Dollars and Sense: Winning Ways of Low-Stakes Limit Poker

By Mick Schumacher

Plenty of poker players possess dollars and cents. At least they start out that way. But few have both dollars and a winner's poker sense. Dollars and Sense: Winning Ways of Low-Stakes-Limit Poker provides the poker sense to make the poker dollars. This book lays out the path to gaining a winner's edge by

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mick Schumacher
• Release date: Jan 24, 2021
• ISBN: 9781087944739

Mick Schumacher

Michael (Mick) L. Schumacher has a Bachelor's Degree in business administration with a major in accounting from the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Nebraska (formerly Kearney State College), and a Master's Degree in business administration from the University of Colorado. He's a Certified Public Accountant and a Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and is an American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) Accredited Personal Financial Specialist (PFS), AICPA Accredited Business Valuation Specialist (ABV), and AICPA Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF). Mick is president of Schumacher & Associates, Inc., Certified Public Accountants, and likes to say it's the world's smallest international accounting and consulting firm. Mick's narrative-writing experience stems principally from writing thousands of pages of notes to financial statements. Mick's website is www.schumachercpas.com

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PART ONE

Early Position

1 In the Beginning ..............................................................15

2 Starting Hands ................................................................37

3 Basic Strategy ..................................................................49

4 Give It a Try ....................................................................63

5 Decisions ........................................................................71

PART TWO

Middle Position

6 Expectations, Averages, Advantages, and Experiences .....79

7 Selective Aggression ........................................................97

8 Don’t Do It! ...................................................................107

9 World Series of Poker ....................................................117

10 Women Poker Players ...................................................123

11 Promotions ....................................................................139

12 Principles ......................................................................153

13 Poker Books and Really Learning the Game .................171

viii • Dollars and Sense PART THREE

Late Position

14 Getting Even ..................................................................177

15 Poker and Health Issues ................................................187

16 Poker Names .................................................................191

17 Storytelling ....................................................................197

18 Other Forms of Gambling ..............................................207

19 Walking with a Purpose ................................................219

EPILOGUE: Ten Years After ...........................................225

APPENDIX: Mick’s Poker Exam ....................................231

About the Author ...........................................................245

Foreword

Something in human nature seems to drive us to search for the source. This search is usually rooted in a quest for self-improvement—from Ponce De Leon’s hunt for the fountain of youth to Warren Buffett’s quest for the source of truth on investing. In a way, they were opposites—De Leon searching for eternal youth, Buffett seeking wisdom from the elders to invest for the ages—but the impulse was exactly the same.

We exist in a complex dynamic where on the one hand, knowledge is literally at our fingertips on any subject, but on the other, it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fiction and get to a comfort level on the actual source of truth. Further-more, there is always the mindfulness-related argument that the journey is more important than the destination. But when it comes to the source of poker wisdom, whether you’re more interested in the journey or fact-based knowledge, you’ve made it to the right place. Dollars and Sense combines the two into a page-turner that I truly believe will one day be considered the definitive source of truth on low-limit hold ’em.

In this book, you can expect to gain a strong education on the statistical probability of poker outcomes, which hands to play and not to play, how to gauge fellow players, and much more.

You’ll feel the thrill of a big win and the pain of a shoulda-coul-da-woulda, enabling you to replicate the right actions and avoid making the same mistakes. Best of all, you’ll get all of this delivered in an entertaining and thoughtful narrative that integrates quantitative probability with stories ranging from Amarillo Slim to Shoeless Joe Jackson, from human sociology to poker-myth bust-

2 • Dollars and Sense ing. This book is full of humor, insight, and life applications all centered around translating a complex topic to actionable tactical behaviors in a graduate level-worthy textbook (but more interesting!) analysis based on more than a decade of personal experience and meticulous research on how to win at low-stakes poker.

I don’t need to say, I hope you enjoy the book, because I’m certain you will. I don’t need to say, I hope you gain insights to raise your poker game, obtain an advantage, and maximize success, because I’m certain you will. I don’t need to say, I hope you appreciate and benefit from the life stories and poker tips within,

because I’m certain you will. What I do need to say is that I hope someday you get the chance to sit at a poker table by my father, the author of this book, because you’d find him to be as authentic as the how-to chronicle he delivers here for you.

When it comes to penning a premier book on low-stakes poker, in this case, it was definitely in the cards. To call a spade a spade, this book is a diamond in the rough with a lot of heart. In all seriousness, Dollars and Sense is downright excellent. Whether you’re seeking an intriguing adventure like Ponce De Leon or the source of truth like Warren Buffett, you can feel confident that you’ve arrived at the source for low-limit poker.

