”If you can’t spot the sucker in your first half-hour at the table, then you are the sucker.”
When Matt Damon isn’t stuck on Mars, he has been known to frequent the poker tables, as he memorably did as Mike McDermott in the poker cult-classic Rounders. His line quoted above is one of several familiar pieces of strategy advice in the film. But how do you go about spotting the “sucker”? Or, to put it a nicer way, how do you recognize the beginner at your table?
I like to put beginners into two categories — the competent beginner, and the amateur beginner.