Ed Hill Poker - Poker Articles

The Poker Zone - Part 1

Authored by: Ed Hill

There is a very special place reserved for great players only, sometimes average players visit when they are running good, but they are not allowed to stay until they become great players. It can be a lot like the twilight zone, because it is located in our minds and we call it the poker zone.

This is not an easy place to visit we have to learn all the tools that winning players utilize first. These tools can be found is Sklansky’s “Theory of Poker.” The next step is trying to figure out the right moment to utilize all the concepts that winning poker players use without using the wrong one at the wrong time. This takes a long time of being in repetitious situations but our timing does get better over time. If you have really studied “Theory of Poker” and have studied a good “how to” book on the game of your choice you will have developed a better feel. Only time teaches us on when to bet a certain hand again against this type of player and to take the free card that is being offered you against that type of player. There are many situations like this in all forms of poker.

I lived in Vegas from 1976 until 2004 when I finally moved to Los Angeles. I just made a trip back to Vegas and visited one of my old friend’s Cissy. She is one of the greatest players I have ever played with, we hold each others poker skills in high regard. She has recently started playing online and made an amazing comment that I have also found to be very true. She said, “I used to think that I was really good in reading tells and that is how I ascertained the correct thing to do. But after playing online I see that I can read my opponents the same way I do in the live games. Eddie, this is really weird, how can you read a blinking circle the same way you can read a person that you are looking at across the table?” I told her, you are always in the zone. I have found the same thing to be true, I can sit here in front of the computer and hand after hand say this guy has this and when the cards turn up, there it is, exactly what I said he had. Many people can do this in obvious situations, we are talking about much more abstract hands than the obvious ones.

Many average players have gone on rushes, when they are winning and everything is going their way they kind of know what their opponents have most of the time. Their game is temporally great and there is a positive energy around them, they have visited the place that great players go and didn’t even know where they were. The next day when the rush is over they are right back where they used to be, trying to guess the right time to make this play or the right time to not make that play. When you are guessing you are correct a certain amount of the time and wrong a certain amount of the time, that’s why it is called guessing. Wouldn’t it be nice to “guess” right nearly 100% of the time? You can if you know what your opponents have. This is why some people have resorted to playing with marked cards. But that is cheating and electronic daub hasn’t been invented yet. But if you have been playing professional poker as long as we have you will find that we are almost as accurate as the cheaters that are playing with marked cards, because we know how to go to the poker zone. We know how to stay there even when the cards are not being kind to us. Most of the players have never been there, some have visited when they are on a rush and the great players are there almost all the time.

We all have our on way of going to a very abstract place, a scary place that exists somewhere in our minds. Where we have taught ourselves to focus on the game with extreme intensity, there is no other existence except this poker game. I am totally oblivious to everything else. If you are talking to me I don’t hear you, the TV is background noise, I am not done playing this hand even if my cards are in the muck. If you don’t understand this statement you probably are looking on the TV Guide to see what channel the Poker Zone in on and wondering why you have never seen it before.

You must know every tendency that all your opponents have and then go way beyond that knowledge. After awhile you can start to feel their emotions, even over the Internet.

The other night I was playing no limit and my beautiful neighbor was over sweating, she is fascinated that somebody can make a living playing poker and likes to watch. There was one limper and I raised it with KQs one off the button and the field folded, he called. The flop came KQ4 rainbow, he checked, I bet, he called. I am real familiar with this opponent, I know he avoids getting in pots with me at all costs. He called real fast here, that is usually a draw, but there are three cards of different suits sitting there, so the only draw is J-10. He, like a lot of others likes to think for awhile before raising in an attempt to fool his opponent into thinking that he has some mediocre hand that he finally decided to raise with. He doesn’t slow play his hands when he is out of position, so if he had flopped a set, he would have stalled for a long time before finally raising. He didn’t do that, he called immediately, that is a draw, so he has J-10, I know it. The turn is a 9. He checks and I say to my neighbor, he just sucked out on me and checked. She said, “you have been telling me to not see the boggy man when a bad card comes off and to go ahead and get value for your hands. You have been saying that I shouldn’t worry about being raised until I am actually raised and now you check top two pair?” I said, he has J-10! The river fortunately came a Q. He bet right into for half the pot because he was looking to get paid off. I raised him everything he had in front of him and he called. He turned up his hand, J-10! I said to her, “told ya!” She said, “you always just triple their bet when you raise, now this time you raised him all his money instead? Sometimes you violate all your own principles.” I told her, “he bet me $100, normally I would make it $300, but he had $900 in front of him and I knew he couldn’t fold a straight.” She chuckled, “you mean you knew he had J-10, you absolutely knew.” I said, “I put my money where my mouth was didn’t I? I did check top two on the turn against one opponent.”

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