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	BACCARAT BLACKJACK CRAPS KENO POKER ROULETTE SLOTS FEATURES How to Play Three-Card Poker Secrets of the Stars' Home Game "How I Won the World Series of Poker" Nicole Sullivan: "How I Won Celeb Poker" Beating the New Slot Machines Play "Sexy Showgirls" Slots COLUMNS Travels with Dick The latest in tours and specials Hot Bets Tips from our SportsBook expert Club Queen Celeb-hopping the sizzling night scene Poker Hand How would you play it?	Lights! Camera! Action! The first thing students learn when they begin to study Hold 'Em is that they must play tightly before the flop if they want to be long-term winners. Hand rankings in this game are anything but egalitarian: The few very good hands win almost all the money; most of the other hands--the average and below-average hands--are all losers. Unfortunately, a tight preflop mentality tends to cause some players to be unwilling to gamble even on their good hands. They are loath to put in an extra raise or two with strong hands, fearing that they will miss the flop or that someone will outdraw them. They wait for a lock before putting in any raises. Poker is a gambling game. The best players all have a healthy lust for action. They avoid the trashy, unprofitable hands--but when they get one with strong winning chances, they pounce. They don't wait for a sure thing; all they need is an edge. This month, we play expert poker and indulge our inner action junkies at the same time. After a rough week at work, you decided that you needed a release. So you hopped a plane to the City of Action, Los Angeles, for two days of nonstop, heart-pounding, pots-bigger-than-your-head poker. For the wildest (and most profitable) Hold 'Em, there is no place better than L.A. With hundreds of thousands of immigrants and aspiring actors (among others) who have nothing but dreams of getting rich, there are few afraid of a little gambling. You drive to one of your favorite card rooms, a huge circus tent of a building jammed wall-to-wall with tables. The clatter of shuffled chips and the smell of loose money overcome you as you step through the door. You may not win today, but you are definitely going to have a good time. No waiting for you. The brush points you to a $4-$8 table across the room, where you find what must be a $200 pot being pushed to a kid in seat six wearing a USC cap backwards chanting: "Ship it! Ship it!" You survey the rest of the table: To the left of USC cap are two Asian guys who look to be in their late 20s, one with a shaved head. On their left is an Asian woman, about 50, with two enormous 10-carat topaz rings, one on each hand, and intricately painted two-inch-long fingernails. On the other side of the table in seat four is an enormously fat man with a long, scraggly beard--he is straddling his chair backwards, hunched over, intently eyeing the Asian lady across the table. To his right are two men in their 40s chattering in Vietnamese. Though you don't understand the words, you are pretty sure that the one in seat three is unhappy with the series of events that led to a $200 pot being pushed to the kid in the USC cap. Finally, in seat one is a woman in her mid-60s with one lonely stack of about 30 chips. She is running her fingers up and down along the edges of the chips, making sure that they are all perfectly aligned. You plop down in seat five and post $4 behind the button. Three players limp to you, and you look down at KQ. What should you do? A. Check. King-queen suited is a drawing hand that plays better multiway. You don't want to scare out the button and blinds with a raise. B. Check. Since so many have already entered the pot, your raise can't get anyone to fold. You are better off waiting for the flop to knock people out. C. Raise. King-queen suited is a strong hand that is a big favorite over a bunch of loose limpers. With a hand this strong, it doesn't really matter much who calls and who folds. You will win significantly more than your share of the pots, so it's time to gamble! D. Raise. If you raise, you might force the button to fold, allowing you to act last on all betting rounds. Also, you put pressure on the blinds and limpers. Some of them might fold, and then you can think about stealing the pot on the flop. Ed Miller is a professional Hold 'Em player in Las Vegas. His new book, Small Stakes Hold 'Em: Winning Big with Expert Play, co-authored with David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, is available from Two Plus Two Press. You can contact him on the forums at http://www.twoplustwo.com/.
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