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Some Ridiculously Simple Poker Basics
Posted by Alan November 22, 2010

Now that Poker Night at the Inventory is here there's sure to be some perfecting of poker skills. I'll admit, I've never, ever, played a single hand of poker of any kind in my life. I've also been doing just fine in today's release, thanks to some of the tips the team put into the game - including a handy poker hands guide! 

Now, I did go into Poker Night with a very low-level knowledge of card values, suits, and details like that so having a bit of that under your belt doesn't hurt. There's some poker jargon though that takes a bit of getting used to, and thanks to a number of online poker glossaries, I present you some key terms to know while playing.

Blind - A blind is the bet that the first two players must put down before seeing any of their cards. The small blind is placed by the first player and the big blind is placed by the second player at the table. The blind positions rotate as players drop out of a game so you're not always stuck playing 'blind'.

Fold - Folding is to concede defeat on your hand and forfeit the money you've already put into the pot. 

Call - Putting the same amount of money into the pot that everyone else already has is calling. 

Check - Checking is when nobody's bet before you and you don't bet anything.

Bluff - Since your opponents can't see you, this is a bit easier in Poker Night at the Inventory. Placing a large bet on your hand, even if you don't have great cards is a good way to get other players at the table to fold. They might be convinced that you have excellent cards and thus, no chance at besting your cards with theirs. Of course, they might call your bluff and continuing raising the stakes, which would be a problem for you if they actually have better cards. 

Raise - To place a bet that's higher than the last person's. 

Do you want a larger version of that poker hand chart? You can find it in the help menus in Poker Night itself as well as right here (You can also click the image above for it). If you need a little more assistance, there's a handy dandy poker tip guide right in the game. Just click the 'question mark' button that appears when it's your turn to bet, call, or fold. 

What's your favorite part about Poker Night at the Inventory?

Tagged Poker Night at the Inventory, Random
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Yes! Poker Night's out!
Comment by crashboy765
November 22, 2010, 3:07 pm
Will it be on the Telltale website? Or only Steam?
Comment by mathman77
November 22, 2010, 3:11 pm
Um... it's not out via Telltale yet.
Comment by ChrisLaughlin
November 22, 2010, 3:28 pm
WTF is up the graphics? It looks like it was rendered in PS1 era FMV!
Comment by Giaccomino
November 22, 2010, 3:30 pm
Its isnt on my list yet.
Comment by koiboi59
November 22, 2010, 3:57 pm
Hurry up, Telltale. The anticipation is killing me
Comment by Keyblader1
November 22, 2010, 4:03 pm
I did not link my game to Steam (can't access it on my school firewall), and it hasnt shown up n my Telltale list yet either. Something wrong?
Comment by divisionten
November 22, 2010, 4:07 pm
What's your favorite part about Poker Night at the Inventory?

Colorful commentary from my esteemed opponents... and WINSLOW!!!!!!
Comment by Irishmile
November 22, 2010, 4:10 pm
Why is this post up when the game hasn't even been released yet? What's going on?
Comment by WaitingForInventory
November 22, 2010, 4:20 pm
Steam customers got it 2 hours ago.
Comment by divisionten
November 22, 2010, 4:21 pm
So people who preordered from Telltale get left in the dust? Classy.
Comment by WaitingForInventory
November 22, 2010, 4:24 pm
You can link it to your Steam account for free. I can't access Steam on my college campus. It's blocked ten ways to Sunday.
Comment by divisionten
November 22, 2010, 4:29 pm
That's just completely untrue.

http://www.telltalegames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=20211

Sorry about the Steam block on the campus, that really sucks.
Comment by WaitingForInventory
November 22, 2010, 4:35 pm
I apologize, divisionten - you were completely correct.
Comment by WaitingForInventory
November 22, 2010, 4:38 pm
thank you alan, i guess i will focus on this later, scinse i preorder poker nigth at the inventory, and is ther on my list of games, but didnt appiers as i can download it :(
Comment by gilau
November 22, 2010, 4:39 pm
For those of you that care, TT's website has opened up for downloads now, too.
Comment by divisionten
November 22, 2010, 4:48 pm
yey, naw i can focus on this, i have a steam account, but the last time i downladed on steam it tuck to mush, so as i usually have more luck on TT ^^ i will dawnload it from telltale. ^^
Comment by gilau
November 22, 2010, 4:58 pm
Doesn't the blind rotate every hand, not just when someone drops out?
Comment by Alan
November 22, 2010, 6:34 pm
This game is TERRIBLE.

