Personally, I will generally ocilate between two general tamplates. Usually I will play tight and aggressive. which is to say I won’t play a lot of hands. I’ll wait until I have top shelf cards and then play them very aggressively to intimidate the other players at the table. I will rarely check or call when I’m in this mode. If I’m playing, I’m raising. When I get a monster I may allow a check or call on the first round in order to induce a reraise. Other than that I will raise immediately - increasing the amount of the raise every subsequent round. Not only does it cause the other players in the hand anxiety once they get to the last rounds but it also keeps them worried about whether I will be playing in any particular hand. This general feeling of anxiety towards me works in my favor when the close calls come down the pike. They will either make a mistake, or throw away the best hand out of fear.

Though that is how I play most of the time, very often l will abruptly switch to an extremely loose, aggressive style. Rather than wait for the premium hands, with this style I will play many more hands than I normally would. Low pocket pairs and even suited connectors may be raised preflop. Again, my betting stays aggressive. I’m constantly raising and increasing the amounts of the raises. In both cases, this forces the other players to make decisions and the more decisions they have to make, the more likely it is that they will make the wrong ones.

The trick is, learning when to switch up styles. Like I said, my default tends to be the tight aggressive template, it just comes naturally. A more aggressive style may be natural to someone else. However when I’ am in the tight mode for a while eventually I’ll get several quality hands in rapid succession. This is my cue to amp up my game. Since I’ve already built a certain amount of trepidation in the other players about getting involved in my hands, they will be very reluctant once I start playing more often following a number of significant victories. Then the pots keep falling my way and its a ripple affect that could last for some time before I pull back to a tighter position again.

Another excellent time to switch to my looser game is when I first sit down at a table where nobody knows me and I can immediatley tell that the general skill level is high, but everyone is playing pretty tight. This is a good opportunity to take down a lot of pots before the turn but I always rememeber to be very careful of the slow play. If someone seems like they are stringing along every round, I will suspect they are holding a monster and waiting for me to bury myself. Remember that these are skilled, tight players. They know how to pick their spots. In fact its precisely the move I would do against a player like me.

Whatever your style, pin it down and use it for all its worth. It doesn’t matter what it is, the awareness of it is a powerful weapon. Self knowledge is just as important as the information gathered about an opponent. A conscious variegation of style will defeat a skilled, but one dimensional player any day.

They have vastly improved their program Polaris. It now has the ability to consistently defeat 1 million plus winning poker players.  Now before anyone  starts thinking that humans are out of bussiness at the tables, realize that it is only programed to play one game, texas holdem, against a single opponenet. On top of that, it only claims the top spot in limit games. So far the variables needed to account for anything more complex than heads up play of a single game and limited betting are too daunting for Polaris.

But, it would seem that if it can be done in this limited case, it is only a matter of time before a program powerful enough can be developed to handle more complex situatons. There isn’t anything essentially different about upping the challenge except for sheer complexity level. Once the essential problems are solved, it is simply a matter or processing power and efficient programming to handle anything else.

Unlike other games that computers excel at, poker is about lack of information. Chess, checkers, and the like are relatively easy because everything is right there. All the moves are open for anyone to see on the board. In poker, not only does the opponent not know the other player’s cards, but he has to account for deceptive play. In order to keep others from guessing their hands, players vary the ways in which they telegraph information.

People get scared about technology any time a computer is able to do something better than a human. That’s all nonsense as far as I’m concerned. When people are made to realize that humans really aren’t as special as they like to think, they get a little shaken up. Chess hasn’t been surrendered to microchips and neither will poker.

Check out the original article here.

So there is finally new president on his way into the White House. He is going to have a litany of problems to deal with and I’m sure one of the most trivial will be regulating gambling. But it is of some concern to us so lets take a look at what sorts of things one might expect from President Obama.

He has made comments during the primary race that suggest he is wary of measures that expand the legalization of gambling in America. He has concerns for “moral and social costs” associated with gambling and its effects on the lower income segment of society. I think one can safely assume that  these concerns are driven primarily by economic ramifications.  I believe that most economists consider casinos and gambling to be, in the long run, detrimental to an economy. They provide high up front revenue, but the negative aspects that tend to assert themselves (not the least of which being crime and a depreciation of surrounding property value) significantly outweigh those benefits. Now I am no economist and am not familiar enough to say definitively that that is a prevailing view; so take it with a grain of salt.

Now, the reason I say it is primarily on economic grounds that he objects is in contrast to moral objections. He probably doesn’t have strong ones. He is a poker player. A pretty good one from first hand accounts. He would regularly come out on top at weekly games among Illinois political figures. He apparently knows the odds well and, like most things, he always plays to win. He is up for a game of poker like anyone else. His problems with gambling are from a purely pragmatic, social effects standpoint.

That might explain why he was not as strong in his opposition of online poker. In fact he wants an independent study done on the subject in order to be better informed and make the best possible decision. Sounds a lot like the play to win, methodical poker strategy he’s credited with.

Probably can’t say for sure what his final decisions on these matters will be, but he seems to embody the decision making capacities of a calm, dispassionate poker player, so I’m not worried. Whichever way he goes with this decision, or any others really, its a good bet that he can be trusted to make an informed, careful decision. Something this country has been sorely lacking.

Here are a couple of articles that might prove informative on this topic.

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jan/18/nation/na-gambling18

http://www.pokerplayernewspaper.com/viewarticle.php?id=2920

They may seem silly or inane, but bumbling criminal stories are funny.

Two men in Greenwood Mississippi were caught running illegal video poker machines out of a trailer. Link to the article here

It’s no major felony, just a misdemeanor. What’s funny though is that someone called the police to inform them what was going on, then they apparently staked out the trailer for some time before making their move. The fact that they called it a raid is probably a little much. Were they afraid they might need a SWAT team to go into some hick’s broke ass trailer and slap him with a fine for running running video poker machines? Imagine a couple deputies walking tward the front door. As they approached the sound of bleeps and buzzers mixed with the occasional groan from the hapless players was certainly audible. Then they gave the old cop style knock on the door. When the proprietors (doubtlessly toothless and wife beater clad) of that classy establishment answered, they kicked everybody out and carted off the machines to personally enjoy back at the squad room. Remember officers, don’t chase and gut shot straights.

The feeling of involvement and community at the polls makes any wait more than worthwhile. this is maybe the most historic election in american history. Don’t put yourself in a position to have to say, years from now, that you didn’t participate.

And just so you know, this is not coming from some blindly patriotic lemming who talks, every year, about rocking the vote and how your one vote really matters. I don’t normally vote. In fact I feel that voting is, in many ways a sublimation of one’s power to a system in which they have no voice anyway. But that is a very long discussion for another time. I’ve let my idealistic notions about voting give way to pragmatic concerns. This election is just too pragmatically important to not do what you can to affect this particular change.

And for god sakes, if there is any problem whatsoever with your ability to vote, don’t take it lying down. Report it to any number of hotlines, tell a journalist. Vote stealing and faulty machines as well as a litany of other concerns about the legitimacy of this election have already come up. As much as I don’t like voting to begin with, the idea of a stolen election is so sickening that it can’t be allowed to happen again. I don’t just mean 2000, but 2004 saw some of the most blatant, horrific voter fraud in this country’s recent history. That can’t happen again.

But, if you’ve read all this then you’re wasting valuable time. Some states will be closing VERY soon. So get out now, especially if you live in a swing state like I do.

Gamble with chips at the table, don’t gamble on the future of the country and the world.