Not all of us have the time or the patience to read books, and we all learn in different ways.  Everyone learns by doing, of course, but not everyone learns by reading.  When it comes to learning poker, all you really need to do is get a video game version of poker and learn that way.  Poker DVDs offer a great way to allow you to learn with an audio/visual presentation that lets you see things in action as they happen, which can then help you apply what you see on television during poker tournaments and in real life.  While some are better than others, Beat the Pros DVD is one of the best you can watch if you’re already familiar with poker.  Beat the Pros is presented by poker author Ken Warren and World Poker Tour co-host Vince Van Patten, as it shows you the ins and outs of successful strategies for Texas Holdem Poker to apply against seasoned amateurs and professionals alike wherever you play.  At the very least, Beat the Pros gives you a benchmark to assess your own skills so that you know what to develop and focus on as you play.  DVDs like Beat the Pros will be one of the more essential parts of your poker supplies that’ll keep you in the game as long as you can, knowing when to go all in or when to fold and why.  After all, you want to win, and if you’re not winning you’re probably not going to play as often as you’d like. 

Okay, so you’ve made it.  You’ve played thousands upon thousands of hands, read all the poker books, studied from the masters, and played against some of the best in the world.  You’re at least in the top 500 of poker players in the world, and now what?  Now you want to make it to the World Series of Poker for a multi-million dollar jackpot, but there’s a problem.  The game is different at this level.  Way different.  Everything you’ve learned and applied doesn’t seem to work here.  In fact, it’s almost counter-intuitive.  You feel like you’re bluffing on hands you know ought to win, and even that sometimes doesn’t pan out as well as you’d like.  At this level of play it comes down to logistics and attrition, and sometimes it’s mostly about how long you can last before deciding to go all in and hope for the best.  But how do you last, and how do you win at this level?  Doyle Brunson’s Super System 2 – A Course in Power Poker tells you how to win.  At this point everything has to be unlearned and relearned and applied in different ways, and Doyle Brunson can help you out with that.  It may be that you already have this book in your collection, along with your other poker supplies, but it never hurts to take another look.  At some point you may realize that it’s time to change your play, or your act.  Maybe a little boldness here and there may be just the ticket to success against players who are, in one way or another, armchair psychologists studying everyone they play against.  You are never too old to learn, so the saying goes, and at this elite level, you might need to refresh yourself from time to time. 

So you may be pretty handy and fancy with shuffling the cards.  That’s great.  Unfortunately not everyone is as good as you, so that means they sift the cards willy-nilly hoping for some semblance of randomness when all they’ve done is move the previous pattern around, so that you and the others see the same cards show up in the next hand of Texas Holdem.  That is not good.  In fact, it’s a wasted hand, and a wasted ante.  Because when people generally have a better idea of what the patterns are based on the cards revealed during play, they may either bet on that or just fold rather than be a sucker to someone else’s knowledge.  That’s real money being lost.  What’s more, there’s time.  Folks that can’t shuffle cards too well might take a lot of time doing it.  Even if you’ve got a full-time dealer you want to go from hand to hand quickly whether he’s good at shuffling or not.  Mechanical card shufflers will handle the job for you quickly and easily, throwing in enough randomization to throw off the patterns made from the previous hand.  There are lots of card shufflers for various kinds of games, but a standard Texas Holdem Card Shuffler is perfect for any poker game, doing the job quick and easy.  Just give the deck a sift, cut it, and put both cuts in either slot and let her rip.  A good card shuffler should be standard equipment in anyone’s poker supplies and you’ll be glad to have one.  The downside is that you won’t get to show off your card tricks. 

It’s easy to get started in poker.  Learn the rules, read a few poker books, play a few hands, and in no time you’ll figure out the basics enough to get hooked.  Then you start playing for real stakes, and get a feel of how much the adrenaline affects and the real costs of success and failure affect the way you play.  Advanced play means learning how to control your mood and mask your emotions so as to prevent telegraphing your tells to your opponents.  It’s at this point that many amateur poker players run into a brick wall.  They’ve been playing enough to know how to break more than even but they want to make the big money, the kind where you end up living a whole year or so off the winnings without working.  Such tournaments are not easy to get into and almost always require preliminary elimination rounds to weed out the wheat from the chaff.  Fortunately, with Win Your Way Into Big Money Holdem Tournaments by Tom McElvoy, you’ll learn what it takes to get in and succeed.  Tom McElvoy shows you how to enter mini-tournaments, called satellites, and turn a small chunk of winnings into a million dollar prize with winning strategies that will get you into higher brackets and on the road to a fortune.  McElvoy turned a $39 winning hand into a $2.5 million dollar prize with his strategies and you can do.  This book is an indispensible guide to your reading library, integral to any player’s poker supplies, and should be referred to almost religiously if you’re tired of playing for small change here and there. 

When you develop your game room, you might want to consider décor.  Rooms can be more than just rooms to put stuff in.  As you know they can be made in ways that convey experiences strong and subtle to what you want that room to evoke.  When it comes to a game room, you don’t have to think about Roman columns and concepts out of Feng Shui but you should have a good sense of what you want to experience when you walk in your game room.  What do you expect to play in there?  Video games?  Board games? Or poker?  If you’re interested in poker, and you want to play for actual money, that means you want a room that’s geared more for grown-ups than for children.  Starting with your table, you want something that has the look and feel of an authentic poker room.  Poker tables like the Full Size Texas Holdem Blue Felt Poker Table give you that kind of mature feel you want for your room.  The blue felt softens the light from overhead lamps, making it easier on the eyes, and each station is marked with a handy cup holder.  Since tables can be the centerpiece of a room it’ll dictate the kind of items that maintain the overall theme.  Chairs, artwork, bars and bar sets and lighting and everything else ought to complement the table you’ve chosen.  Select your poker supplies that go with the look you’ve established and you’ll be pleased with the results. 

