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The best Poker hand then takes the pot. If a player makes a bet or a raise that no other player calls, they win the pot without showing their hand. Thus, in Poker, there is a bluffing element, and the best combination of cards does not always win the pot! Bluffing is one of the key reasons why Poker. List of poker hands is a former featured list candidate.Please view the link under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. Once the objections have been addressed you may resubmit the article for featured list status.: This article appeared on Wikipedia's.

With less than 150 players remaining during the late afternoon on Sunday on day 5 of the 2015 World Series of Poker main event, the only former winner of the tournament still alive was Jim Bechtel, who took gold in the 1993 no-limit hold’em championship.

The 63-year-old doesn’t play much poker these days, but he didn’t miss a chance this summer to search for his third career main event final table.

“I played a lot of poker when I was young,” Bechtel told Card Player during a break. “I haven’t played that much over the past 10 years. There is not a game in Arizona that suits me, at the level or limits I like to play in. I don’t like to travel, so I don’t play a lot.”

What’s especially cool about Bechtel’s run this year is that he hadn’t recorded a cash at the WSOP since 2006. Bechtel last cashed in the main event in 2001.

Bechtel still loves poker, but he doesn’t agree with rules that prohibit players from talking about their holdings during a live hand, even if heads-up. Card Player spoke to him about his tournament run so far, as well as his criticism toward how poker has evolved over the years.

Brian Pempus: How is your day five going so far?

Jim Bechtel: Well, I could have gone broke the first hand [of the day] but I only lost about half my chips. My opponent flopped a set and I had aces in the hole. I did all the betting. He never raised. Had he put a bet in I would have probably moved in. So, I am on a freeroll. It feels good to still be here.

Rules To Poker

BP: Can you talk about how you’ve seen this tournament grow over the years?

JB: Well, there were 6,400 people and probably half of those players are excellent poker players. Most of them are very aggressive, and it’s tough to get through. There might be 1,000 weak players in this tournament when it starts, but there’s at least 3,000 very good players.

BP: What kind of table image do you have? Do people usually give you credit because you are a former main event champion?

JB: I don’t think these good players get intimidated, they play their hand, they play their game. So, there are some players who this helps with, who want to try to beat someone who has a reputation or a bracelet. Sometimes this can be an advantage for me.

BP: One thing often talked about is the amount of tanking in tournament poker these days. Is this something you have an issue with at times?

JB: Well, I am surprised that the tankers weren’t all that bad in this tournament. There were a few who I thought tanked too long. I think it’s better today than it was two or three years ago. I don’t think it makes a lot sense for some people to tank like they do. The great players I’ve always played with know almost instantly what they’re going to do. When guys freeze up and want to take five minutes, what the hell are they trying to figure out? They are going to come to the same conclusion that they had in the first 15 seconds, in my opinion.

BP: In the early 1990s, when you won the main event, did the game move a lot quicker?

JB: Yeah, the game was quick. There were tough decisions where people did tank, but these situations were humorous because people could talk. You had the banter. Now they won’t let you talk about the hands. Back in the old days, when they tanked, guys would talk to each other. It made a big difference. They should allow that in [the 2015 main event] and allow people to show cards. The game would be a lot more fun. Guys say a lot of funny things when they are in these spots with the money in. For whatever reason it has been outlawed. If you want to see some good poker on TV, allow talking during hands. You’ll see the characters in poker. It’s stupid that if a guy wants to show a card he can’t. If he wants to, fine, let him show it. It’s the way we always had played it.

BP: If you were to reach the final table in November, would that be pretty surreal to make it again in this era of poker?

JB: The magnitude of 6,400 people, it’s actually hard to imagine that nine get through. When you take three buildings as big as football fields and fill them up for three separate [starting] days, that’s a lot of people to get through. Nine guys will though. They will all be good players. There will be nine great players there. I guarantee it.

For more coverage from the summer series, visit the 2015 WSOP landing page, complete with a full schedule, news, player interviews and event recaps.

Some things are unequivocally bad for poker. Cheating. Tanking for routine, inconsequential decisions. And slow rolling.

