Make a new plan, Stan

I started playing Texas Hold'em about 8 years ago, just after starting college. For me, it's far superior to 5 card stud for a number of reasons - but mostly because the element of luck is vastly reduced, so it is much more a game of skill. Skill to understand the value of your cards; to be able to read the board; to be able to read the opponents; and to know how to apply all this to get maximum return for your cards. There is still luck involved of course, but the point is that you should try to rely on that luck as little as possible.

I didn't realise this for years of course. In my head, you took the cards you were given, tried to see as many flops as possible, hang in the pot for every draw - and hope like hell that no-one else has anything better. This isn't a very profitable way to play, and so luckily I was only very rarely playing for money. Lots of games were had with my equally poor college mates, where we were playing for chips only. You might think that that would be damaging to a poker player - having no respect for the chips since they're worth nothing - but I can be very competitive, and so I hated even losing here.

Over time I developed a bit of a sense of the worth of a hand - or more appropriately the lack of worth of the majority of hands. This led to a lot more pre-flop folds, and a lot more wins. I even picked up a few quid in friendly games with my mates and family. It never occurred to me to try playing poker online - frankly the idea scared me. You hear so many stories of people with gambling addictions losing everything, so I was surprised to hear that a friend of mine had been playing online a while, and was doing quite well. And I knew for a fact that I was a better player than him the majority of the time.

So I signed up for an account and gave it a go, and placed in my first game to make a $9 profit. "Ain't this easy", thought I. Obviously, I lost this profit pretty quickly. I was all flushed with success, and kept making silly bets. After about 12 games over the course of 2 weeks I was only really treading water - so I decided it was time to actually have a strategy.

I looked around online, but didn't find anything I really liked at first. Mostly the poker tips sites were just full of so much jargon that it was pointless trying to understand a bit of it. Eventually though I found SixHanded. This site explained in fairly simple terms how to profit from playing a tight aggressive strategy. I gave it a shot, and placed 2nd and got my first 1st in the next few games.

Not that it's easy - far from it in fact. But it does give a great chance to make the money more than half the time, and you should be getting more 1sts than 2nds after making the final 2. I'll post another entry with my synopsis of the scheme, but I'd recommend reading through his site for all the proper details.