3. Is the bettor a tight player and the caller a loose player? A tight player who is first to act is capable of bluffing in this spot. The loose player is capable of calling with anything in this spot. You should generally consider calling, unless you know for sure that the first player who bet just doesn’t bluff in this spot or has a habit of checking his good hands.

4. Are the bettor and caller both tight players? If so, then you’ll usually need a much better than average hand to call.

Just like playing loose is not always a bad tactic, playing tight is not always the best tactic. It’s really a question of how good your opponents are. There’s no substitute for knowing your opponents. casino online

If you could know only the bettor or the caller, not both, you’d make the best decisions in the long run by knowing the caller. The first caller is the key player in this equation. If you recognize the caller as a good, solid, experienced player (and especially if you know that he’s just a better overall player than you), you can take advantage of that knowledge.

The next time you play in your usual game, keep track of the times that you make an overcall on the river. Record how many big bets you win and how many you lose when you’re in these situations. If you make an overcall and lose the hand, count that as losing one big bet. If you make an overcall and win the hand, count the number of big bets in the pot, minus the bet you called with.

All you have to do is keep a running, cumulative total of big bets won and lost. You’re not concerned with the number of pots won or lost because they’ll always be different sizes, and one win therefore does not always equal another win.

This chapter may be short, but it’s very important. Overcalling correctly is essential, because you have a chance to do the wrong thing so many times during the course of a game. When you have an opportunity to put a lot of big bets per hour into action, you can see that an incorrect strategy can have an immediate, huge, and negative impact on your hourly rate. This aspect of the game is one that you can work on easily, and the effort is certainly worth your time. Good luck.

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Overcalling is the term for calling a bet after another player or other players has/have already called that bet. For the purposes of this book, we'll be concerned only with the betting and calling that takes place on the river, after all of the cards are out. To overcall a bet on the river, there must already be a bet, and you can't be the first player to act after it. Before the action gets to you, one or more players must act on that bet for it to qualify as the subject of this discussion.

If you already have some experience playing hold 'em in a live game, you probably know that the first player to bet on the river often does not have a good hand. He could have been on a draw, missed, and now be betting as a bluff. He may have a low pair, or even two pair, that he knows will not win if he checks. He might, however, have the nuts or some unexpected great hand. Sometimes you just can't know for sure what a bet from the first player really means.

One thing you do know for sure is that, even though the bettor could have anything, the first player to call him has to have something. If you're the next player after that first caller, you have some analytical thinking to do. First, you have to think about what kind of poker hand the original bettor has. Second, you have to think about what kind of hand the first caller thinks the bettor has. Since he called first, knowing that you're behind him and could possibly raise, you usually have to give him credit for a reasonably good hand.

You have to figure out why that player called. Does he have a lousy hand, can beat only a bluff, and is hoping you won't call? Is he calling with a fairly lousy hand, just because the pot is very big? Is he calling with a great hand (or even the nuts), just so you'll also call?

It also helps if you know the players in question. If that's the case, here are four easy questions that you can quickly ask yourself:

1. Are both the bettor and the caller extremely loose players? If so, then either of them could have anything, and if you're truly undecided, you should lean toward calling.
2. Is the bettor a loose player and the caller a tight player? If so, you can be sure that the caller has a good read on the bettor. He doesn't think he's throwing his money away in this spot. In this situation, you should fold if you're undecided.

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If you play in a poker room with jackpot rules that you don't like, talk to the poker room management about it. They do listen, and they do respond to players' comments. If you feel that a rule is especially egregious, and you can't get satisfaction from the poker room, consider making a complaint to the gaming commission. Your complaint may be just the one they're waiting for to take action If the jackpot influences you to do something you would not ordinarily have done, record that in your records. If you're lucky enough to hit and share in a jackpot, record the amount in your records as a win. For example, if you won $65 playing hold 'em during your entire session, and you got another $350 as your share of a jackpot, you should record a win of $415 in your records. Be sure to mention the jackpot so you can explain the big win.

