Adam wrote the article below about online poker cheating. Have you experienced online poker cheating? If so we would love to hear from you in the comment section of this article.

Cheating in online poker is a very popular conspiracy topic for poker forums and communities.  The idea of “cheating” in online poker can create a lot of sub-topics, and it largely depends on what we define as cheating – and who’s doing the cheating in the first place.

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Poker Rooms Cheating
Poker rooms tend to get a lot of press from disgruntled poker players who receive continuous bad beats or get “sucked out” of massive pots by a set on the river.  However, it is extremely unlikely that any poker room particularly the public traded ones like PartyPoker incorporate cheating or rigging the deck into their operational strategy. The negative publicity and legal settlements against them would bankrupt the company and may even force the owners into jail.  Hence, the odds are 99% that a poker room doesn’t rig the deck or con their players out of their money.

Online Poker Players Cheating
If you’re going to get cheated in online poker, the chances are that it’s going to be from the other players sitting at your table.  There are two forms of online poker player cheating that can be used to exploit the system: active cheating and passive cheating.  Active cheating works by players working in teams or colluding against the others at the table.  They’ll continuously raise the other players out of the pot and basically steal every pot possible losing you big chunks of your poker bankroll.  Fortunately, this type of collusion can be caught out by the poker room’s automated software.  Passive cheating, where opponents communicate each other holdings to each other (on msn), is much harder to spot, and is your highest chance of being cheated against in online poke.  I have witnessed this form of collusion myself in the past, along with one of the player’s getting refunded by the poker room, so I can tell you that it does happen. None the less, it really doesn’t happen that often and there still ways to defend yourself from it with a tighter strategy.
In the recent past – specifically on the Cereus Network, security lapses enabled a group of players to cheat by seeing everyone’s opponent’s playing cards.  This caused a massive upset in the industry, but it was spotted and remedied literally hours afterwards however.  Things like this might happen on odd occasions, but 99% of poker sites employ 128bit encryption and RNG (random-number generators) to ensure hacking is impossible. This is similar to the type of security that modern online banking use.

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Poker Cheating with Poker Tools
The most common method for cheating in online poker –regardless of whether you consider it cheating or not – is to use live tracking software and a Poker HUD.  Together, these tools provide key information and reads about the opponent’s at your table.  You can use them to narrow down your opponent’s hand range and get a feel for his playing style.  The majority of these tools are accepted at major poker sites such as Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, however there are a number which are forbidden, specifically those live tracking tools which use a remote database of data as opposed to uploading your own hand history from your desktop.  To see which poker tools are forbidden, you can go to www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/prohibited.

Phishing Online Poker Account Details
The final method of cheating in online poker is through phishing.  Phishing involves using spoof emails and fraudulent websites to trick players into giving them personal information that can be used to hack into their account.  You can easily defend yourself against this type of cheating by being smart about who you divulge sensitive information to.

What type of poker player are you? Adam wrote the following article about the subject

There are a lot of ways to approach poker and these result in different types of poker players. The first way people play poker is the easiest and most entertaining. It is the approach of the gambler, the true addict. This is the man that goes to the casino with $1000 in his pocket, ready to be spent on fun. Somewhere deep inside his mind he knows he will probably lose a lot of money, but this doesn’t bother him at all. Why? He ignores all the little voices that tell him he will almost certainly lose. He tells himself there is a chance he will come home with a shitload of money, and all of his problems will be gone. He dreams about showering his wife and children (or himself) with gifts. Clearing the bad conscience he built up from all of his previous visits to the casino, where he wasted his family’s money. But naturally this rarely, if ever, happens. And every time it doesn’t he tells himself; “oh well, at least I had fun”.

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This is the tragic kind of poker player and rational beings obviously do not agree with this kind of idiocy. Especially when you can actually win money with poker! In my opinion poker is a sport and not a game. It is like playing tennis in a club your whole life, but never actually training and getting better, never winning any prize money. It might be fun, but the entry fee is $5000 a year. In my opinion poker should never be approached like that; it has to be taken seriously and there is no way around it.

One exception can be made when you’re the second kind of poker player, the rich boy. Then you have all (or at least, a significant portion) of the money in the world. It is like a world where Nuclear Fusion works, and electricity is almost free, like the air we breathe. Losing money loses its significance, since you have near unlimited access to it. “Paying for playing” doesn’t count anymore and you can finally have careless fun with this game, without being anywhere near afraid you will end up in the gutter thinking your life through, telling yourself you did your best but just weren’t smart enough.

