Ashley Adams

You can learn some lessons too well. It happens to beginning Stud players all the time. They came to the casinos with the loosey-goosey style of the home game. They lost. They read some books, watched their opponents, and soon learned that if they were to win in a casino they had to play tight. So they did. They limited their Third Street play to Trips, high pairs, low pairs with a high kicker, 3-Flushes and 3- Straights. Gradually, and painfully, they learn to throw away the 9-K-A double suited, the 3-3-6, and even the 3- 9-9 that they played for profit in the passive easy home games.

Attitude is everything in tournaments. Truly. Once you have mastered the basics, nothing will help you as much as a winning attitude that keeps you focused and keeps you from conceding or playing recklessly during the requisite hours of play.

Successful bluffing involves, usually, a combination of ingredients to be successful. Ideally, you'd want to have some value to your hand, some possibility that your hand might improve on future cards, timid and tight opponents, and good scare cards. But I'm not going to focus on any of those items in this column. Instead, I'm going to look at something less tangible - something you can't touch - but something that is ultimately very important and something you can actually do something about. I'm going to look at your image in the mind of your opponent.

Setting up the Bluff

Successful bluffing involves, usually, a combination of ingredients to be successful. Ideally, you'd want to have some value to your hand, some possibility that your hand might improve on future cards, timid and tight opponents, and good scare cards. But I'm not going to focus on any of those items in this column. Instead, I'm going to look at something less tangible - something you can't touch - but something that is ultimately very important and something you can actually do something about. I'm going to look at your image in the mind of your opponent.

In the long run, the difference between wining and losing is almost entirely due to a difference in skill. We all know that. We write and read about it all the time. But sometimes, winning is just a question of having an amazing string of good cards. I had the hottest 90 minutes of poker in my life the other night. I'd like to share what happened, not to demonstrate good play on my part, but rather to let you know what types of positive experiences may be out there for you - if you have the patience to wait for them.

I've recently started to get paid in a dangerous manner for some on-line poker writing I've been doing. My Internet publisher sends my money to an account on Party Poker. Though I had pretty much given up on online play, because of the seductive nature of having a poker room in my living room, I have found it increasing hard to just cash out of the site rather than play. So I've been playing.

When last we left off I was busily engaged in ethnic, gender and age-specific profiling at the poker table. I was waiting for a seat. I was fortunate. I was given my choice of playing with only older white men or with a mixed table of women, black West Indian players, and four older white guys. I chose the mixed group.

This is a dangerous article. I'm going to deal with ethnic stereotyping. If you're not up to it just look at the nice ads and turn the page. It was 10:00 AM Saturday morning. Foxwoods was very crowded... There were four $20/40 tables going, but no seats available. So I watched while I waited - trying to figure out which would be the best game to sit in. Three of the tables had the line ups I had become accustomed to in early morning games - a bunch of older white guys. I knew many of them.

You remember the old gangster movies- where the lead mug would threaten to throw the hero into the river with cement shoes? As a kid, in love with these old flicks, I used to imagine what that would be like - sinking fast in a body of water with "concrete galoshes". It's the feeling I still get sometimes at the poker table when the game is weighed down with rocks - the living and breathing kind. I had such an experience in Las Vegas on Memorial Day weekend.

I was reading some back issues of this great newspaper. I find that when I get my copy in the mail I often don't read it thoroughly - just looking for some of my favorite authors, upcoming tournaments, the Hustler ad, and then my article. But I just check to make sure it's there; I often don't read it.