It's all about poker!

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OK...... ya know, I have played Poker at times in the past, but I never seriously got into it. But I'd love to; especially what with all the variations of it (the only I know well is the 5-card stud)

Who here can teach me the other games, and who here likes playing this exciting card game?

I'm more of a Blackjack kind of fan... or whatever you call it.
Though I don't mind Texas Hold 'Em either which is a variation of Poker.
In fact, you could watch a Red Dead Redemption Video on YouTube on Texas Hold 'Em and Blackjack to get an idea of how it works.

I Love Texas Hold 'Em. Can't say I'm a fan of Blackjack, though.

I also enjoy a bit of Texas Hold 'Em and Blackjack. Not played either in a while though.

It is pretty tough to teach someone how to play poker without being there IRL. I played poker daily for about eight months about 40 years ago. I was good but my weakness was reading other peoples cues. Not surprising for an aspie.

There are really three elements to the game.
1. Knowing the odds of each hand in a given situation. You can pretty much pick them up by reading books. I remember a long time ago the book that helped me most was Oswald Jacoby's book. I think it was simply called Poker.
2. the second element is money management. You must learn how to play in such a way that you never waste a chip or get involved in a situation where your going to have to defend a weak hand with significant money. I played table stakes, which is "no limit" poker although you can never lose more than what you have in front of you on the table. Money management is very important. You need to play "tight" in most games most of the time.
3. The third element is the one aspies will have trouble with. You need to be able to both read other people and to also not do anything that allows them to read you. It is why I gave up playing poker everyday and I never looked back. I could handle the psychology but not reading the non-verbal cues.

What I do instead is trade in the stock and commodity markets. It involves the same three elements.
1. understanding when a trade is advantageous.
2. Money management, also known as position sizing. and
3. Psychology. But in trading there is no need to read non-verbal cues. What you need to do instead is read the psychology of the markets and determine whether fear or greed is the predominant current emotion. There is more to it but in a nutshell there are cycles in emotions which sometimes drive the movement of prices.

The beauty of the stock market vs.poker is it plays into the aspie's strengths not their weakness. You need to find patterns in the price movements and understand them well enough to extract money by trading. We are good at detecting patterns and we are also good at controlling our emotions. Trading needs to be done on the basis of logic and reason. Avoiding fear and greed is important. Most aspies do not like risk and if you are not comfortable with risk then trading is not a good idea. For some peculiar reason risk never bothered me.

I just noticed your San Diego Charger atavar. When I played everyday i was living in San Diego and played in Ocean Beach. I used to go to the Beach and wait for the card rooms to open. Then I would play until they closed and we would head to the bars for a while. When I wasn't playing poker I used to ride my dirt bike around town. This was in 1974 before San Diego was built up. There were all kinds of open places in the middle of town where you could ride a dirt bike back then. It was a fun life for a while.

The one I always loved was Omaha hi/lo

Correction: It's all about Poker Night at the Inventory.

(OK, just... disregard this post...)

I could use the learn to wikis........ I've done well with those.

There;s a great website from 2+2 Publishing, which publishes some of the best poker books. There are forums for every form of poker, many oriented to online play, which we can no longer do much of in the US. If you're looking to learn NL Holdem, the forums on that game are actually more informative than most books in print on the game. Another resource is Cardplayer magazine, although their books are not quite as good as 2+2.