it will be another man's turn, and in the long run the cards will average up with a mathematical precision that is fascinating to observe. If the same men play regularly for three months, the man who is furthest ahead at the end of that time will be the best player ... and to find the worst you have only to look for the biggest loser. Were it not for its being a game of skill, poker would long since have passed out of the picture in favor of the faster action of the crap table.

But before going into the strategy and tactics of winning poker it is necessary to define the particular variety of the game under discussion. Social poker is, in effect, poker for fun. The crazier the game the greater its appeal, for the stakes are so low that no one can get hurt, and the talk is so constant that no one can think. The pot is always light because the players are talking so much they don't hear the call to ante. But no one really cares, for poker here serves the function of background music at a party. To see the game perverted to such profane ends pains the good player, and he will not participate, even under protest. To him, social poker is like Platonic love: it is best reserved for those incapable of anything stronger.

Then there is the sort of poker advocated by Max Shulman in these pages last August. These players assert they are tired of classical poker and want to try something different. Thus we have low-ball, high-low, no-peek, and any number of other weird variations--including one in which status is given such picturesque-sounding hands as big dogs and little dogs, big tigers and little tigers (i.e., busted straights and flushes). Well, those who play these games are tired all right, but what they're tired of is losing at regular poker. And so they have devised these other games, most of which have the implicit purpose of reducing the amount of skill required to win. No one gets "tired" of winning. Any man who takes pride in his ability to play and who enjoys testing that ability against his peers will agree that the three basic games of five- and seven-card stud and draw are quite enough. Some purists even ban the seven-card game, though it seems to me to be in many respects the ideal limit-poker game. Draw, on the other hand, is better suited for the table-stakes bluffing game than for limit-poker, for it seldom creates pots of the size provided by either of the stud games.

But--stud or draw--the topic of this discussion is the blood game.

And before going to the heart of the matter, this word of advice: don't play more than four or five hours at a session. Beyond that your mind will be dulled, causing you to play automatically and thus to surrender your natural advantage as a superior player. All cats are gray at six A.M.

If you don't know whether you're slowing down, try remembering your hole-card with only one look. When you find you have to keep peeking to remember what it is, you've been playing too long. Your reflexes are gone. Get out--even if you're stuck--because if you go on you'll be stuck just that much more an hour from then.

There are, I believe, two basic strategic approaches--one defensive, one offensive. Let us suppose that you are one of six players in a game. Your chances of winning any given hand, then, are one in six. This is important. You know from the beginning that you cannot expect to win every other hand, or every third or fourth hand. To play every hand through to the end would be ruinous, and so we infer the first principle: Get out as early as possible in all hands you don't figure to win.

This means a good deal more than simply dropping out immediately when you have nothing. Even some of the fish do this every now and then. It means (assuming you are strong enough to see another card or two) that you must get out the moment a realistic appraisal of all the hands reveals that someone else has a better chance of winning. A grave defect in many players is their inability to evaluate their cards realistically. Poker is a game of skill because the fall of the cards is determined by mathematical laws of probability. Yet a player who knows this perfectly well loses his sense of proportion when he considers his own cards. "I thought I would catch," he explains, having tried and missed. But he tried and will keep on trying because -- like a horseplayer -- he remembers only his winners. The memory of a hundred busted flushes has conveniently (and perhaps mercifully) passed from consciousness; but the time he made a fantastic catch of the case eight to win a big pot -- this memory is evergreen. And as he considers staying on to the bitter end with his possible flush, this memory causes him to respond like a punchdrunk fighter hearing the bell.

Stay? Of course he stays--it's all he can do to keep from raising.

Here is an example: you are playing a hand of seven-card stud. Six cards have been dealt so far, and you hold four spades. The two other stayers show four spades between them, and two of the three players who dropped out earlier had a spade up. (To have noted this last is important; average players don't keep track of the cards closely enough.) The active players against you in this hand show pairs. One of them bets and the other calls. Should you stay?

Well, there are three spades unaccounted for, and there are 24 cards in the deck. Your chances of catching a spade are one in eight. The money odds if you win will be slightly better than two to one (for one man who dropped out saw the fourth card). In the circumstances the only possible play is to fold immediately. Unless your hand has other values, such as a high pair, you should not consider paying for that seventh card. Get out! Save your money for a hand when the odds are in your favor.

