User Profile

This is my poker journal. I also have a photography journal (as jwilkins) and a computer security blog (http://www.bitland.net). I'm 29 and work in the computer security industry. I rock climb, surf, snowboard, do jiu-jitsu and play poker. So far I've been focusing on Texas Hold'em, but I expect to branch out into other games over the next year or so.

You can read more about my beginnings as a poker player here:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/atari1976/360.html?style=mine

I'm going to try and write a simple tutorial for people just starting to play Hold'em. I invite critiques of everything I write in the hopes that the result is a better tutorial. I will also post interesting poker articles, etc so that I don't lose track of them.

I'm going to use the standard notation for hands. A=Ace, K=King, Q=Queen, J=Jack, T=Ten. All the others are obvious. If it's relevant, I'll use lower case letters to indicate suit; s=spades, d=diamonds, h=hearts and c=clubs. eg the Ace and King of diamonds would be shown as AdKd. If I'm just trying to distinguish suited and offsuit hands I'll use AKs for suited and AKo or AK means offsuit.

I'm also going to presume that you understand how limit and no-limit hold'em are played and the hand rankings. If you don't, go check out
http://www.partypoker.com/games/how_to_play/hands_ranked.html
http://www.partypoker.com/games/how_to_play/texas_holdem.html

I'll update entries as appropriate and I'll try and make a note of what changed (at the bottom of the entry) when I do so.

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