Undisciplined Players

[Terremoto]

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In the earliest rounds, with or without raises, in or out of best position, should I play Kx? I used to, but I don't any more and of course there's a king in the flop.

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You will fold the winning hand quite often in poker. Playing Kx or even Ax from any position (but especially oop), can get you into trouble when you hit it on the flop. You can easily be outkicked.

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If I have Ax, and the table is, for example, 3-7-3-4-9, and it's checked to the river around to me, is someone slow-playing, or if I put a raise in will I take the pot?

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It really depends, someone could be slowplaying a strong hand, hit 2nd pair, or have nothing with a missed draw. More info. about how the hand played out would help. When you say "checked around", it sounds like there are several players in the hand, so I'd proceed carefully and most likely would check having hit nothing, and be happy if my A kicker took it.

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In another place I played a non-dealing player would reach over and count the chips to see.

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I could be wrong, but that sounds like a big no-no. Some home games can be fairly loose with the rules, and I don't like to be a nit, but technically I believe you can't even ask for a count of the pot. In the nlhe home game I play in, I sometimes lose track of the size of the pot and just eyeball it. I can usually come up with a reasonably accurate count by staring with the larger denomination chips and working my way through it. It doesn't have to be exact, just close enough that you're bet size accomplished what you meant.

[Jobo]

oi, you know i've been playing at an infrequent home game with a bunch of loose aggressive hieniken-drinking vietnamese... your tourney peers sound suspiciously like some of these fellows! when i began playing with them i was an absolute poker-n00b that landed on the losing end of things after every night of playing "you know the next cards gonna be?? NO? me neither! ALL-IN!! hahahaaha!". then i grabbed a couple books.

a few months later... well, i'm still no pro at this game, and i make crazy mistakes all the time, especially online, but against these loud laughing Viet. i have one helluva good time now that i've learned how to fold appropriately, and how to bet big when i hit the flop to eat all their chips.

my best night to date was just last weekend, i made a nice little folding octagon poker table and brought it out for its debut. 3$ buy-in/re-buy for 40 chips, 1&2 chip blinds, and at the end of a couple hours i was up $80!

hyper-loose-aggressive players are your best friends! play slightly-tight very-aggressive for the first rounds until you chipstack can take a good hit, then loosen your PF hand-selection quite a bit, call those crazy early raises with your spare chips and then punish them when you hit the flop. you didn't hit? fold, cuz you can't win with a bluff against these fellers. fold, and dont worry that you called a 3$ all-in. you've a huge stack to be liberal with and that lets you play more hands and win more hands. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]