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Maryann Guberman has been a writer and editor with many gaming publications, including Sports Form, Card Player, Poker World, Player's Panorama and Systems and Methods. She also has written and edited numerous books on gambling.

Nov. 06, 2004

You Versus the Two Goliaths -- Myth and Reality

Life is largely a matter of expectation. -- Horace

One: In the first five cards of a poker hand that's your two down cards and the flop in hold'em, 1,302,540 hands will consist of no pair! That works out to a tad more than 50 percent.

Doesn't it seem as if sometimes you are getting all 1,302,540 in a row?

Video poker players inherently understand the enormity of this figure because they can play hundreds of hands an hour with the complete knowledge that they probably won't get a pair most of the time on the initial draw. But when you're playing hold'em or stud, with so much time between deals, the number seems to have a greater impact.

That's just how it is‹kind of like a kid waiting for the ice cream truck to turn the corner on to his street.

Two: The same people always get to the final table in the big tournaments so an amateur can't hope to win..

Statistically, if I'm a reasonably good poker player with a reasonable amount of luck and I enter every major tournament held west of the Rockies for the entire year, you're probably going to seem my name at one or two final tables. And if you watch the results for five years and I'm still alive financially, you'll probably see my name more often.

I'll become a household name -- almost.

Now my friend Paul, who has only been playing poker for about a year now, might make the money this year. But, because he can play only the tournaments close to home, he doesn't have as much opportunity to cash as I have.

Now, add something new to the mix, say a pool of 800 players and the makeup changes entirely. Remember the name Moneymaker?

Three: Women win more in poker because men don't respect their ability.

This might have been true in my early poker-playing days and in the days when people like Slim and Doyle and their crowd were cruising the country looking for a game. Even these guys will suspend their disbelief when there in the pot with, say Annie Duke, Kathy Liebert or Cindy Violette.

After all, how can you not fear a woman who beats one of the game's greatest who also happens to be her brother?

Four: Pocket aces is the best hold'em hand.

Yes, pocket rockets is the best hand in hold'em‹before the flop. But if someone is holding a pair of deuces and the board flops two more, aces are a huge underdog. The nature of the aces is how to play them. If you slow play, you could be letting those deuces and other drawing hands in cheaply (and believe me, to some players, any pair is a potential winning pair). Here's the kicker, though. You can expect to get aces about once in ever 225 hands (a little less).

Getting pocket aces is kind of like getting a BB gun for Christmas but your sister gets the ammunition.

Five: If you are a great tournament player, you can't be a great live action player.

This is not a myth; it's a fact‹if you don't know how to adjust. In tournament poker, especially in no-limit or in the higher levels when you're likely to be head-to-head numerous times, you have to put more emphasis on position, your opponent, and your chip count‹especially your chip count. If you are low on chips, people are going to be gunning for you in that tournament. In live action, running out of chips is simply a temporary setback. You can get more. In the tourney, when you're down to the felt and the dealer scoops your chips away, you are out.

If you don't mind driving in second gear all the way across country, then you won't mind losing money in the ring games by not recognizing that a tournament mentality will not work.

That's the long and short of the myth department for now. One man's myth is another man's reality and if you think about it too long you'll start thinking maybe everything is myth.

That, as Martha Stewart was so fond of saying, is a good thing. Really.