How Do I Avoid Looking Like an Idiot first Time in a Casino? |
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Posted Sun May 02, 2004 7:33 pm GMT by nuts4poker
I have followed the boards on this site for a few months now and have sucessfully used what i learned here to regularly beat my friends. Now unfortunatly, they wont play with me as the last 5 or so times we have played i ended up with everyone's money. I have only played at this one home game and want to up my game. So im going to Turning Stone Casino this weekend to try my skill there.
A few questions for the people who have already shared thier knowledge alowing me to take lots of money off my friends:
Are there any etiquite rules i should be aware of before i sit down?
What do first timers normally do that i should avoid?
My friends and I have played what i think are low blinds .25/.50 even though we regularly get pots up to $40. So could use some clarification on what to expect as far as pre-flop action.
Thanks for all the help.
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Posted Sun May 02, 2004 9:33 pm GMT by cayouche
This article sums it all, pretty much: Click here for the article!
Also, when people win a pot, they usually tip the dealer. Although it is unnecessary, everyone else does it. It doesn't have to be a lot. I suggest you look at the other players to see how much they tip.Click here for a very interesting thread about tipping dealers!
Posted Sun May 02, 2004 9:39 pm GMT by JacksLose
The mistake that I see most first timers make is not buying in for enough money. In a low limit casino game(2-4, 4-8, ect) theres alot of stupid action and hands can get very expensive. Just have enough to take a couple of bad beats before you win a big pot. Someone will always call you to the river.
Other than that, just dont string bet or talk about the hand you folded. Good luck!
Posted Sun May 02, 2004 9:57 pm GMT by cayouche
I usually bring 40 times the big blind. So if it's a $5-$10 table (the blinds are $2-$5), I start with $200. Here's why.
You can bring less if you want, but you'll feel like being shorthanded. Because of that, you'll end up being too conservative. Also, if you're involved in a hand, you don't want to run out of money  .
You could bring more than 40 times the BB. On that same $5-$10 table, you could bring $250-$300 and it will still be allright, but if you bring too much, like $1000 on that table, you might start to call anything and say:"A $5 or $10 call won't hurt me...". It's dangerous.
Note that this is only my opinion. You know how you play, and you know what suits you. If you'll feel more comfortable in bringing $2000 at a $5-$10 table, go ahead. There's nothing like personnal experience.
Posted Sun May 02, 2004 10:19 pm GMT by racquet000
TSC has alot of fishes. Lots of ways to get money off them. You will suffer bad beats. But the lower the limit the more beats you will see.
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 9:43 am GMT by MasterShake
Pay attention to the limit structure. It's easy to screw up your bet at the table and over/under bet if you're used to no-limit. Remember that you're locked into a specific bet. 2/4 5/10 10/20, whatever. It's not so much about etiquette as it is about not giving away too much info about your hand. 
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 9:58 am GMT by Dave B
Do 99% watching and 1% talking and you will do fine.
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 12:44 pm GMT by Always_Bored
I recommend waiting for the big blind before you start playing. Not to save you from posting out of turn but to give you some time to watch how everything works and get a little bit of a feel for it.
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 2:02 pm GMT by Blarg
Be extremely protective of your chips and cards!
There ARE hustlers, cheaters, and thieves in card rooms.
If you walk away from the table, say to take a bio break or get a coke or whatever, just leave one 50 cent chip to mark your place, maybe something dirt cheap to identify you if you like, say your pack of cigs if you smoke. People have been known to sit down and play other people's money, or say, I'm his wife and we're going now and scoop up a rack full of chips.
Dealers can lose their jobs or get in trouble if they mess up hands, so watch them like hawks. If they have to choose between you winning and them losing, YOU will be the loser for all but the very rare among them.