There will be times, of course, when your spade comes in. But in the long run you must lose if you persist in making this play. The possible flush is naturally tempting, but poker is not a game of sentiment. And this is to say nothing of those times when you make your flush only to learn (paying liberally for the privilege) that someone else has filled his two pair. When this happens you may throw in your hand in disgust and bemoan your bad luck, but the fact is that you had no business staying around in the first place.

This poker game you're in is not a benefit being conducted on your behalf. It is a highly competitive affair, and each man is out to win the other players' money--but to win it while strictly conforming to the rules of play. No good player would be so lacking in a sporting sense as to use any dubious or dishonest means of improving his chances, because this is entirely contrary to the whole spirit of the game. If you can't win on ability alone, either improve your ability--or don't play.

A really good player is also one who carefully observes the etiquette of the game. The subject of poker etiquette is large enough to warrant a separate treatise, but this much can be said here: a good player always bets, folds or raises in turn. He remembers at all times that this is a game involving money and that he has a responsibility to the other players as well as to himself. A very bad offender is the player who makes a one-card draw to a straight or flush, misses, and immediately throws in his cards, indicating that he missed. Suppose you are sitting with two small pair between the opener and a one-card draw. One-card fails to catch and tosses in his hand at once, whereupon opener bets. He made a second pair and has aces-up. Ordinarily he would have checked to the one-card draw, not wanting to risk a raise if one-card hit--but this prohibition is removed when one-card folds. Opener bets with confidence, and you are forced to call a round of betting that would have been checked out if one-card hadn't folded out of turn.

Bet, fold or raise in turn--and when you are holding your cards with the expectation of dropping out when your turn comes, do not indicate by your manner or words your intention of folding. This is simple respect for the rights of the other players.

The psychological aspects of poker are infinitely varied. I am not one of those who feel that a man stands completely revealed at the poker table. But there is no doubt that a man's essential personality is exposed when he sits down to play. Poker is as revealing as perhaps any other single activity he engages in, for it calls forth so many of his basic qualities: intelligence, greed, guile, charity, patience and sense of fair play. If you know someone who becomes a different person at the poker table the chances are that the poker personality is closer to the true man.

Applying our first principle: in draw, fold immediately unless you have openers or better. (Exception: stay with a four-flush or open-end four-straight provided there are already enough callers to assure you of money odds equal to the odds against your making the hand. Your chances of flushing are 9/47--about one in five; for a straight, 8/47--about one in six. If you hit, the pay-off should be at similar rates.)

Otherwise, you should fold if you don't have openers. To stay with a small pair is bad poker. You know that at least one stayer has you beat going in, and his chances of improving are just as good as yours. This is all you need to know to get out.

Moreover, opener may have more than the prescribed minimum, and if this is the case it will be that much harder to beat him. You will lose enough times when you have a legitimate call. Don't add to your grief by staying around when you should get out.

If you pay good money to draw to inside straights only a psychiatrist can (continued on page 83)Playboy On Poke(continued from page 28) help you, because there is probably something wrong with your head.

In five-card stud, fold immediately unless your hole-card is higher than any card you can see. (If high man has to bet and you are high you will have to bet, of course, but get out as soon as possible thereafter.) Note that it is your hole-card that decides your course. In five-stud the hole-card is vital. If you pair it you can hope to win, other things being equal. But this is true only as long as it remains the highest card you can see. If you pair a hole-card you should have folded, you may well lose -- and such losses are usually expensive.

After your first up-card in five stud you must play by ear ... but the principles still apply. Unless you make a pair or catch an ace on the second card you should get out -- assuming other players now show cards higher than your hole-card. Certain exceptions will suggest themselves, of course, but it is best to learn the principles of proper play and to conform to them until you are sufficiently expert to recognize legitimate occasions for their breach.

If another player shows a pair, get out, unless you paired, too (and if you paired your hole-card and had a proper call on the first round you will have a higher pair and can be alert for a chance to make an effective raise).

In short, get out as soon as you are beaten on board and must improve to win. To stay with a three-Hush or a three-straight is madness itself, unless you have other values, e.g., A-K-Q. A straight is dealt in five cards once in 254 times, and a flush is even worse at 1/508.

Seven-card stud presents special problems because it offers seven cards. Alter buying five or six cards it is often the case that you will have just enough to force you to stay to the end--at which point you will usually lose to a hand that was developing steadily from the beginning. Don't stay in seven-card unless you have a pair, three of a kind, or three cards to a straight or flush. I don't recommend staying on any other holdings, even something as tempting as ace-king in the hole and nine up. Remember that you are looking at three-sevenths of your hand right here. Unless you can see something worth following up it is best to go now.

