by rdale » Tue Jun 21, 2005 9:21 pm
Maybe, I'm a momma's boy, but I love time with my family. Spending the time with them is one of the greatest things about all of us still being alive, bumping into the ex-wife is usually about as much of an opposite as it gets. Teaching my brother hold'em concepts with no electricity during a hurricane was great fun, taking my mom gambling is a blast, teaching hold'em will make you a better player.
When someone wants to watch me play because of an interest in learning...
I tell them, watch and I will explain, if you have a question about a fold or call that I didn't explain we can do it after the hand, so that I can think faster during the hand. My process works likes this, I explain why I don't call a 4x bet with A7o or a raise and reraise with 99. I work to explain the process of hand reading which looks like magic to the people that don't understand the logic. I take times when folding to explain pot odds, and when calling a raise implied odds, when making a position raise the concept behind it. I usually start explaining the way i'm going to play my hand if no one raises and if someone raises, and start trying to give them an idea of the power position. Basically I give commentary on my play and my assumptions of play of other people at the table. I play even tighter more ABC than normal, the way you should play in the beginning and try to not put myself in tough positions preflop, or on the flop, all tough decisions are turn and river folds, calls or raises.
If they still want to think about learning poker after seeing many hands folded, hands they thought were good chucked over and over again. I can recommend books and critique their own play. I start them out on play money or penny poker so that they can find frequent hold'em mistakes for free/cheap, even though play money and pennies real money, kickers do count, sucker ends of the straight still screws you, playing flushes/straights really fast on paired boards will cost you and it is a great exercise in pot odds. I've played play money games that had more skill level than 4/8 and 5/10 limit casino games, so to say that it is completely pointless is isn't completely true.