New poker book is a winner... 

Little Blue Book, by Phil Gordon

I enjoy good books on poker. I like the strategy discussion, the tips, and the experienced insights but tend to skim over the sample hands. Poker hand analysis is deadly boring! Phil Gordon's latest book is nothing but hold'em poker hands and hand analysis. Boring? Not! I followed every hand and thoroughly enjoyed Phil's setup and analysis. Gordon wrote The Little Blue Book as a follow up to his successful book on strategy, The Little Green Book. Where the 'Green' book lays out Gordon's approach to hold'em poker and offers insight into his playing strategies; the 'Blue' book tells the same story through real poker hands that he has played. Gordon sets up the situation for a hand, shows the table position of players and betting status, then takes us through his thought process on each card and bet decision. The situations range from tournaments to cash games to on-line games. Sometimes the players are nameless; often a famous poker pro shows up in the hand. Gordon makes each hand into a short story with a beginning, middle and resolution. There are happy endings and there are bust outs. Sometimes the strategy works and sometimes it doesn't. Good or bad result, each hand teaches something useful to the aspiring poker player.

Phil Gordon's Little Blue Book: More Lessons and Hand Analysis in No Limit Texas Hold'em

by Phil Gordon

Amazon Price: $14.28 (as of 05/16/2008)
List Price: $21.00

The Poker Gazette 

Poker news, articles, announcements . . .

Good articles from Negranu, Helmuth and others.

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Wednesday is poker night ... 

Poker Night

Poker night is a special time. Check it out.

Search the web for Hold'em 

Poker News 

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Add this Little Green Book to your poker library 

A very readable, very helpful, and very cheap essential

Some poker books wear you out with math. Some can't explain an idea without pages of hand diagrams. Some are fluff and hold back on real help for your play. Phil Gordon gives us an excellent book on understandable strategy and useable tactics that screams "try me!" A great read and a great reference for your poker shelf.

Phil Gordon's Little Green Book: Lessons and Teachings in No Limit Texas Hold'em

by Phil Gordon

Amazon Price: $14.07 (as of 05/16/2008)

Strategy 

Some things to think about

Common Beginner Mistakes

Do you play too many hands?

Wikipedia on Poker Strategy

The fundamental theorem of poker states that every time you play your hand the way you would if you could see your opponent's cards, you gain, and every time your opponent plays his cards differently from the way he would play them if he could see your cards, you gain.

Check raising

A poker strategy to use selectively.

Reading People and telling lies . . . 

Tips on bluffing, reading, and player psychology . . .

When not to bluff

Strategies on when NOT to bluff in Texas Holdem Poker.

Bluffing in Poker - Optimal Bluff Strategy

A bluffing strategy.

How to Bluff in Poker - WikiHow

Checkout WikiHow.

Inside the Tour - 46 - Dirty Books review in Poker News

Do not buy these books

Poker Tells - Top Ten Poker Tells

The top ten poker tells, with leads to other poker tell pages.

Representing a Bluff in Poker

Bluffings evil twin brother.

To Show or Not to Show?

Daniel Negreanu in The Poker Gazette offers thoughts on showing your cards after a bluff or after a strong hand doesn't get called.

Player's Web Sites 

Professional Poker Players with their own web sites . . .

Annie Duke

Annie Duke is one of the best known and most successful female professional poker players in the world.

Johnny Chan

Johnny Chan's personal website. Interesting forums.

Howard Lederer

The Professor

Phil Helmuth

The orignal "bad boy" of Poker.

Daniel Negranu

The Kid, a frequent contributor to The Poker Gazette.

Phil Gordon

I liked his Little Green Book.

Phil Ivey

On a quest to be the best.

Doyle Brunson

"Texas Dolly" - Pretty fine to have a poker legend that's active and accessible.

Barry Greenstein

Checkout Barry's brief analysis of other pros.

Chris Ferguson

Official Website of World Series of Poker Champion Chris Ferguson

Antonio Esfandiari

The Magician

13 Essentials To Run A Home Tournament 

Bring Texas Hold'em to your neighborhood . . .

1. Legality - Here in Arizona, our game is what is called "social gambling". Our players are neighbors; they are not competing against "the house"; there is no business that profits (no rake for gain); costs are shared.
   
   We are not lawyers, nor are we giving you legal advice. Do your own research. Make your own informed decision. This page at homepokergames.com may help.
2. Card tables - You want a surface where the cards slide easily, the chips move without extra clatter, a realistic casino like feel. We use hexagonal tabletops that fold in half for storage. They have a good quality felt, on sturdy wood frames. There are chip racks for 8 players. They cost us about $50 each. At the other game they use a felt-like tablecloth that they throw over round tables. Works well, but I like the firmness of the surfaces on our tabletops. We can handle four tables. If we get more players than that we use uncovered tables and put up with the noise.
3. Cards - We have a red deck and a blue deck alternating in play at each table. The last dealer shuffles while a hand is being dealt, and passes the deck to the player at the dealer's left for the subsequent hand. We don't necessarily start with new decks for each evening's play. Instead a deck comes out of play when it begins to look and feel a little ragged; and definitely if a card is marked, torn, bent, etc.
   
