Have you ever played a hand so atrociously poorly that you just can’t let it go? During the session you keep thinking about it. The next day you keep thinking about it. It’s an itch. In your mind. That just keeps coming back. It’s like those trick birthday candles. You blow out the flames, but then
Dear reader: I wrote this in 2002. He really got me good on this one. I was playing $40-80 limit hold’em at Lucky Chances. Alex was at the next table, playing no-limit. He spoke to me with a hand gesture and said, “Do you want to take a break on your next big blind?”
Here’s a hand I played in the big no-limit game at Lucky Chances. There was a guy in the game I’d never played with before. He was giving lots of action. So far I’d played two pots against him. Both times I was on the button. Both times the river went check-check. Both times I
Dear reader: I wrote this in 2008. Sometimes an even-money bet can have big consequences, so it still matters which side you pick. Here’s a great example of that, from the $10/10/20 blinds no-limit hold’em game at Lucky Chances. The lineup − what we lovingly call The Breakfast Club because the game starts at
When Andy stumbled into our little snake pit, we know he had no chance. Not because he was drooping around like someone who had washed down his quaaludes with Jack Daniels, and not because he lacked basic card sense. There was no way to tell if he did or not. That’s because this was his
I looked up “tapping the glass” online and the first two definitions I saw were both good. From Pokerdictionary.net: “In poker, the saying ‘Tap the glass’ refers to telling weaker players at the table about their bad play, to vent, and to educate them in the process.” And from Flopturnriver.com: “Tapping the Glass is a
This is an “I Knew Him When” story. When Yan Chen won event #14 at the 2010 World Series of Poker − a prestigious Deuce to Seven No-Limit Lowball title − it blew his cover. Before that, only the top players in the world knew that Yan was one of the top players in the
“When you look to the right, you look into the past. To see your future, look left.” − me Among my recurring targets as a poker player is to look left as the action gets to me, so that I might get a feel for my opponents’ intentions. Is he going to fold? Is he
This is a before and after story. Before Joe Tall co-founded Deucescracked.com and became known throughout the land for the poker expert and righteous man that he is, he hired me to coach him. When the initial program was over, I gave him my standard-issue diploma. It looks like this: Yesterday, Joe sent me a