Of course this can only happen if you are rich in the first place, which you probably aren’t since you are reading a strategy blog! So first, before we can become the second kind of poker player, you need to be the third kind of poker player. The smart poker player.

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And don’t think the only thing you need to be is smart. Even with an IQ over 140 you will not make it on your own. You need guidance. Read books, talk to friends who played the game before (but ignore their boasting, it is almost always untrue). Try to find some good poker blogs and strategy databases until your mind is completely full. Then sleep and go again. After which you should start to play poker, at the lowest stakes. Also, try to have the best computer software installed to track your and other people’s play.

In short, don’t be arrogant and build up slowly. Treat it like any other sport, except that this sport’s muscle is the brain, which is far more fun to stimulate. And do not forget; poker will not only affect your income and stress levels; it will affect your entire life.

Adam B.

I was recently asked to incorporate a little bit of autobiographical information in my poker articles for the Bankroll Blog.  Before I do, I just want to let you all know that the contents of this article, overcoming obstacles, in no way is meant to give you the impression that my life is so much tougher than yours, because it’s not, we all have obstacles and negative factors that try and hold us back from doing our best, but one of mine happens to be very visible.

For those of you who don’t know, I was born nearly completely blind and over the last twenty-eight years the little vision that I had has been slowly deteriorating until I’m left with just the slightest bit of light perception, which will probably be gone in the next few years.  I used to play card games with my grandma when I was a small child and I had enough vision back then to play games like Go Fish with a regular deck of cards as long as they were the jumbo print.  Now I can, in the right lighting and if I hold the card an inch from my face tell you if I’m looking at a face card or not and be right about three quarters of the time.

I discovered poker about five years ago, interestingly enough not from Rounders or from Moneymaker, or from TV at all, but from this website called allinplay.com that has accessible on line games, so blind and sighted people can play together.  In 2005 they introduced a play money Texas Hold ‘Em game and I had remembered playing five card draw with my parents and figured learning a new poker game would be fun.

I quickly lost my chips over and over again in this new form of poker and being the competitor that I am, I figured I was going to learn better strategy.  I spent two weeks looking up Hold ‘em strategy on Google before I played another hand.  I learned a good many things, I should be raising more than calling, I shouldn’t be playing many hands when I’m one of the first to act.  By applying a few simple rules I began to completely crush the games.

However, crushing play money games isn’t exactly something to get all excited about for me, so I decided that I wanted to play live.  I asked one of my friends to help me and trained her to whisper my hole cards in my ear, then let me know all of the action as it goes around the table.  After we developed our system it was time to convince the local casinos to let us play.

Most were very helpful and encouraging once I was able to convince them that I was indeed blind and needed the assistance to play and would not be using my helper to make my decisions because I would be making all of my own decisions.  Then I started playing live.

Most times other players are really great about it too, but every once in a while I’ll have a player complain and I’ll explain to him or her my situation, if they are still not satisfied I’ll call the floor to explain for me.  This can be a rather uncomfortable way to start a session, but it’s just reality.

So just from my poker life I’ve had to create a way to help me play, get my method allowed in a live casino, plus have to deal with the occasional ass hole who thinks I’m cheating.  Also think of the physical tells that I miss, my inability to quickly estimate someone’s stack size and you would think I’m at a rather large disadvantage.  However, I’m still a winner in the games I play.  I play live about once a week and with the help of my lovely girlfriend Kathi I also six table limit hold ‘em on full tilt.

So next time you’re facing a tough situation, stress, just not being on you’re a game, I don’t want you to think from this article that I’ve got it worse than you, that’s not my point at all, I just want you to remember, that no matter how big the obstacle is, no matter how long the odds if you set your mind to something and are determined to succeed, I mean really determined nothing can hold you back.  Success is not just the glory of accomplishing a goal, it’s the product of all the hard work, the late nights, the overcoming circumstances that are out of your control and coming out on top.

It’s so easy to give up or put in half the effort you should, but you will only meet your potential if every day you strive to effect any changes you can in a positive way, overcome the things that you’re powerless to change and always focus on getting better.  Nothing is free and nothing is handed to us on a silver platter, but great things are there for the taking if you put forth the initiative.

If you’re like many aspiring poker players, you may have a few long term objectives in mind. Whether it is to make millions, live in Vegas, and play in the biggest tournaments in the world or more modest ones, like being able to make a steady income while living at home with your family. Regardless of your goals, it is likely that your plans are not to play at the tables 12 hours a day, everyday. A great way to become more involved in the industry, help build your reputation and to have another source of income is to run and manage a pro poker blog.

