Dealing out hands to yourself for practice

A trick or tip that is stupid but gave me some insight was to take a deck of cards and deal out different tables sizes and then look at each set of hole cards in order to see what you should do. It also allows you to get a look at what hands get dealt.

I started this experiment when I was new to the game and did not understand why it was ok to raise with KJ suited just before the button and fold when first to act. So I dealt out a table of 10 hands over and over again to see what would happen and then looked at the hands everyone got. Then to whole idea of position made more sense.

I did it again recently. I started with heads up and worked my way up to a full table of 8 to 10 people. Sounds boring but looking all starting hands for a table of 10 gave some insights into what everyone possible could be holding and some traps that happen when two monster hands collide.

P.S. was reminded of this by looking at the battleplan thread started by KJ Start with a battleplan!

What a GREAT way to practice! I think I will try it out for Omaha as we just started a weekly live game for it. THANKS for the wonderful idea!

I have been doing this exact same thing since I began playing poker. I believe I have become a better poker player just playing by myself. I thought it was a little weird but now I know Im not the only one.

Lol
Jonathon

That idea sounds nice, i used to do it with a little something else, after dealing all the hands i would deal the flop, and i would sit behin the cards, and begin to count outs, back door potentials , and to calculate all available odds against the other hands, then i would get to the other hand and repeat this process, this might sound like a waste of time, but it turned my little baby poker mind in a RAZOR SHARP MATH ASSASSIN MIND and when you sit down to play, this helps up, because you can calculate at some incredible speed , it evens feels fun ( by the way , i used to play chess at a high competitive level , maybe this crave for calculation comes from there ) . You know what you can even do , sit with a friend and make a situation for example, Suppose im with BOB ( a fictional player ) and i tell him , bob you and me we have [7d8d] and flop is [Kc5d6d] lets see who can come up with the outs faster ( 7 outs for the flush, 6outs for the straight, 2 outs for a straight flush . You have like 32% chance of hitting ) stuff like that ^_^ to keep that poker mind fresh and running