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Texas Hold 'em - Deal me in!
Deal me in!
A beginner’s guide to limit Texas hold’em
Want to play poker but don’t know where to start?
Top poker expert Nolan Dalla’s guide to the easiest
format – limit Texas hold’em – will put you on the right path
SITTING DOWN TO A POKER GAME FOR the very first time can be a confusing, intimidating, even scary, experience.
I’ve played over half a million poker hands during my lifetime, and while I’ve forgotten playing almost all of them, the one hand that’s still crystal clear is my first live poker hand dealt in a casino.
The year was 1983. Two months after my 21st birthday, I sat down in a $1/$4 seven-card stud game at the Flamingo Hilton in Las Vegas.
The line-up at my table appeared mighty tough.
The men with faces of stone looked like they’d been playing poker since WWII. The women, mostly grandmothers living on retirement
cheques, were just as intimidating.
I was the youngest player in the game by at least a quarter of a century. It was a textbook case of the Las Vegas locals (them) feasting on a tourist (me). Shark bait.
I anted up 25 cents. The exact cards that were dealt were irrelevant, but I recall how one of the chain-smoking old-timers made it $4 to call, which was the maximum bet allowed at the table.
I reached into my stack and, without any hesitation whatsoever, fl ung four $1 chips into the pot.
They weren’t going to push me around. I’d show them!
‘Sir, don’t splash the pot,’ the dealer insisted.
Splash the pot? What in the hell was he talking about? ‘Sir, place the chips in front if you intend to call, and I’ll rake
them into the pot,’ the dealer instructed.
Sure – I knew that. Right. ‘No problem,’ I said, hoping that my first infringement of poker etiquette would go unnoticed.
I might as well have fired off a flare gun.
My opponent kept on betting on each round and by sixth street I’d seen enough.
I folded, careful not to allow anyone to see my cards and the fact I had no business in the hand in the first place. I’d played one hand and was already stuck $17.25.
Around 30 minutes later, I was broke and stormed out, furious.
Such was my fi rst poker experience at a casino.
What did I do wrong? Well, as you’ll fi nd out over the next few pages, just about everything. Your first ‘play money’ game When I first started playing poker, the Internet didn’t exist. If anyone wished to learn how to play poker in a casino, the beginner had to jump into the fi re and get
burned.
But that’s no longer the case.
Now, with easy access to the Net and multiple poker websites to choose from, it’s much simpler to learn the rules and nuances of poker for absolutely nothing.
Here’s what you can do right now:
download the free software on  pkr.com and play for fun.
Since you’re not playing for real money here, there’s really no such thing as making a mistake.
Go ahead and try a few crazy things, see what it’s like to fold, call, bet and raise.
Watch the betting action and notice how players are forced to act in turn. Notice that in limit games, the bets conform to a certain size on each round of betting.
I strongly suggest before you even think of playing poker for real, an apprenticeship in online play-money poker should be mandatory.
There’s really no better way to build up your confi dence.
When you play online, no one knows who you are. There’s no reason to feel any pressure or be intimidated – everyone was a beginner.
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Texas Holdem is one of the most popular Poker game variations, apparently it is also the easiest game to learn but still difficult to master.
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