—Quinn Schumacher

Author’s Note

In this book, I provide basic information about the game of low-stakes limit Texas Hold ’em poker for beginners, give specific recommendations to improve the game of experienced players, offer explanations of and reasoning for strategies, include mathematical computations with my recommendations, and relate stories of relevance.

Part 1 of Dollars and Sense outlines the basics of poker play in general and the specifics of Texas Hold ’em. From there, I provide a simple basic strategy that gives those of you who are new to limit hold ’em an opportunity to play the game right away. It will also improve the results of many experienced players.

In Part 2, I present information that refines basic strategy.

These refinements will guide you down the path toward optimum play. Note that optimum play isn’t always without room for differing opinions. Certainly, circumstances affect your options and the paths you take. But if you follow the Yellow Brick Road I lay out for you here, you and Toto will have the best chance of safely getting home a winner in the end.

Part 3 discusses the colorful culture of poker—topics as wide-ranging and far-reaching as getting even at the tables in its many forms; health and the poker player; poker nicknames, aliases, and pseudonyms; other table games you might want to play while waiting for a seat in the cardroom; and the deep vein of poker stories and storytelling.

In writing this book, I generally envisioned a player with a minimal level of familiarity with poker. But even if you possess zero knowledge about the game, reading this book will help you

4 • Dollars and Sense become a winner at Texas Hold ’em. With a 30-minute coaching lesson using the basic principles of Dollars and Sense, my daughter-in-law learned enough to not only make the final table, but win a 30-player no-limit tournament. She never played Texas Hold

’em before, but knew the basics of poker. I admit that, in addition to being a quick learner, some beginner’s luck did go her way.

I’ve tried to make this book as gender neutral as possible. References to particular men or women are, of course, gender specific. When referring to players in general, I’ve used he and she interchangeably. Pronoun usage should not be taken personally unless I refer to a bad player as an it. As you proceed through the book and at the poker table, you’ll see that a good poker game can always use a few more its—and you don’t want to be one of them.

Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to see is true

goes the opening line of the 1950s’ TV series Dragnet. Only the names have been changed to protect the innocent. Likewise, in this book, the stories you are about to read are true, unless I say, I swear it’s true. Take that as a warning. It might not be true. If you believe none of these stories, you’ll be right at least half the time.

Some of the names have been changed to protect the guilty rather than the innocent.

I’ve attempted to give credit to all of those who contributed stories, jokes, clever sayings, insights, and concepts. But some of the sayings and stories are so often repeated, it was impractical and maybe even impossible to determine who actually said them first.

For example, Lily Tomlin said, The road to success is always under construction. By my way of thinking, if you study and practice, you’ll improve your game. If you continue studying and practicing, you’ll continue to improve your game. If you never quit studying and practicing, you’ll never quit improving your game.

Practice, whether it’s at the piano or on the football field, is usually hard work. But with poker, and I’d say any job or pur-suit you really like, it’s difficult to tell where work ends and play

Author’s Note • 5

begins. Indeed, most people have to pay for their education (or entertainment), but I get paid for mine.

While playing poker is definitely practicing and fun, studying poker helps avoid practicing the same mistakes over and over. A TV commercial I’ve seen suggests that all that’s wrong with your workout is that you’re not doing it. It’s the same for studying.

It’s been said that there are no good people in heaven, because there are no good people. We all make mistakes. Those of us who get to heaven follow the right path and make fewer mistakes.

While the stakes—your money versus your soul—are much lower, the same is true with poker. The difference between winning and losing poker players is what winners don’t do or at least do less often. Players who make the fewest mistakes win the most.

Nothing has been held back throughout the pages of this book.

You’ll learn what you need to know to be a winner. So tap your heels together, hold on to Toto, and enjoy the ride!

Introduction

The idea for this writing project can be blamed on Sharon Elaine Anderson, my soulmate and significant other. I love to talk poker even more than I love to play poker, but I need to play poker to have something to talk about. After listening for many years to my nonstop poker patter, Sharon challenged me to write a book.

This was obviously intended as self-defense: If I started writing and quit talking, she wouldn’t have to listen to me. Her initials are S. E.

A.; throughout this book, I refer to her as SEA.

I accepted SEA’s challenge. On Thanksgiving Day 2007, instead of watching the parade, I turned on the computer, opened a new Word document, and stared at it. A blank page can be kind of intimidating. It was for me, as it was for Samuel Goldwyn of MGM Studios. He wrote, The easiest thing not to do is to write.

At least he wrote that much. I was still staring.

As a child, my mother kept telling me that when I grew up, I’d be an accountant. I had no idea what an accountant did or was, but it became a generally accepted premise. I wasn’t much of a student, but Mom noticed that I showed a little promise in math.

