Winning Poker Hands

What You Have To Know

No matter what kind of poker game you are playing in, there are certain things about winning poker hands you have to know. They are listed below in order from the simplest to the most complex. The more of them you are capable of, the greater your chances of winning poker hands. Therefore, obviously I start with "kid stuff" that any poker player worth his salt knows as a matter of second nature and I progress to factors that may not even occur to anyone but players of the highest rank:

1. The rank of the hands.

Don't scoff at this-75 percent of all poker players have difficulty remembering.

2. What constitutes a good poker hand, a fair hand, a bad hand.

All these are relative values and vary in accordance with the game you are playing. It is absolutely necessary knowledge that you must take into any game with you. In jackpots draw poker a pair of sevens is a weak hand not worth playing; in blind-opening draw poker, in certain circumstances, it might be a good hand worth a stay and even a bet. A pair of tens and a king in the first three cards constitute a good hand in seven-card stud but are not worth a play in seven-card high-low stud, in which a good starting hand is something like 7-3-2. Later on I tell what is a good hand, a fair hand, and a bad hand in every one of the principal forms of poker. Before you go into a game, make sure that you have a very clear idea of this, whether you get it from experience, from intuition, from a book, or from any other source.

3. Your chance of improving.

Poker is not a game of the higher mathematics. All you need is rough approximations of the accurate figures. Nevertheless, you have to know approximately what is your chance of improving the hand you were dealt. To make an extreme example, if you did not know this you would be as likely to play an inside straight (in which the odds are nearly eleven to one against you, odds that you are seldom if ever offered by the pot) as a double-ended straight (when the odds are less than five to one against you, odds that you are frequently offered by the pot).

4. What you stand to lose and what you stand to win.

At this point we begin to approach expert stuff. The ultimate phase of mathematical figuring in poker is the number of winning poker hands you will get and how much you will win on them, and the number of hands you will lose and how much you will lose on them. You know the chestnut about the man who had three farms and lost them all in poker; he lost the first two drawing to inside straights and not hitting, and the third drawing to an inside straight and hitting. It is not enough to know that when you draw three cards to a low pair the odds are eight to one against making three of a kind. The necessary next problem is, what are the chances that I will win if, in that one case out of nine, I do make three of a kind? If your three of a kind, once you make them, have only an 85 percent chance of winning the pot, then to be mathematically sound you must deduct your losses on the other 15 percent, the times you improve and still don't win.

5. The best Poker hands probably held by each opponent. Cont...