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It’s important as a poker player to stay abreast of what’s going on in the industry. Many poker sites and casinos hold all sorts of promotions that you can take advantage of if the channels of communications are open. The advantage of blogging is that these sites will often reach out to you to advertise these promotions, or even give you special perks for mentioning them. It’s not uncommon for a poker site to give you free entry into a tournament if you blog about a special satellite they are holding. It also opens opportunities to meet and interact with some of the big names in poker. The fact of the matter is the poker blogging market is not nearly as saturated as many other blogging markets. This leaves any decent writer and player the opportunity to become an authoritative voice for the poker industry.

This raises an important point about building a reputation. It’s difficult, even as a steady online winner, to get your name recognized. Have you ever noticed that many of the professional poker players you see on TV aren’t actually that good? How many online players do you know that would destroy Phil Hellmuth in a heads-up cash game? Probably quite a few. How many people do you know who actually know who Phil Hellmuth is? Probably more. Phil Hellmuth isn’t a big name because of his current poker skill – it’s his name that is worth the money. Joe Sebok, a great poker player, was made big by building his reputation on the website, PokerRoad.com, not by his amazing skill at the felt (although likely better than Phil Hellmuth!) With a pro poker blog, your opportunity to build this reputation will support you in moving up the ranks in the poker industry.

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You’ve most likely heard the term, “residual income”, meaning have a stream of income, likely secondary, that accumulates with very little time or effort required. Your pro poker blog, over time, can become one of those sources. By offering your readers deals on poker rakeback, you’re able to make a small percentage of all the revenue they generate for that site, while still giving them a good rakeback deal. This situation is win/win/win for the player, the pro poker blogger and the poker site. For players familiar with game theory – it’s a no brainer.

It’s every poker players goal and dream to drag the million dollar pots in the biggest cash games or to be sitting at the final table of the World Series with the TV lights shining.  While this is a cool goal and the dream is possible, you can’t expect to go from novice player to big time winner all in one night, one year, or probably your entire lifetime.  It is important to set goals for yourself in poker, but you want to set goals that, though challenging, are also likely to be accomplished with some work.

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Many players will never develop their abilities beyond the level of occasional hobbyist, which is fine, especially if they realize where their skill level lies.  If you can admit that you’re playing for fun, then a $200 losing session doesn’t hurt that bad.  It’s the price of a night out and the fun you got to have making jokes with your table mates was worth the price.  However, if you only have the ability of a novice and expect to win like a pro, you’re in for a lifetime of frustration.

If you develop your skills to the point where you’re a winning player and can supplement your day job with some poker earnings, it is probably not the time to quit the day job because you may have made a big score or two.  Rather, you might want to see how things go over the next year before you even entertain the idea of going “pro.”

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If you keep your expectations in step with your talent level you will always be getting better, but you won’t be nearly as frustrated with the game.  It’s important to have a healthy relationship with poker and an honest assessment of where you stand is the basis for this relationship.

Jonathan runs the Why do I play poker website, which as the name suggests is all about sharing each others motivations for self punishment on the felt.

I’ve been married for 10 years, have 2 kids and almost no time to myself. If you count my internet porn babes as company, then I do in fact have no time to myself. When I get a call to join a neighbor’s home game on a random Wednesday night, I think to myself, “What would I rather do? Watch the finale of So You Think You Can Dance with my wife, or hang out with the guys smoking pot, telling lies and acting like a 15 year old.” Hmmmmmmmmm

I arrive at the game a bit giddy. This night is going to be fun. Buy in is $80 and it’s dealer’s choice. Everyone hates NLH at home games. It’s too slow, too restrictive…requires too much talent! I know this going in. We are going to play games that are just a hair above roulette in skill level. Shit, I was going to be watching Tiffany and Raj do the Latin Ballroom, even if I lose $80 at stupid games of chance, I’m a winner. I’ll gladly play 3 hours of “Pass The Trash” if I can escape the suffering of a round of comments from the faggy dancing judges about how much Raj extended his arms during the pirouettes. Not that I have a problem with gay or dancing. But really? Is this even a contest?

Tonight I am catching bad cards. Couple that with missing some of the “subtleties” of Pass the Trash and I am thru my first buy in. It’s only 8:30. Raj is still doing pirouettes. RE-BUY!