Having taken a fourth card your hand should have definite possibilities--and I mean possibilities that an unbiased observer would readily concede. Too many poker players proceed with the idea that as long as there's life there's hope. Turn it around. As long as there's hope there's life, and as long as there's life the poor poker players are in there, contributing to another man's prosperity. If your hand has definite possibilities you should naturally play. If not, fold it and forget it. There'll be another one along in a minute.

There is a player for whom none of the foregoing is really relevant--the intuitive "if you get a hunch, bet a bunch" player--and the perfect example in my experience is Nelson Algren. Here, truly, is the man with the golden arm. When he's hot, that is. To win seven out of eight pots in a row is just about par when Algren is hot.

Here he is at the top of his form. We are playing five-card stud. On the third card I show a pair of sixes. He shows a four and a three. I bet. He calls. I figure he's chasing with a small pair. The next round he catches a pair of fours. Naturally I check. He checks. Then, on the last card, he gets a three. I retire, babbling incoherently. With one hand he draws in the pot and with the other he generously reveals his 10 in the hole. What happened was that he came on when he had only one card he could pair to beat me (and always assuming I didn't help or didn't have trips backed)--and ended up doing it the hard way with two small pair.

This is, of course, suicidal. But these intuitive players (as opposed to those who simply don't know any better) make their own rules. They are gloriously inconsistent. And before such confidence--and such results!--I yield in awe. Were there many such players around and were they doing this sort of thing very often the game would quickly take on a different aspect from the familiar one we all know so well. Such a player is unprotected against the inevitable dry periods. He will get mangled, hand after hand. But there is something beautiful as well as terrifying in watching Algren compulsively ride a hot streak through to the end.

Thus far we have been discussing defensive play. It is necessary to your game, of course, but its function is largely negative. If in the six-man game you can expect to win only once every six deals--and inasmuch as you are bound to lose some expensive hands along the way--it is of the utmost importance that you see to it the ones you do win are fat ones. And so to the second principle: Build the largest possible pot for the hands you figure to win.

It is regrettably true that what you figure another player may disfigure -- usually some screwball who came to play and bets like there were no tomorrow. But except for that once in a blue moon when he gets red hot and wins everything in sight, this guy is a generous contributor. His presence in the game improves your chances of being a winner, so don't begrudge him his victories. Besides, it won't do any good. His tenacity brings tears to the eyes, and his courage in the face of overpowering superiority is marvelous to behold -- or it would be if he weren't forever grimly hanging on and managing to come up with a scrawny little straight -- a belly catch on the seventh card -- to render your three mighty aces impotent and contemptible. Ah, me!

To build the pots you have a good chance of winning, the greatest need is for restraint. And this is just the quality that is lacking in the play of the average player. He is overeager. His aggressiveness scares off the others before they are properly set up for a killing. A premature raise drops the other players because it occurs before their hands have developed sufficiently to commit them in the pot to a degree that practically demands their continued participation. You cannot raise simply because your hand warrants it. You must consider the probable effect of a raise on the other players. For if it drops them it was a bad raise in exact proportion to the strength of your hand. Five men calling each round of betting is much better than one man seeing your raise after the other four have folded. The trick is not to raise but to keep from raising. Once a pot has been raised the other players check to the raiser. As a rule he gets only one raise per hand (except in a very loose game). If he is given a second chance it will be because someone else has a strong hand, too.

So keep them in by just calling. Don't annoy them by raising, soothe them by calling. Save your raise until everyone is committed and the first better is on your left. Then, after the stayers have seen his bet and it is around to you, make your raise. But to raise when the bet is on your immediate right is precipitate.

It is lack of restraint that prevents the poor player from building the pots he wins. He raises like a madman, everyone folds, and he turns his hole-cards and reveals three of a kind backed up. He may feel he is unlucky, but he isn't. He's stupid. Three of a kind figures to win at seven-stud, so there was no need to start pushing so soon. If you have such a holding let them stay in. If the high man is on your right and he checks, you check, too. Let someone on the left bet. And when he does and the bet reaches you, call, don't raise. Save that raise until the doubled round (most local rules allow the betting limit to be doubled on an open pair and before and after the last card is dealt). If the round is checked out, don't fret. You've learned something. They're weak, and a bet might have dropped most of them. Now they get a free card and some will improve and be able to stay in.