So you’ve got a poker room in your basement, you play with a few friends and you smoke, drink, and play for money.  Playing among your water heater, washer and dryer and where you store your stuff might be quaint for awhile, but it gets old.  It won’t be long until your friends might start looking to real poker rooms and casinos, and that means less money they’ll bring when they come back to play at your table.  You need to build up your poker room with poker supplies that’ll add comfort, seriousness, and authenticity that they’re looking for.  You should start with your poker chips.  Plastic poker chips are fine initially, but you want to upgrade to real, clay casino style chips like a set of 1000 World Tophat and Cane Paulson Chips with Aluminum Case.  A good set like this is a great start to updating your room with chips that have heft and feel that comes with quality that your fellow players will be impressed with.  Little things here and there along with the big things such a good felt table will keep your players interested and coming back for more and more action.  That feeling of going into a real card parlor is important.  It’s authentic and it means a great deal; they may not say so, out of courtesy of course, but watch what happens when you lay these poker chips on them.  Then ask them if they’d rather go back to the old plastic chips.   How would you feel about it?  A little bit of authenticity will be appreciated all around. 

This is the 21^st Century, so yes you can play poker without playing cards if you have a computer system.  But there is something about playing poker on a machine that is lost in the translation from the table, and that is the human element.  Some who play poker with others online may be able to say they can bluff their opponent, but how do you read a tell off an icon?   You might be able to figure out a pattern of play from an online persona, but it’s not quite the same as figuring out an actual person’s tells, live, right there in person.  It’s an important dimension of the game that is difficult to simulate even with the latest in computer graphics.  So do yourself a favor and play real people with real cards and with real money.  When you do you might as well buy a good set of cards such as the Modiano 100% Plastic Poker Size 4 Index Red Single Deck.  This robust deck of cards are tough and washable, able to withstand hundreds of hours of play and repeated shuffles without losing their slick, fresh out of the box feel.  With a good set of cards, chips, and other poker supplies you can play poker as it was meant to be played, with real people for real stakes, with real psychology in play that makes poker the game it is.  Keep the virtual poker around to practice when you can’t be at your poker room, but remember that it’s not close enough to the real thing.   

It’s inevitable.  With the popularity of poker in its various forms, you’ll eventually have more and more people than you can handle with your own meager table, so you’ll have to consider getting a new table.  Or at least, something nicer than the one you have.  Something with green felt like the ones at the casino that allows you to move cards and chips in a nice, smooth way that doesn’t wear out either as a typical table cloth might, or, even worse, wood.  Poker tables come in a wide range of design, so it might be a bit daunting to consider what you want.  How about this Full Size Texas Holdem Green Felt Poker Table 83 x 44?  Complete with a padded cushion with ten cup holders at each equidistant position will give you and your players something to look forward to when you hold your next session.  Best of all, the legs are foldable, which means you can store this table or take it with you anywhere you’d like.  Football season is fast approaching; imagine playing poker at a tailgating party.  You’ll surely turn heads at the parking lot when they see you all slinging chips and cards around before the big game.  Food, drinks, football and poker are an excellent combination that sounds downright civilized.  A good poker table such as this is standard among any cache of poker supplies; after all if you don’t have a good table you’ll end up playing on the floor, and that’s no fun.

When you’re considering the nature of the décor of your own poker habitat, you ought to consider the artwork.  Depending on the motif you’re trying for, whether it’s an old western approach or perhaps something a bit extravagant similar to that of a full-fledged casino, you want artwork that captures the very essence of the mood you’re going for.   Perhaps what you might be looking for is an experience of maturity when you walk into your poker room.  Naturally placing a canvas of dogs playing poker probably doesn’t give you that kind of feeling, and seeing scantily clad women adorning the walls isn’t too classy either.  After all, you’ll probably have women playing and it’s better that everyone comes to a place that’s especially comfortable but not dainty that men couldn’t enjoy themselves in either.  Poker art such as the Opal – Extra Large Artwork is just the kind of thing to set the mood you’re after.  Featuring a finely dressed man lighting up an Opal cigarette against a black backdrop with only the match illuminating his face, this exquisite reproduction of the original, right down to the brush strokes, gives your poker room a very jazz, night club feel that ought to go well with similar artwork.  It conveys a serious, mature mood, a way of enjoying an indulgence or two in moderation that is the mark of maturity and poise.  Artwork that captures the very mood and motif you’re after for your room is as essential as the poker supplies you play with, and should not be overlooked. 

Learning how to play poker is easy.  Mastering the game is not.  Needless to say it takes a lot of commitment, but it also helps to learn how other professionals have played the game before.  Sure, you’ll read various poker books that tell you how to calculate the odds of certain hands appearing, know the various mechanics and strategies of the various different kinds of poker to play, and watch them all play out on television.  This is all well and good, but have you picked up and read about the exploits from poker professionals about how they play the hands they have, win or lose?  If not, then you should consider doing so.  Phil Gordon’s Little Blue Book is a treasure for any poker player to have.  In this book, Phil Gordon tells you how he applied the theories and strategies he learned and developed in various hands throughout his career.  It delves into the mind of a world-class poker player in a way not too unlike the way a memoir of a famous military commander reveals the thought processes behind his every campaign.  In the Little Blue Book you begin to see parallels you can draw from your own experience in ways that you’ll be able to apply in the future when similar situations arise, and more importantly you’ll know how to anticipate them.  Knowledge is certainly Power, but applied Wisdom is twice the Power.  Having this book among your own personal library and poker supplies is essential for any poker professional, and ought to be dog-eared and annotated thoroughly, with fresher copies on hand when the old ones wear out from use.