推 sandra7193:推 用心 01/05 13:24
以下文章來自Phil Hellmuth,Jr.寫的書，
Play Poker Like the Pros.
Chapter 1. Skill versus Luck in Poker
內容是說如何「看待運氣」。我想其中有些與麻將一樣的道理，在此全抄下來希望有興
趣的人可以看看，晚點我會試著翻譯看看這篇文章。
我想Hold'em與麻將最不一樣的地方是在於，你想要看下一張牌幾乎都要「花錢」。
但麻將不需要花太高的代價就能摸到下一張牌。
而Hold'em輸贏決定在幾張牌上，但麻將的輸贏決定在上百張牌。資訊可以說是瞬息萬變。
打麻將起手就決定不玩的人，常常會是輸的。但是打Hold'em卻必需要在很多牌一起手就
決定不玩。
反正麻將看下一張牌不用錢，只要在不放槍，不被自摸的前提下，你都是可以跟下去的。
除此之外，看待運氣的方式我想是不會有太多的不一樣。文章中一樣提到要紀錄輸贏。
看得懂英文的人可以先看看。
順帶一提，此書作者已靠Hold'em贏得超過兩百萬美金，上千萬的台幣。
Most people today misunderstand poker. Let's be frank: most people
know poker from the low-stakes games they now play (or grew up playing)
with their family and friends. In these low-stakes home games,luck often
plays a much bigger role than skill.
The money to be gained or lost in a home tends to mean next to nothing,
and everyone at th table plays almost every hand to the end. The dealer's
choice games are often nonstandard, even bizarre variations (often fun)
where, for example, deuces, black kings, or one-eyed jacks (or all of them)
are wild. In this type of poker game, peoplejust put their money in the
middle (in the "pot") and hope to make the best hand. Often, there doesn't
seem to be much strategy or thought involved. When the evening winds up,
everyone seems to agree that "Johnny sure was hot tonight!" You don't
hear anyone saying, "Boy, did Johnny play great tonight. I sure am afraid
of him at the poker table."
One reason why luck has such a big role in home-style poker games is that
many of the skills we use in pro-style games just don't come into play in a
home game. For example, three of the more important skills that we use are
being patient in determining which starting hands to play, bluffing, and
reading people. Patience, like discipline, is a virtue in many areas of life,
and poker is no exception. It is in the nature of professional or tough
high-stakes poker games that it is mathematically correct to fold a lot of
hands right away. If you are playing too many hands (which equates to too
many bad hands) in a tough poker game, you will often find yourself "drawing
mighty thin," that is, trying to win by catching particular cards that are
in short supply.
The plain fact is that if you play too many hands in a pro-level poker
game, you just cannot win, certainly not in the long run and probably not
even on just one given night, no matter how lucky you are. But if you're
playing a lot of hands in a home poker game, you may be in good shape anyway,
because the sheer size of the pot will wind up offering you odds suffcient to
draw to an inside straight (add a nine, for example, to your 7-8-10-J hand)
or another "unlikely to hit" hand. You'll usually lose, but when you do
manage to hit the card you need, you're going to win a huge pot.
Further, the number of cards that can complete what you need in the
late rounds of a hand in a home game is often larger than one sees in the
pro game, because the dealer has designated various wild cards or rules that
allow you extra draws or give you chances to buy another card or replace a
card.
Because you don't see these big pots and people paying you off with weak
hands in a pro poker game, patience is crucial there. In the traditional
home-style poker games, patience not only is not as important but may
actually clash with the "spirit" of the game -- that "We're all here just to
have fun and gamble." Playing a more technically informed style may win you
more money in a home game, but it might also mean that you're not invited back
the next time the game is held! In a casino poker game or an online poker game
, of course, you don't need to be concerned that you might not be invited back
.
Another key difference between home poker games and the games that the
pros play is that bluffing actually succeeds in the pro-style games! In a home
game, it's extremely hard to pull off a bluff, because you usually can't bet
enough money on the last bet to get your opponents to fold. For 25 cents,
someone who is convinced he is beaten is nontheless willing to throw the two
bits into the pot, just to see what you have, and, oops, there goes your
attempted bluff. In fact, in most situations in these home games where there
is a "bet on the end" (in the last round of action in a given hand), someone
is always egging someone else on to be the "sheriff." "Bill, you call that boy
and be the sheriff this hand! We can't let him bluff us!"
In the pro game, bluffing is a sound strategy, because in the late stages
of a hand there aren't many people who haven't folded. If you've been playing
very few hands (that is, patiently), and have seldom been caught bluffing
during a day of play, then when you do bluff, it's hard for those remaining
in the hand to "call you down" through the last bet. Long live the bluff!
Bluffing well is an art form, and I will be addressing it at various points
throughout this book. The bluff is one of the poker crafts-man's tools that
is seldom available to players in wild, friendly, low-stakes games.
Another important element in pro poker games is reading your opponents.
Are they riding on "hot air" or the real thing? In a lot of home games, there
is just so much money in the pot, relative to the size of the final bet, that
it makes sense to call that bet. (What do you have to lose?) In pro poker,
theres is enough money involved, and enough actual thought processes are being
utilzed, that many situations come up where you can take advantage of a good
read -- which might arise either from your ability to detect weakness or
strength in body language or from your ability to assess the implications of
the betting pattern on the hand -- and make either a good call or a good fold.
