How To Play Pairs in Blackjack

Pairs are two of the same cards in you starting hand. By playing correct basic strategy  you reduce the house edge marked cards.

Difficulty: Average

Time Required: one hour or less

Here's How:

1. Look at the dealers up card.
2. Look at the pair in you hand.
3. If you have a pair of Aces or Eights: Always split.
4. If you have a pair of twos or threes: Split if the dealer has 2 - 7, otherwise hit.
5. If you have a pair of fours: Split if the dealer has 4 or 5, otherwise hit.
6. If you have a pair of fives: Double if the dealer has 2 - 9, otherwise hit.
7. If you have a pair juice cards of sixes: Split if the dealer has 2 - 6, otherwise hit.
8. If you have a pair of sevens: Split 2 - 7, otherwise hit.
9. If you have a pair of nines: Split 2 - 6, and  8 or 9. Stand if the dealer has 7, 10 or Ace.
10. If you have a pair of tens: Always Stand.

Tips:

1. These rules are for 4- 8 deck games when doubling after splitting is allowed.
2. Always check the rules of the game before playing.
3. Learn the different strategies for single or double deck games.

Mental Edge and the WSOP Final Table

As all poker fans know by now, the final table of the 2008 WSOP Main Event is going to be played in less than two weeks.
Harrah's radical decision to move it to November has been assaulted by many, praised by a few and viewed with a mixture of confusion and curiosity by the rest.
But, no matter. The day dawns, and it's time for me to think out loud about the psychological factors introduced by the four-month hiatus.
What follows are my speculations. I don't know any of the folks who've made the final table, and have no special insight into how each will handle the situation. But there are reasons for suspecting marked cards that this temporal lacuna will benefit some more than others.

Recovery from Fatigue

It took seven days and nearly 66 hours of play to get down to the final table. The break gives everyone the chance to recover.

Breather helps the geezer.

Those who benefit the most will be those who were the most tired - most likely Dennis Phillips, 'cause geezers get tired faster than 20-somethings (trust me on this one).
What would have been a disadvantage has been removed. Phillips also gets a boost because he's older, more mature and, as he's put it, "I'm just having a blast." And, of course, he will be sitting behind a freakin' mountain of chips.
Gratification, Now or Later

Some react badly to being forced to wait for anticipated goodies - an effect that has been softened somewhat by everyone receiving ninth-place money (a shade over $900k) immediately after the final table participants were decided this summer.
Delaying the distribution of the remaining pool may impact some negatively and others not so much. Those who start to twitch when they have to sit at a dinner table waiting for everyone to be served may not have liked the time gap.
Those with a Zen-like calm about things will not be bothered. Keep in mind that whoever gets knocked out first will add exactly zero to his bankroll - and who wants to come back after four months, play one hand and get nothing but a bunch of handshakes and a TV moment?
Just contemplating this is depressing. The big stacks should be primed to take advantage.
Sharpening Your Game

I'm assuming all final-table participants took the time to analyze the play of their opponents, tease out patterns and tendencies they hadn't picked up on before and, importantly, worked on finding new ways to mix up their own games to neutralize such efforts on the part of their opponents.

Demidov: He's a certified beast.

Several of the finalists have played in other tournaments, gaining experience and honing their skills.
If anyone got an edge on the field here, it was Ivan Demidov. Demidov has been busy, most recently in the WSOP Europe Main Event where, amazingly, he finished third.
This accomplishment certainly cements his reputation; the final table in London was heavy with talent, including Daniel Negreanu, Scott Fischman and John Juanda (who won). The "book" has Demidov as the one to beat.
"Absence makes the heart grow fonder" or "Out of sight, out of mind"?

These two clichés are among my favorites as each seems so real when uttered, yet they are mutually contradictory. Which one will we see here? Will our nine survivors care as much about the infrared contactlenses final table as they would have without the delay?
You may think this sounds silly. How could they not? Nine million coconuts is a serious payday.
However, the latter cliché actually has the data behind it. As the weeks and months have dragged on, they all have lived their lives, bought clothes and cars, traveled, played in other venues, gone out to dinner, formed and reformed relationships
The significance of the final table may have psychologically diminished. For some, it may begin to look less special, more like a date marked on the calendar. Will they be able to "crank it back up?"

