Flop Quad Kings

Patience is one of the essential keys in becoming a good poker player. You will not succeed in the long term if you do not know how to be patient. In fact, to be the best poker player you can possibly be, it is absolutely, one hundred percent vital.

Sure, it is tempting to play every hand, because you have to figure, the more hands you play, the more money you can win, right? Wrong. You need to learn the importance of playing quality hands, otherwise you may end up losing a whole lot of money.

Sure, there are times you can play strange hands, to throw your opponents off a bit, but you should not make a practice out of it. It will only make you get sloppy.

All right, now we are ready to tackle the “board cards.” They are also, and perhaps more widely, known as community cards. Anyway, they are the cards that the dealer lays face up on the table. They include the flop, the turn, and the river, which we will get to in a little while.

In some variations of poker, you have a draw — contrary to what you might be thinking, this does not necessarily mean that you are drawing new cards. On the contrary, it means you are attempting to improve your present hand by using the board, or community, cards. You want some specific cards to show up on the table.

The pre flop describes the point at which your hand gets dealt to you. At this point, each player receives two cards which only they can see.

You are new to poker. You finally sit down at a serious game, be it online or in a bricks and mortar casino. Much to your dismay and embarrassment, however, you discover that you have no clue what these people are talking about at all. What does he mean, the pre flop? What board cards? Are you playing a board game? Is this a bad dream?

No! It’s real! All because you did not take the time to sit down and learn the basic terms used in most, if not all, variations of poker, before sitting down to play with the big dogs. This might seem ridiculous, but it has happened to a lot of us after we have made the move from playing with the boys in the basement to entering, say, a serious tournament. Fortunately, this next series of posts is here to help you out considerably.

Let’s start with the very basic basics. The blinds — big blinds, small blinds, blinds everywhere. Blinds are like antes, in that they are forced bets. However, they are replacing the traditional ante with which a lot of us are familiar. You have to pay the blinds before being able to see your cards.

Flopping quads — whether you are looking to flop kings, queens, jacks, tens, or even twos — is never a sure thing.  That bears repeating and an enormous amount of emphasis: flopping quad kings is never a sure thing.

There are poker players out there, those who play both online and offline in bricks casinos, who make it look like the easiest thing in the world.  Phil Ivey comes to mind there — but if you ever get the chance to ask him, even he will tell you that it is never, ever an absolute certain, one hundred percent positive bet.

It might seriously burst your bubble to hear this, but quite often — more often than you are likely thinking, in fact — the road to flopping quad kings is paved with nothing more than luck and coincidence.  The cards you are dealt are the cards you are dealt.  You can bluff it, of course, but you have to be darn good.

Generally, you can be more optimistic if you have two kings and one turns up in the flop.  You will be able to tell, a little, from the betting rounds just how excited your competitors are, which may give you an idea if they have a king as well.

Once you have considered factors such as the amount of players playing in your game and things of that nature, you have got to put things in perspective.  Flopping quad kings typically means calculating the odds — realistically.  Quite often, this is definitely one case where you want to err on the side of pessimism because there is so much room for error here — and for failure.

Think about it, honestly.  Whether you are sharing the table with nine other players or with only three, you do not know what any of those players has.  It is a sure bet that, in most hands, at least one other player has a King.  That one King can mess you up — you have already failed at flopping quad kings.

Say you feel pretty sure no one else has Kings.  It is not extremely rare to get dealt two kings yourself, and it is not rare for a King to show up in the Flop, the Turn, or the River.  However, the odds are high that you will get the flop you need.  Quad Kings are not quite a sucker’s bet, but it’s something you don’t want to work towards unless you’re sure.

The road to the quad king flop is paved with good intentions, fraught with pitfalls, and prone to chip stealing ambushes.  Unless you have the best luck in the world, you cannot, as a novice player, expect to go right into your first games and suddenly flop quad kings.  It ain’t happening.  You have to work to get there.  It is not just essential but practically mandatory that you know some basic poker strategy.

For example, before you even consider trying to go for this play, you have to consider a number of things, such as the amount of players in the current game.  Some Texas Hold ‘Em games have as many as ten players.  Needless to say, that is an occasion when you cannot lay good odds to pulling through with a hand like this.  It just isn’t likely to happen.   To many people could have good hands and it is too difficult to calculate which cards may be left in the deck versus which are going into the flop.

Arguably poker is a game where every player competes to win the pot and earn himself a fortune at the cost of others. It a proven fact that the game of poker requires a lot more than luck and this is where poker tutorials can be of great aid. There are a lot of poker tutorials available online but all of them require a signup amount after which you can go through them.

The biggest question is that are they worth the money? The answer depends upon the reviews and reputation of the site. It is accomplished that a beginner cannot learn the game of poker just by visiting a casino and requires a proper knowledge of the lingo of poker as well as the rules and regulation which change with each variant of the poker.

There are various sites which are owned and run by some of the most successful poker players and where one can get all the details and proper guidance about the game of poker. It is very well said that observation is the best way of learning and besides going for poker tutorials one can also visit local casinos to observe the games on high money tables or catch poker championship on television.

Continue reading »

Pretty stupid bet between Gavin Smith and Phil Laak. Pretty strange video, but I surprisingly like it.

Find the right bingo game for you at gaming supermarket today...

It’s so much fun to see a great poker mind like Tom Dwan absolutely MURDER the gang at High Stakes Poker, including this hand against Eli Elezra. Dwan hasn’t made a single mistake, and might be the biggest poker genius we’ll ever see on television.

The reason why he didn’t raise the river was because he was HOPING for the board to pair and at the same time hopefully make a strong hand for Eli. I’ve read comments saying that Durrr should’ve raised there, but I strongly disagree. What if Eli had a flush? What if Eli pushes behind him on the turn? Dwan played it like the poker God he is!

Who else to start this weblog with than my man Phil Ivey flopping Quad Kings in the Aussie Millions.

Phil obviously plays the hand perfectly — but it helps when you flop the stone cold nuts, aye.