At 9:07, my second buy-in is gone. Raj or chips? Raj or chips? Raj or chips? It’s a tough one, but at this point I need to acknowledge the grace and beauty of Raj’s dancing. He actually does have a place in my life. When all the money is gone and there is absolutely nothing left to do, Raj is the answer.

I come home. My wife remarks that I am home early. Bad night. I take my place on the couch and manage to show some enthusiasm when I ask, “Hey did I miss Raj and Tiffany?” “Nope”‘ she says, “just in time.” I force a smile and say, “Great! Can’t wait to see them really nail this Latin Ballroom.”

Sometimes I play poker to postpone the inevitable.

Why do you play? Let me know at stories@whydoiplaypoker.net

If I subjectively pick yours as the story of the month, I’ll deposit $100 in to your online poker account at Full Tilt, Poker Stars or UB.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

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It’s been a while since I’ve checked up on Dungbeetle’s poker life on the Magical Mystery Poker Tour blog. Last I heard he was not doing well and sadly the bad streak has not improved. Below is a particular sad post which I have chosen to post here because it reminds me that no matter how many times we keep saying to ourselves that poker is a variance game and bad beats / losing streaks are supposed to happen, sometimes they simply get the better of us leaving us miserable.

Work finished early today, so I thought I’d continue my hate/hate relationship with online tournaments and promptly lost $600 without ever coming close to the money. I played poorly, but seemed to be cold decked a lot.

The highlights:

- Held AA on a board of AK78K whilst going well in a $100 tournie. Lost to KK. Money all went in on the river after we both slow played.
- Flopped 9 high diamond flush out of small blind when average stack in a $75 tournie – other guy has ten high flush
- Held QQ on KQxx board in UB tournie – got it in against KQ – river = K

I’m not really complaining as I didn’t play well. In 2007 and 2008 I was dynamite in online tournaments, taking down about 85k in profit. Now I am just making up the numbers. I actually canned 2 tournaments with average stack tonight – there is just no point, so I might as well be blinded off.

Not sure what the answer is. My son, girlfriend, friends and family are fantastic, but I just seem to get down on myself and that clouds everything.

Clearly I’ve had a few wines before this post, but maybe it’s good to get stuff off the chest. However, it seems the upcoming Vegas trip is a car crash waiting to happen.

I think time and again how lucky I am – there are millions of people in the world who are much worse off either financially or health wise. Despite this self coaching I am unable to lift this downer.

I need to lift out of this pathetic self-pity, but whether I have the strength to do this is another matter.

About to play football manager………..anger factor about to rise by a multiple of ten.

Apologies readers for you wasting five minutes to read this drivel

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

“…so I got my full house on the turn and the guy gets an 8 of diamonds on the river for the straight flush and beats me.”  

How many bad beat stories have you heard?  Hang around a poker room for a night and you’ll hear plenty.  They will be offered to you.  You don’t have to ask to hear them.   As poker players, we remember those bad beats vividly.  We remember the suit and rank of every street, plus the hole cards involved in all of our bad beats.   Now let me ask you.  How many bad beat stories have you told?
We feel the need to tell these bad beat stories to anyone that will listen.  We even feel the need to tell bad beat stories to people who have not agreed to listen.  Why???  Let’s take an honest look at why we insist on telling everyone and anyone about our bad beats. 

The answer is really simple. To let everyone know what great poker players we are.  We didn’t lose the hand because we played it wrong.  That would never happen.   The planets lined up against us, the poker gods put a curse on us.  The cards came out to the benefit of an opponent and knocked us out of the tournament or at the very least decimated our chip stack.  So we steam out of the poker room to find a fellow poker player to plead our case. 

Keep in mind as you are telling your bad beat story to another poker player, he has had that and every other bad beat happen to him.  As a matter of fact, all of his bad beats are running through his head while you are telling yours.   At the end of the day, someone sucked out on you and knocked you out of the tournament.  Get over it.  It happens every day in every tournament in every poker room in America.  No wait!  Make that in the world.

If you have won a tournament or even just made a final table, you have sucked out on an opponent.  It has to happen.  Yet we don’t run to find someone to hear that story!  “Hey listen to this.  I just sucked out a flush on the river to beat this guy who had already flopped the nut straight!”  Why don’t we do that?  Well, that would make us look like a lucky player, not necessarily a good poker player.
The bottom line is, bad beats happen.  They will always happen.  They don’t make you a bad poker player.  They don’t make the guy who sucked out on you a bad poker player.  They just happen.  Trust me, no one wants to hear them.  