1) If you have more chips then your oppoent, eg you have 20,000 and they have 10,000, and you go all in, then they call. If you lose YOU LOSE 20,000 chips. POKER DOES NOT WORK LIKE THIS. I had 25,000 chips and went all in preflop. I was called by Max and The Heavy. Each player had around 10,000 chips. I ended up losing the hand, I had trip jacks and the heavy hit a 4 flush on the turn with AK. I lost ALL my chips and was eliminated. COMPLETE CRAP!! PLEASE LEARN HOW TO BUILD PROPER POKER GAMES. IN NO POKER GAME I'VE EVER PLAYED CAN SOMEONE WIN MORE THAN THEY'RE ALL IN FOR.

2) The chit-chat is pretty lame and boring, it gets repetitive

3) The game-play is QUITE slow, amongst all the chit-chat it takes a long time from hand to hand. It gets frusterating.

4) The game randomly froze on me. Not an actual freeze but it was just stuck in some loop mode, music was playing and the players were moving but there was no "action" happening. I waited 5 minutes and nothing happend. I had to restart the game and I lost the 25k chip stack I had.

Overall as I said, very unhappy with this game, especially this BUG that allows you to LOSE MORE THAN YOUR OPPOENT HAS
Comment by Cam
November 22, 2010, 8:18 pm
The game is awesome! I like the talk
Comment by DukeBG
November 22, 2010, 10:24 pm
My next issue with this game is this.

Myself, Max and the Heavy are all in a hand. Max has bought in with his pistol and badge. I have about 20,000 chips preflop, Max has 10,000 and the heavy about 4,000 preflop.

The raise preflop is 2k, all of us call, max has a pair of 3's on the flop, I have a pair of 6's, and the heavy has ace 8. The turn is an 8 the heavy goes all in for his remaing 2k, both max and I call the 2k. Leaving me with 16k and Max with 6k, the river comes a king or something, I bet 6k, Max calls 6k all in (side pot). The Heavy won the main pot with his pair of 8's and I won the side pot of 12k with my pair of 6's beating Max's pair of 3's. YET THE BADGE AND PISTOL WENT TO THE HEAVY. HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? THE HEAVY DID NOT ELIMINATE MAX, I DID.

I'm getting so pissed off with the bugs in this game, it's rediclious.
Comment by Cam
November 23, 2010, 12:42 am
Pretty pathetic that people can't seem to post feedback without using capitals. If I were a developer, I ignored those posts too. If you guys cant give feedback like an adult, then don't try to act as one.

On-topic: nice game guyz, please keep it alive with some dlc or updates cause after all the unlocks have been won, I wonder how many people will continue playing.

Jeff
Comment by Jeffrey
November 23, 2010, 3:40 am
The most horrible parody of Poker
Comment by iDm
November 23, 2010, 9:02 am
telltale can you please remove the bug where if max won once he would keep winning constantly its really annoying nice job though i found the talk quite funny mainly when heavy was refrencing to hats ect. or having a good side :D
Comment by hyperkentic rabbit thingy
November 23, 2010, 2:14 pm
Myself, Max and the Heavy are all in a hand. Max has bought in with his pistol and badge. The raise preflop is 2k, all of us call, max has a pair of 3's on the flop, I have a pair of 6's, and the heavy has ace 8. The turn is an 8 the heavy goes all in for his remaing 2k, both max and I call the 2k. Leaving me with 16k and Max with 6k, the river comes a king or something, I bet 6k, Max calls 6k all in (side pot). The Heavy won the main pot with his pair of 8's and I won the side pot of 12k with my pair of 6's beating Max's pair of 3's.


First i haven't bought this game yet and not sure if i will or not.
If the pistol and badge are in the main pot wich it sounds like they where then the person that wins the main pot gets them its that simple my problem with all of this is If Max bought in with his pistol and badge that sould mean he is out of money to get into the hand, for him to then make any side pot bets shouldn't happen at least thats how it should work in real life if you don't have enought to call the main pot you would put everything you can in all your money and any exras would then be side pots maybe.

all in all if it happened the way you discribe it there is definatly something wrong with the game
Comment by Blake
November 24, 2010, 10:26 pm
This is not worth the £3 I paid for it. The dialogue gets repetitive very quickly, especially Max's, and the AI players are appallingly bad. It's no fun as a poker game, and the few amusing lines of dialogue get dull fast. It is also riddled with bugs. It only succeeds as a source of TF2 items, but even then it's not worth it.
Comment by LuckyStrike
November 25, 2010, 1:39 am
"Pretty pathetic that people can't seem to post feedback without using capitals."

Complaining about someone's spelling or typing style is a sure sign you don't know how to counter the actual argument. Please refrain from doing that kind of thing.
Comment by DaVince
November 25, 2010, 12:47 pm
There definitely are some annoying bugs in the game as well as some basic functions that should be included but aren't.

1) Similar to what Cam said above (though with a few years of maturity included...I mean, jeez...it's a $5 game), you can overbet other players. If I'm heads up against a single AI player and they've got $1k and I've got $10k, I can actually bet $10k. Not only that, the game keeps prompting me to bet with each round even though the only other player in the hand is all in and can't bet anyway. By the way, it actually creates a side pot with "P" (player) as the only person in that side pot. Fun times.