Advantage goes to Chino when it comes to WSOP final-table experience.

Probably, but some will get sharper, others not. If there's an advantage here I suspect it goes to the young and hungry, with Chino Rheem looking good here with two WSOP final tables to his credit.
Momentum

In virtually any game, stopping play is unhelpful when things are going your way and a blessed relief if you're getting thumped. Those on a roll tend to be alert, focused and show little fatigue, while their opponents are down, distracted and exhausted.
This is why coaches call time-outs, and one reason why the second half of a game is often different from the first.
But momentum in poker is a different kind of beast. Because the luck factor is so large, momentum fluctuates more and for different reasons.
Cards are mere slips of plastic and paint. They don't "know" that they gave the same player three huge flops in a row.
The impact of momentum here, as opposed to a game like football, is largely mental, and it can shift without anyone doing anything. In football someone has to do something (interception, great run-back); in poker all it takes is the random turn of a card.
While all the players know, consciously, that each hand is independent of every other hand, the player who got hit in the head with the deck during the playdown to the final table isn't going to like this break.

But his chip stack is sooo low ...

The one who was mucking hand after hand and hanging on for dear life is breathing a sigh of relief - even though both know their feelings are based on a statistical illusion.
The lull will smooth out the momentum factor, which will benefit players who'd been card-dead. I'd give Kelly Kim an edge here, but his chip stack is sooo low ...
Prognostication?

I could find a reason for picking any of the nine (well, if Kim takes it down, color me surprised). But, to tell the truth, the one who wins will be the one who gets lucky.
I know, I know; I'm not supposed to say that. But history is on my side. Rerun the tapes of Varkonyi, Moneymaker, Gold and Yang. What do you see?
Final Analysis

I think that a break was a good idea. But four months? Sheesh, the Super Bowl does fine with an extra week.

Leaks: Something's Dripping, and It's Money

No, this is not an article on plumbing.
Leaking is an unhappy condition and pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Something's dripping - and it's money.
There's a guy I've known for years. He's a decent middle-stakes marked cards player, probably a long-term winner. But he has a leak. He thinks he knows something about the horses.
He doesn't, and he won't listen to anyone who does. He sits at the poker table with the Daily Racing Form in his lap. When he's not in a hand, he takes a couple of quick glances and tries to handicap.
Every half hour or so he goes to the simulcasting room and systematically piddles away his poker winnings.
That's a leak, and he's not alone. Our game has more than its share of legends who bleed profusely from self-inflicted wounds at craps tables, baccarat and games like golf and basketball.
Many also have a poor head for business and are prone to invest in offbeat ventures that are closer to scams than honest enterprises.