When you play and don't win the jackpot, the money that goes into the jackpot comes from you. It's a loss that you don't see, because your share of the jackpot drop might be as low as 10C per hand in a full game. The records you've been keeping up to this point include the loss of the jackpot drop, so it's only right that you count the win when you get some of it back.

You should know that some poker players are almost exclusively "jackpot chasers." They move from poker room to poker room and from game to game in an effort to play in the one game in town that has the best jackpot with the best odds of being hit. If you are going to focus on jackpots at all, I recommend that you follow their method. Your hourly rate will increase significantly if you can become one of these players. Good luck!

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What does this mean to you, and how do you take advantage of this information? Assuming you're going to let the jackpots be the deciding factor in your game selection, you should make sure to do the following:

1. When you enter the poker room and are deciding which games to play, look at the hold 'em and Omaha jackpots. If the hold 'em jackpot is more than four times as large as the Omaha jackpot, then you should play hold 'em. Alternatively, if the Omaha jackpot is less than one-fourth as big as the hold 'em jackpot, then you should still play hold 'em.

2. Learn to play Omaha if you don't already know how. Assuming you are going to be a poker player in the broader sense of the term, and not just a hold 'em player, you should know how to play more than one poker game. As you can see, it's worth money to you. If you're interested in this topic, look for my book on Omaha that's due to be published about six months after this one.

3. Determine how many tables there are of each game, because the jackpot can be hit at only one table. For example, if the hold 'em jackpot is $8,000 and the Omaha jackpot is $2,000, it's a mathematical toss-up whether to play hold 'em or Omaha. If, however, there are two hold 'em games going, and only one Omaha game going, that cuts your odds in half that you'll be at the right table when the hold 'em jackpot is hit, and it clearly makes Omaha the better game.

4. If you're new to Omaha or you play but not that well, and you think the jackpot is worth playing for, ask the card room manager to start an Omaha game with the lowest limits that will still qualify for the jackpot. You can probably get a $2-$4 game going, especially if you let the other players in the room know what you're doing and why.

Don't forget that the money in the jackpot belongs to the players. You're the customer. If you're successful at getting this game started, the most important thing is that you make sure it is for high only, and not high-low split. High-low split is a game that requires a great deal of skill to play well, so those games are usually populated by experts.

Before I end this chapter, did I mention that the jackpot money belongs to the players and not to the poker room or casino management?

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Notice that if the game is only half-full, the odds against hitting the jackpot more than quadruple, rather than just double. This table also shows why (if the game is very short-handed), you should not play for a small jackpot. With the game already short-handed, the pots will be much smaller than usual, and the $ 1 that's taken out for the jackpot will be a much larger percentage of the pot than usual. You'll make more money in the long run if you leave that dollar in the pot where you can win it now.

Don't use that dollar to make a bet that you can beat the 56,000+ to 1 odds to get a share of the jackpot in the next few hours. If your game is five-handed and you're playing thirty-five hands per hour for the next three hours, then you'll have played 105 hands. 56,250/105=535.7. Your odds of hitting the jackpot in the next three hours are 535.7 to 1.
Would you rather have the extra $30 or so that you will win today by not playing for the jackpot, or would you rather give up that money in exchange for the long odds of hitting the jackpot? That $30 saved 535 times equals $16,071. Would your share of any jackpot be that big if you hit it? Usually not.

There's one other thing about jackpots that you should know. It concerns the Omaha jackpot, if there is one. My research has shown me that an Omaha jackpot is about four times easier to hit than a hold 'em jackpot. Why? It's because there are more hand matchups in Omaha than there are in hold 'em.

An Omaha player who is dealt A*J*9*7V doesn't have just one hand. He has six of them:
l.A*J* 3.A*7V 5.J*7* 2. A*9V 4. J*9¥ 6.9*7*
Just two Omaha players can matchup their hands in thirty-six different ways! It takes nine hold 'em players to achieve that many matchups. How many times have you been in a hold 'em game where one of the players had the minimum losing hand to hit the jackpot and no one beat him?

