Archive for the 'Fun Links' Category

Remember Your History with Each Player

Developing an image and a history at a poker table full of players is like a resume for your fate. Each time you are in a hand with someone you’ve played before, they will likely be accessing all the ways they’ve acted in hands against you in the past, and the results of those hands. Staying on top of that image, and using that knowledge to adjust your play in the present, is important to keeping your online poker opponents on their toes.

Have you bluffed this guy out before? Does he realize it? People tend to remember being bluffed more than anything else. Often one big bluff against a poker player can be a way to get paid off ten times over in the future, so even getting caught once can set up getting paid off many times as things progress. A previously bluffed might be that much more willing to pay you, so you should be that much more equipped when you face him again.

Did you show this guy the nuts last time? Likely then he’s afraid your going to do it again. He might be willing to give you more credit this time if times before he called and you took all his money. You might be able to get away with pushing harder than you would against a guy who had never seen you win with a big hand.

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The "Gambler’s Ruin" Theorem

When you start to get serious about online poker, you inevitably notice that there are a lot of different theories out there about how you should be spending your money. Some of these are valid and some of these are not. Let’s take a look at the gambler’s ruin theory to see if it is something that you should add to your bank of online poker knowledge. The principle of this theory is that a player with a limited bankroll will always lose to one with an infinite one. It started with zero sum games like flipping coins to show in the most basic way that the person with less money will end up spending it all. In poker terms, the player with a limited bankroll is you and the player with an unlimited bankroll is technically made up of everyone else at the table. Thank goodness poker online is not a zero sum game! Because poker is not a zero sum game there is some room to adapt this theory to make it les pessimistic. You will be fine in a highly variable game like poker if you use less than 5% of your bankroll at once. This works out to be the equivalent of having an unlimited bankroll in terms of the gambler’s ruin theory.

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Sign of Experience

As a beginning online poker player, when asked to describe a hand, what’s the most common element that is talked about? That’s easy, the hole online poker cards. But talk to a pro and he’ll tell you about that same hand starting in a very different way. He’ll tell you where he was at the table first. This is something all pros inherently do, they take into consideration position. And if you’re not thinking in terms of position, then you’re clearly missing out on a lot of potential profit. The general theory is you’ll want to play more poker hands in position and less out of position. And by in position I mean closer to the button. This simply means that you get to act last or closer to last than your opponents. The advantage of position is quite logical when you think of it. You get information first. You get to see the flop, as well as get to see what your opponents are going to do, how they bet, if they check, or if they hesitate while looking at the flop. This leads to the three reasons that playing a hand in late position is more profitable than playing that same hand in early position. First, you’re more likely to fold a winning hand in early position than you are in late position since you’re essentially playing a guessing game at your opponents’ hands when they have position on you. Second, when you have a winning hand, you’re going to make more money on it in a later position since you’ll have the option to reraise a bet and thus get more money in the pot. Finally, your losing hands won’t cost as much. You’ll be able to get away from a losing hand more quickly due to being able to read the bets of your opponents and put him or her on a hand range. And when you do the calculations, if your hand is beaten by that hand range, then you have an easier time folding in position.

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Tourist Traps and Fish Swarms

Every poker player out there wants to be a shark, but it is not an easy task. There are a lot of tiny little details that you need to know to be able to be a truly predatory shark. One of these details that you will need to know if you want to be a shark is what casinos attract the most fish. An easy rule of thumb is to think about the tourist attraction factor. If a casino has a worldwide reputation that is likely to pull in tourists, then they will consequentially draw in a lot of fish. It is not an entirely unfair association to connect tourists with fish. These people are more likely to part with their money because their main concern is having fun, not making a fortune.

In a big casino city like Las Vegas, sharks will be most successful if they stay on the strip. If you don’t happen to live near sin city you can simulate the same thing by going to the online poker casinos with the big names. You can double check that your chosen casino is a fish magnet by checking the member numbers. The more poker players that a big name casino has, the more fish for you to catch.

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Save Your Bets for Best Spots

Poker is game of betting and many are drawn to it for the betting action. It’s fun to call and raise. It can also get costly when your loose betting action drains off all your chips.