If a dealer is not paying attention and starts to muck your hand(he grabs some of your cards and starts to throw them away), grab his hand like it had a gun in it, grab your cards, whatever - DON'T let those cards hit the muck! Because then, your hand is over. Disqualified, whether you were winner or not. I've seen dealers with their hands halfway to the muck get stopped by players, make a quick decision to screw the player rather than get in trouble, and then muck the cards anyway and start lying about it afterward at a full table of people who SAW them screw up. I've seen dealers who are sloppy, sleepy, jerky, etc. make many, many mistakes involving grabbing the cards of players at the wrong time. DO NOT TRUST ANYONE with your cards, or chips, EVER. Not the floorman, the dealer, nobody, ever. Hold your own cards and chips or prepare to pay a potentially truly horrible price. The only time your cards should be accessible by anyone else is when you fold. By the way, in some casinos you are not allowed to touch the "open" cards dealt, like the third through sixth cards in 7-stud. Keep the rest close to you or in your hands, without taking them off the table at any time. (If you want to show a buddy, he comes to the cards, not vice-versa.)
About holding your chips -- someone mentioned string betting. This means you can't put down some chips, then go back into your pile for more. Want to make a 20 dollar bet? Do not put in 10 bucks then reach back to your stack, or your bet is now ten bucks only. This is to prevent people from putting out money, watching people fold or react, then add more when it looks profitable. Nobody cares about your motivations -- just don't do it. All money goes out in one chunk. If you MUST use a lot of chips in several motions, tell the dealer how much you are putting out first so everyone hears it very clearly.
And PLEASE don't be the guy who eats fried chicken or picks his teeth or his nose at the table. I don't care how wonderful you think your bodily fluids are, nobody wants them on the cards - and there's no napkin in the world that can clean up your fingers from greasy food enough that you won't notice the slimy feel on the cards. Some people think of a poker room as one of the few places they can be truly obnoxious and disrespectful to people and completely get away with it -- don't be one of those guys if you ever feel you wouldn't want to deal with one yourself, or have any friends or respect among the staff or the players. People's memories last forever in card rooms, believe it.
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 2:44 pm GMT by nuts4poker
Blarg- Sounds like you have had some first hand experience getting screwed by people. You actually sort of addressed one of my main questions though. how does it work when you want to get up to say streach, take a break, or even move tables? Also, When is betting "capped"?
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 2:56 pm GMT by Always_Bored
| nuts4poker wrote: | | Blarg- Sounds like you have had some first hand experience getting screwed by people. You actually sort of addressed one of my main questions though. how does it work when you want to get up to say streach, take a break, or even move tables? Also, When is betting "capped"? |
Just get up. Your chips will act as a holder for your spot. If you miss your big blind then you will have to either wait for BB again or post BB and surrender small blind. Dont be gone for an hour but 5-10 minutes should be fine. If you are going for a meal at my casino you tell the pit boss and he will hold your spot for an hour and cover your chips with a plastic cover.
Moving tables (at my casino) you have to ask the pit boss. They will usually say no. If you want to go up in stakes from 5/'10 to 10/20 then he will move you if a seat is open or put you on the 10/20 list and come get you when your name comes up. But they dont like to laterally move people at my casino. from 5/10 to 5/10, They would rather have a full table and half full table then 2 3/4 full tables. Dont just get up and move tables on your own.
Betting is capped after 4 bets. For example in 5/10. player A calls BB for 5, player b raises to 10 Player C reraises to 15 and player A caps it at 20. no one can bet anymore than that. Same goes for the 10 round. Except it woul;d go 10,20,30,40(cap). From my experience it doesnt cap that often.
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 3:00 pm GMT by Always_Bored
| Blarg wrote: |
If you walk away from the table, say to take a bio break or get a coke or whatever, just leave one 50 cent chip to mark your place, maybe something dirt cheap to identify you if you like, say your pack of cigs if you smoke. People have been known to sit down and play other people's money, or say, I'm his wife and we're going now and scoop up a rack full of chips. |
this is a good rule. At the casino i play at we are not allowed to take chips off the table unless cashing out.
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 3:03 pm GMT by JacksLose
Geez Blarg, where are you playing? And why do you ever go there? It sounds like shady business to me. In the card room I work in, if you leave the table, I guarantee you your chip are safe. Each table has 8 different camera angles in which to view the action. Only once have we had someone try to steal chips off the table. He was caught quickly, and even though he claimed it was a mistake, he's out for life.
