Card Player Lifestyle

Okay – admittedly, it’s a bit surreal to be writing a poker blog entry about something that happened to me, as I mostly cover news in the poker world. But what happened to me last night simply begs for some sort of a headline.

So I’m driving home from a poker game (in which I won $100) and it’s about 2:30 a.m. On the way to my town, we pass by a small village, located just to the right of the road. While driving uphill, all of a sudden, a donkey runs from the village straight out to the middle of the road.

Shocked, I immediately swerve to avoid hitting the donkey, but lose all control of the car. I crash into a barrier, do a full 180-degree turn while skidding about 50 yards down the road, and crash again into concrete staircase (ouch!). Thankfully, the side airbag deployed and aside from some shoulder pain, I’m doing fine. The car, however, was essentially totaled.

My friend, who played in the game as well, was driving behind me and saw me swerve, but was also caught off guard by the donkey (who hadn’t moved an inch!!!). He drove right into the donkey, which cracked his windshield and busted up the passenger’s side of his car, but thankfully he escaped with no injury whatsoever.

The donkey? Apparently completely unfazed (and with nary a scratch on it), just walked away down the road as if nothing had happened.

Moral of the story? Sometimes, no matter how in control of a situation you might be, whether at the poker table or on the road, there’s simply nothing you can do to avoid bad luck, and the donk will walk away the winner.

Although you can play a number of poker games and video poker online, Texas hold’em is the most popular version of online poker by far.

It has been described as the “Cadillac of Poker” by the godfather of the game, Doyle Brunson.  No-limit Texas hold’em is the main game played at the World Series of Poker (WSOP) as well as in World Poker Tour (WPT) events.

It’s easy to learn the basics of Texas hold’em, but the game takes a lot of time and effort to master.

The idea of Texas hold’em is to make the best 5-card hand possible from a combination of the cards in your hand and the shared (community) cards.

Texas hold’em is a “flop” game, as all players in a hand can use any or all of the 5 cards that are dealt on the board. Each player is also dealt two hole cards. Players must work out how to make the best the hand from a combination of their hole cards and the community cards.

Play begins with each player holding two hole cards (face down). The flop consists of 3 community cards.

The dealer has a button and the two players to the left have to place (small and big) blind bets. Put simply, a blind is a forced bet, the idea of which is to get the pot started. The person on the immediate left of the dealer posts the small blind while the next player posts the big blind. To make the game fair, the dealer button moves around the board so that each player in turn is forced to post their blinds.

Action begins as the player on the left of the big blind has a choice of matching the blind bet, raising (which is adding additional money to the bet), or sitting out the hand by folding. This pattern continues around the table until action gets back to the blinds. If there has been a raise, the players still in the hand can choose to match the bet (call), raise, or fold.

Another community card is then dealt – the turn (or 4^th street) – with another round of betting before the final community card is dealt – the river (or 5^th street). Betting always begins with the first player to the left of the dealer button – there is no forced betting once there’s a flop.

If two or more players remain after the last round of betting, each shows their hand – the one with the best hand takes the pot.