Tournament 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
My 1978 nationwide survey of Poker gambling
My 1978 nationwide survey of Poker gambling in the United States shows that it is the leading private and commercialized gambling game in the nation both in the number of participants and the amount of money involved, despite all the federal, state and local restrictions against it. Poker's betting handle is about double the combined total money volume of all the legalized gambling casinos situated in Nevada, Atlantic City, Puerto Rico, Aruba, Curacao, St. Maartens, the Bahamas, Haiti and elsewhere in the Caribbean Islands. Today about 65 million adult Americans, of whom 37 million are women and 28 million are men, are gambling the astronomical sum of $100 billion annually at Poker.
Before 1930 or thereabouts Poker was exclusively a man's game.
Before 1930 or thereabouts Poker was exclusively a man's game. Today the weaker sex, with its 37 million Poker adherents, outnumbers male Poker players by 9 million. Every day millions of women now gamble with one another in thousands of private homes and at card clubs, and more millions gamble with men every day in the tens of thousands of mixed Poker games. My survey reveals that the reason for the 9 million more female than male Poker players in America lies in the continuous police raids (federal, state and local) on clubs and private homes where men are suspected of illegal card playing. Most law enforcement agencies think twice before raiding an all-women's Poker, Rummy or Bridge game. As far as I can ascertain, in the past twenty years only ten illegally operated all-women's card games were raided by police in the United States. When we compare this to the hundreds of police raids conducted weekly all over the country on various card or Poker clubs patronized by men only, we can readily understand why more women than men play Poker. Although women Poker players outnumber male players by 9 million, the yearly total betting handle for women is $30 billion as compared to $70 billion for men.