Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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Notes -
Some old school friends invited me to a poker table around christmas. It's a bit too much for me to just happily play the money away as I usually did, but not so much to say no just for that reason (losing it wouldn't make a noticeable dent in my finances at all, I'd just feel bad). Does anyone here happen to know a decent, short basic poker intro guide/video series or anything that I can watch over a few days?
How is it structured, is it set buy in and then play cash and buy in again if you bust, or single buy in then tournament and pay out by rank, or variable buy in?
For the most part if your concern isn't making money (which depends more on the people you are playing with than on any skill you might build in a couple days) but just in not losing it: then your goal is to play tight, fold most of your hands pre-flop, and don't worry too much about bluffing or calling bluffs just play when you have a high percentage hand. This is where you start pre-flop:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PW7OB7crkxGKJMq9DKEBSCWDJHNcmrbmA05yEAJ3qrw/edit?gid=1033090205#gid=1033090205
Try to memorize the basic shape of the odds for the good hands, and give yourself basic rules of thumb for which to play through. Don't get obsessive with position or anything like that, if everyone else is playing at that level you're probably screwed anyway. If you're playing with ignorant normies, just playing tight and knowing which are the good hands will make you pretty solid. If you're playing against obsessives, it's going to take more than a week to get good enough at strategy for it to matter.
Personally, I'll add that as you play you can learn more about your own issues with certain hands, and either focus on learning to play them properly, or just learning to avoid them. For a long time I consistently lost money playing pockets, I'd take it to the flop because the odds were worth it, then fold immediately under pressure because I wasn't confident that the other guy didn't have a higher pair. So I started just deciding pre-flop that if I felt good I'd go all-in pre-flop and if I didn't I'd fold pre-flop for anything under JJ or QQ.
Fold on everything that isn't at least ${face card} + {ten or higher}.
They will think you're a poker GOD.
Most "bro basement" casual games devolve into wild risk taking within 30 minutes. Playing tight will be a contrast and you'll look amazing.
Not really? It'll be apparent that you're holding out for the best cards, not 'paying in' and taking part in the fun, and when you bet, it'll be obvious that everyone else should fold unless they hold an amazing hand.
Yeah you can't always play tight
I've played a vanishingly small amount of poker in my life but I usually like to set a first impression in the opening few hands by making a somewhat aggro stupid bluff so the people who are trying to track your strategy think of you as more volatile.
It shows!
If they're actually "tracking your strategy" this will have the opposite of the intended effect. They will simply not play when you are in a hand because the variance is too high. Happens all the time with newer players playing at a casino. They come in, sit down all fast and loose, every veteran at the table can see it a mile a while. What happens on every hand? If the new guy leads a bet ... fold,fold,fold,fold,fold. You just wait them out. Eventually, they get bored (quite quickly, actually) because there is "no action at this table!"
Then the adults can get back to grown folks style poker.
Edit:
The scene in Rounders where all of them gang up on the tourists is fairly accurate. It's not that they actually conspire with gestures or what have you, it is just that they are signalling really obviously what they have, letting the tourists chase them, and using the other (pro) players as enablers. They take turns with who gets the pot - again, informally and spontaneously - so that everyone walks away with cash.
Poker is an information game. You not only have to but want to give away some information in order to effect the betting and play of other players. This gets fucked up when a drumb / new / and or drunk player stops rationally reacting to information.
The most exciting hands are when both players have strong hands, try their best to signal it just right, both do but then both have a fundamental inability to accurately model the board and it comes down to the 4th and 5th cards being turned over. This is so fun because its actually where the limits to information theory are touched.
LMAO shots fired, luckily for me my opponents also didn't play much poker, so my amateur reverse psychology was mildly effective
This is really interesting, so "good" players try to avoid chaotic situations and play when they have a better gut sense of what they think the other people are actually doing?
Isn't that the point of bluffing though? I'd imagine every good player does a mixture of going in on legitimately good odds hands, and some amount of bluffing? What makes an opposing player low or high variance?
What does this mean?
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@RenOS seems to A) Want to go to this game and hang out for social reasons, B) Prioritize not losing money over making money C) in front of people. Playing tight will maximize the odds that you stick around for most of the night, getting the social benefits of playing poker, and minimize the odds that you'll bust early and need to rebuy and/or look like an idiot.
We can't know the level of the table, so we can't reliably increase the odds of winning by advocating for aggressive play. We can reliably increase the odds of hanging around all night by advocating tight play.
It's pretty similar to what I'd tell someone prepping for a boxing match in two weeks: practice movement, keeping your hands up, throwing straight punches quickly, backing away. That might not be the best strategy for winning a boxing match, but it's got decent odds against an untrained opponent, and it's got very good odds of avoiding getting knocked out quickly and looking like a fool against a similarly skilled opponent.
Best YouTube resource for the basics of boxing "movement." ?? I have zero boxing experience and whenever I stumble onto a bout on late night ESPN, it looks to me like they're just kind of lazily circling each other, but I know there's a lot more going on.
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