| How To Use the Poker.Fairestcasinos.Com Website |
| by Andrew Glazer,
published on Tuesday, September 18 2001 |
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I get so many reader questions about matters that are answered somewhere on the poker.FairestCasinos.com website that I figure it’s time for an article explaining carefully what you can find here, and where you can find it. There are valuable resources here no matter what your poker skill level is.
IF YOU ARE JUST LEARNING POKER
If you take a look at the main poker.FairestCasinos.com page, you will see, a link to “Basic Strategy,” a short article that duplicates some of the functions of this article but also helps teach you some poker basics. I’d start there, and then shift back to the main page and look on the right hand side towards the bottom of the page in the gray bar, where you’ll find a “Learn Poker” section. These links will send you to articles that explain the rules and very basic strategy considerations involved in playing the listed games.
If you are REALLY new, I suggest you start with the “Ranking the Hands” article, and then move from there to the Texas Hold’em article. I discuss many basic poker concepts in the Hold’em article and if you read that one first, the other articles will be simpler.
You could read the “Poker Dictionary” from start to finish, but I think you’ll be better off just opening it up and keeping it handy as you’re reading the other articles.
IF YOU WANT TO TEST YOUR SKILL
On that same right hand side, at the very bottom of the “Learn Poker” section, you’ll find four poker quizzes. These quizzes test your skill, but they also teach: the answers explain not only why the correct answers are right but also why the incorrect answers are wrong.
Although you might find the quizzes fun, I’d advise against taking all four in one session. Take one, do some reading or some playing, and then come back and try another. As you’ll read below, some of the questions in each quiz are fairly advanced.
IF YOU ARE ALREADY AN INTERMEDIATE- OR ADVANCED-LEVEL PLAYER
You can and should still try the quizzes, because each quiz offers a mix of questions at different skill levels. I’ve had talented friends take the quizzes and get one or two wrong, take a look at the answers, and realize they were indeed wrong and hadn’t thought the question the whole way through. So don’t think the quizzes are “beneath” you if you are a veteran.
Experienced players, though, probably won’t find a lot of terribly helpful information in the “Learn Poker” section. Don’t worry, there’s still plenty for you. The most helpful place is the Article archive. Again starting on the main page, you’ll see, in the upper part of the gray bar on the right hand side, an “In the Archive” section.
The very first article in the archive is always, by specific request from me to the folks who run poker.FairestCasinos.com (I’m just the editor, not the owner), my article “Should You Gamble On the Internet?” Although there are some very positive aspects to Internet gambling, there are also some very negative and worrisome aspects, and I strongly encourage anyone who is gambling on the net or who is considering doing so to read this article before placing a single bet.
The second article in the archive is always the current “main page” article, and you’ll usually see two more linked from the main page. Just below that final link, though, you’ll see a very useful link to “Entire Archive.” Just as the title implies, this page holds all of the archived main page poker.FairestCasinos.com articles, as well as all of the tournament articles I’ve done for poker.FairestCasinos.com. You could spend weeks in here. Don’t forget to stop for meals and sleep.
WE’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN
On the top right, where it says “Poker Newsletter,” and on the left, where it says “Wednesday Nite Poker,” you have the chance to sign up for an absolutely positively free bi-weekly newsletter called (come on, you can guess it!) “Wednesday Nite Poker.” I’m the editor and write most of the articles, although some of poker’s finest writers stop in for the occasional guest article.
Unlike the many sites that when offering free newsletters require you to submit your home address, social security number, last five years federal income tax forms, as well as your rap sheet, all you need do to get WNP is supply your email address, and voila, twice a month, you’ll get a newsletter that always offers at least one beginner article and one advanced article. During big poker tournaments like the World Series, we put out a lot of special (and yes, still free as always) issues so you can read about the way the world’s best are duking it out for big money.
Usually the first thing that happens when someone starts subscribing to WNP is they say “Oh, heck (or something stronger)! This is good, I wish I hadn’t missed all those back issues.” Well, you can indeed find the back issues by going to http://www.FairestCasinos.com/newsletter/poker/archive/ You’ll be able to see what you’ve been missing. Note that the article archived here are NOT in the main Article Archive. Don’t ask me why they put the site together this way, I just teach you how to extract maximum value from the cards you’re dealt.
