There's an awful lot of poker on the television these days. If you wanted to you could probably watch poker on the TV almost round the clock and the big events like the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker receive massive coverage.
Poker is great to watch on TV, it is about psychology and people more than it's about the cards and so it attracts a large percentage of non-players. People love watching other people in real situations and poker is the latest reality TV craze.
The apparent simplicity of Texas Holdem draws the TV audience and holds them, like all great games and sports it is incredibly simple to understand but extremely difficult to master. Everyone from teenagers to grannies can work out the basics – three of something beats two of them! It's only a short step to fill in the other hands on the ranking table.
TV Texas Holdem also has a very powerful addictiveness about it. Very quickly you will start to like some players more than others, in some cases people will become fans of certain players and follow their progress. If you start watching early on in a tournament, poker has the ability to hold the attention in such a way that you need to stick with it until the end to see who wins.
OK you're asking, but how will that make me wealthy?
Well, remember all of these non-players who start watching poker on the TV and get hooked by it's sheer entertainment value? Very soon some of them will be saying the four little magic words to themselves, the four words that will make you money.
“I can do that!”
Yes of course they want to join in. After all it looks so easy when the professionals raise all-in with a Jack high and steal the pot on a complete bluff against two pairs. What they don't realise is that it takes years of practise to develop the instinct to know when they can bluff like that. The other point they miss is that TV will edit out the majority of hands and will give a distorted view of the play, it will look like these big bluffs can be pulled off every two or three hands!
Position is of course the other great unknown to the new player. Again to create a more exciting spectacle for the viewer, there is a disproportionate amount of heads up play shown on TV. The non-player absorbs this and takes two false impressions from it, one that you should see the flop almost every hand, and secondly that a good heads up hand is a good hand in any circumstance.
So along come these rookies to the internet tables, full of hope and expectation. They've watched Phil Hellmuth take a big heads up pot with pocket Queen Seven and thinks it is OK to call with it when he's first in to play in a 10 player tournament.
This is very good news for you if you've played internet Texas Holdem poker for any length of time at all. All these novices entering the arena on a daily basis eager to try out the new found skills that they've learned from the TV means rich pickings for you.
And it's not going to stop anytime soon. TV poker coverage is getting bigger all the time, and every time Texas Holdem is shown, another new “expert” is born!
About the Author
Article by Ian McIntosh of
www.Love-Texas-Holdem.com. Check out the site for all the latest information on poker tournaments and
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