"If you can't spot the sucker in your first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker." - Mike McDermot from the movie Rounders

Limit dosn't dictate player strength. That is such a common misconception that I hear players discussing that I almost can't believe my ears each time that it's uttered. The only thing that can be discerned by the limit that a game is played at is that each player could meet the minimum buy-in requirements. The game is played exactly the same, regardless of the chip denomination.

Here is the truth of this matter. In a typical card room or casino game, there will be a huge variety of players at the tables. Your primary job when you sit down at a table full of unknown faces, is to determine who the weaker players are. You don't have to be the best player in the town, the room, or even at your table; but you can't be the worst player at the table. You can't be the person whose stack is just waiting to get chopped up among the rest of the table. You can't be the gal that plays without regard for the way that other people play, otherwise you've already lost from the moment that you sit down. You can't stare at your own cards and not have an idea of how your opponents play the game.

It's true that cards speak at the vast majority of the establishments that you will ever play in. It's also true that player bets speak, so do player calls, checks and raises. Player position speaks, as does their chip stack, the last few hands that they won or lost, the way that their chips are stacked, the way that they dress, thw way that they check their hole cards, the way that they carry themselves; everything on and around them and the table speaks. You just have to listen to all of these things and watch their play to determine who they are inside. When you listen to all of these things speaking to you, then you're inside their head and you can know what they're thinking.

Once you know how another player thinks and plays, then you can adjust to their tactics and that's when you can own the table. You can sit and wait patiently for hours until you catch the right hand at precisely the right moment and snap off another player's monster hand with junk; because you knew what they had. If there aren't any players in the game that you can beat, then you're just wasting you time, change tables, find another game. I don't want to be the 10th best player in the world sitting with the 9 best. Look for the weaker players and attack them, that's what they're there for. There's also a reason that death results results when Lions fight, the loser just leaves and looks for a weaker Lion to push out. Remind yourself of that when time and again, you still call a raise that puts you all-in while just knowing that you're beat. You didn't really want to win, you wanted to lose, just to remind yourself that you're still alive. If that were a lie, then the twelve step program would have never been invented.

That's how you need to play the game, any game really, not just Poker. Poker is no more a game than anything else in life is. In-fact, if you really think about it, everything in life is a game. We don't like to use that word because it harbors images of children playing jacks on the sidewalk, stick ball in the street or chasing after each other playing Freeze Tag. However, a game is really a competition, there are winners and losers; and we play lots of games in our lives. The non-Poker table is just larger with more seats.

Love is a game just like Poker, sex is a weapon just like chips are weapons. That's an occasion when we don't like to admit that there is a winner and loser, but there are. You know it inside when you concede the point because you just want the issue to end, it feels just like folding a hand even though you're pretty sure that you have the hand won. You've felt the burn when you know that you're right and refuse to back down and the argument becomes heated, just like a raising battle at the felt. You know the actions and what they are saying. You hear them speak without hearing a word. All actions have meaning.

Some days you win, some days you lose, but you keep playing; because it's human nature to compete. It's been born and bred into the animal kindom since the Earth cooled; it's every creature's basic instinct to play games. You can't escape what you are, you can only try to hide it. Listen to the things around you speaking, that's just information gathering to bolster your existing position or adjust your strategy accordingly. Embrace what it is to be alive, play the game and don't be ashamed to be what it is in your nature to be. So you better know who the sucker is, because it isn't just your stack at the table that's at stake, it's your entire life at stake. You get to choose the hands that you play. How you play your cards is completely at your discretion.

How good of a player are you?

Deal the cards...

Nicholas has left the 3s