IF YOU HAVE A QUESTION
There are links to “Ask Andy” on both the right and left hand side of the main page, and you can submit your questions and receive personalized answers. I encourage you to spend some time wandering around the site first, because if you ask something that’s already explained at length elsewhere (I get, for example, about five questions a week asking which hand is lower in high-low poker, A-2-4-5-8 or 2-3-4-6-7), you’ll either get a very brief answer pointing you to the existing article, or no answer (if I’ve had a bad day).
The kinds of questions that get the most thorough answers are general questions where it’s possible that someone other than you might be interested in the answer, because we put the very best questions and answers up on yet another part of the site. If you click on the Ask Andy link (or just go to http://askthepro.FairestCasinos.com/poker/), you’ll find both a place to submit your question, and many good reader questions (and answers) from the past. If your question is about home game poker, rather than cardroom or casino poker, you should definitely look through all the old questions, because home game poker gets more attention in this section than in other parts of the site.
A tip: please make sure you enter your email address correctly when you send in a question. I really hate it when someone goes to the trouble of submitting a good question and then I can’t answer directly because they have submitted an incorrect email address.
Finally, please remember that I’m the POKER guy here at FairestCasinos.com: not video poker (go to videopoker.FairestCasinos.com for Dan Paymar’s thoughts there), and not roulette or blackjack. Even though I could probably answer your questions on those games, I stay out of the other “FairestCasinos.com Dream Team” member’s turf. If you go to the main www.FairestCasinos.com page, you’ll see that the site employs pros in other games to answer questions. Also, games like Caribbean Stud and Three-Card Poker are based on poker hands, they aren’t really poker, so I don’t teach those here, either.
ALMOST LAST, AND ALMOST LEAST
You’ll find links to “Andy’s Mailbag” and “Andy’s Fame and Acclaim Section” on the main poker.FairestCasinos.com page. Trust me, blowing my own horn this way wasn’t my idea. Basically, these sections include some wonderfully nice letters from readers around the globe (some of them rather eminent) who have given me some very nice feedback about the job I do for poker.FairestCasinos.com (some letters are about tournament coverage, and some about the site). If you’re not experienced enough to know whether you should believe the advice of your friendly neighborhood Poker Pundit, perhaps these letters will help convince you. Of course, I could have made them all up, and if you worried about that, congratulations, you have enough of a suspicious nature to have a promising future as a poker player. I didn’t make them up, though!
LAST, AND CERTAINLY LEAST
You’ll also find a section called “Poker Talk” on the main poker.FairestCasinos.com page. I’m not sure why it’s there, or why I am listed as the moderator, because I have been very clear with the poker.FairestCasinos.com people that moderating this forum isn’t part of what I do for them, and that most of the posts that go up there seem to be advertisements for something or another, and the posted ads are usually for highly doubtful products.
At some point, poker.FairestCasinos.com may hire me, or someone else, to moderate a good poker talk forum. For the time being, I suggest that if you want to get feedback from someone other than your friendly neighborhood Poker Pundit, you try either the rec.gambling.poker (RGP) newsgroup, or the Two Plus Two forum found at http://www.twoplustwo.com/.
Each of these forums has its advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage of RGP is that because there is no moderator, a lot of “get a life” types post all sorts of nasty responses to questions (it’s amazing how the safe anonymity of the Internet can help turn a coward into a bully).
Also, no matter how sure your respondent may appear, there are no qualifications for posting on RGP, so especially when you are a beginner, you have no idea whether the advice you’re getting is worth anything or not. Most of the discussion threads turn into kindergarten-level name calling at one point or another. There’s nothing quite like insecurity to get people to act 100% sure of themselves and call anyone who disagrees with them an idiot.
The Two Plus Two forum is moderated, which eliminates some of the nonsense, but here we learn a little lesson about free speech: if you disagree violently enough with the site owners, you might find your post removed, even if you’re quite polite and possibly even right. Fortunately, because the owners are David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, they tend to be right a lot. I tend to use RGP more because as a newsgroup, it’s faster than the web-based Two Plus Two, but when I join the 21st century and get DSL or a cable modem, I’ll probably start visiting Two Plus Two more.
Of course, you don’t have to visit either one. You’ve already found the voice of reason and a pretty good poker instructor, and unlike most of the folks on the newsgroups or posting forums, if I’m not sure about an answer, I’ll say so.
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