Some things are unequivocally good for poker, like loads of new players coming into the game or, at some point, the availability of online poker throughout the United States.

And some things are more mixed. Take, for example, talking at the table in a brick-and-mortar card room.

Live poker is social, which means conversations will be (and should be) taking place. And in an era where most people are transfixed by their smart phones, face-to-face human interaction — also known by the formal term of “chatting” — must surely be a good thing, for poker and for humanity.

And it is. But not unequivocally so.

Discussing the weather, the movie you saw last night, the basketball game that’s going on right this minute while you’re playing $1/2 no-limit hold’em, even politics (within reason)... all of these subjects are perfectly fine to talk about and a great way to enjoy the game while you’re not in the middle of a hand.

But other kinds of talking are bad, ranging from that which is explicitly forbidden by the rules of the game to that which is (merely) bad poker table manners to that which is bad for the game in a more far-reaching sense.

Sitting atop the list of table talk “don’ts,” talking about a hand in progress is completely taboo. Whether you are in the hand or out of it, do not speculate about your opponents’ holdings in a way that gives anyone information. Do not provide a play-by-play on the community cards or the action.

I know a guy who routinely says cringe-worthy things like “Uh-oh, three spades. I smell Mr. Flushy!” Yes, you’re right to be embarrassed for him.

When you talk about the flop, you give players information to which they’re not entitled, thereby violating the one player per hand rule. You could easily “lose” a hand for another player — not cool!

Asking legitimate questions out of turn is also a no-no. Asking “How much do you have behind?” when there are three active players to your right is also not cool. At best, it’s bad etiquette; at worst, it’s shooting an angle. Even saying “Dealer, how much is the bet?” is crossing the line when there are players yet to act in front of you.

These concepts definitely apply to multi-way situations. In heads-up pots, the rules are relaxed, but some card rooms and tournaments do not allow chatting about the contents of your hand even then.

Rules For A Poker Run

Criticizing players before, during, or after a hand is also off-limits. Most rooms have rules about abusive behavior, but it’s “legal” to say snide or smarmy comments like “Keep playing that hand, buddy” or “How on earth did you call four bets with 8-5 suited?” And plenty of players are much more venomous than that when it comes to their opponents (“you freakin’ donkey!”).

Isn’t it obvious by now that berating players is not just rude but also unprofitable? In fact, it is unprofitable in two ways. For one, it might encourage your opponents to start playing better right then. And secondly, it certainly discourages recreational players from coming back to the card room at all. No one likes to be berated, and it will never add to their enjoyment of the game.

Castigating a player or his play is simply indefensible.

In the same vein, talking poker strategy at the table is also a bad idea. Obviously, talking strategy is not against the rules (except, of course, during a hand). But why would you advertise to your opponents (1) how much you know about the game or (2) how you play?

I’ll tell you why players do it: Because they want to be seen as smart. Trust me, if that’s important to you, try to start a conversation about Martin Heidegger or Winston Churchill or string theory. But don’t talk poker in a way that shows you know what you’re doing.

Talking strategy is one of the great pleasures of poker life, but do it away from the table.

Along the same lines, justifying your action post-river is poor form. “But I was in the big blind!” “Pot odds!” You’ll hear pleas like that from time to time when someone sucks out and is stacking a big pot with a chagrined-but-happy smile on his face. There’s no need to explain anything at the poker table. You want chips, not a shiny star for effort.

And finally, if you do talk poker — strategy, tactics, theory — know it well enough to learn the lingo and sound convincing. I still think talking about strategy at the table is a foolish idea, but some of you will want to engage on the subject with your opponents. So take Robert Woolley’s advice from earlier this week in his article “Why the Words We Use Matter in Poker” and learn the buzzwords, the jargon, and the concepts well enough to be coherent.

As the old adage puts it (generally attributed to Mark Twain), “Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.”

Poker — live poker at any rate — is fundamentally a social game, and if you spend much time at the table, you will engage in conversations all the time, some of them surprisingly interesting and entertaining (and some, sadly, mind-numbingly boring and distracting).

But keep the poker talk to a minimum, in keeping with the rules of the game and everyone’s shared mission of bringing more people into the game.

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