In an Omaha game, every player in the hand will have six times as many hands as he would in a hold 'em game. Because of that, someone will beat him about four times as often as in the hold 'em game. Why four times and not six times as often? Two reasons:
1. It's impossible for 2s, 3s and 4s to make a qualifying hand under most circumstances.
2. Some Omaha games require that the losing hand be four-of-a-kind rather than just aces full.

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5. The player in the fifth seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of five matchups. TOTAL: 9+8+7+6+5=35

6. The player in the sixth seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of four matchups. TOTAL: 9+8+7+6+5+4=39

7. The player in the seventh seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 8, 9, and 10, for a total of three matchups. TOTAL: 9+8+7+6+5+4+3=42

8. The player in the eighth seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 9 and 10, for a total of two matchups. TOTAL: 9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2=44

9. The player in the ninth seat can match up his hand with the player in the tenth seat for only one matchup. Total: 9+8+7+6+5+4+3+2+1=45

This list means that for every hand dealt, there are forty-five hand matchups. If it takes 12,500 hands to hit a jackpot, then when a jackpot is hit, on average, there will have been a total of 562,500 hand matchups (12,500 x 45 = 562,500). That number applies for a full, ten-handed game.

If the games were all nine-handed, then there would be only thirty-six matchups per hand, and you would have to divide 562,500 by 36 to get the number of hands that it would take to hit the jackpot. That comes out to be 15,625 hands (562,500/36 = 15,625).

With just one player fewer at a table, the odds against hitting the jackpot increase by exactly 25% (12,500 + 25% = 15,625) instead of 10% as you might expect. That's because the number of possible matchups decreases exponentially as each player leaves the game. Using the above math as a foundation, I've created the following table to tell you the odds against hitting a jackpot with various numbers of players in the game.

ODDS AGAINST HITTING A JACKPOT
total divided by # of hands needed
# of players matchups # of matchups to hit jackpot
10 562,500 45 12,500
9 562,500 36 15,625
8 562,500 28 20,089
7 562,500 21 26,785
6 562,500 15 37,500
5 562,500 10 56,250
4 562,500 6 93,750
3 562,500 3 187,500
2 562,500 1 562,500

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There is no way to know the exact odds of hitting a jackpot. Have you ever been in a game where someone said after the hand was over, "We would have hit the jackpot if I hadn't thrown my hand away before the flop?" That's why you can never know the exact odds of hitting a jackpot. You cannot account for the actions of all the players with mathematical certainty.

All you can know for sure is that the more players there are in the game who see every flop, especially when they're holding an ace, the more likely it is that you'll eventually hit a jackpot. On the other hand, it will take a very long time to hit a jackpot if you're in a very tight game where hardly anyone ever sees the flop, and most hands don't go past it.

The only way to know the approximate odds of hitting a jackpot is to use hindsight, and that's what I have done. The poker room managers of three different casinos have given me access to their hold 'em jackpot histories.

This is not privileged, classified, nor secret information. This information is available to anyone who cares to keep an eye on the jackpots and record how much each jackpot was when it was hit. If you also know how each jackpot dollar is distributed (75%-15%-10% or 67%-33%), you can calculate how many hands were dealt, on average, between jackpot hands.

I have ten years of statistics from three poker rooms, for a total of thirty years of hold 'em records. It turns out that the magic number is 12,500. That's how many hands it takes, on average, to hit a jackpot. This takes into account loose play, tight play, players who play every ace, players who only play aces selectively, the play of small pocket pairs and all the other variables that can't be calculated in advance.

Knowing that it takes 12,500 hands to hit a jackpot is not really the whole story. Assuming the table is full, every time a hand is dealt, there will be forty-five individual hand matchups. In a ten-handed game, all of the players at the table can match up all of their hands a total of forty-five different ways. So you can see this more clearly, I'll list for you just how each hand can match up with the others:

1. The player in the first seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of nine matchups. TOTAL: 9

2. The player in the second seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of eight matchups. TOTAL: 9+8=17

3. The player in the third seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of seven matchups. TOTAL: 9+8+7=24

4. The player in the fourth seat can match up his hand with the players in seats 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, for a total of six matchups. TOTAL: 9+8+7+6=30

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