winning at zynga Poker

Over to FaceBook, I'm playing at the Zynga Texas Hold' em game. The Next posts are going to be about how to win there.

The thing about Zynga poker is there really is no winning. You can win chips and pick up buddies but your chances of winning actual money are few and far between. So I'm going to define winning as increasing your Zynga bankroll.

1) You can actually buy chips but you can't sell them back so I don't recommend that.
2) Zynga gives you a bonus everyday you play if you are a fan on FaceBook. So do that.
3) If you give chips to your poker buddies using their give chips icons your buddies will give chips back to you
4) If you click on the pictures/avatars of the people you are playing with you can make them your buddy and they can help you.
5) Accept challenges using one of the challenges icons on the sides. The challenges are fairly easy and get you chips and points.
6) Play a lot. Just for playing you get experience points which move you up levels and get you more chips. This leads to being "faced" or spending to much time on FaceBook.

7) and most important. Play like you mean it. Most of the people playing play way to loose. You can tell when someone plays poorly because their current chip bankroll is significantly lower than their high chip count. That is half or more. Find that info by hovering your mouse over their picture at the table.

Play tight. Don't bluff unless you notice people folding to you. If anyone bets back at you they probably have a better hand unless you have the absolute nuts. If someone does have a better hand fold.

yeah yeah 2 and a half years

OK so maybe blogs are hard to keep up. I've been keeping a running commentary on some google spreadsheets about my play for the last few days. If you are into viewing low stakes poker send me an email or leave a comment and I'll publish them so they are readable.

The main thing I seem to be learning is somewhat reminiscent of a line from Bangkok Dangerous.

"When you start to think that it might be time to get out, it is." or something like that.

I refer to that thought as my voices. Sadly I don't always listen to them and start to lose.

I think it's a Law of Attraction kind of thing. You start to think failure and failure comes to you. Think positive, confident, alert, focused thoughts and you do better.

One problem I think I have is sort of trying to think of nothing, of stillness. Once you realize you have achieved it, stillness is broken, vacuum fills. One must learn the mind, no mind.

By realizing that I am up in the chip count, I wonder if I should get out while ahead. As soon as that thought enters my head I start to lose. I need to learn to leave then.

OK so I got my butt kicked the Saturday. I was playing very well. I was catching cards and reading the situations correctly then I got to thinking I was bullet proof. I forgot that when someone is betting like they have a hand they often do. Not always by the way, I did catch a few hands in the cookie jar.

Still working on folding when I'm beat.

I also noticed that it seems easier to distiquish betting patterns online than in person. It tends to be quieter and I can concentrate more. That doesn't always help by the way.

Ya know when I finally get all this tweaked out. I should be a force to be reckoned with. I had hoped that I could do it in a couple of years now it looks like it may take longer.

I am working on not being quite so sticky. When someone is betting back at me or even calling large bets it's really time for me to consider that they might have something. It turns out that a set of 2's really will beat pocket rockets no matter how hard you shout or bet.

It's working too. I've laid down hands recently that I really didn't want to but if you want to survive in a tournement you gotta be willing to lay down the best hand sometimes. Course I've forced a couple of people to lay down their best hands too.

Sometimes it's nice to have an abundance of chips.

I just wish that when I bet the pot preflop more people would decide that maybe J7o wasn't such a great hand. That maybe I had something that could beat it. Course it's tough to beat it when the flop comes down 277. Grrrr.

Course people play a little tighter when there's money on the line.

So I'm also working on not going all in if at all possible.

And so it goes. Turns out poker really is a tough way to make an easy living.

Playing a little better this week. Still bluffing to much but folding more hands. Played at a table last night with a guy who was getting a little tired of me bluffing so much, mostly because I bluffed him off a side pot to my advantage but much to his disadvantage. He then proceeded to tell me what an idiot I was for bluffing so much. "And yet you still don't call" says I.

Of course the time when folks did call I had pocket Aces. Picked up a good pot there. Finally I said to him "If you don't like my bluffing wait til you see my donkey work." The next hand I had pocket 3 and he went allin with pocket 10, I called, for maybe 10% of my chips. I caught my set on the turn and he went out, got canned as they say over to http://poker.milbestlight.com.

It was sweet.

A word about http://www.milbestlight.com. I like playing there. It's free the play is improving but not much. I'm afraid I'm not helping that much. And they are still giving away a seat at the WSOP each week. That ends soon but I'm hoping that they will revive it when the stats come in. Especially if people move away from the other online sites that may be suffering from the recent legislation.

Been playing like a drunken sailor of late. I can see people have me beat. They are betting like they've got me beat and still I bet into them. fortunatly on Saturday I played against someone else who was having the same problem. He had himself convinced that he was unbeatable. He even put a bounty on his head for the first person to take him out of a game. So Saturday night was a freeroll after I took Doug out. Good thing to cause Fred kicked my butt.

Three handed tourney's are a bit out of my comfort zone. But I managed. Doug wasn't at his best and Fred was just sitting back and letting Doug and I go at it. I finally lost to Fred when it turned out he actually did pair the Ace on the flop and my pocket Jacks just weren't enough.

Well I am not sure at all what's happening with the new legislation. It's been suggested that even by pointing you to a sight that I'm an accessory to a crime. I hope not. But then I don't think that's a real problem for me right now.

But that's not what this is about. Did you ever have one of those weeks where you could do nothing wrong. All your bluffs worked. You had no bad beats. and all your draws went your way. And even when things went poorly you were so far ahead that it didn't matter. That was last week for me. I was patient. The cards went my way. I got lot's of respect from the other players. I was playing in a series of short tourneys at Milwaukee's best light sight for a chance at one of their WSOP seats. I was in like Flynn I was gonna play in their final the next day and I stopped playing to soon. I thought the count stopped at Midnight Saturday and it ended 6am Sunday and I missed by 800 points.

Which brings me to this week. I started by playing like a drunken sailor. Fortunately I stopped what was quickly becoming a trainwreck. Yesterday I played slightly better but I wasn't waiting long enough for the cards and when I did bad beats abound. Same today. I raise up the pot by 1.5 times and somebody with a 64 suited decides he wants to play because he's in position. I hit the K on my AK on the flop and come in with a big raise again. This guy hits his 4 and decides to stay in the turn comes down an A I go all in, this should be a major clue for this guy and he calls and hits the trip four on the river. This is how my week is going.

What should I learn from this. Continue to be patient. The reason my bluffs worked last week is that I only played quality cards.