The Online Home of Jeffery MacKinnon

I recently read my first poker book. Up till this point I basically have been reading what is online and what is said on TV as my only source of information.

What I learned about low-limit holdem was huge. I have been playing some very low limit holdem games on PokerStars ($.02/.04) and have doubled up every hour, from .80 to 1.60. It isn’t much but it is a lot faster then I did in the past. In the past I would win a lot of small pots and lose the occasional big pot, so basically my chip count would rise slowly. To doub;t up it would take me a very long period, usually 2-3 hours, and usually on Sunday evening when I had nothing better to do. Now however I have cut my time in less than 1/2.

In terms of money it is not very big, but in terms of stragety and learning it is. The biggest change in what I have learned is positional play. The hand that you should play in the blinds is not the same hand that you should play on the button, and those starting hands change a lot depending on who has the button. Another thing is the fact that every betting round is new, it doesn’t matter what money you put in the pot before, but it does matter how much is in the pot so that you can calculate the “pot odds”.

I will have more on what I have learned later, for now I have to get back to work.