High Speed Slots

Today I am putting my house up for sale. Sometime soon I will say good-bye to theMississippiGulfCoastand move to theSherman,Texas area. That is about 60 miles north ofDallas. My two years as a working pro down here have been successful, but love has conquered me, and I will be marrying my childhood sweetheart. I will get an “honest” job, but would still like to play poker occasionally, like maybe a couple of nights a week. I have never played in home games before.

1.  Can any one give me any tips on where to find a low limit game?

2.  Any tips on playing home games as opposed to casino games?

Answer 1:

Your best bet for Casino poker isBossier City LA.The Horseshoe is one of the best poker rooms in the South. They give you $29 rooms and plenty of comps for food. They spread 4-8 up to high limits in holdem and plenty of action on all. They also have a poker room South of Memphis in Tunica MS. It is an excellent poker room also.  Jack Binion runs both and I highly recommend play there.

Answer 2:

Wayne, welcome toNorth Texas. There are many home games in theDallas area all the way from 3-6 up to 10-20 for the lower limit games. When you get located inShermanand are interested in finding out more about the games, give me note. Also, it is about a 3 hour drive fromShermanover to Bossier for poker at the Horseshoe.

Answer 3:

I live inHoustonand play everyday, I know of some games inDallas. You will find overall, atleast to my experience that you are treated better than in a casino.  The rake is higher usually than the casino, but for the recreation player, you get free meals and drinks. Plus you make some friends in the area to show you around so to speak.

I have been playing poker in ring games for a short while, and I am interested in trying some tournaments but I have a small issue. I am not sure what the difference is between a freeze out and a free roll or basically any other term which might describe a tournament style.

Answer 1:

Freeze-out and free-roll are two things that have nothing to do with each other. Freeze out is how the tournament is structured — play continues until one player has all the chips, “freezing out” the other players. The one I’ve never been clear on is “shoot-out” Free-roll is a tournament with no buy-in — a casino that has a free-roll tournament puts up the prize money, and the players usually qualify by playing a designated amount of time in the week or month prior to the tournament.

Answer 2:

Adding to the information provided by John: I have also seen Free Rolls where there is no original buy-in but Re-buys and Add-ons may exist. Just so you know you or your opponents do have the opportunity to add chips, in some cases. The best advice I can give you is to ask!! Asking is free, not asking and finding your opponents taking the re-buy or add-on WILL cost you money.

Answer 3:

A shoot out is where you need to win your table. Then you advance to the next set of tables which consist of all the other individual table winners. Depending on the size of the event (# of entrants) the “finals” then determines the winner. Some are winner take all, but usually have a payoff schedule where anyone who makes it to the finals is in the money.

Do an archive search at deja on JTs and you should find lots of reading material on the subject.

I notice that JTs is put in category 3 in HPFAP. I understand how well it is supposed to do multi-way, especially in regard to its ability to make the nut straight in many different ways. However when you look at what values are given to other hands such as AJo and KQo i think it has too much value attached to it. I realize that the hands i mention are intended to be played very differently (i.e. number of opponents) but anyone else think that overall too much value is placed on it? I look forward to reading the counter-arguments.

Answer 2:

YES…most serious hold’em players have come to recognize that S&M over-value ‘suited connectors,’ and J-10-suited is a prime example of their misconception.  There have been several lively and extensive discussions of this previously in RGP, so perhaps you might like to search through newsgroup archives.

Answer 3:

S&M rank J-10-suited a whole “category” better than K-10-suited. Below are ‘test-your-intuition’ questions from RGP last April that Sklansky himself found most revealing and convincing.