I used to really like poker. Well, to be more general, I used to really like playing cards. The fascination has died away, like my obsession with pogs and Pokemon.

While the latter two are understandable as they are more related to childhood, a category to which I no longer belong to, for poker it is something entirely different and playing it now only gives feelings of déjà vu, as though its DominoQQ all over again.

I think I can attribute this change to three reasons:

Even if I wanted to play, I couldn’t. No one I know plays poker anymore…I think the poker craze has died down since its heyday back in ’04/’05.    Poker is intrinsically not a very enjoyable game. A wise man (read: someone whose name I can’t remember) once described it as “excruciating boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror.” That is a perfect description. 90% of the time, you’re really just sitting there watching other people play.    Frankly, I’m not very good. This normally doesn’t dissuade me, but when losing costs money…well…I have to rethink things..  OK, these are all good reasons to quit poker, but saying that I quit because of them is a lie. I quit because of online poker.

Last winter break, I got bored staying home alone in San Ramon. So I figured I’d dump $25 into an online account and see how far I could get playing poker. If I lost, that would be the end of it. If I won, say, $100 or so, I’d cash out.

Yeah, right.

Within the first day, I had nearly $100 in the account. As you might imagine, I was feeling pretty proud of myself.

Then I calculated it out. 4 hours, $70…I had made $17.50 an hour. But that wasn’t enough. I needed larger stakes. $0.25/$.050 tables weren’t going to cut it anymore.

So over the next few days, I sunk nearly all my waking hours after work into online poker. Passed the $100 mark, then the $200, then the $300…all the way up to $428 and change. I kept pushing the cash-out mark higher and higher. Eventually, I just stopped thinking about cashing out. After all, why stop people from giving me their money?

Then The Hand happened. Every poker player has stories about The Hand.…

So it all started when I got pocket rockets (a pair of aces). For those of you who don’t know, this is the “best” pre-flop hand in Hold-Em Poker.

I raise to $20, two people call me into the flop. One of them is the big man at the table (he had more money than me). The other has about $100. The flop comes out: Ace, 9, 5 rainbow. (This means that I have three Aces, and that no one else in the table can beat me with either straight or a flush. Long story short, I am winning this hand by a long shot.)

I’m sitting there salivating. Even better: the big man raises $40.

The other guy folds. And I do the old “online slowplay”. In online poker, you really only have two tells to measure a person by: how much he bets and how long he takes to play. So I pretend I’m thinking really hard and re-raise to $80 at the last possible second. (I AM SO SNEAKY!!)

Then the unbelievable happens. He re-raises again to $150. I’m thinking, what does this guy have? In actuality, I don’t really care. I’ve got a fish, I’m going to catch him. So I go all-in right away. $400.

He calls. I’m loving life. The turn and river come up, 9, Q. The 9 gives me a full house (one of the highest hands in poker.)

We show…and inexplicably, the chips go to him. But how…?

Apparently, that same 9 that gave me a full house on the turn gave HIM a four-of-a-freaking-kind (a very rare, very powerful hand). He had pocket 9’s.

$400. On a 4% chance.…

And that, my friends, is why I do not play poker anymore.

As you are flipping through the channels one evening you notice ESPN is having a marathon on the World Series of Poker, and you decide to see what the hype is about. As someone who has been an addict at playing the game on PokerQQ, I can understand the level of craze and fandom everywhere. Several hours later you find yourself watching two players battling back and forth, the tension in your living room is so tight that you do not realize the family dog has become your footstool. Finally, the moment you have been waiting for, one player has decided to go ‘all in’. As the other player calls, the hands are revealed and you see the bluff exposed. “How could he make that play!?” you exclaim as you kick what you believe to be your footstool in disbelief.

The art of poker is not easily classified. To be successful in the game, one must be knowledgeable in a vast amount of areas, literally a jack of all trades. A player must be able to calculate the probability they will catch a card which they need, and decide if the cost associated with seeing the next card is justified by the probability. Being able to ‘read’ your opponents is also essential to being successful. To truly master the art of reading players, one must develop their skills of observation and be able to detect any of the slightest signs a player may unknowingly give away which signals a strong or weak hand. Along the same lines, as a poker player you must be able to control your own tells which you give off by strictly disciplining yourself to be fully aware of every tiny movement or gesture you make. You can also use tells to your advantage by mixing up which movements or gestures you make for various hands, while making sure no patterns develop which other players may pick up on. Lastly but definitely not least, always pay tribute to lady luck, for when she turns on you, no strategy will save you.

Let these guidelines serve as a rough method to determine the proper time an all in play may be justified.

