Limit Holdem: Beginners' Strategy.

I remember well my introduction to Texas Holdem at the Memorial Union on the campus of the University of Wisconsin (UW). I was a poor (OK, broke!) undergraduate student at UW then, with nothing to lose (literally). Amazingly enough, the game was played right in the middle of the Student Union, infamous for its relaxed mores. For some reason, the powers that be didn't think students should be playing poker there, but because we used some old Austrian coins as chips, instead of the usual red, white, and blue plastic chips that were the standard for the time, none of the authorities seemed to notice what we were playing. The game of choice offered additional camouflage: we were playing Texas Holdem instead of the much more easily recognized Seven-Card Stud.

I fancied myself a great poker player at the time, and when I heard about the game, I hurried down to play. Of course I  wasn't even a good player then, because I'd had very little experience. It seems that everyone overrates himself when it comes to playing poker!

The players were quite an eclectic mix: taxi drivers, students, professors, lawyers, and even a prominent psychiatrist. When I sat down and bought in for $20,1 was warmly welcomed by the group, because every game needs some new blood (and fresh cash) once in a while. I quickly learned that I had a lot to learn about Texas Hold em. I had a great time, but my $20 didn't last long, and it was all I could afford to risk. Although I didn't know much about poker yet, I at least had the good sense not to risk more than I could afford to lose, or borrow money I'd have trouble paying back.
Still, I thought I was gaining a feel for the game and its nuances, and, with so much money flying around down there, I thought I might one day begin paying my tuition with my poker profits. So I struck up an acquaintance with the best player in the game and set out to learn how to play Texas Hold em the right way.

My new acquaintance, Tuli Haromy, ended up becoming my best friend for the next eight years. He was also the best player and banker for the game. (The banker is responsible for passing out chips, cashing checks, judging how much he can lend various players, and making sure that everyone is paid at the end of the night.) That made sense, because the best player has a vested interest in making sure the other players have access to cash to pky with (and lose to him). It turned out that Tuli was originally from Las Vegas, which explains why we were playing Hold em in Madison, Wisconsin, in the first place. Without someone with Tuli's Las Vegas background, the chances of finding a Holdem game in Madison in the early 1980s would have been slim to none!

Tuli had a basic theory about Holdem: "Tight is right." "Tight" means that you drop out of most hands before the flop. It was good advice. After studying the game with Tuli's tutoring and playing with the group for about three months, I found that I'd surpassed Tuli and become the best player in the game. After all, I had no job and no money, which meant that I had a lot of time on my hands and a strong motivation to learn the game. The amount of money I was winning each week was pretty good, too. In fact, from my modest perspective, the money was phenomenal. After about 18 months, I'd put more than $20,000 in the bank, and I paid off all my student loans! The bigger poker game on campus included mostly successful faculty and staff members, doctors, and lawyers. The money, combined with the fact that my ego felt great competing with and beating successful PhDs, JDs, and doctors twenty years older than I was, caused me to devote a lot more time and energy to learning Texas Holdem.

While I was crushing the games in Madison, I began developing my own basic theory of Texas Hold em. I had taken Tuli's theory and moved on: super tight was better than tight. In other words, playing even fewer hands than Tuli had suggested was the way to go. Another skill I had developed was an ability to read my opponents (to analyze how strong or weak their hands were, from subtle clues of behavior). Reading players, though, is a more advanced concept, so for now let's just take a look at my theory: "Supertight is right."

To make "supertight" something that you can sink your teeth into, I'll begin by identifying my top ten hands for Holdem the 10 strongest Hold em hands out there. I'll then teach you how to play those top ten hands before the flop, on the flop, on fourth street, and, finally, on the river—in other words, on all four rounds of betting. I'll teach you how to use well-timed raises on the flop to gain information that will help you judge, in the final rounds, whether or not your opponents have you beat. I'll show you how to make good use of that information when you're on fourth street. Finally, I'll show you that folding your hand on the river is usually not a good idea, because of the amount of money that's already in the pot by then.

Before we get into analyzing tactics in actual hands, I'll also introduce certain "animal types" that describe many of the people you will be playing against. Through examples, I'll show you when to raise, reraise, call, or fold your hand, depending on what types of "animals" your opponents seem to be, and thus what their tendencies are likely to be.

If you can truly absorb all the information I'll be offering in this chapter, and act on it under game conditions, you will already be capable of beating most small-limit Texas Holdem players all over the world! I will now teach you how to play limit Texas Holdem—a variation of Texas Hold em in which the size of the bet in each round is preset. This is the most popular game in the world today.