As far as dealers mucking your hand, it is the players responsibilty to protect thier hand! You must put a chip or some sort of token on your cards to show you are in the hand. Especially in seats 1 and 10. After about 6 hours at the tables, dealers are on autopilot, and if cards look like theyve been folded, theyll be mucked. Our dealers do not lose thier jobs for making a mistake. It happens. They are encouraged to call a floorman to fix the problem. If they dont, then they will lose thier job. I would encourage you to find a safer place to play. Honest card rooms do exist!!!
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 3:10 pm GMT by MasterShake
JacksLose brings up another good point. Protect your cards with a chip or some kind of token.
And make sure if you use some sort of good luck charm or token that you brought with you that it isn't too large. I saw a guy get reprimanded at Foxwoods once for keeping his keys and cell phone on the table in front of him.
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 4:41 pm GMT by Blarg
It's not so much a matter of cardrooms being honest, I think, as of human nature. Nobody wants to get fired, and very few people like to be caught looking either stupid or foolish. Look stupid or foolish on your job? Big no-no, so the temptation will always be there for dealers to pull something. You and I may be tempted to kick some little kid in the ass when he annoys us, but we probably do it on the frequency of rarely to never; neither are dealers always craven or crummy, but it happens. Yes, I've seen a fair share of it. When it comes to your money, you MUST protect yourself.
And not just because of intentional wrongdoing. Like Jackslose notes, fatigue and boredom or distraction can set in on dealers, and they can simply make mistakes. This will inevitably happen regardless of how good the casino or the staff is. Do be careful to protect yourself from it!
I've played a lot in the Los Angeles area, in the Bicycle Club and Commerce Casino and Hollywood Park. Very unprofessional floorpeople there at the Hollywood Park -- they sometimes talk to the customer like they got their customer service training in Auschwitz, or they're paying YOU and not the other way around, so I stopped going there. It isn't just me, either; I'm scrupulously polite to a fault, almost old-world style. Seen sly moves by both customers and staff at all three places. Hey, that's life.
So don't forget it! And keep your eye on that customer with crossed arms who tries to sneak a finger onto your pile of chips. There's an old chinese guy I used to play with who tried that every day a dozen times.
P.S.: Many casinos won't kick people out practically unless they pull out a gun. Or they'll kick them out for the day or the week. I know a few cheaters who got caught, and they were quickly back at play again. The casinos want their money too much. Do NOT count on them to do the right thing -- protect yourself.
Posted Mon May 03, 2004 6:02 pm GMT by mindgame
Just a not FYI on "capping."
Rules CAN vary from casino to casino. Typically a "cap" is the fourth bet (3rd raise). BUT...at least in both Indiana casinos outside Chicago...if two players are head's up there is no cap. They can bet back and forth into each other until one of them is all in. The thinking is that either player can stop all the raising with a simple call.
Posted Tue May 04, 2004 1:26 pm GMT by Always_Bored
the heads up no limit thing is the same in Ontario casinos too. But ive never seen it put to use. One of the guys usually gets pretty worried.
Posted Tue May 04, 2004 2:39 pm GMT by JacksLose
Good point! When two players are heads up there is no cap. True. THis rule can provide for some good people watching. I love watching the two players raise each other back and forth, both confident the pot is theirs. Then, all of a sudden, a glimmer of doubt appears in one's eyes. I love looking for that moment, the momentum dies and the player says "Ummmm, I just call". Moments like that are what makes Holdem beautiful. You can truly see inside someones head for just a second.
Posted Tue May 04, 2004 2:48 pm GMT by Dave B
I saw this happen on a 6/12 table when one has 4 7 hearts in a blind for the str8 flush the other had AK hearts. The guy w/ AK was down to about $16 (from $150 to start the hand) when the other dude stopped, looked at him, said "What are you thinking" then reraise a final time and showed the winner. He NEVER saw it coming.
Posted Tue May 04, 2004 2:55 pm GMT by Always_Bored
| Dave B wrote: | | "What are you thinking" |
lol, I would say the same thing after i got most of the guys money. then again I never play 4,7suited so i would have to get lucky and hit that hand on my big bling.
Posted Tue May 04, 2004 4:05 pm GMT by racquet000
Hes thinking. who the hell plays low suited cards in a 6/12 game. Cause i know he had to raise it preflop. With AK suited...haha
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