Winning Texas Hold Em

All you need to play is a chip and a chair--and this straight from the start guide to the hottest, most popular form of poker around. Ben Affleck plays it, Allision Janney plays it, even Jason Alexander plays it. It's the game as big as all Texas, and the so-called "Cadillac of poker." With shows like Celebrity Poker Showdown winning an avid audience, it seems everyone wants to get dealt in. Don't let the fun pass you by, because every rule and trick is explained in this first-ever truly complete guide to success in today's Texas hold'em games. Written by a professional player, it reveals everything you need to know to beat cash games for thousands of dollars. Begin with the most general concepts and move on to pot and implied odds; betting; bluffing and semi-bluffing; deception; flop, turn and river play; and other techniques of the table--including some advanced ones. And, because it's less about the cards you've got in your hand than your ability to psych-out your competitors--there's also plenty of advice on honing that skill, too.

Teaches how to play Texas Hold 'Em Poker for beginners. This work contains terms, definitions, etiquette and rules and shows how poker hands are ranked. It helps you to understand your chances, appreciate the percentages, and master the odds so that your hand improves.

In this Updated, New Edition, you'll learn how to play every hand from every position with every type of flop. Learn the 14 categories of starting hands, the 10 most common hold'em tells, how to evaluate a game for profit, the value of deception, the art of bluffing, 8 secrets to winning, starting hand categories, position, and more! Includes detailed analysis of the top 40 hands and the most complete chapter on hold'em odds in print. Over 400,000 copies sold! 224 pages

One of the fascinating aspects about Hold'em is its dual nature. The game is both incredibly simple and incredibly complex. If you've watched any World Poker Tour (WPT) broadcast, you've heard Hold'em described as a game that "takes a minute to learn and a lifetime to master." That is really true, and a large part of the appeal of the game is that you can sit down and learn how to play almost immediately. However, after playing a bit, you become aware that Hold'em has many layers, each more complex than the previous one. The deeper you develop your understanding of the game, the better your results should be. The best thing for you is this: most players never work to develop their games. What they know about the game is strictly what they draw from their personal experience at the table, much of which they don't properly interpret. In fact, they often misinterpret their experience in counterproductive ways. So there is great opportunity for those who wish to invest a bit of time and effort in improving their game. Currently, a huge number of books on limit Hold'em are available, with many more being written. However, very little exists for the brand new player, whose only exposure to Hold'em may be what he has seen on television and perhaps a few hands played at a casino or in a home game. This book provides someone who has played little or no limit Hold'em with a sound basic strategy that will add to both his enjoyment of the game and his bottom line. You must walk before you can run, and this book teaches those first steps. If you absorb and put into practice the information in this book, you should become a winning low-limit holdíem player. This will put you ahead of the 90 percent or so of public cardroom poker players who lose money at the game. Once you acquire a framework for beating the game, you can then take your game to the next level. The book is designed for simplicity. We present 52 tips, each of which provides a valuable kernel of information. We present the tips chronologically as you progress through a hand of Hold'em. Obviously, everything to know about holdíem cannot be reduced to just 52 items. However, these 52 tips deal with some of the most important and most frequently encountered decisions you will have to make. Hold'em can be both very complex and quite simple. This book keeps the game as simple as possible for you. Specifically, we do this by presenting a strategy that helps you steer clear of many of the common pitfalls in Hold'em, pitfalls that can quickly erode your stack of chips. Staying out of potentially dangerous situations is very important to a player new to the game, as many of them require a feel for the game that only experience can produce. Although this book is aimed at the newer player, the concepts are relevant to all levels of Hold'em. Thus, we think that most players will find some benefits to their game by reading this book. Even if the tips presented in the book are not new to you, you will find it beneficial to treat them as a refresher course, since a true mastery of poker involves not only learning concepts, but remembering and putting them into practice.

Poker star Dusty Schmidt presents his first book [¬" one that stands to shake up poker in the same way Moneyball did for baseball. Schmidt offers an inspiring look at how in just five years, he went from not knowing a thing about poker to netting a seven-figure annual income. Far from a mathematical or technological genius, Schmidt says what guides him through is a fundamental understanding of business. Treat Your Poker Like A Business provides a foundation upon which all poker will be evaluated in the future, and will help an entire generation of poker players evolve their games into empires. A consummate "grinder," Dusty Schmidt has played nearly 7 million hands of online poker over more than 10,000 hours during his five-year career. He's won over $3 million during that period, and has never experienced a losing month. In 2007, he achieved Poker Stars' SuperNova Elite status in just eight months while playing high-stakes cash games exclusively. Schmidt posted the world's highest win rate in both 5/10 NL and 10/20 NL in both 2007 and 2008. In a four-month period between Nov. 2007 and Feb. 2008, Schmidt won in excess of $600,000 in high-stakes cash games. He is now a highly respected instructor at Stoxpoker.com, and plays as high as 25/50 NL. As a young man, Schmidt was a top-ranked golfer. He broke two of Tiger Woods' junior records, and was the leading money winner on the Golden States Tour when, at age 23, he suffered a career-ending heart attack. Schmidt returned to golf in 2009, winning medalist honors in qualifying for the Oregon Amateur Championship. Later that year, Schmidt famously represented himself in federal court in his suit against the United States Golf Association, which controversially stripped him of his amateur status, in part due to his poker profession. Schmidt is now a volunteer assistant coach for the University of Oregon's men's golf team, working under his good friend, Head Coach Casey Martin. Schmidt is also a successful entrepreneur. He is part-owner of Stoxpoker.com and Imagine Media, and the creator of 10thGreen.com, the first social network for golfers. His story has been featured in Sports Illustrated, Card Player, Poker News, Golf Magazine, Fairways and Greens, Golf Week, Golf World and the Portland Oregonian, as well as on ESPN, cnn.com, wallstreetjournal.com, forbes.com, fortune.com, espn.com, golfdigest.com and golf.com, among many others. He recently founded the House of Cards Project, a philanthropic effort to provide food and shelter to disadvantaged families. His life story will be told in the book [¬Raise: The Impossibly True Tale of Dusty Schmidt, [¬? to be released later in 2010. He lives in Portland, Ore., with his wife, Nicole, and daughter, Lennon.

Since its first publication in 1994, Winning Low-Limit Hold'em, by Lee Jones, has become the major reference on playing Texas Hold'em at the lower limits. However, poker has changed over the several years and Lee has continued to study the game. The result is this revised and expanded second edition.

The recent boom of Texas hold 'em has forever changed the way the game is played. Many more people know how to play this game well. Even the "loose" players who come to gamble have become far more aggressive, making them more difficult to play against. So a basic tight and patient strategy will no longer guarantee that you can make a significant amount of money in games at the higher stakes. This is especially true short-handed, which have become increasingly popular in the online poker rooms. This text is the first to tackle the complex issues presented when playing short-handed and high-stakes limit hold 'em. But even if you happen to only play in softer games, many of the key concepts presented will still help you against the other good players in your game. Winning in Tough Hold 'em Games includes an examination of pre-flop play, covering issues at a depth of sophistication which have never appeared in print before including discussions of blind stealing, re-stealing, isolating a loose player, big blind and small blind defense, and blind versus blind play. Also covered are thorough sections on playing heads-up post flop and semi-bluffing. In addition, over 50 hands, taken from high stakes online games which were played by "Stoxtrader," are presented along with appropriate discussion of the strategy involved. Book jacket.