2. Professional poker players are more and more turning
into famous poker players. And not just famous among
other poker players: these professionals are turning into
something like real celebrities. These becoming-famous
poker players are turning Texas Hold'em into a
spectator sport.
3. Thanks to the World Series of Poker (WSOP), the
Internet, and ESPN coverage, there are many
professional poker players who are no longer
obscurities--they are heroes (and, yes, heroines).
Stu Ungar...Scotty Nguyen...Noel Furlong...Chris
Ferguson...Carlos Mortensen...Robert
Varkonyi...Chris Moneymaker...Greg
Raymer...Joseph Hachem...Jamie Gold...Jerry Yang...
4. Do any of those names sound familiar to you? Even if
you've never held or folded a Texas Hold'em hand, those
names may strike a bell somewhere in your mind. They
are the last 10 winners (in order, starting with Ungar in
1997) of the WSOP. The WSOP began all the way back
in 1970. Just like with pro football and baseball in those
days, there were dynasties, albeit one-man dynasties.
Johnny Moss, Doyle Brunson, and, at the beginning of
the 1980s, that guy Stu Ungar were the men beat.
5. Those guys are still the guys to beat (one of the good things
about Texas Hold'em is that your skills get better, not more
diminished, as you "get old"); but as those professional
poker players have become famous poker players, their
techniques have spread like wildfire, making for more
competition and increasingly putting the WSOP final pot up
for grabs.
6. As I said before, the Internet has been one of the
reasons for Texas Hold'em's meteoric rise in the last 10
years. Many people love playing online now, and it's a
great virtual place to start learning and mastering the
game. There are even professional poker players like
Niki "KaiBuxxe" Jedlicka who have built the
foundations of their careers online, while the likes of
Chris Ferguson, Doyle Brunson, and Annie Duke , just
to name but a few, are famous poker players whom you
can play against online.
7. "Never limp in...One of the most important rules of
Hold'Em -- Limit or No Limit -- is to never, ever call as
the first player to enter a pot before the flop. Either pump
up the pot with a raise, or dump your cards in the muck.
If your hand isn't strong enough for a raise, it's too weak
for a call. This tactic makes it more difficult for your
opponents to read your hand, and it makes it impossible
for the big blind to ever see a flop for free when you're in
the hand," says Chris "Jesus" Ferguson.
