Hold Em Authority - Texas Hold Em Strategy and advice for all levels of players

I’ve played in a lot of home poker tournaments in my day, but only a few of them were run with any sort of organization and sensibility. What does it take to run a flawless tournament? Well, I’ve got a few ideas, and I’m here to help, so let’s get right to it.

Obviously there are some non-money spending issues that one has to decide upon. The most common one is “Do we want to play multiple tournaments in a night, or do we want to spend a whole day playing one big poker tournament?” This question can be answered simply by asking your participants and then adjusting your blind level increases appropriately. One big tournament in a day? Structure the tournament like a WSOP event - give the players 10,000 chips and have the blinds rise once every half hour or hour. Want to play more than one tournament in an evening? Jack up the blinds every 10 minutes.

Now to the money-spending additions to your poker tournament:

First off - it’s hard to play poker without chips, and I absoultely hate playing poker with bicycle poker chips. Spend a little extra money and get yourself a nice set of chips, chips that a player could shuffle or do other tricks with if he/she was so inclined. It makes your whole operation a little more classy, and why wouldn’t you want to be classy?

Next, it’s good to have a few nice sets of cards. Might I suggest Kem Cards? The description pulled from the amazon link I just included states, “100 % Plastic Kem Cards are widely regarded as the world’s finest playing card. Kem cards are made entirely of cellulose acetate material, the most durable plastic used today in playing card production. These cards are scuff and break resistant and completely washable.” All those one dollar packs of cards you buy at Wal-Mart wear quickly, with corners that bend, tare, or simply get dirty, thus giving players that are paying attention an easy cheat when that card is dealt to someone. The extra money is worth it, trust me. You’ll never have to make that Wal-Mart run again to get a cheap fix.

What to do for a table? Well, there’s many varieties you can buy, and ther price ranges span from around $25 for a tabletop to $1200 for a real casino style poker table. Another option available is making a poker table. A little resourcefulness and handyman skills can make a table for fairly cheap. This is the route I went, and I was able to find some resources for quite cheap.  The resources I used were foam and carpet padding for the rail along with some vinyl from your local thrift store, old pool table felt from a pool shop for the table itself, a piece of plywood, and a staple gun with plenty of staples.
I’ve found that having everyone bring their own chair to sit on works best - this way you don’t have an unnecessary amount of chairs sitting around at all times you are not running a poker tournament. Obviously it doesn’t hurt to have a few extras lying around in case someone unexpected shows up, but generally most players, if notified, will bring their own chairs.

I feel that this is the kicker to hosting a smooth poker tournament, and I’ve saved it for last so it sticks in your mind. Hopefully you have a laptop computer at this point in your life - if you don’t, set up your tournament fairly close to your computer, because this poker tournament software will help answer so many questions that people might have. It will tell the player what amount chip colors represent, how much time is left in the blind level, what the payouts are, etc. It makes the tournament run much more smoothly, and you can play host with the things that matter most, like making sure there’s enough booze and food on hand.

These ideas are all the things I have, or have done in the past with hosting a poker tournament.  I’ve received no complaints and many compliments with this strategy, so I’m telling you, it works for me.  If you want different ideas on how to run a home poker tournament, check out Home Poker Tourney.

There are many different ways to play hold ‘em according to betting structure, the most popular of which is No Limit Hold ‘Em. The Poker Project has a good summary of the different styles, and I suggest that you focus in on the No Limit and Pot Limit sections. These are two of the most popular styles, while the other structures are out there, but not as common. No Limit has, well, for lack of a better term, no limit as to how much one bets at a given time. You may be able to guess what Pot Limit is. The amount of money in the middle is the maximum amount of money one can bet. I will touch more on pot limit hold em and how to calculate amounts in another article. I’ll link it as soon as I can finish it.

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Limit hold ‘em is also a very popular game, and is played in almost all casinos. In limit, the betting goes up incrementally. For example, let’s say I’m playing 4/8 limit. Typically, the blinds will be half the limit, so in this case, the blinds are 2 and 4. If I choose to raise, I can only raise to 8, doubling the initial bet, in this case, the blinds. If the next person chooses to raise, he/she can only raise to 12. The next can only raise to 16, and usually, 4 bets is the cap, so this would end the raising; only calls could happen from here on out. This structure continues on the flop, 4, 8, 12, 16. However, on the turn and river, the structure raises to 8, 16, 24, 32.

These are the five basic terms you MUST know before you sit down at any sort of poker table. Knowing these will give you one less thing to worry about when you’re at the table.

Check – Saying this means that you had the option to bet, but you’ve declined that option.

Fold – To fold means to exit the hand.

Bet – Betting is putting money into a pot before anyone else does.

Call – Calling means matching a bet or a raise that has been placed.

Raise – Raising is increasing a bet or call that has already been made.

Remember, these are very important to know. An example is linked below, but before you read the example, let me introduce one more concept:

Blinds – Blinds are forced bets that are required before a hand even begins. Usually, there is a small blind and big blind, the small blind being half the size of the big blind. The forced bets rotate to the left, one person at a time, after every hand.

Here’s that example I promised you:

As you can see, we won the hand with a straight flush, weren’t we lucky?

Finally, we’re going to discuss betting structures, and then it’s off to the statistics and calculations section of this website, where all sorts of odds will be discussed.

I think I should introduce my site first and foremost. This is the first article of the Hold ‘Em Authority, which will eventually be a central location for all kinds of poker information, ranging from the hand rankings that is contained in this post, to suggestions on how to improve your tournament play by tightening up while staying aggressive.

**Before you even attempt to sit down at a table, it’s vital to know the strength of your hand. These are all based on five card hands, and a five card hand is what is used in the game of hold ‘em (even though, as you’ll figure out soon enough if you don’t know already, seven cards are involved).

Without further ado, let’s get into some resources that are excellent for hand rankings:

The Poker Source has a nice user friendly view on the rankings of poker hands. I really like the graphical interface on this site, but it leaves out a very important part of the hand rankings. Sometimes you won’t have a hand that contains a pair, straight, or flush. In this case, the strength of the hand lies solely in the highest card you possess. In hold ‘em, the Ace can be used as a high card or a low card, so if you have an Ace in your hand, it will be considered the high card in your hand.

If you’re interested in a printer-friendly version that still contains illustrations of the hands, I would recommend Got to Get

This should give you something to work with. I find that most people have trouble remembering which is stronger: flush or straight. My advice to you is to think about it alphabetically; which word comes first in every dictionary? Obviously, flush does, which might help you to remember that flush also comes before straight in the hand rankings.

**Next, it is important to understand that there are strengths among the strengths of your hand. The next post will also discuss introduce the “kicker”.