Debunking Poker Systems and Ebooks

Once you have registered with a number of different poker web sites, word seems to get around that you are a prolific poker player, and you get an enormous amount of junk mail coming through your email. Many of these are from the poker companies themselves, which is okay as you do not want to miss out on a special deal or reload bonus that they may be offering.

However, there are a certain number that promise to disclose the greatest “secrets” of successful poker play if you will send them $20 or more.

These e-books are a complete waste of time. Most of them contain basic principles that can be found at any online poker school or web site, and their promises of revolutionizing the way you play are barely justified by the vagaries in their techniques.

One such scheme advises that you bet a “reasonable” amount when holding pocket pairs ranked TT or better and high ranking, suited, connected cards. Barely a revolution! The author also advocated folding everything else without any comment relating to position, or getting to the flop cheaply in case you catch with the community cards.

There are plenty of other areas of the game that the author also omitted to include and, despite his impressive graphics displaying past wins that he had enjoyed, only once since 1991 has the winning hand at WSOP fallen into his qualification – and that was against AA!

Although there is no value in using a system yourself, it is useful to know that they exist. Obviously some people subscribe to these theories (not least the authors themselves if they are to be believed), and it may be possible that you come up against somebody employing set techniques in a poker game.

Once you have identified that this is what they are doing, they are easy to play against because they will only bet on the hands that fall into their system and fold everything else. You just need to distinguish what system they are using and play against it. By doing this, you will prove that systems do work – but only in your favour!

A final consideration on systems – If a system was ever developed that was that good, do you believe that it would be touted around the Internet for $20, or do you think that the author might just keep it to himself?

“When a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience leaves with money and the man with money leaves with experience.” Anon.

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