Dec. 18, 2004

The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.
Mark Twain

Sometimes the simplest idea can become a gigantic, totally misconstrued and misunderstood complication. Take, for example, the idea of starting hands in this case hold'em but we can generalize.

Hardly a single book has been written for beginning to intermediate players that doesn't impress upon the reader the importance of learning and sticking to the starting hands recommended by one to four of the top poker experts.

And the writers, of course, are right to a point. When they say you can play pocket aces in any position, they are right. That advice is usually expanded upon to take into consideration such factors as position, type of game, and bankroll, but by and large, it's a given that your pocket aces are a definite powerhouse before the flop. But as the starting hands go down from there, their strength begins to dissipate. This is to be expected so there's nothing complicated about it so far. A pair of queens, for instance, can often win a pot but the ladies probably won't stand up against a pair of kings or a pair of aces.

All the starting hands are based on probabilities, so they have a great deal of validity.

But playing only the cards according to the book will lead you to the poor house.

The problem comes from the decision to play only the starting hands in the positions suggested by the experts and from a decision of others to be super aggressive and play anything that looks like it could end up being a winner.

At one time, a player using the tight style could easily eke out a living at the medium to high limit games back before everyone and his sister decided to take a stab at public poker. The loose fish jumping into the quiet little rock's pond was a welcome site because it usually meant a huge contribution.

Now, however, with an overload of players rushing toward the top of the heap, the house of winning cards has tilted. Playing exactly as the starting card rules recommend has become a shortcut to poverty.

Early on, immediately after fully understanding the art of the starting-card chart, the serious poker player has to learn the art of stealing the blinds and semi bluffing, of slow play and check-raising. Most of all, he has to understand that when the poker guru advises him to put the starting cards to memory, he doesn't mean you can't improvise and mix things up now and then. For example, in the 2004 World Series of Poker, Dan Harrington who has a reputation of being Mr. Ultra Conservative at the table-had everyone believing his image. Quiet and unassuming, Harrington played starting cards to perfection with little enthusiasm, mixing up his play so infrequently that he was never caught-or at least he wasn't caught on camera-deviating from his cautious game plan. Then, at the final table, where a flick of the risk could mean you're out of the tournament, Harrington, out of position, in possession of two rinky-dink cards (a six-deuce off suit), up against some powerful chip leaders, broke completely away from his perceived image and raised - more than a half million tournament dollars!

There's nothing in the starting card recommendations that would even hint at playing the six-deuce in any position. (And truthfully, this kind of deviation should be done with extreme caution, if at all.) But the lesson is there. If you ever expect to evolve from cabbage to cauliflower; from pit to peach, you have to recognize the need for the beginning stage and then learn how to evolve into the final product in this case, a great poker player.

Good luck. You can do it.