We’re not talking high-level mathematics here, just arithmetic—

adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. Most people have the incorrect presumption that to be an accountant, you need to be a math whiz. Not the case at all. After high school, I enrolled at a college that had almost no entrance requirements. If you could sign the application, you were in. Maybe even an X would have worked for the signature; I’m not sure. But I was accepted and registered for an accounting class. I quickly learned that if you could add, subtract, multiply, and divide, you could indeed be an

8 • Dollars and Sense accountant. My mother got it right and I became a CPA.

Having a bean-counter’s mentality made poker interesting to me, especially after Texas Hold ’em came along and caught my attention on TV. Also, by chance I moved to Texas, the birthplace of hold ’em and the home of Texas Dolly Doyle Brunson, one of the earliest Texas Hold ’em pros. Being residents of Texas was good for SEA and me. It doesn’t have a state income tax and it does have a lot of Texas Hold ’em games, even though the Baptists have been successful at keeping out casinos.

In 2005, one night near where I lived, I happened across a bar that offered free poker, at least technically; after you added up how much you spent on drinks and food, it was anything but free.

At the Pelican Lounge on North Padre Island, they played no-limit Texas Hold ’em three nights a week from seven p.m.

until one in the morning. There were rednecks with long necks, Navy pilots and mechanics, construction and offshore-rig workers, retired folks, lawyers and judges, sales people, young and old and rich and poor and gay and straight and good and not so good, but they all had one thing in common: They played free no-limit Texas Hold ’em at the Pelican for points and pride. At the end of six weeks, the players with the highest point totals competed in the finals for the chance to win a trip to Las Vegas or a big-screen TV. Mostly, though, they played for Texas-size bragging rights.

What Constitutes …

The games you see on TV are all high-stakes no-limit games. Actually, what you see on TV are the highlights: the thrills of victory, the agonies of defeat, the great plays, the mistakes, the bad beats. Some of the TV games are tournaments and some are cash (a.k.a. ring) games, but none of them qualify as cheap poker.

So what does?

Examples of cheap poker are the $1-$2 limit Hold ’em played in Florida; $2-$4 in Colorado; $2-$6 in New Mexico; $2-$10 in Deadwood, SD; $3-$6 in California and Las Vegas; $4-$8 in Arizona and Vancouver, BC.

Introduction • 9

Playing poker three nights a week got to be like having a job; 18 hours per week was a big commitment. There was no requirement to play every night the Pelican offered poker, but it was the only way to accumulate enough points to make the finals. Being competitive, I developed a passion for really learning the game.

I started buying poker books and searching the web for anything I could find to read about poker. Also, since I traveled a lot for business, I found casinos almost everywhere. Most had some sort of cheap poker game—not as cheap as free bar poker, but pretty cheap by poker standards, and those were the games to which I was attracted.

Between 2005 when I found the game of poker, or it found me, and 2008, I clocked approximately 2,000 hours of playing time, mostly at cheap games. That was a lot of hours, the equivalent of working a full-time job for a year. Even so, in the poker scheme of things, I was still something of a novice.

Then, beginning on January 1, 2008, I started keeping a poker journal.

Fast forward to 2019. My handwritten poker journals now consist of 20 volumes and more than 3,500 pages. They chronicle every poker game I’ve played in since 2008. I’ve kept track of the dates, places, types of game, limits, buy-ins, hours of playing time, and amounts won or lost. I had to do this for tax-accounting

… Cheap Poker?

One cardroom in Florida recently quit dealing $1-$2 limit Hold ’em and replaced it with what they call micro $1-$2 no limit Hold ’em. The micro part of the game refers to the buy-ins. The minimum buy-in is $40, the maximum $80. Although it’s a no-limit game, the relatively small buyins limit the ability of a player to bully the game. To have a dominant chip stack, you need to earn it.

Cheap poker isn’t entirely determined by the size of the stakes, but by being the cheapest game dealt in a particular poker room. Since they’re the cheapest games available, they attract the beginners and players looking to take money from beginners—the sharks looking for fish.

10 • Dollars and Sense purposes; I am a CPA, after all. But I’ve also noted stories of interest and characters I’ve met along the way. Some have become good friends. Others are just acquaintances who would be fun to see again. Some I’ll never see again, because they’ve passed on, unless of course there’s a poker game in heaven. But they say there are no poker games in heaven, because all the dealers have gone to hell.

My journal entries cover 5,000 hours of play in 1,300 sessions at 30 different cardrooms across the U.S. When added to the 2,000

estimated hours over the three years before my journals, it totals 7,000 hours sitting at a poker table. Based on 30 to 40 hands dealt per hour, that adds up to having been dealt more than a quarter of a million starting hands.

