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| 1 | The Poker Joker Forum / Poker Tips and Tricks / Holdem Poker for Advanced Players | |
| Started by Five Fingers | Last post by Five Fingers | ||
| Comment Sklansky and Malmouth promise to turn you into a great holdem player. Unfortunately they try to do so by explaining every variation of hands, table positions and betting patterns in the Universe. By the two thousandth set play I started feeling as if I had been beaten about the head with a poker baseball bat. Worse, I was becoming increasingly confused. Can you really prepare for every eventuality? I was becoming paralysed by knowledge and had visions of sitting at the poker table trembling with fear, trying to remember what Sklansky would do if the player four seats to my right was wearing a yellow hat and biting the nail on his left hand little finger. Thats not to say there isnt some excellent poker tips within this book. The mechanics of the game have been dissected and dissected again. Indeed it is bible-esque in the shear scale of the project. And thats the point. I think, being a great player is a divine gift, not something you explain using maths and tables. If you want to win playing tight, dull, grinding, soul destroying poker, this is for you. If you would rather lose a few but keep a personality, go elsewhere. Perfect as a toilet read when you have a spare five minutes. It just doesn't read coherently as chapters. Top Tip: Sklansky and Malmouth have ranked starting hands into groups. Using the strategies of Sklansky should turn the beginner / intermediate player into a regular contender. |
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| 2 | The Poker Joker Forum / General Poker Jokers Chat / Good content! | |
| Started by Rostik | Last post by Rostik | ||
| How do you do !! Hi, good morning to all of you... Nice forum  !!!I Will be back! |
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| 3 | The Poker Joker Forum / Great Poker Books / Re: Swimming with the Devil Fish | |
| Started by Five Fingers | Last post by The Lawman | ||
| When I picked this up I thought it was going to be a book primarily about Dave 'Devilfish' Ulliott and his life story from the back streets of Hull to the bright lights of Vegas and, in a way, it is. The book is all pitched very much in Ulliott's favour with a big picture of him on the cover, a title including his name and the first 70 pages being listed as 'Book One' which are exclusively about the top man in British poker at this time. This portion of the book presents several anecdotal tales of Dave's development as a person and player to the point where he is described as a 'poker superstar'. This is all well and good except for the truly awful literary style. The whole piece is written in 'footballer post match interview speak', (as in the present tense) even when referring to stories from way back in Ulliott's past. I don't know if this is an attempt to present the infomation as if it's being told by a cabbie to you, the reader, as you sit in the back of a Hackney carriage, but it is certainly very annoying. As the book progressed into 'Book two' I got the feeling that it had paid its lip service to Ulliott (did he finance it or something? His website certainly gets a few name checks!) and the author was now finally getting to the real core of his subject. What follows is a collection of thumb nail sketches of several of the other leading lights in the British poker scene with brief episodes from their lives and playing careers. There are still lapses of prose exclusively in the present tense but the book as a whole switches style and seems more informal and readable. As well as learning about the players there is info on where and how they played before the recent poker boom. A definite 'good old days' stance is projected and the 'new breed' of internet poker players are shown to be a lot less charismatic than their 'real game' forebears. Having introduced us to many of 'the Usual suspects' the book moves on again to one of its best segments, a resume of the 2005 WSOP. At last there is some straightforward descriptive writing rather than a catalogue of players, one after the other, which has been the bulk of the content up to this point. The player profiles still pop up in this chapter but it does manage to present a readable account of the tournie from 2005 and Hachem's eventual success. With yet more character profiles interspersed with a look at the growing European poker tournament scene the book peters out to a final questioning conclusion: can the poker boom continue or is the bubble about to burst and what does this mean for the multitude of old school players we have met in the preceding pages of the book? Wilson seems concerned for many of the older players and not only because several of them are his friends. On the whole I found this book to be a bit rambling and pretty badly written. I have already mentioned the infuriating style but it also makes some glaring mistakes, (for example on page 54 when it talks of Paul Ivey!) and it is filled with all the usaul stock stories and lines which it seems no poker book can publish without ("Mr Moss, I'll have to let you go..", "a chip and a chair...", "a minute to learn, a lifetime to master..." etc etc). It's purpose was unclear and it served mostly as a check list of senior British and Euro players and most of that infomation is romanticised and looked back upon with rose tinted lenses. Ulliott's life as a criminal for example and the often strong arm tactics seen and employed at the underground spielers are portrayed as almost humourous and quaint. It's as if the author wants his reader to feel a part of something risky and dangerous but not to scare them away, this all the while emphasising the blandness of many of the new breed of poker players who on the whole come from the internet. I wouldn't recommend this book other than as a very light read and only then if you are prepared to read it in your head in a 'mockney' accent: Guy Ritchie probably loves it! |
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| 4 | Tournaments and Friendlies / 2006 League Championship / Re: League Standings 2006 | |
| Started by Five Fingers | Last post by The Lawman | ||