In draw poker, raise with two pair before the draw, no matter where you sit. You must raise before the draw if you expect to raise at all, because the chances of filling are one in 12, and you are unlikely to be able to raise after the draw. Myself, I haven't filled two pair since 1941 ... but it's an interesting and important hand and fun to play.

If you hold anything better than two pair do not raise before the draw unless there are already several stayers or unless you are the last man. Be patient! Call the opener. Your raise may fold two or three live ones who would have stayed.

A raise on a four-flush or open-end straight is warranted only if there are four or five stayers in front of you. Given this number of stayers a raise is in order for you will be getting satisfactory money odds and if you catch, you figure to have a winner.

It is a fine thing to have a powerhouse, but anyone can have one on any given hand, and the mark of the expert is that he bets it almost diffidently, nursing the hand along, coaxing bets from the stayers, until he has lulled them into a feeling of security ... and then, at the end, the authoritative raise as a coup de grâce.

In five-card stud, with an ace in the hole or a small pair, you must raise at once, no matter where you sit (assuming, of course, that no higher hands show). If you're going to make your ace or pair stand up you've got to give nature an assist. Drive them out -- or make them pay to stay. You can't afford to sit there passively, because an ace in the hole or a small pair is no cinch.

If you are raised by a player who is almost surely weaker than you, resist the impulse to raise him back, unless you feel a re-raise will not hurt your chances of a large pot (and generally this would be the case when there are only the two of you left in the hand). Don't be insulted by the raise and reply in kind. Keep your feelings out of it. You should be analytical and calculating, not hot-headed. Poker is no game for the emotional -- which may explain the absence of first-rate women players.

Sand-bagging (i.e., checking and then raising when another man bets) is an excellent pot-builder, provided the bet comes on your left. If the man on your left is one of these "checks are for banks" players who bets as a matter of principle, check to him when you're high, then raise in turn. Sand-bagging has two advantages: it builds a pot and it will make the others more hesitant to bet on those occasions when you have checked a weak hand.

Bluffing is generally unavailing in limit poker, and its chief function is to advertise itself by being discovered. It will help the bluffer find callers on other hands when he is loaded and wants action. Contrary to the belief cherished by many players that they "run" one regularly, very few hands of limit poker are won by bluffs. A player may think he has run one, but if the hands were examined it will usually be found that his was the strongest of all, no matter how weak it may have seemed to him. Bluff just enough to assure callers when you want them.

And these final precepts: Develop a philosophical attitude about the game. Don't let prosperity, boredom, animosity or despair cause you to change your principles of play;

Learn to lose graciously. If you can lose graciously it will be because you understand the game. And if you understand the game you will usually win;

While it is important to master the techniques of correct play, it is just as important to remember that these techniques are in part based on the expectation that the other players are also doing the right thing. In fact this is not always the case, so you cannot sit down with inflexible ideas. You must adapt yourself to the players in your particular game. Observe their methods and habits ... and then use this knowledge. What is sometimes vaguely referred to as "card sense" is often the ability of a man to size up his opponents, to exploit their weaknesses. Their style of play can reveal as much and be as useful as knowing their hole-card.

The outstanding characteristic of a first-rate poker player is that he is perceptive. He is constantly alert. And the rewards -- psychological and monetary -- are in proportion to his skill.

Ace poker players frequently find their attention wandering when they attempt the variation known us strip. Cards and an opponent of suitable dimensions, with a chilled drink to refresh the fevered brow, are among accoutrements that keep the game moving in a proper direction.

Two can play the game for whatever stakes they've agreed on, but the rules of classic poker should be followed, as in this case. A full house wins the first hand, for the young lady's opponent.

Three jacks give the gentleman another hand and his companion pays off accordingly. She doesn't really need that shoe to play the game anyway -- and he didn't need that extra jack handily tucked up his sleeve.

Four jacks, the lady figured, couldn't be bettered. But five of a kind make a compelling array, so she pays again.

Five aces, now! This man's obviously championship material and is rewarded by collecting a pair of hose. It may have occurred to his friend by now that all's not according to Hoyle, but she carries on.

Six face cards to choose from -- how can he miss? The lass on the losing end suggests a switch to stud.

Seven-card stud it is, then -- but what's this? The dealer's peeling them off the bottom of the deck.

Eight hands later the dastardly facts become known: our hero's been cheating. But who would trust to luck when playing for stakes like these?