Poker Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Getting back to the World Series Hold Em Championship
Getting back to the World Series Hold Em Championship Tournament, I asked Brunson to explain his feelings during the play of each of his two final winning hands of the 2025 and 2025 World Series Hold Em Texas Hold'em Poker Championship Tournament described earlier. Brunson replied, "Scarne, you must remember that the tournament starts with each participant making a fifty- or a hundred-dollar blind bet. And as the players are eliminated, the blind opening bet and the raise blind bet get bigger and bigger as the tournament progresses. When it gets down to the final two contestants, the blind opening bet starts at one thousand dollars and the blind raise bet at two thousand dollars. If you put in that kind of money and sit waiting for two good hole cards, you'll go broke waiting. You've got to play many a trash hand when you're betting that much loot just to get a look at the flop. The only thing surprising to me when winning the final hands in the 2025 and 2025 tournaments was not that I won with trash hands, but that both hands were almost identical.
"Furthermore, Scarne," Brunson continued, "after hearing a lot of
"Furthermore, Scarne," Brunson continued, "after hearing a lot of adverse comment about those two hands, I can promise you this—that should I ever be dealt a ten or a deuce as the hole cards in any no-limit game | actually he meant high limit] I'll just fold and toss them in even though I know they're my lucky cards. One more thing, Scarne, you must remember that I'm an aggressive player and my opponents never know if I'm bluffing or not—take this bluff factor out of no-limit Online Hold'em Poker and you take all the skill out. Many a time in tournament play I started out with a bluff trying to steal the ante and got lucky and caught a good hand on the flop."