Ask a veteran poker player any strategy question and the answer invariably will begin with "It depends."

"Should I raise the bring-in in stud poker with a wired pair of Aces?" you might query.

"It depends on the circumstances," would be the typical response.  "Sometimes you do; sometimes you don’t." Questions about how to play Kings in late position in Texas Holdem, how to play 378 in Razz, or A388 in Omaha8 would also get the same response.  Poker playing is all about making distinctions among a myriad of choices.  And since no two situations are ever exactly the same -- well, the correct answer usually depends on variables that aren’t asked about.

Certain rules of thumb generally hold:

"Don’t chase with hopeless hands."

"Don’t waste clever moves on unobservant opponents."

"Bet strongly when you have a strong hand."

"Find bad players to play against."

These rules should be followed nearly always, everywhere.  And so should my general advice to bring a smile and laugh to the poker table, I thought.  But then I got this odd tale from my longtime friend, Fred, with whom I played poker in high school and who now lives in Bentonville, Arkansas.  The story is instructive -- especially with regard to playing poker with strangers.  It has taught me that nothing is absolute -- not even the benefit of laughter.

Fred and I played poker together back in the early 1970s in our junior and senior years of high school, in Dunmore, NY, a suburb of Syracuse.  We were typical middle-class kids; didn’t have a lot of money, but were usually able to scrape together a few dollars for a poker game every couple of weeks.  The stakes were small: penny ante in our junior year and then nickel, dimes, and quarters when we were seniors.

We played the crazy sort of games that high school kids love to play: follow the Queen, baseball, guts, deuces wild, as well as the more traditional variations of stud, draw, and even holdem.  We were all pretty much novices back then.  There was no internet, of course.  Our play was limited to these low stakes home games that we pulled together every couple of weeks or so.

I took poker more seriously than most of my peers.  I had read Herbert Yardley’s book Education of a Poker Player, the only text on poker that I was aware of back then.  But I was not the best poker player in either of the groups.  Not by a long shot.  That distinction went to Ken, a guy who always seemed to win.  But then he had a secret weapon:  He laughed.

Ken laughed a lot.  I’m not talking about a mild, self-effacing chuckle or even a jolly ha ha ha or ho ho ho.  I’m talking about full-blown guffawing.  He laughed not quite like a madman; but he laughed loudly, noticeably, sincerely, and almost maniacally.

Ken laughed when he had a great hand. nbsp;A loud, confidant, welcoming, not arrogant laugh.  You could tell because he showed down his great hand even when players didn’t call him on the end.

Ken didn’t limit his laughing to those times when he got great hands: He laughed with lousy hands as well.  He laughed when he lost with them and he laughed when he won a pot on a bluff with them.  You liked to hear Ken laugh, even while you were losing money to him.  It was that infectious a laugh.  Fred and I figured that it was his secret weapon.  He laughed his way to poker victory.

I tried that route myself.  But I’ve never been able to pull it off.  Sure, I try to tell jokes, I try to be good natured and not too serious.  But it’s hard for me to shuck the somber, tight, aggressive image.  It’s who I am.  I’m just not a wild, easy-going laugher -- try though I might.

But my other friend Fred, well, Fred is another case entirely.  You see, Fred hadn’t played poker in 30 years or so -- pretty much not since high school.  He’s disabled, doesn’t do a whole lot but drink beer, play a little music, walk his dog, write letters to the editor and sleep (he has a condition kind of like chronic fatigue syndrome).

But then a wonderful confluence of events occurred that got Fred back to the poker table.  I visited him and spread my enthusiasm for the great game.  I talked about poker incessantly, mentioning my book, my articles, and all the games I played in.  I was probably annoying, so eager I was to spread the gospel of poker.

And then a local bar in Bentonville started having these free tournaments.  If you won one then you qualified for a second round.  And if you won that, you won a chance to win a trip to a tournament in Las Vegas.  More than anything else, the tournaments were free entertainment for people who liked to play poker.  "Free" was the operative word for my friend Fred.  He figured he might as well go down, drink a few, and play -- since it wouldn’t cost him anything extra.

He also recalled the wonderful lessons of his high school poker game, where laughter was rewarded.  So he decided to laugh, regularly, for no apparent reason, with good hands and bad hands, impossible draws and all-in coups, when he won a hand, and when he lost a hand.

This he did, hoping that it would lighten the game, entertain or amuse his opponents, and, eventually, help him win this free, moneyless tournament in downtown Bentonville.

Things went according to plan in one regard.  Although he had never played no limit holdem (our version was strictly limit) and had never played in a tournament, he found himself winning.  Actually, he wasn’t totally clueless.  And he'd called me the night before and asked for some pointers.  I gave him my fast and dirty strategy that included raising four times the big blind with the very premium hands and folding everything else.  I told him that if anyone re-raised him he should fold unless he held Kings or Aces -- and that he should go all in with those.  I explained a little about position and suggested he bluff a bit if he made the final table.  And that was about it.

This strategy seemed to work.  He was in few hands and won the few times he was in, as his opponents tended to call his large bets.  He laughed a lot -- when he lost a couple of times but mostly when he won a pot -- since that’s generally what he did when he played.  He won.

My friend Fred was having a good time, a really good time.  Not a mean bone in his body; he was just doing what he thought good players did, laughed a lot of the time.  Of course there was no money involved, but that wasn’t really the point for him.  He really just wanted to have a good time while reliving some of the fun he had had in his youth.

But in another regard, the laughing was a big mistake.  You see, it didn’t endear him to his fellows.  It didn’t lighten up the game, or make the experience more "fun."  In fact, he was threatened with assault if he continued to laugh his ridiculous giggling laugh.  A couple of the guys told him to shut the fuck up or they would take him outside and MAKE him shut the fuck up.

And there wasn’t even any money at stake.  It was just a free tournament.  And these guys were ready to beat him up because he laughed too much.  Unreal.

My friend stopped laughing -- even though he ended up finishing in a tie for first place (they agreed to end the tourney with both advancing to the next round).  This should have been cause for legitimate laughter, since he could win a trip to Las Vegas and a seat in the World Series of Poker if he went on to win in the final stage of these free tournaments.  But he never went back.  And he has no interest in playing poker again.  The experience soured him.  It's too bad.  He seemed to have a decent game.~~