I learned this early when I had the pleasure to interview Antonio Esfandiari.  I wanted to tell him about this time I flopped the nut straight and my opponent put me all in.  Of course I called and he ended up with a full house getting an ace on the river.  I started telling Antonio my story and he stopped me and said, “Wait a minute, is this a bad beat story?”  There was a long pause and I sheepishly answered, “Yes.”   He then stated he didn’t want to hear it.  He did joke about it and didn’t make me look like an idiot but I got it.  Right then and there.  I got it.  Poker players don’t want to hear bad beat stories.
Bad beats will always happen.  The true test is how we handle them.

Do you jump out of your chair and berate the player who just sucked out on you?  Maybe you just tap the felt and say, “Nice hand.”  That will the subject of my next column,  Tableside Manner. 

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

I recently read another long post on Rakewell’s PokerGrump blog and liked the way it touched on the subject of why we tend to remember our bad beats better when we are on the receiving end and how it becomes easier to deal with bad beats the more of them you have experienced. In addition Rakewell again draws parallels to situations that on the surface have nothing to do with poker, which I really enjoy and therefore also want to share with the readers of this blog.

In the original Star Trek series episode “Mirror, Mirror” several members of the crew get switched, via one of those frighteningly frequent transporter malfunctions, into one of the many parallel universes which is almost but not quite like our own. In this one, doppelgangers of our heros are on a ship identical to the Enterprise, except that they are all selfish, power-hungry, violent, and cruel. Oh, and they tend to wear goatees and/or have facial scars, sure signs of all that is wicked.

In this mirror universe, each crew member is required to carry a small device called an “agonizer.” In case of infraction of the rules of military conduct, a superior officer will take the offender’s agonizer, activate it, and apply it to his body for whatever length of time is deemed appropriate to the occasion, resulting in unspeakable pain being inflicted. For the most serious offenses, such as mutiny or assassination, the guilty party was put into the “agony booth,” which we must assume was unfathomably worse than the little agonizer device. As Mirror Spock coolly notes, “The agony booth is a most effective means of discipline.”

Yes, there is a poker connection here. I’ve had more than my fair share of cold-deck situations over the past week, and it has brought back to mind a bunch of painful memories. I remember keenly:

–the first time I drew to the low end of a straight, got there, and only then realized what a bad spot I had gotten myself into.

–the first time I flopped trips and lost it all to a guy who had flopped a full house.

–the first time I had a full house and lost it all to a guy who had quads.

–the first time I had an ace-high flush and lost it all to a guy who had a straight flush.

–the first time I misread my hand, thinking I had the nut straight, when I actually had nothing, and called off all my chips, only to be thoroughly embarrassed when I turned over my cards and saw what I had done.

There is something about the pain of these moments that sears them into our souls. Mike McDermott observes in a rueful voiceover in “Rounders”:

In “Confessions of a Winning Poker Player,” Jack King said, “Few players recall
big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with
remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.” It seems true to
me, cause walking in here, I can hardly remember how I built my bankroll, but I
can’t stop thinking of how I lost it.

I recall that once when I was a small child my mother was preparing to do some ironing. The iron was standing idle on the ironing board. She was out of the room. I wondered whether the iron was on or off, so I did what seemed like the logical thing at the time: I reached out and touched its surface with my index finger. It was on. I cried, of course. When mom came to see what the fuss was about, and I told her that I had burned my hand on the iron, she asked, “Why did you touch it?” I thought that was the dumbest question possible. “I wanted to see if it was on.” Of course.

It must have been somebody with a similar childhood experience who coined the expression, “Once burned, twice careful.”

Some things do get better with time and experience–and some build-up of scar tissue. These days I am never as shocked at the kind of situations I listed above as I was the first time they happened. (Fortunately, I still haven’t experienced the really horrendous beats–things like quads being beaten by a straight flush, or the low end of a straight flush being squashed by the high end.) Just the other day at the Rio I had 6-7 offsuit in the big blind, so I took the flop for free. I loved seeing it come 8-9-10, two-suited. I bet, got raised by the button. It was early in the session, so I was relatively short-stacked, and moving all in was a no-brainer. Of course I knew that it was possible he had one of the two hands that had me drawing nearly dead (7-J or J-Q). But on the other hand, he would raise me and be willing to call my reraise, probably, with any two pair or trips, and maybe something like a pair and flush draw, or a combined straight draw/flush draw, or even just the nut flush draw with no pair. It was not one of those situations where my all-in raise would get called only if I was beat. But this time he did, in fact, have the J-Q. The only way I could win was with a runner-runner flush or split the pot with a runner-runner J-Q, neither of which happened. Sigh.

