Lou Krieger

If you took a poll of poker players and asked them whether they thought online poker or the brick-and-mortar variety was more aggressive, I'd venture to say that most respondents would come down on the side of online poker being the more aggressive of the two. Although there's plenty of room for disagreement, there'd also be loads of anomalies just based on the nature of the players even if there were some perfect way to determine which kind of game was more aggressive.

You can always bluff in a poker game. Sometimes you'll scarper away with the heist; other times you'll be caught red-handed. You can look like a donkey or a genius. It all depends. The cool thing about bluffing is that the cards you have don't matter at all, except for the fact that they're crummy. After all, if you have something as good J-J or A-K, you're not really bluffing unless you're pretty sure you're making your play with the worst hand. And if you do have the worst hand, you could make the same play holding 3-2. It doesn't matter.

The flop is hold'em's defining moment. For the cost of one small bet, you get to see 71 percent of your cards on the flop. That's right; the flop comprises five-sevenths of your entire hand. It's one of poker's biggest bargains. Because of that, it's imperative that the flop fit your hand in order to warrant the relatively pricy decisions to see the turn and the river. Deciding to see the turn or the river means seeing fewer cards at a higher price, and you need to have something that makes your investment worthwhile before making this decision.

It's difficult to digest all the material that's been written about poker over the past few years and probably impossible when you're in the midst of a cash game or a tournament and trying to recall some strategic gems you read.

Poker is not chess. You can't ponder a tough decision for ten minutes while you weigh each and every variable before taking action. Chess players have more time allotted to them to make decisions, and they use it. Poker players only have a limited amount of time to decide on a course of action - which raises an obvious question. What should you think about first?

Whenever all the cards are dealt and you're the last player to act, it pays to call if your chances of winning exceed the odds the pot offers you. If you figure to win once in three times when the pot offers 5-to- 1 odds, calling pays regardless of whether you win that particular hand or not. It's the long run that matters in poker, not the outcome of any given hand.

I received a lot of favorable feedback about my recent column, Playing the Odds. This piece expands on it by discussing the impact of odds in tournaments. Next issue we'll look at implied odds.

Tournament players have additional factors to consider when deciding whether to fold or continue drawing. Even when the pot will offset the odds against making a hand, the risk of elimination sometimes overshadows any potential rewards.

Because of this, folding is often advisable even when the relationship between pot odds and the odds against making your hand are favorable.

Default positioning often results in players calling too often while not folding or raising often enough. Although we talked about this last issue, it's not the whole story. Many players have a default position where bluffing is concerned too. That's because most people you meet around the table are looking to play their cards rather than throw them in the muck.

The default position for most players is "My opponent is bluffing," when it really should be, "He bet; I guess he's got a good hand."

In poker, as in life, we have default positions that help us put a lot of our decision making on autopilot so that we con concentrate on the really tough choices. We're not unlike our computers. Every time I open Microsoft Internet Explorer, Hotsheet comes up. It's my homepage and I don't have to make any decisions or go through any gyrations to put it right up there on the screen in front of me. It's my default choice, and I like it that way. Poker players have default positions too. Most of us - when confronted with folding, calling, or raising - choose to call.

In poker, as in life, we have default positions that help us put a lot of our decision making on autopilot so that we con concentrate on the really tough choices. We're not unlike our computers. Every time I open Microsoft Internet Explorer, Hotsheet comes up. It's my homepage and I don't have to make any decisions or go through any gyrations to put it right up there on the screen in front of me. It's my default choice, and I like it that way. Poker players have default positions too. Most of us - when confronted with folding, calling, or raising - choose to call.

Whether you call it card sense or intuition, there's more to hold'em than knowing the odds and how your opponents play. Poker intuition is like a sixth sense. But a lot of poker strategy is counterintuitive too. Like the song says, "It ain't necessarily so."