Phillip Brown

Hi, my name is Phil and I’m from Florida.

I’m currently studying politics and social studies at college. I am a huge poker fan and I play in organised (friend no betting ;) ) tournaments with other students as well as playing online. I have always loved card games and poker is one of the most fun ones out there, it has been repeatedly described as the “all American past time” and I think this is defiantly true from the people I know.

I am hoping to eventually get far enough into politics to try and help peoples understanding of the game and hopefully disband some of the over the top gambling/sin related stigma that a percentage of American political groups associate with the game.

Published on 04/28/2008

There are several variables attached to a game of poker. Players keep moving in and out of a game, losing or winning results in personality changes, cards run hot or cold, time constraints, drinking, bank rolls going up and down are some of the factors that can impact a single poker hand.

Even though this is true, there are some situations in a game of poker where you can do just nothing. If you are making a royal flush in Stud Hi Lo, on Seventh Street, you can do nothing about your single opponent who will catch a card that will make him or her, a raggedy low hand for splitting the pot. In some cases, there will be a river card becoming a flush card for killing your straight and you can in no way get the opponent who made the flush for folding his hand prior to the river. Sometimes your opponent will be all-in with his or her straight when you are making a flush on the river and without chips to pay you off. There is no chance for you to go back in time and force the opponent to buy more chips for being able to extract a bet out of him on the river.

There are strong chances that you will keep on facing situations where a lot can be done for making significant changes in a hand. Sometimes poker players make decisions that are not obvious at all; be it hard, easy, right or wrong. But in almost every case, you can get an opportunity for affecting the situation you are into. In the decisions, the “stuff” of poker resides in a few situations where a player is completely at a loss regarding the next move.

You must be aware that the decision you face is not a no-brain decision, but sometimes you don’t have any idea about what can be done. The decision you have to take depends a lot on your skill level, but even experienced poker players face such situations. In such cases where your poker skills don’t help you in figuring out the best action, you can fall back on some pre-determined ideas and rules. One such important tool is the stereotypes.

It is not a very sensible idea to believe rigidly in stereotypes. Different people behave differently. When you have to face an opponent who is completely new to you, it is best to follow stereotypes as compared to flipping a coin mentally. For instance, when you come across a guy with long hair, what do you think of him? Or an overweight man in a Hawaiian shirt and comb over?

Does you mind say something like “mid-life crisis”? Have you ever tried sitting across a player in a poker game and creating an impression about him or her by the dressing style? Two schools of thought are applied here.

The first one is the age-old stereotype about strong and weak players. Tidy, organized players are usually considered as strong opponents. The theory says that they are able to calculate the pot odds faster as compared to any IBM product. There are reasons why stereotypes come with validity. There are chances that a strong player might come dressed as a weak player and vice versa. But judgment based on stereotypes makes a good guideline if not the final conclusion.