The Basics of Blinds and Betting

Before you can play the game, you're going to have to learn what betting options you have, when you have them and how to make them.
Depending on what style and limit of poker you're playing, the ante or blind structure will vary. I've added a series of tables at the end of this article to allow you to easily find the type used for the game you're about to play.
Antes, Blinds, Brings and Postings
Antes: An ante is a small set amount which all players must contribute before any cards are dealt.
Blinds: Similar to an ante, but not everyone has to contribute. There are two blinds, the small and the big. The small blind is placed by the player directly to the left of the dealer (dealer button), with the big blind to the left of the small.
In a Limit game, the small blind is half the minbet (the lower of the two limits) and the big blind is double infrared contactlenses that. For example, in a $4/$8 Limit game, the small blind is $2 and the big blind is $4.
In a No-Limit game, the game is usually referred to by the blind sizes. For example, a $2/$5 No-Limit game would be small blind $2, big blind $5.
Brings (Bring-In): In a Stud game, the person showing the worst up card (door card) must "bring it in." A $1/$2 Stud game would typically have a 25¢ ante. The player has the option to bring half the lower limit amount (50¢) or complete to the full bet of $1.
Posting: In a game with blinds, it's common for you to have to "post" before your first hand at the table. Posting is simply paying the amount of the big blind to be dealt your first hand. If this is required where you play, you also have the option to wait until you would be the natural big blind, or until the button passes you to post.
Betting Options
Call, check, raise, pass, re-raise, push, bet, check-out, three-bet and upstairs are just a few of the terms used in making bets on a poker table. It can seem daunting, but boiled down there are never more than three specific options you can pick from on any street.
All betting actions are made by either vocalizing them, or using a hand gesture. When learning the game, it's best to vocalize all intended action on your turn.
Bet: The first time someone puts money into play on a betting round is a bet. Action: Putting the exact amount of the intended bet across the line, into play.
Call: To match the bet made by another player to have acted before you. Action: Putting in any chips equal to, or less than the bet. Putting in one chip is always considered a call no matter what the value of the chip, unless stated otherwise before the motion.
Check: When no bet has been made, you can stay in the hand by choosing to check rather than bet. Action: Tapping your hand twice on the table, or making a "Keep on moving" sideways wave.
Raise: To increase the amount of the bet made by another. Action: Placing enough chips to make a legal raise in one movement. You are not allowed to place chips and then return to your stack to get more, unless you clearly state your intentions prior to the movement.
Push: A No-Limit term meaning you are betting all of your chips. Action: Pushing everything you have across the line.
Re-raise: You raise a bet, and re-raise a raise. Action: Same as a raise.
Check-out, three-bet, upstairs: All just poker slang for various actions. Not important in learning the game.
Betting Rounds:
A betting round ends when every player who has not folded has had a chance to play and has bet the same amount of chips. Let me make it a little bit clearer:

Not sure the bet is to you? Just ask the dealer.

• If you are first to act, you have the option to Check, or Bet.
• If someone before you has bet, you have the option to Call, Raise or Fold.
• If the first marked cards player bets, and everyone calls, the betting round is finished. The original bettor has already had a chance to act, and does not get to act again on the betting round.
• If the first player bets, the second player raises and the remaining players call, the original bettor now gets to choose an option on the new action. She can call, or re-raise. If she calls, the betting round is over. If she chooses to re-raise, then everyone else at the table has option again.

The Games
For quick reference, this is how five popular poker variants play out in terms of blinds and betting rounds and amounts.

Game	Blind/Ante
Hold'em	The game of Hold'em mostly only uses blinds. In higher-stakes games, or late stages of a tourney, you may see antes introduced in addition to the blinds.
Omaha	Same as Hold'em.
Seven-Card Stud	Typically uses an ante, and a bring. This can change from limit to limit, and room to room.
Five-Card Stud	Same as Seven-Card Stud.
Razz	Same as Seven-Card Stud.

Game	Betting Rounds
Hold'em	Four rounds total, plus blinds.
Omaha	Same as Hold'em.
Seven-Card Stud	Five rounds total, plus antes and bring.
Five-Card Stud	Four rounds total, plus antes and bring.
Razz	Same as Seven-Card Stud.

Game	Betting Amounts
Hold'em	Pre-flop and flop minimum bets are the lower limit, turn and river minimum bets are the upper limit.
Omaha	Same as Hold'em.
Seven-Card Stud	Typically bring is half the lower limit. First betting round and fourth street are the lower limit. Fifth, sixth and seventh street use the upper limit. NOTE: Ante and bring amounts, or usage, can change from limit to limit, and room to room.
Five-Card Stud	Typically bring is half the lower limit. First betting round and third street are the lower limit. Fourth and fifth street use the upper limit. NOTE: Ante and bring amounts, or usage, can change from limit to limit, and room to room.
Razz	Same as Seven-Card Stud.

Battle of Malta Near, Boot Camp No-Go

The 2013 PokerListings Battle of Malta is nearly here but the strategy boot camp that was supposed to precede the event has been cancelled.
The camp, which was planned for Sept. 23-25, generated interest but not enough to justify the entire seminar and time commitment of pros Dan “jungleman12” Cates, Johannes Strassmann, Max Altergott and Ashton Griffin.
Despite cancelling this year’s boot camp marked cards, there’s a good chance an even better version debuts next year at the 2014 Battle of Malta.