I didn’t track the time I spent writing in my journal or reading poker books, magazines, and websites. Nor did I tally up the countless hours talking poker (though SEA probably knows down to the minute how many were directed at her). Even though I can’t tell you how many hours I put into reading and study, I’m convinced it’s more time than I spent preparing for the CPA exam and completing my MBA program.

In 1993, psychologist K. Anders Ericsson published an article,

The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance, in the Journal of Psychological Review. As a guideline for understanding mastery, Ericsson downplayed the idea that an expert performer was gifted, a prodigy, or even a natural and introduced the 10,000-hour rule. He identified a pattern of regular and deliberate practice over the course of years that make top performers what they are. In one study, elite violinists had separated themselves from others by each accumulating more than 10,000

hours of practice by age of 20.

The late great Mike Sexton, a professional poker player and World Poker Tour television announcer, and others have said that you can learn Texas Hold ’em in five minutes, but it takes a lifetime to master.

While elite performers in many fields complete their journey to mastery in about 10 years. I’ve just passed the 14-year mark. I’m

Introduction • 11

still working on my lifetime to master Texas Hold ’em, but I’m a cumulative winner at low-stakes limit poker since I began writing in my poker journal in 2008. By following the suggestions in this book and apprehending the spirit of the stories, you too can be a winner. You’ll win not because you’re lucky; lucky averages out with unlucky over time. You’ll win because you’re playing better poker than the others at the table.

PART ONE

Early Position

The typical poker table has nine seats. They’re divided into four sections: the blinds, early position, middle position, and late position.

The player in the button seat is the symbolic dealer; this is the best position at the table, since the button acts last throughout the hand. The button itself moves clockwise (to the left) during each round of poker, so players’ relative positions change after each round. But the positions are also fixed in relationship to the button.

The seat directly to the left of the button is the small blind; the SB acts first after the flop. To the left of the SB is the Big Blind (BB), who acts second. The blinds also pay forced bets, so they’re not only in the worst positions post-flop, they’re the only players who have money at risk before the cards are even dealt.

The next three seats are known as early position. They’re called Under the Gun (UTG). The seat to the left of the Big Blind is UTG+1; then come UTG+2 and UTG+3. Before the flop, UTG+1

is the worst seat; that player acts first.

The three seats to the left of UTG+3 are Middle Position (MP): MP1, MP2, and MP3. Those in Middle Position seats have an approximately equal number of players who act before and after them.

Finally, the last two seats are called Late Position. The player in the seat to the right of the button is called the Cut-Off, second to last to act before the so-called dealer.

As I mentioned in the Author’s Note, this book is divided into

14 • Dollars and Sense three parts. I’ve bypassed the blinds; I didn’t want to start off the book blind, neither small nor large. Turn the page, sit down at Under the Gun+1, and let’s get started in Early Position.

1

In the Beginning

The Rock-Bottom Basics

In the beginning, you get dealt two cards turned down that only you can see and use. These are your hole cards. They’re followed by the first of three community cards, called the flop; the second is called the turn and the third is called the river.

Community cards means that everyone can use them, along with their two hole cards, to make the best-five card poker hand.

Unlike a divorce in a community-property state where assets are divided, community cards aren’t split up. They’re used by all players still in the hand. This is sort of like getting joint custody of the kids.

In hold ’em, like all traditional poker games, the best five-card poker hand wins, but only at a showdown, where you compare hands at the end of round. You can also be bluffed or bet off a hand and fold, even if you hold the best cards. We’ll talk a lot about folding later.

In case you’re not familiar with the hierarchy of winning hands at poker, here they are:

High cards beat low cards.

One pair beats a high card.

Two pair beats one pair.

Three-of-a-kind beats two pair.

A straight, five cards in numerical order, beats three-of-a-kind.

A flush, five cards of the same suit, beats a straight.

16 • Dollars and Sense A full house, three cards of one denomination and two cards of another denomination, beats a flush.

Four-of-a-kind beats a full house.

A straight flush, five cards in numerical order of the same suit, beats four-of-a-kind.

A royal flush, a five-card straight flush consisting of T, J, Q, K and A of the same suit, beats all other straight flushes. Don’t expect to see a royal flush very often. I’ve been dealt only one royal flush and unfortunately, I was playing in a home game with 10-cent chips. Doyle Brunson has said he can recall having only two royal flushes in more than 60 years of playing poker.

There are four rounds of betting: one round after the hole cards are dealt, one after the flop, one after the turn, and one after the river.

Button and Blinds

Even though