Dos and Don’ts of Live Poker

Live sessions with a ‘real’ player bring disadvantages that online gamers are not used to: you have to observe your opponents’ behaviour and body language.

Do not tell your opponent which kind of holding you have after folding a hand because it gives him information on how to play the next hand.

Dos

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For a raise or call announcement, you must verbalise it first and then throw the chips in front of you – this will avoid any misreads or any of your actions being misunderstood, and string betting is never allowed (a high-denomination chip bet without verbalising raise/call is a call only, other players and opponents in the pot will penalise you).

Angle shooting is another big no-no, something you must never do, which is a play that helps only you while harming other players at your table. For example, bending or marking cards in your favour (through such sleight of hand as reading cards) helps you but hurts other players too. It’s rude as well as wrong; it helps you at the expense of hurting others and is against all the rules.

Don’ts

If you’re playing a live game for the first time, be quiet. Don’t talk too much, not even online in the chat box. Especially not on the rail.

If it is your turn to act, do not allow yourself to gather or count your chips in plain view before acting – this makes life more difficult for attentive opponents to read your intentions.

Don’t poke or touch food at the table with your bare hands: this is unhygienic and annoying for other guests and could yet again scare them off from the food.

You might also have to remind yourself that, while this is poker, it’s also being played live. This means that a two-hour session is likely to give you only 25 hands to play (compared with up to 300 hands per hour playing online). You will need to think about and plan ahead, and be patient, so that you can make good decisions and avoid the mistakes that will cost you a fortune. You should also avoid ‘grinding it out’, playing the same hands over and over again.

Rules of etiquette

Live Poker has a few rules of etiquette to keep the table environment friendly, the main one being to stay quiet when you’re not in the hand. Talking too much can take away the concentration of other players at the table, and saying too much about your hand can give information to your opponents. A common mistake that players make is to splash the pot too often which slows up the game for the dealer.

Furthermore, in the spirit of good poker etiquette, one should take care to stack the chips in direct relationship to the amount of bets one makes so that both the dealer and other players know how much one is betting. Similarly, it is bad manners as well as bad form (punishable, by the floorman if necessary) to place higher valued chips underneath the lower denomination chips so they cannot be seen.

Displaying respect for tournament staff and dealers means not acting jubilantly or tauntingly following a winning hand –not only because it’s a dark cloud in an otherwise clear sky for the other players but also because it’s a drain on their gaming enjoyment.

Variations

Diversity, it can be argued, is one of the greatest allures of poker, and to understand how this diversity plays out is of central importance for all players, from beginners to poker lifers. Knowing how things look from a diverse array of perspectives gives you far more insight into how the game works and where your strategy should be positioned; this is particularly useful if you’re making a transition from live to online play.

The main difference between the two versions is pace – online players play 60 hands an hour – and while that might seem interesting, at the live tables I can play at a pace where I feel in control. I know what is coming next, and if the pace is too leisurely for me, it could lead to the degenerate behaviour that results in bad decisions.

One solution might be to practise at home using video poker machines. This won’t be as fun, but it’ll still give players an understanding of the underlying maths of the game and might help get them off the cards for a little while.