Battle of Malta Registration Strong, 500+ Expected

Cancelling the boot camp doesn’t affect this year’s Battle of Malta tournament with attendance looking very good in the early stages of registration.
Over 500 players are expected for the €550 buy-in tournament which offers a €200,000 guarantee -- an upgrade over last year’s €150,000 guarantee.
This year’s Battle of Malta takes place next week from Sept 26-29 with numerous pros like the aforementioned Cates and Griffin set to play as well as Andreas Hoivold, Luca Moschitta, Sofia Lövgren and many others.
Registration is still open and full packages available on the Battle of Malta webpage.

Poker One-Liners We Can All Do Without

Poker abounds with quickies - one-liners that seem to carry a cartload of wisdom.
Some indeed do. We even devoted an article to one of them.
Other favorites of mine are:

• Doyle Brunson's "Never go broke in an unraised pot"
• The uncredited "Small hands, small pots; big hands, big pots"
• and the wildly popular, "If you can't spot the fish in the first half-hour, it's you."

Most one-offs come from the greats, or get filtered marked cards down through the culture of the game.
And like aphorisms everywhere, they are admirable for their clean, efficient encoding of deep truths.
Alas, there are others that abound in poker rooms that come up short in the wisdom department but are far more common and more commonly believed.
I'd like to dissect a couple of them for you.
I hope there's a poker lesson here, and I hope even more that having read these you'll stop repeating them.

1. "I crushed the game last night at ____ (fill in the poker room or online poker site of your choice)."

If you "crushed the game" you should really not give yourself much credit.
No one deserves any special accolades for a single big win.
In the room where I play we have a school (metaphorically speaking) of semi-fish. They're actually reasonable players - not particularly gifted, not truly awful.
The game is too big to support the genuinely piscine; they would go broke too quickly.
Our partial fish just lose more than they win but, of course, without them the game would wither away.
One of these scaly folk must have stepped in something on his way in the other day. He caught cards that you would not believe.
It gave new meaning to the phrase "hit in the head with the deck." He walked away with two racks of greenies and over 4,000 coconuts in profit.
Not bad for a fish.
So, what do I hear from him next time I see him? I hear that he "crushed the game."
And not just that he crushed it. He now seems to think he's the best player in town because he recorded one of the bigger wins we've seen in months.

The God of Gamblers 5

China could bring Macau’s boom to an end by fiat; citizens need a special permit to go to Macau, and China opens and closes the flow of visitors at will. When, in 2008, it reduced the number of visas, revenue dropped sharply during the financial crisis; Sands stock lost ninety-nine per cent of its value, wiping out more than twenty billion dollars of Adelson’s family fortune. (The value later recovered.)

But cracking down on Macau poses political problems. Some officials in Beijing are keen to maintain the enclave’s economic success, because it shows the breakaway island of Taiwan the potential benefits of a return to the motherland. Moreover, Macau is a place where China’s new millionaires can indulge in the gains of their prosperity, which is one of the rewards guaranteed by the unwritten bargain between Chinese leaders and their people for a generation: Don’t concern yourself with the state’s inner marked cards workings, and the state will not overly concern itself with yours. On a return flight from Macau to Beijing, I sat beside a former military officer, who now owns real estate and a string of factories. He visits Macau once a month (“to let off steam”), and he spent much of the flight scrutinizing his latest acquisition: a twelve-thousand-dollar cell phone, encased in alligator skin and equipped with a button that connects him to a full-time concierge, to make dinner and handle travel arrangements.

Macau is poised for another dramatic expansion. A high-speed train line is under construction that will link it with cities as far north as Beijing, and the world’s longest sea bridge, connecting Macau to Hong Kong, is set to open in three or four years, reducing the ferry crossing to a half-hour drive by car. Even as the federal investigations continue, few people in Macau have both the interest and the capacity to impose greater control over the system. Manuel Joaquim das Neves, Macau’s top casino regulator, told me that foreign criticism will not alter the way of doing things in Macau. “Macau is not Las Vegas, Singapore, or, indeed, any other jurisdiction,” he said, adding, “Macau has attracted more than twenty billion dollars in foreign investment in the casino industry alone. In short, the public interest has been well served.” José Maria Pereira Coutinho, a liberal member of the Legislative Assembly, is less impressed with the industry. “The government is incompetent,” he said. More than eight out of every ten dollars of government revenue comes from casinos, and Coutinho says that the annual payments to citizens are a “drug,” to “keep their mouths shut.” I asked whether lawmakers will push for more urgent changes. He laughed, and said, “In the Legislative Assembly, a nuclear bomb could pass through and everything would go slowly and calmly.”

