Advice on Casino play?

[TheHip41]

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Well Im going to a Casino for the first time tomorrow and was wondering if anyone had advice about playing? What limits or what not? I posted in the B&M section but they just told me how to act. How is the play in casinos normally? Donkish? Tight?

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horrible. unless you are playing like 40-80, then they will be at least decent

[Adam22]

i've yet to play limit in real life, but i've come to believe from all my no limit IRL interaction that i'm 100x smarter than most live players even after only playing for a year or so. i guess when you think about it, we learn 10x faster and have much better access to learning tools online than real life players do.

[bobhalford]

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i've yet to play limit in real life, but i've come to believe from all my no limit IRL interaction that i'm 100x smarter than most live players even after only playing for a year or so. i guess when you think about it, we learn 10x faster and have much better access to learning tools online than real life players do.

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I'm not sure if you are being sarcastic or not, but you aren't necessarily 100x smarter than a poker player at a casino. The vast majority of these people do not care about poker strategy. The idea of buying a book about poker is anathema to them. This is true of both educated and un(der)educated people. Live games are wonderful for this reason. The majority of players are there to have fun and see if they can get lucky. They will always get lucky on some hands, but will almost always go down to the felt and then buy more chips.

When I first started playing poker, it was online. I would sometimes get angry at the bad beats and curse out the bad players for being so dumb. Then of course I realized that if it weren't for these players I would not have a bankroll to continue playing poker (duh). Then when I played live for the first few times in AC I got to spend time with the bad players and began to understand how they think, which is to say that they don't think. They don't care about playing well and seem to be overly concerned with how much they've won or lost in a given session. They consider poker to be a game of luck. They think that raising AA, KK, QQ, AK preflop is a bad idea because they don't know yet what the flop will bring (btw I second the poster who says to watch out when you get action with top pair hand like AJ/AT because they will never raise preflop with the hands that beat you).

I think it's interesting that people go out of their way to seek value when making buying decisions, like cutting coupons or buying sale items at the supermarket exclusively, but yet they think nothing of blowing $500 or more dollars at the poker table when they go to play. I find it strange that they would not at least look to try and improve their play a little in order to mitigate their losses. But they don't see it like this because they don't consider their actions at the table a part of the equation. You are either lucky or unlucky after all five cards are out and that's it. They have fun when they win, not as much fun when they lose, but overall they enjoy themselves and that's all that matters to them. I can't really relate to these people this way, but I can understand it sort of. I guess I'm not the kind of person that's capable of having fun while spewing all my cash away by frequently making speculative plays. Not everyone is like me, and that's great. If everyone cared about playing the game well, these awesome live games would not exist and poker would not be worth playing. But I digress.

One piece of advice that I can give is to be friendly at the poker table. Often I see people being overly serious and it hurts the game (I used to be like this in the beginning and have stopped). Play your best game, smile and have fun. The fish won't be able to tell that you are the one taking their money. But I'm not saying to be nice in a calculated way. Sitting at the table is often boring, so I usually try to befriend the fish just to pass the time and have conversation. If you get a bad beat ( and believe me this is going to happen in ways that you could never imagine) and are upset about it, don't show it. I tend to get pissed off at times (something I'm working on changing), so instead of showing it, I take a break and go for a walk. The advice about being friendly is not really necessary - it's a matter of preference and depends on your personality type as well. Best of luck.