The Mohegan Sun poker room was a welcoming place. Anyone with thirty dollars in his pocket could sit down among the bamboo and the TV monitors and receive his very own poker hand, along with a warm smile from the dealer. My friends had told me how great it was, how much fun they’d had losing their money over a green felt table. I had a problem, though—I hated losing money.
So before I made the trip to Uncasville, Connecticut I did some studying. I read a book. And I was silly enough to think that would give me an advantage over people who’d been playing the game for years.

That’s how I convinced myself to make the one-hour trip from my dorm room in New Haven; and that’s how I found myself in the middle of a hand, peering at three cards sitting face-up on the table. There were two fours and a queen. These were community cards, part of every player’s hand. If they helped someone else’s hand, chances were they didn’t help mine. In front of me, face down, were my two hole cards: an ace and a queen. In most of the hands until now, I had been throwing away my hole cards before any others were dealt, not wanting to pay even three dollars to continue. The book told me to do this.

Finally involved in a hand, I tried my best not to be nervous. Most people get uncomfortable when real money that can buy real things in the real world is on the line. That book I’d read, The Winner’s Guide to Texas Hold ’Em Poker by Ken Warren, said if you thought of six dollars in poker chips as a ticket to a matinee, or a personal pizza, or anything that six bucks could buy away from the table, then you had already lost. I was supposed to forget the money. The only thing that mattered was whether to bet, call, raise, or fold.
I had bet my hand aggressively, the correct play according to the book. I was betting chips, not money—a red chip and a white chip, not six bucks, I told myself. But my opponent, a quiet blond lady, wouldn’t fold her hand. Did she think I was just a young punk and probably bluffing? Or did she have a four in the hole, meaning my two pair would lose to her three-of-a-kind? I didn’t think she had a four, but then I had no idea how much to trust my instincts. I was playing this game for the first time.

The betting finished and, since neither of us had folded, it was time to show the hands. I exposed my ace-queen. The blond woman reached for her cards to turn them over. Despite my newness to Hold ’Em, I knew from my other poker experience that this meant trouble. Most players don’t show their hands unless they hold a winner. I wondered how she had managed to beat me when the woman flipped up her cards. An ace…and a queen. We had the same hand, and we would each get half the pot. Although this was an unlikely result—the odds against someone else at the table having ace-queen, given the queen on board, were 17.7 to 1—it fit perfectly with my assessment of her hand: strong, but not too strong. This was encouraging.

The woman and I smiled at each other as the dealer split the chips into equal sized stacks and gave me my share.
“I thought one of you had the four!” said an obnoxious player at the end of the table, looking sketchy in his mostly unbuttoned shirt. It was the fall of 1998, and for the first time in my life, someone was pushing me chips after a hand of Texas Hold ’Em poker.

I somehow did leave the Mohegan Sun a winner that night. More important, I left feeling this was something I could do. I had won money in casinos before, from slot machines, but I knew I couldn’t play slot machines forever and expect similar results. I thought I had a shot to win at poker.
Amidst school, a job, and now more school, poker has been the one constant in my adult life. Most of the friends I’ve met since my days as a Yale undergrad I’ve met through poker. I’ve used poker to get through failed relationships and bad situations at work, and I’ve used it to celebrate my minor and major successes. It’s an all-purpose drug—a drug that helps pay the bills. When I quit my job in the summer of 2002 to pursue an MFA, I subsidized my tuition with poker winnings. Poker is now my primary source of income.

My passion for poker has allowed me to make money and travel the country meeting intelligent players of all kinds—old and young, fat and skinny, geeky and suave. This book tries to create the same passion for the reader, and allow him to become a winning player.
Readers who know no poker will start where I started, as a high school kid playing dealer’s choice with his buddies on a Friday night. I explain all games, and you’ll learn everything the same way I did. You’ll relish my wins and suffer my losses. You’ll see my brilliant bluffs and stupid calls, my stupid bluffs and brilliant calls. You’ll meet my poker buddies and my poker enemies.

But first, you need to learn how to play. Here are poker’s basic rules (experienced players should feel free to skip this section):

• Poker is played from one (never more, unlike blackjack) standard deck of 52 cards.
• A poker hand is made up of five cards.
• The hands are ranked, in order of best to worst, as follows:
• Straight flush – Five consecutive cards in the same suit.
• Four of a kind – A hand containing four cards of the same rank, such as four sevens and an ace.
• Full house – Three cards of the same rank and two matched cards of another rank, such as three nines and two fours.
• Flush – Five non-consecutive cards in the same suit.
• Straight – Five consecutive cards not all in one suit.
• Three of a kind – Three cards of the same rank and two other unmatched cards.
• Two pair – Two cards of the same rank, two matched cards of another rank, and one unrelated card.
• One pair – Two cards of the same rank and three unrelated cards.
• High card – Five non-consecutive cards of different ranks, not all of the same suit.

A poker hand contains several rounds of betting. On each round, every player gets the chance to “act” on his hand. When the “action” is on a player, he has these choices:

CHECK – Pass rather than bet. This costs nothing. If another player has already bet, checking is not an option.
BET – Put chips into the pot. Every other player must at least match the bet if he wants to remain in the hand. A player can only bet if no other player has bet when the action gets to him.
FOLD – Throw your cards in the muck, conceding the pot to one of the other players.
CALL – Match a bet that another player has made
RAISE – Increase the amount it costs to stay in the hand by putting even more chips in the pot after someone has bet (this is my favorite option, and should be yours too). Doing this after having checked earlier is called check-raising, a powerful play that some consider unethical but is certainly not. It is merely another weapon at a poker player’s disposal.

After the last betting round, if more than one player is left in the hand, the cards are exposed and the best hand wins. Many times in casino poker a player will win a pot without ever showing his hand. This is only possible if all his opponents fold.