TEXAS HOLDEM ONLINE POKER

When I started learning poker, a video poker playing buddy of mine who had played Texas Hold'em for many years before switching to VP, tried to warn me how disgusted I'd get with the game. "You'll wait and wait and wait for a good starting hand, and then when you get one and play it, you'll lose to some idiot who stayed in the pot and drew out on you," he said. "Linda, you're one of the most disciplined video poker players I've seen, but the discipline you have for video poker isn't half what you're gonna' need for poker."

As I was walking out to my car one Thursday afternoon, I remembered his words. I had just taken a severe financial beating at a Hold'em table, and I had no one to blame but myself.

Two years ago when I tried to learn to play poker, I was reading several books at once and my head was spinning in all directions. I wasn't focused. So this time around I decided to stick with just one book at a time and learn one way to play. That way I'd have a good solid foundation to build on once I wanted to advance. The book that I decided to study is "Get the Edge at Low-Limit Texas Hold'em" by Bill Burton, which was written specifically for beginners.

Burton generally teaches the same starting hands that most authors recommend, but he goes a step further. He advises that during the first 50 hours of playing time, new poker players should tighten up and play even fewer hands. And during my first 40 hours, I had held steady, playing only the best starting hands. Of course, I was making a lot of betting and raising strategy errors, but that was okay; I'd work on that later.

But when I walked out to the car that Thursday afternoon, with my head hung low, I knew that I had not been playing tight enough. I had seen other players enter the pot with what we call "trash hands" and, like my friend said would happen, I had started losing patience and discipline.

So, I made a promise to myself that if I couldn't play the next 10 hours strictly by the strictest standards, I would quit playing poker. And I didn't want to have to quit. And even more so, I didn't want to report to you why I had quit.

I went home and practiced on the computer just folding bad starting hands. I kept track of how many hands I folded and how many I played. And then if the flop didn't fit my hand, I practiced folding the hand also. Of course, I wanted to play the turn and the river correctly, but for that weekend I was concentrating just on starting hands and flops.

I went back to the Copa on Monday afternoon and played again. The plan worked, and I won a little bit of money. Not a whole lot, but enough to stop the flow of red ink. And over the next two weeks, I slowly but surely won back what I had lost.

Double Bonus Poker at Grand Gulfport - You asked for it; you got it. Actually, it was there all along. Last week, I mentioned that it would be nice if Grand Casino Gulfport included its 9/7 Double Bonus video poker game in its quarter games, since it had already added it in dollars. Well, this must be a case of "do as I say, not as I do" because I've told you to always check all the machines in a bank. And I had not done that.

On the Grand's third floor, next to the restrooms, are four banks of IGT machines with blue glasses; some of the machines have the 9/7 Double Bonus in quarters and some do not, so you have to look for the best pay tables.

Although the strategy is a little different, 9/7 Double Bonus is similar to 9/7 Double Aces & Faces; both pay back 99.11 percent.

The same "good" machines boast a Not-So-Ugly Deuces game (99.73 percent) in 50-cent and dollar versions.

Until next week, aces and faces to you.