2007 March 19

Here are a few hands that I played online at PokerStars or Full Tilt in the past week.

There are different forms of intimidation. Some players think that by being loud, obnoxious bullies with forceful, aggressive images they can successfully intimidate opponents. Their goal is to profit from mistakes caused by upsetting their victims.

These intimidators fail to realize something. By making the game so unpleasant, opponents are either sitting out pots they might otherwise be involved in or choosing to play elsewhere.

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.

The United States may be the center of the world poker scene, but it's hardly the only place where interesting poker is played. The UK, for example, is replete with skilled players plying their trade within their own poker economy and ecology. The stories of these players aren't well known on this side of the Atlantic, but one source for this information is Des Wilson's book, "Swimming With the Devilfish".

Pete DeMonte was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on July 7, 1954. He graduated from Bullard Havens High School in 1972 followed that up with a couple years at Norwalk Technical College.

In 1977 Pete joined the local fire department as a full time fire fighter until his retirement in June 1998. In July 1998 he and his wife, Diane moved to Las Vegas.

That move was something that they had planned on doing for years. Pete and Diane spent their honeymoon in Las Vegas back in 1982 and from that time on they vacationed in Las Vegas about twice a year.

In poker, there are some misconceptions that are widely accepted as gospel. For instance, many serious players, even professionals, believe that cards come in unexplainable streaks - hot and cold. When you're on a hot steak, they think, your fortunes are more likely to be favorable on the following hand. And when you're on a cold streak, you should expect bad fortune to continue.

So, when they're experiencing a good run, they take more chances and play more aggressively. When they're experiencing a bad run, they play fewer hands.

There is no definitive "correct" way to play poker.

Read a dozen different instructional poker books, and you are likely to find as many differing ideas on how to play those questionable hands. Poker guidance from Doyle Brunson is markedly different from that of Phil Hellmuth; both have contrasts to Dan Harrington, which is nowhere similar to .... You get the idea.

It leads many inexperienced players to a point of frustration and confusion. As we attempt to pour ourselves into reading we find ideas in some books and magazine articles are oppositional to each other.

I had just gotten back from a three-day business trip to San Francisco. I stopped to see Hobby at his yacht, Lazybuns. Since it was late in the afternoon, maybe we could do dinner.

"Hey Hobby, what have you been doing?" I said as I helloed him from shore.

"Come aboard. I've been doing some research, Joe. I met a Poker Astrologist."

"Really, Hobby? Are you going dippy on me?"

"No. This is straight stuff."

"Yeah, sure. Tell me about it."

Recently I came into an event at the Los Angeles Poker Classic determined to start out slow and easy... "take the temperature of the table," as I described it to myself. Yeah, that was my plan, but I'm such a pumpkin that within fifteen minutes I had drained away half my stack on a bunch of reckless adventures and hazardous bluffs. That's what happens when you take the temperature of the table using a rectal thermometer shoved up your own butt.

It is not a good idea to play poker when you feel physically ill. A body off balance is a mind off balance too. It's hard enough to be patient when healthy and strong and doubly difficult to do this when you're not up to par.