If you’re sitting down for your first game of poker and the player next to you says he’s going fishing, don’t think he’s ready for a vacation.
Chances are he’s about to feed–and you just might be the fish.
“The sharks are starting to swim again,” said poker expert Chris Valterza, 37, who once made his living playing cards but now prefers to concentrate on running his Gold Coast coffeehouse, 3rd Coast.
Professional poker players are salivating over the presence of willing amateurs, referred to by the pros as “fish,” who have flooded poker tables in recent months.
The number of “fish” at tables is now around 60 percent to 70 percent, Valterza says, up from no more than 10 percent a couple of years ago.
Credit for the poker explosion might go to an amateur player named Chris Moneymaker, who rose from nowhere to win the 2003 World Series of Poker. ESPN constantly airs reruns of the tournament in which Moneymaker took home $2.5 million to become the patron saint of amateur players.
“That made it horrible,” Valterza said. “Now they all think they can win.”
Cable networks are fueling the trend by bringing celebrities on board. Bravo Network just finished airing “Celebrity Poker Showdown,” and the Travel Channel’s World Poker Tour, which televises professional tournaments at glamorous locations, debuted a series this week called “Hollywood Home Games,” with Jack Black, Ben Affleck and Aisha Tyler, among others.
Poker chips (and an accompanying case) were a popular Christmas gift, according to Omar Gonzalez, supervisor of Gamer’s Paradise in Lincoln Park. A spokesman for Walgreens says sales of their poker chips are “way up.”
Valterza says it takes at least 10,000 to 20,000 hours of serious poker playing to give up your amateur standing.
“Until then, you’re just a fish,” Valterza said. “You get cleaned, and you bust out. These kids think they know what they’re doing and they do not.”
Jason Duffy started playing seriously eight months ago and suffered through some tough games, dropping about $2,000 against, what he says, were pretty good
players.
Since starting out, he’s won his money back and then some, with much of it coming from new players. But he doesn’t refer to them as fish.
“They’re like ATMs,” Duffy said.
Duffy admits he was slow to pick up poker, but after playing three to four times a week, he has become good enough that he is using his winnings to pay off his credit cards.
Still, Duffy knows not to play in high-stakes games against pro players.
“If I go sit down at that game, I’m a fish,” Duffy said. “If I surround myself with people who are only slightly better or slightly worse than me, then I can not only learn things but have it not cost me money.”
Duffy and other poker players who met through meetup.com recently gathered at a local coffee shop to discuss and play poker. But when Duffy and his girlfriend realized the group was going to play for sugar packets and not money, they left to go find another game.
“Maybe this group is your way of finding people to take money from,” Sherry Campagna told him.
“Absolutely,” Duffy said.
While poker is legal on riverboat casinos in Illinois, the majority of games are still being played in living rooms and basements.
One female poker player, who asked not to be identified, said she finds games all over Chicago and has compiled an e-mail list of 110 prospective players.
Ryan Steele is a reformed gambler who says he has lost as much as $5,000 and has won as much as $12,000 in a single evening. While he now prefers to play for sugar packets instead of money, he still tries to teach newcomers before they get blindsided.
“Some people who work at [a local financial institution] are asking me to teach them how to play because all of them have played online,” Steele said. “One of them played with some friends in person and just got his butt whipped.”
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Play your cards right
Several poker pros at the Bellagio in Las Vegas reveal how they read amateurs:
– You play too many hands. (Action is great, but patience and discipline win.)
– You play weak hands early. (The last thing you want with a hand that needs work is to play with five people yet to bet.)
– You play too many drawing hands. (Chase wisely, because in a freeze-out game, you can’t fall back on your wallet.)
– You call big bets. (Raise or fold. Got it?)
– You lose too many chips holding only one pair, even aces. (If a pro risks most of his chips when you have a pair, say goodnight.)
– You play the cards instead of the players. (If pros sense weakness, you’re lunch.)
Steve Rosenbloom
