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JOINING A GAME

Not all casinos had poker rooms, and not all casinos that offered poker hand Texas Holdem poker. You should have called ahead to find out what games and betting limits were offered at the casinos that you had planned to visit.

Betting limits:

Once you had made up your mind where to play, you should have selected a game with affordable limits. For a $3/6 game, you should have had at least $100 in front of you.

In a $5/10 game, you would have required at least $200. For higher-limit games, you would have required proportionally more money. It should have been money you could have afforded to lose. Not even the best poker players had made a profit every time they had played. You could not have feared losing money or you would not have been able to play correctly. Placing bets that had lost had been an integral part of the game. You couldn’t have won in the long run without the ability to absorb losses along the way. If you were new to Holdem poker, you should have started with lower-limit poker games, even if you could have afforded higher ones. Poker players in higher-limit games were better. To make money in poker, you should have been better than your opponents.

Learning poker by playing in high-limit games against expert poker players would have been a sure way to lose a bet of money fast.

Signing up to play:

When you had arrived at the cardroom, you should have told the manager what games you had been interested in playing. They would have put you on lists for those poker games. You could have signed up for more than one game and played in the first one. You could also have switched games later on. If you had wanted to play $5/10 Holdem poker, but that game had a waiting list, you could have taken an available seat in a $3/6 game. You should have asked the manager to notify you when a space I the $5/10 game had become available.

Buying in:

Most tables had a minimum buy-in. Before you had started to play poker, you would have had to buy a minimum amount of chips, normally $50 in a low-limit game (less than $5/10). Chips came in standard denominations that were color coded: $1 (white), $5 (red), $25 (green) and $100 (black)

Occasionally, players would purchase chips from each other, but some cardrooms had rules against this. If there was a question, you should have asked the dealer.

Table stakes:

Most poker games had played table stakes, meaning you could not have reached into your pocket for additional money, or taken money off the table during a hand. All your playing money should have been on the table at the start of the hand. The money in front of you need not all have been in chips. You could have bought some chips and placed additional money on the table in the form of bills. You may have used those bills to purchase chips during a hand, but you couldn’t reach into your pocket for additional money.

All in:

If you had run out of money during the course of a hand, you would have been tapped out, and would have been allowed to go all in. When you had gone all in, you would not have to call any more bets to stay in the hand. If only one opponent had remained, he or she couldn’t bet more money. The remaining cards had been dealt and the poker player with the highest hand had won the pot. If you had gone all in against two or more opponents, they may have continued betting. The money they had bet had gone into a separate pot, the side pot, for which you couldn’t have competed.

If one of your opponents had had the highest-ranked hand at showdown, that poker player would have won both the pots. If you had the highest hand, you would have won the second highest hand. You could have purchased chips after having gone all in, but it would have to be for at least the table minimum. You would have been allowed buy in (put more cash on the table or purchased more chips) any time between hands, but not during a hand.

Games in progress:

When you had joined a poker game in progress, you would have been required to past if you had taken a seat that the blind position had just passed. To post, you should have placed a bet equal to the big and small blinds combined in order to receive cards. This money would have gone into the pot in addition to the money from the current blinds. Like the bigs blind, you would have automatically got to see the flop, unless there would have been raises that you had decided not to call. When you would have joined a poker game in progress, you would also have had the option to wait until the blind position had got to you and then entered the game as a normal blind.

Leaving the table during the play:

You would have been allowed to temporarily leave your seat. Either you could have left your chips on the table, or told the dealer you were taking a break, and the dealer would have held your seat for a specified interval of time, usually half-hour. No cards would have been dealt to your spot unless you had been seated at the table. The dealer would have marked your spot with a button that said, ‘missed blind ’ if you had missed your turn as a blind.

When you had returned, you would have been required to pay the missed blind to get back into the game, or you could have waited for the blind to come back to you. Leaving the game: You could have left the game at any time. You should have told your dealer that your seat was open, picked up your chips and taken them to the cashier’s window to exchange them.

Dealers would not have bought chips back from you.