The point, though, is that I have become considerably more callused to this sort of thing, and because I anticipated the possibility of being shown the nuts, it didn’t stun me and send me reeling the way that those earlier stories did when they occurred. It’s not that it doesn’t hurt. It does. But my skin is thicker than it used to be, and I have learned to expect the unexpected. With anything short of the nuts, I’m braced to take whatever hit may come, and even with the nuts I’m mentally prepared to see my opponent turn over the same hand for a chop, when that is a possibility.

Before I started playing in real-money games online, I spent quite a bit of time with Wilson Software’s simulator. It was, I suppose, useful in getting me used to the mechanics of play, and giving me some feel for what starting hands were likely to end up winners and losers, but I honestly can’t remember a single hand I ever played on it. I think it’s because none of them actually cost me anything. If I got knocked out of a tournament, I could say, “Oh well,” and be in another one ten seconds later, with nothing lost–and nothing learned, I’m afraid, whether it was a bad beat or a bad play.

Simply put, if it doesn’t hurt, it’s a lot harder for the lesson to sink in. I’m sure there’s some biochemical reason for that, related to neurotransmitters powerfully stimulating certain loci in the nucleus-of-whatever deep in the brain. But you don’t need to know the physiology to recognize the truth of it.

Of course, the magnitude of loss it takes to inflict the kind of pain necessary for a long-term memory of the event to form will vary according to your means and past experiences. I remember reading a poker magazine story about Phil Ivey. His wife was just learning to play poker and was doing microstakes online. Phil came home on edge because he had had an unusually deep loss–a few hundred grand, as I recall. His wife was upset at her day, too; she told him that she had lost something like 70 cents, which is a lot when you’re playing $0.01/$0.02 games. Talk about different pain thresholds!

Mike Sexton said it well during an episode of the World Poker Tour a couple of years ago, when somebody got knocked out of the final table on a one-outer: “If you don’t like a little pain once in a while, poker is probably not your game, because as you can see, you’re gonna get it.”

Who needs an agony booth when you have poker?

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

This is the story of a Texas Hold’em variant known among my friends and I as Loco Poker.

Loco Poker was developed in Newcastle a few years ago when Artur and I took two weeks off to visit my brother and a friend of his who had set op base in Newcastle to live the gambler’s dream. Now I’m not sure who actually invented it. If you ask Artur and my brother they will claim to their death that it’s their child, but I  like to think that the idea was developed by all of us.

To better understand the essence of Loco Poker you need some understanding of the grave situation we faced every night  in Newcastle: How to get drunk fast, when all you want to do is go to bed after a hard days work at the virtual tables. Regular beer drinking games were getting boring, so we needed something new.

We first tried playing SNG’s where the first guy who got knocked out had to drink a shot/glass of beer and the winner decided who should drink another shot/glass of beer. However after the first couple of rounds we always ended up all in preflop on the first hand played so we thought we might as well adjust the game. No point in using chips when you are always all in-)

So here it is with no further ado,  the Loco Poker game:

Loco Poker Rules and Point System:

• Hand rankings are the usual known from Texas Hold’em.
• Player positions follow the dealer as usual.
• There are three possible actions in Loco Poker: check, fold and all in.
• If you go all in and everyone else folds, you receive one small Loco Poker Point.
• If you go all in,  someone calls and you win after the showdown your opponent is knocked out. You do not receive any small Loco Poker points in this situation.
• If you go all in, someone calls and you lose after the showdown you are knocked out regardless of the number of small Loco Poker points you have. Your opponent does not receive any Loco Poker points in this situation.
• If the hand is checked to the river nobody wins any points.
• The Loco Poker winner is the player who either knocks all the other players out, or wins 3 small Loco Poker Points. The winner decides who drinks.
• The Loco Poker loser is the player who gets knocked out first. The loser automatically gets a penalty drink.
• Most importantly, whenever a player receives a bad beat you have to remember to shout in unison: “THAT’S LOCO POKER!!!!!”

Loco Poker Hints:

• If you are dealt any Ace, treat your hand as the nuts: push, push, push!
• Trap with any pair.
• Cheat your opponents if they don’t know Texas Hold’em hand ranks.
• Make secret alliances; remember the goal of the game is to get your opponents as drunk as possible so you can take incriminating pictures of them.
• Make up your own prizes and penalties for first and last place; play the game with your girlfriend and see where it takes you.

Enjoy!

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