As you know, seeing the game is the trick and because it is amorphous like Zen, it is an impossible thing to teach people. The beauty of poker is that it allows the right brain (big picture simultanous juxtapostioning of things) people like myself to compete with the left brain (sequential logic math) people.
I have played and beat so many math and physics geniuses in my life that I know a normal person like myself with an educated mind, can not only win but dominate the game. I am very agressive and when I am pushing them around they never know what to do, nor can they seem to figure out what I am doing.
When my daughter went to Berkely and I visited, I would play at the Oaks and it was filled with UC Berkely geniuses working their way through college. And they knew the theories down pat, still when I was bluffing them it was like they were blind and all the theories in the world couldn't help them then.
I think one of the most important tricks is knowing how to play the small pairs and suited connectors. I had an interesting experience once at the Hideaway in Seattle. I was playing in the little 10/20 game when a "gang"-lol, of young Chinese kids came in and sat down. They were very good players and played ram en jamen no foldem poker.
There were 7 of them, myself and one other rich guy (we started a new table). They were raising the max every time before the flop. And they paid no attention to myself or the other guy at all. I was just an old guy sitting on the end of the table. Invisible to them.
Well, almost everyone at the table was coming in every time. Often 9 people with three raises, so the pot was $360 before the flop. Well, this played right into my knowledge. Remember one only has to have 5 people in the pot, inlcuding yourself, to have the odds to make samll pairs and suited connectors work and I had 7 to 9 every time ( Souce Mason Malmuth and Sklansky).
Well, in just a couple of hours I had won over $2,000 in that little 10/20 game. They took notice of me then. I saw one of the kids a few months later at another game and asked him if he remembered me. He said: "yeah, I remember you, you were the one hitting all your hands.
lol-I was doing nothing of the kind. I was just making my money on the normal odds of the game. He still didn't now what had happened. Very nice kid though and generally speaking a very good player. |