   We use Bicycle brand Playing Cards, Rider Back. I buy a box of a dozen decks, six red and six blue. This costs $10-11 at Costco. We could certainly buy more expensive and higher quality cards and we could change decks more often, but this works for us. At the other game they use plastic cards, which I'm sure last longer. But I don't like the feel as well as the cards we use.
4. Chips - the more you simulate casino chips, the better the playing experience. Plastic chips will do to get started but there's nothing like the look and sound of real chips building a pot. Plan the chip purchase carefully and shop around, as this will probably be the largest cost item.
   
   There is a broad range of material, weight, color and design choices with appropriate price points. We settled on composite chips weighing 11.5 ounces each. We chose green (for $25 value), black ($100) and purple ($500). We didn't know how big our game would get and ended up purchasing enough chips to setup four tables with a $1,500 to $2,500 starting stack. This worked out to: 100 purple, 400 black, and 700 green.
   
   Don't forget chip trays. They are essential, and often come with the chips, but not always. We later added a chip carrier to keep the chips safely together in storage between games.
5. Playing times - we start at 7 PM and target to finish around 10 PM. We haven't gone much past 10:30 or finished earlier than 9:30. Three hours seems to be long enough for a night out for neighborhood players. The blind schedule is set up to keep us on target. We can accelerate the blinds at anytime to move play along faster if we seem to be running late.
6. Buyin - We have a $25 buyin. We started at $15. The "other" game has a $50 buyin. You neeed a starting number that your neighborhood players are comfortable with. It needs to be enough to make things interesting, but not enough to create a financial discomfort for those that don't make the final payouts.
7. Chip stack - We give each player a starting chip stack of $2.000 in tournament chips. This includes: 20 green @ $25, 10 black @ $100, and one purple @ $500.
8. Re-buys - We allow up to 2 re-buys per player, in same amount as original buy-in.
   Player's chip stack value must be less than original buy-in (negative). No re-buy after 9:00.
   
   We started without re-buys, and decided that that made for an early evening for a few each night. Re-buys allow for more agressive play early on, and of course makes bigger prize pools. If the initial buy is reasonable, nobody loses more in an evening than they can afford. $25 to $75 is cheaper than a professional sport night out!
9. Blinds and Antes - You need to keep the game moving along or you won't finish in a reasonable amount of time. We introduce antes in the last hour. This speeds up the play an makes each player more interested in playing the hand rather than waiting for great cards and the blinds to hit them. We take two breaks for the players and to allow time to color up and remove the lower valued chips, as the stacks can get unwieldy.
   
   This is our current schedule, but we reserve the right to accelerate the mandatory chips if needed to force the end of the game.
   
   TIME BLINDS ANTE
   7:00 25/50 0
   7:20 50/100 0
   7:40 75/150 0
   8:00 Break, color up
   8:10 100/200 0
   8:30 200/400 0
   8:50 300/600 0
   9:10 Break, color up
   9:20 400/800 300
   9:35 500/1,000 300
   9:50 600/1,200 300
10. Timer - Nobody likes the blinds to increase just as it's their turn to put in the big blind. We started out thinking we'd manage the blind schedule by watching the clock. This was ok, but we'd often slip past the change time. We now use a digital kitchen timer that we can set for any number of minutes. When the buzzer goes off, the next hand dealt at each table is at the next blind level. No arguments.
11. House rules - assemble all your rules and guidelines into a concise document, one page if possible. Print it and have it available at the games for all players especially newbies.
12. Prize pool - There needs to be a balance between the incentive to win (first prize) and giving a few people a taste of success. Winner takes all doesn't cut it. We base the prizes on the number of players buy-ins plus the number of re-buys. On a slow night we have one prize.
    
    PRIZE POOL SHARES (# of players equal total number of buy-ins and re-buys):
    5 - 9 players, one winner of 100% of prize pool.
    10 - 17 players, 1st prize 70%, 2nd prize 30%.
    18 - 23 players, 1st prize 60%, 2nd prize 25%, 3rd prize 15%.
13. Bonus hands - We got this idea from the "other" game and added it to ours. The first occurance of certain hands (winning or losing) gets a single bonus payout in tournament chips:
    
    Full House gets $200
    Quads gets $400
    Straight Flush gets $800
    Royal Flush gets $1,000

Poker Reference Sites 

Some neat places to get the poker information you crave . . .

Home Poker Law

Helped us to decide to run our own Hold'em Tournament.

Poker.Net - Poker School

If you are looking for basics . . .

SoYouWanna learn how to play poker?

A clever little overview of poker basics to get a real newbie started . . .

Poker stuff on Ebay . . . 

Auctions that are close to closing (best time to buy) . . .

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Blog Posts on Texas Hold'em 

PokerNews Announces New Interactive Texas Hold'em Odds Calculator

Arts and Entertainment-Texas Holdem Players: Play Texas Hold em ...

Latest Texas Hold’em Experience

Holdem Radar Texas Hold em Calculator - 1.03

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