The files of the God of Gamblers case can be read as a string of accidents, good and bad: Siu’s run at the baccarat table; Wong’s luck to be assigned an assassin with a conscience; Adelson’s misfortune that reporters noticed an obscure murder plot involving his casino. But the tale, viewed another way, depends as little on luck as a casino does. It is, rather, about the fierce collision of self-interests. If Las Vegas is a burlesque of America—the “ethos of our time run amok,” as Hal Rothman, the historian, put it—then Macau is a caricature of China’s boom, its opportunities and rackets, its erratic sorting of winners and losers.

Four years after Siu hit his hot streak, I got word through a friend in Hong Kong that he might be back in his old neighborhood, not far from the dismantled squatters’ camps where he grew up. He was said to have worked out a deal for protection from another triad, the Wo Shing Wo. I took the train to see him. His neighborhood marked card tricks lies in a lush river delta framed by green hills on the horizon. The summer heat had broken and construction seemed to be under way everywhere, as old villages were being converted into enclaves of villas and cul-de-sacs with names like the Prestige and Sky Blue and Full Silver Garden.

I met Siu at a construction site near a scrap-metal yard, surrounded by marshy fields of water chestnuts and lilies, crosshatched by footpaths. He was building fourteen houses whose modern design, heavy on stainless steel and black granite, would have looked at home in Sacramento or Atlanta. The complex will be called the Pinnacle. Siu was wearing a droopy yellow golf shirt, jeans, and muddy sneakers. He seemed subdued, and his voice was raspy. He was barely distinguishable from his crew—tanned, bony, middle-aged men from across the Chinese countryside. When I arrived, it was quitting time, and one of them was naked, giving himself a bird bath from a bucket of soapy water. Siu and I sat on folding chairs beside a line of drying laundry and gazed out over the unfinished houses.

I asked where he had gone into hiding, and he smiled. “All over China,” he said. “I drove everywhere by myself. Sometimes I stayed in five-star hotels, sometimes in tiny places. I liked Inner Mongolia the best. Eventually, I went up to the mountains of Jiangxi for eight months. When it began to snow, I nearly froze. I went down from the mountains and came home.”

I asked if he had cheated at baccarat. “The reporters just listened to rumors from people who wanted their money back,” he said. “Everybody says I was playing tricks at the table. It’s not true. I wasn’t. When I gambled, there must have been ten people with their eyes on me at any time. How am I supposed to play tricks?”

His denial left open a range of possibilities for manipulating the game, and theories abound. A lawyer for one of the defendants surmises that Siu may have been a minor player in a larger con, pitting one triad against another. But he said that, ultimately, “there is so much cheating going on. How can you know the truth?”

Siu seemed unconcerned about his safety. “I’m in my mid-fifties, and I’ll live to be, what, seventy?” he said. “So I’ve got only another decade or so. What do I have to lose? I’m not afraid.” He fell silent for a moment. “If they come for me, I can go for them, too,” he added.

He’d stopped going to Macau. The decision was for his kids, he said. “I don’t want them to gamble. Two of them have bachelor’s degrees, one has a master’s. They don’t swear. They’re good kids.” He went on, “You have to be highly sensitive to be a good gambler. I don’t recommend it to everybody. Everyone called me Inveterate Gambler Ping. But I never liked that, because I was never addicted. I gambled because I knew I could win.”

Night was falling, and Siu offered me a lift back to the station in his black Lexus S.U.V., parked in the dirt beside us. “There used to be a helicopter taking me to the Venetian anytime I wanted to go,” he said. “Now I’m getting my feet dirty. Real estate is even more lucrative. It’s better than gambling or drugs or anything.” He pointed out the new houses in progress. “It costs a few million to build one of these, and then I can sell it for ten million.” ♦