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

Are you competitive? An only child who has to entertain him/herself on a daily basis? Are you really bored right now? Why do I ask these questions? Well, I am all three right now, and I just recently invented a game at my workplace that times my ten key speed and tracks my improvement. Yes, I’m a huge dork, but I’m also competitive, bored, and an only child. Moral of the story, if you’re the same way, you may like this little game a friend of mine invented

Sometimes we need a break from the grind of poker, however, sometimes we don’t want to take a break, even though we should. Honestly, this little game could help a beginner find ways of making him/her self better in a heads up match. This article is courtesy of him, so I’ll just turn the typing over to him:

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Recently I’ve been trying to find ways to improve my game that are a little different than others. Aside from playing on Ultimate Bet almost daily I’ve been playing a one person game that I made up myself. I’ve been trying for probably a year to figure out a game that I can play alone, but still takes skill to win.

Over the last two weeks I’ve went from losing 60% of the time to winning 90% of the time. I encourage anyone to give me some insight on how I can make this game more difficult or if there are any big holes that I haven’t seen yet.

Here’s the game:

I play Texas Hold ‘Em when I play this game, but I would imagine that you should be able to play Omaha High and other games with small revisions.

What you need:

-1 poker deck of cards (no jokers)

-80 poker chips (one color)

-A Table

-Hands

Directions

This is a one player, heads-up match against a ghost player. Give yourself 40 chips and put 40 chips opposite yourself that will represent the ghost player’s chips.

Shuffle and cut as much as you feel and deal 2 cards face down to yourself and the ghost player. To begin, play 1 / 2 blinds No Limit. You are always in the small blind. Eventually blinds can be raised, but if it gets too high it becomes an all-in fest.

You can look at the hand in front of you as much as you want, but the ghost player’s cards stay hidden until a showdown situation occurs.

Pre-flop play goes like this…it is 2 chips to call and you can fold to the ghost whenever you choose, giving up your 1 chip small blind. Any chips you put in the pot before the flop gets paid out of the ghost’s chips 1 to 1 (meaning if you bet 10 the ghost player will call 10). After the pre-flop betting round you can burn and turn up 3 cards. This is the final betting round in the game. Any chips that you put into the pot after the flop get paid out from the ghost’s chip stack 1 to 2 (meaning if you bet 10 then the ghost player will only have to call 5). The ghost player calls all bets that you make. After this betting round all cards can be turned face up and the last 2 community cards can be put on the board, no betting the turn or river, best 5 card poker hand being the winner as usual.

That’s pretty much the game…let me know if there is any confusion, or if you think I need to castrate myself.

Courtesy of: Andy Schirm

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All thoughts of castration aside, I think a couple ways of modifying the game are these:

1. Have the ghost player always pay out 1:2, like the ghost does after the flop in Andy’s game.

2. Add a player to the mix – you’ll get paid off more with your big hands, yes, but you’ll pay the price much more when you’re putting lots of money in with mediocre hands.

Enjoy the little sidetrack from your daily grind!

This entry was posted on Friday, March 9th, 2007 at 1:40 am and is filed under Beginner Holdem Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.