2) I turned OFF bleeps and it seemed to work the first time but then when I loaded up the game after that, the game seemed to be bleeping audio for a few minutes before it stopped. It's possible there just are some sound files that weren't "de-bleeped". On a side note, I don't get why the subtitles aren't "de-bleeped" when I select that option...isn't that part of the idea?

3) I haven't confirmed this is 100% consistent but I've found that when you play a round that has a side pot, the side pot display stays for the next hand. It's like it isn't getting reset. So, I'll be in a hand with a $2500 pot size with a side pot indicator showing $25k. No one bet into a side pot yet in the hand.

4) This isn't a bug but it's definitely annoying: given the repetition of some of the banter, it'd be real nice if you could skip the animation/banter for a given player. Just like you can skip a hand if you're out of it, I'd like to be able to tap a key to skip a player's turn rather than sit and wait for him to finish off some dialog or some animation. This is especially true during some of the drawn out conversations (which are well done by the way...I love how they pick up the conversation after interruptions that result from the game's action) and more importantly during the start when one of the players is paying with their special item. I really don't want to see Max do his fruit/vegetable joke for the 20th time. I want to hit the space bar or escape and get to the game.

5) This isn't a bug but it should be treated like one: who's idea was it to require a click to deal the next hand? I mean, if you were still displaying the hand (which you aren't) I'd get it. But you clear the board and have the game sit there waiting for me to click. Huh? It's not a timed tournament. You're not displaying anything interesting. The conversations will continue to play out despite the new deal. Just go! If you wanted to add the ability to see the hand at a glance after each hand is complete (so you can see who had what in case you missed it) or when the blinds go up (it makes a lot of sense there since you actually DO have stats to show), then by all means, give me the option to pause after that. If not, please don't add an extra click I have to do each time just to see the next hand...it makes no sense.

6) And this last one is a suggestion. I know it sounds dumb and I hate to be the one suggesting it but sometimes it helps to have a hint up somewhere (maybe it 's an option we can turn off/on) where you display what we currently have. I don't do this often but sometimes I miss something (especially with some decks like the TF2 one where a spade and a club are pretty similar looking) in terms of my hand. If you could show what I currently have (if anything) based on my hole cards and the current community cards, that'd be great. I've been at plenty of card games where people think they've won with four card straights and flushes or misread a 6 as a 9 or whatever. I think this would help a few people out.

Otherwise, the game is good and has some great moments. Of course, things get repetitive after a while (I'm guessing/hoping that means there are going to be DLC packs to add different characters or something??) and it'd be nice to incorporate a couple of human players so I can get my friends in there (I know, game design nightmare). And, I think it'd be better if the characters were a bit more consistent with their play styles. I can't tell you how many times I felt like the game's cheating (but I feel this way with other poker games against AIs so...) when I go all-in on a AK and one of the AI players calls it with 5-6 off-suit pre-flop (and not one of the blinds) then nothing pairs me up but they get a 6 on the river and win it with a weak pair. I know poker is gambling and I know how ridiculous the river can be but I had the same situation occur four times in a row. Weak hands pre-flop go all in or call my all-in with nothing, not even connectors, and they end up winning on the river with something stupid. I really hope it's purely because you've got them on some Maniac "logic" and they're just being stupid and lucky at the same time and not because you feel they need to be able to see what's coming with a percent chance of acting upon it...
Comment by KenLG
November 26, 2010, 6:43 pm
Yeah complain complain. Nothing new here. Just the internet.

Plus it was only $5. Nothing major lost if you didnt like it.
Comment by ShiroShishi22
November 30, 2010, 1:06 am
First, It's a cheap poker game. If you bought it to play poker then you bought it for the wrong reason. If you bought it to play poker with some of the Internet's coolest characters then you are in luck!! It's good fun. They do repeat themselves after about 6 hours of play, but it was $5. They can't hire voice actors to sit around and play poker with you while improvising new lines so you can feel like you got your precious $5 worth. If you are bored of the talk there are options to set the talk-level to your desired setting.

Second, It's a cheap poker game. They hired voice actors to voice the characters. They paid programmers to program Texas Hold'em. It's $5. There might be some bugs. If your whining because you didn't win your TF2 loot play some more. I'm sure with your incredible level of poker playing you'll have it in no time.

Third, seriously, you get to play poker with Strong Bad. What could be cooler than that?
Comment by JumboBob
December 12, 2010, 4:19 pm
Which of these The Walking Dead characters would you rather be paired up with if the undead took over the earth?
Lee
Larry
Lilly
Mark
Kenny
Katjaa
Doug
Carley
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