| Any sign of game four results and league table? I'm level at the top with the prof I think but would like to see a posting to confirm. | ||
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| 5 | The Poker Joker Forum / General Poker Jokers Chat / Home Poker Games | |
| Started by boxfan2015 | Last post by boxfan2015 | ||
| Home Poker Games By John Reger Recently I was talking with a woman online about poker, and she was telling me about a home game she had started. She had been playing for years online and at poker clubs, but liked having a friendly game at her house in a more social atmosphere. Home games are fun, but they are definitely a different animal than online or playing at a club. A home poker game is more social, usually played with friends and family. There is usually liquor and food and your attention is not on the cards a lot of the time. There is nothing wrong with that, but realize a home game is not as competitive and your strategy will definitely be different, intentional or not. When you are playing with someone you know, the tendency is to play looser. First, the stakes are usually a lot lower, and second, you aren’t going to have the same killer instinct you would if you were playing with a stranger. That doesn’t mean a home game can’t be fun. If you set it up correctly, it can be more enjoyable as online or a club and just as competitive. The woman I was talking to hosts a regular Thursday evening game, and it begins sharply at 6:30. There are six to eight players, and the game ends at midnight or when the table gets below four players. If someone has to leave, they must announce their departure time at least an hour before. She called it “table etiquette.” Setting a routine is important. Her game is at an established time with a consistent core group of people and has a definitive end time. There are a couple of people that float in and out of the game, but for the most part the same people show up every week. There is nothing worse than a home game that has four people ready to play and four flakes whom you can’t count on to be there. Personalities are another consideration. The personality of a game is crucial. Most of the people that play in her game are friends, but there have been some people she has met online that have played. She hasn’t had to ban anyone, but she did say there are certain people she will avoid when they call, because they didn’t work out when they played. As the host you have to decide whether the game is going to be a fun, loose affair, or you are going to treat it like the final table of the World Series of Poker. Either way is fine, but establish it early and stick with your decision. Related to that is money. She had a $20 buy in and 50 cent blinds. No one got hurt too bad and the most she ever won was $100. Setting a limit everyone is comfortable with is important. I played in a home game at a country club that was $300 no limit Hold ’em, but everyone there was at ease with the stakes. Then again, I have played in home games where beginners played with advanced players and it was just as enjoyable. It really is about expectations. If you are expecting heavy action and big pots on a quarter, dime, nickel game with a bunch of beginners, you are going to be totally disappointed. This woman has been playing in casinos for years and has been playing online for four years, but looks forward to her weekly game. “We have a lot of fun,” she said. And sometimes that is what poker is all about. .  |
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| 6 | The Poker Joker Forum / General Poker Jokers Chat / Re: Nicely done and informative! Regards! | |
| Started by Leonid | Last post by Five Fingers | ||
| Thanks Leonid. We appreciate all feedback and we are pleased you like the site. | ||
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| 7 | The Poker Joker Forum / Great Poker Books / Re: The Man Behind the Shades | |
| Started by Five Fingers | Last post by The Professor | ||
| I read this book on recommendation from five fingers and obviously from the photos in it the author paid Ungar for the rights to write a sympathetic biography, although he died before the book was published! Undoubtedly Ungar was a selfish and flawed individual with an addictive personality, not uncommon in geniuii in a particular field (ref Gazza) bet also undoubtedly the greatest texas holdem player ever. Moral of the story, avoid class a drugs and keep the betting under control. ps. had to laugh when someone asked Paul Merson " if you were a betting man, who would your money be on" on sky sports news the other day... From reading the book it sounds like bookmaking is still illegal in a lot of states in the usa, what would have happened if betfair had been around for Ungar to use.  |
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| 8 | The Poker Joker Forum / General Poker Jokers Chat / Holdem Boot Camp London | |
| Started by timwaring | Last post by timwaring | ||
| I am in the process of putting together a Texas Holdem Boot Camp in London for the autumn. It will involve a day's instruction from professional players with solid tournament experience followed by a tournament on the sunday in a well known casino. What I am wanting to know from the forum is what topics beginner/intermediate players feel they would want to cover as a priority. Naturally we will not be able to cove every aspect of the game but need to cover topics that offer the maximum level of improvement in the shortest time. Tim tim@epicbreaks.co.uk |
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| 9 | Tournaments and Friendlies / 2006 League Championship / Re: Ranking 3: Professor becomes hunter | |
| Started by Five Fingers | Last post by Five Fingers | ||
| mate that is a top class write up. makes me feel a bit shabby for some of the drunken hole ridden reports I have added recently. The FOUR aces was the Black Cat. I have a photo somewhere which I will put on later. |
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| 10 | Tournaments and Friendlies / 2006 League Championship / Ranking 3 | |
| Started by Five Fingers | Last post by Five Fingers | ||
| 1 Original Poker Jokers 2 Old Skool 3 Women in Poker 4 Hells Kitchen 5 Fishbowl |
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