I like to play poker, its fun, tense and you can win money at it.

Don't worry I'm not a high roller or anything, I stick to the cheap games. 5 dollar buy ins. Basically a night of bowling, or a night of poker where I have a chance of winning free nights of bowling with other peoples money. So I'm no big spender. I did qualify for, and win the 100 dollar game from the crew at work, and I've also won the 5 dollar games about 6 or 7 times in 2 months. Thats a lot of profit.

Anyways, as I continue to further my poker career I've realized something. Just like pretty much everything else in life, how you play poker can be directly related to getting a girl. There are certain terms and skills one must learn in order to be succesful at each. Let me explain.

Figuring Pot Odds

One of the biggest parts of poker is figuring out your odds. We call these outs and pot odds. An out is a card you need to make a winning hand. For example, if you are drawing to an open ended straight is it worth calling? That is determined by pot odds. There are 8 cards in the deck that will give you the winning hand (8 outs) thats roughly a 17% chance of hitting your card on the turn or the river. So if the pot is 10 dollars and the bet is 1 dollar you should call, because you have to pay a bet thats only 10% of the pot and your chances of winning are 17%. In other words, if this exact situation happened six times, odds are you would pay six dollars total and win 10 dollars once.

In this situation I would bet

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Now the same can be said for trying to win a lady. For example, your friend calls you up and asks you to hang out. Should you call him back? Well lets say if you call you know that there are 4 boys going and only 1 girl. You only have one out. The chances of you winning are 1-4 but the cost of going out is 30 dollars. You should stay home. If the cost of the night out was 15-20 dollars, then you are getting good pot odds and should go out, or if you had more than one girl tagging along then you are getting better pot odds and have an extra out in which case you should call.

In this situation though, I would fold.

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Laying down a Monster

Sometimes in poker, you'll get a monster hand. That is a hand that is virtually unbeatable at the moment. However, these hands can sometimes lose and the best poker players know when to fold these. For example, say you flop top two pair, but the flop is all spades and you hold diamonds. You bet to the turn and it flips another spade. Your monster hand is now in grave danger to the flush that you figure the guy betting huge right now has. It's time to lay it down. Novice players will fail to realize the flush possibility and figure his two pair are winners, when in reality all the other guy needs to beat you is a duece of spades.

Now let's use this situation in relation to girls. Say youre out hanging with a chick, having one of the best times of your life. Right now you are having a monster hand. A virtually unbeatable time. However during your time together one of her friends comes up to her and asks her about her boyfriend, which sadly, is not you. What do you do?

Lay it down. Bring her home, no good night kiss, nothing. Don't be that guy who loses to a duece high flush. Playing this 'monster hand' will only get you in trouble.

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More girl to poker analogys to come!


  posted by Darrell @ 5:24 PM