But it's hard to read someone who hasn't really been thinking about the hand
and can't possibly be nervous about losing $1.75! The skill factor in poker
is much higher in the pro game. There is just too much at stake for anyone
to rely solely on luck.
Let's take a quick glimpse at the high-stakes poker world, an enterprise
that yields several of my friends over a million dollars a year! At this level
, too, luck is a factor on any given day, week, or month, but what's different
is that if you play better poker than your opponents do, pretty consistently,
you'll find that over almost any two-month period your winnings have exceeded
your losses. Furthermore, if you play better poker than your opponents over
a six-month period, your result will have moved very solidly in the winning
direction. Making a few well-timed bluffs each day will add up to a lot of
money each year!
In fact, if an inexperienced poker player were to sit down for a few hours
with a group of world-calss poker players, he would have virtually no chance
to win over even an eight-hour period. This very fact is why five or six top
pros might be willing to sit down in the same game with this fellow and each
other: the money that even one amateur is likely to contribute makes it
worth their while to do battle with so many respected opponents.
This is why so many of the top poker players today drive fine cars and
live in palatial home. Right now, as you're reading this book, there is a
$600-$1,200-limit poker game at the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas and a $400-
$800-limit poker game at the Commerce Casino in Los Angeles. There is a $200-
$400-limit game somewhere in New York City. They're playing no-limit poker
in San Francisco at the Lucky Chances Casino and high-stakes pot-limit poker
in London at the Grosvenor Victoria ("The Vic") and in Paris at the Aviation
Club de France. In Vienna, at the Concorde Card Casino, they're playing $75-
$150 Seven-Card Stud. (I'll have more to say about these two-figure games in
Chapter 2.)
If that's not enough action for you, four night a week in Los Angeles,
there is a $2,000-$4,000-limit Seven-Card Stud game at Larry Flynt's Hustler
Club Casino, with Larry himself often playing. In the $400-$800-limit poker
game it's easy to take a $25,000 swing in one our. In the $2,000-$4,000-limit
game, where movie stars, former governors, and billionaires play, it's not
uncommon for someone to win or lose $250,000 in one night. In these "nosebleed
" poker games (the term refers to the altitude of the stakes), strategy,
discipline, calculation of the odds, and practiced observation contribute to
a game that involves much more skill. Better play wins more hands in the long
run.
Imagine yourself facing down Larry Flynt in the $2,000-$4,000 Seven-Card
Stud game at the Hustler Club Casino. You're sitting there trying to figure
out if he has a strong hand or is full of hot air (bluffing). If you decide
right, you will win $25,000, but if you're wrong, it will cost you $25,000.
What do you do? You make a good read--of the situation, of the odds, of your
opponent--and make an educated guess, rather than a plain old boldfaced guess!
The chief difference between your home poker game and the games of the big
players is the preponderance of luck in the one and the preonderance of skill
in the other. In a game (the Flynt game) where winning just one $4,000 bet a
night would mean an income of $16,000 per week (this game runs four days a
week), one carefully earned bet can make a great deal of difference.
That's the way thing look into the high-stakes "side game" world at large,
but there is even more evidence that skill is present and important in
high-stakes poker tournaments today. (When I say "side-game" world, I mean the
nontournament poker world.) Why do the same people, by and large, keep winning
poker tournaments year after year? They win because the apply finely honed
strategies and tactics, calculate and recalculate the odds, read their
opponents well, avoid becoming predictable, and know how and when to make a
good bluff.
Some of the most famous poker players in the world today have made their
names in poker tournaments. Doyle "Texas Dolly" Bruson has eight bracelets
(titles) from the World Series of Poker (WSOP) at age 66. I have seven, and
so does Johnny "The Oriental Express" Chan. "Amarillo Slim" Preston--whose
name is known even to the general public--has four or five WSOP titles,
depending, as Slim himself would say, on "who does the telling."
I'm proud to say that I was the all-time leading money winner in
WSOP history in 2001, haveing won more than $2,800,000. (Unfortunately for
me, Hohnny Chan and T.J. Cloutier both passed me in 2002. But there is no
one within $600,000 of the three of us.) As I write this in 2002, only six
people have won more than $2 million in their WSOP "careers" (that is, on
the all-time list); and Johnny Chan just crossed the $3 million mark in 2002.
(He beat me there! But I'll win the race to $7 million!) Althought the same
people don't win all the poker tournament, by the time year's end rolls around
, the same people always seem to end up having won several tournaments year
in and year out. This is one of the appealing aspects of poker tournaments:
the record is out there for every one to see; some players are consistently
successful, and others are not. (The side games, though very lucrative, keep
no records.)
If serious poker were a game where luck predominated, this would not and
could not happen. Everynone involved would win about the same number of
tournaments as everyone else (as tends to happen in slot tournaments or craps
tournaments),and no one would make (or lose) any serious money. But that's not
what years and years of proven, recorded results show.
One last note: Beware of playing in the small stakes poker games in Las
Vegas or other casinos. No matter how good you are it is very hard to beat
the "rake" (the money that is taken out of every pot each hand). It's best
to avoid the $2-$4 limit games and below, and watch the rake--if it seems
like it's too much, then play with shorter money in a higher limit game that
is beatable.
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※ 編輯: playerOrz 來自: 61.57.148.179 (01/05 06:32)