How should you know when the proper time to go all in is? By using the discussed guidelines, you may be able to derive the proper time to push your entire stack into the pot. Here are a few examples of what a poker player may consider before going all in:

Did his hand just twitch when he made that raise?

1. You recall an earlier raise by the same player which his hand also twitched, and he folded to your all in move.

Consider the strength of your hand, and your odds, if they seem decent, go all in.

1. You recall an earlier raise by the same player where his hand also twitched, and another player pushed all in. When the players laid down their hands, the player in question showed his two aces he was dealt.

Do not go all in unless you have a very strong hand, or very high odds of catching a strong hand.

1. You’re unsure about the style of this player, seeing as that he just sat down at your table.

Calculate your odds, do the odds justify an all in move?

All of the sudden outspoken Joe has become silent as he makes a large raise.

1. He became curiously quiet awhile ago when involved in a large pot, the pot went to the showdown and he showed Ace King.

These players enjoy entertaining themselves by listening to their own rambling while not involved in a large pot, but decide to take the game more seriously when they think they have a hand with the potential to earn them a large sum. Be wary and consider the strength of your hand, can it stand up against another strong hand?

1. The player employed this strategy a few hands ago, and his competition all folded, he was then feeling cocky enough to display his horrible hand and hasn’t stopped talking about it since.

This player knows you are going to notice his sudden silence, and wants you to conclude that he has a good hand. He is probably trying to give himself something to rub in your face for the next few rounds. If your hand has some decent strength, strongly consider pushing this opponent all in.

1. Outspoken Joe has been all over the place the last few rounds, throwing chips into pots randomly, and has managed thus far to not get any horrible beats while still catching some lucky cards to build his chip stack.

This player is a gamble to play against, since he has been so random, you cannot deduce any logical explanation of what he may be holding. Consider the strength of your hand and if it’s worth risking against a lose cannon such as outspoken Joe. You may be best off waiting until you are against another opponent who you can more accurately judge before pushing all in.

While I have only covered a tiny fraction of the possible scenarios one may encounter, you can see the general idea behind judging an all in move. In regards to the move made in the World Series of Poker you were watching, perhaps the player who pushed all in thought he had gotten a read off the other player and was hoping to capitalize off this opportunity. Use these rough guidelines, and through practice you will be able to accurately gauge the opportune time to push all in.

The Maryland Lottery is expanding their television style games that are played at local bars and restaurants. They now have one that will appeal to fans of poker. The game is a game of luck, but the poker game will draw players into the game that might not play otherwise. The first television game the Maryland Lottery had was Keno, they then in the past six months or so introduced their Racetrax game based on watching an animated horserace. Now the latest game is built on the popularity of poker sweeping the country in the past several years.

I drove by the sign several times at a local bar advertising “Play Maryland Hold’em Here, The New Maryland Lottery Game”. I sort of dismissed it as a scratch off, but then visited the website and found out it was not a scratch off game. The website does not explain the game, so I had to go to the bar and find the instructions there. It is similar to the Keno and Racetrax games in that you fill out a betting card for each game you want to play. These games are as intense and challenging as games in dominoqq. So if you are a player who are into this type of game categories, then you are in the right place.

The screen has eight animated players on it. Before you fill out your card to make your bet, you have five minutes in between hands where you see the hole cards for each of the players. Also displayed is the percentages that each of those hole card hands have of winning the game (payouts on bets are roughly based on these). You can then bet on the main game or make a side bet.

If you choose to bet on the main game, you choose an amount to bet on your entry card, as well as a player to bet on. You can bet on multiple players if you wish, but you have to bet the same amount on each player unless you submit multiple entry cards.

You can also bet on the type of hand that will win the game. The trick here is there are only four types you can bet on. They are straight flush, four of a kind, full house, and flush. Payout odds are not revealed prior to the deal of the game, so you are sort of taking a blind shot here based on all the pairs of hole cards you see. The one thing is if a higher ranking hand out of those four wins, and you bet on one that is lower, you still win your bet, but your payout is lower than if you had bet on the winning hand.

After the five minute period is up, the remaining cards are dealt on the screen. This takes about one to two minutes, with some animation for entertainment value. After the hand is dealt, a winner is determined both for which animated player won the game. If you bet on them you receive your payout based on an unknown calculation based on their percentage chance to win the game after the hole cards were revealed. If you bet on the winning type of hand on the side bet, or one of the lower ones out of the four you can bet on, you win as well.

This game does not involve a lot of skill and is purely a game of luck. Even with that being said though it can be an entertaining way to pass some time at your local bar. The Maryland Hold’em game is released in limited release currently, and you can find a list of establishments that have it at Maryland Lottery’s website.