When you play poker, remember that a bet saved is a bet earned that can be spent elsewhere on a better opportunity. What this means is that it is foolish to chase after long shot draws or to simply call a raise to defend your blind when your are dealt rag cards.

Many players, especially at lower stakes limit games, will automatically call with anything once they are in the pot. The reasoning is “it’s just one more bet.” But those bets add up hand after hand. When you play 1-2 limit, you can burn through 100 bets quickly if you call every time.

It is better to concede your blind or to fold your hand after calling pre-flop if the cards don’t hit you. Sometimes you may pull off a bluff, but these casino opportunities are few and far between, especially at lower limits.

Throwing chips after a long shot chase is reckless. Saving chips to leverage when you do get a big hand is the wise course of action. You want to keep your chip stack as large as possible for when the right opportunity comes along.

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Picking a Casino to Suit Your Budget

There are all different kinds of poker casinos out there. There are ones that cater to microstakes poker players, ones that are only for the high rollers, and ones for all the people that fall somewhere in the middle. With all these options out there, you need to know how to pick a casino that suits your budget. If you don’t do this wisely, you can end up going through your bankroll far more quickly than you expected. One of the ways to pick a poker online casino to suit your budget is to look at the image they try to project. Is the casino trying to seem glitzy and glamorous? If so, it is probably trying to market itself towards high rollers. I would steer clear of these casinos unless you are trying to speed through your bankroll. On the other end of the spectrum are the casinos that label everything as “budget friendly”. If you see too many references to light on your wallet games or play without pay games you may also be in the wrong place. You need to find games that are actually played for cash, but won’t break the bank. Try to find something in the middle where the buyins are reasonable and it is aimed at the average player.

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A Side of Chips

In Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments, players tend to have uneven stacks, with some big and some small. Once a player becomes short stacked, then that player typically goes all-in.

Sometimes that short stack does not have enough chips to even call a bet. In this case, the short stack can still shove all their poker chips into the pot. If any other big stacks call the original bet, then a “side pot” along with a “main pot” develop. The short stack can only win the main pot, while the other players can continue to bet into the side pot.

For online poker amateurs and players with weak math skills, the side pot scenario can seem very confusing. It is based on simple mathematical calculations though. At online sites, these are automatically calculated in a split second. At live games, poker dealers are trained to quickly separate out the side pot chips from the main pot.

The formula for separating the side and main pots is actually quite simple. The number of chips of the all-in bet are subtracted from each of the bigger bets put in the pot. These go into the main pot. If the smaller bet matched the blinds, then these go into the main pot too. The remaining chips make up the side pot.

For instance, the blinds are 100/200, and a big stack bets out 1,000. A small stack of 300 calls and is all-in. Another player behind the all-in calls. The main pot then contains the big and small blinds (300 total) plus 300 from the all-in, 300 from the first bettor and 300 from the second caller. The main pot has 1,000. The side pot holds 700 from each big bet for a total of 1,400.

The all-in can only win the main pot of 1,000, while the other two players are in contention for the side pot. Keep this in mind when you play poker online.

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Wisdom from the Pros: Doyle Brunson

online poker is filled with lots of myths, legends and sayings. When proven champions offer advice, it’s worth listening and learning to improve when p laying the jeux de casino. The ‘Godfather’ of online poker , Doyle Brunson, a back-to-back WSOP winner and author of “Super System” says this about the game: “Try to decide how good your hand is at a given moment. Nothing else matters. Nothing!” Every player would be smart to take this to heart before betting into any pot. You must assess your hand strength, it’s chance of winning and then decide if you can chase away other players with it. Anyone who draws to an inside straight or hopes the flop will make a set for a small pocket pair should pay special heed to Brunson’s wisdom. Think about the strength of your hand and how it might be beat before you act. Does this mean you should never bluff? No, because bluffing is part of the game. But one must be very selective about picking spots to bluff. And when you do, you must play the hand like it’s a big winner all the way down. Let the other players think you only play good hands, and play every hand that way.

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Online Poker and Gambling Recession Proof

As I have often said, gambling and online poker is recession-proof. And a new poll from the casino online shows that online poker will continue to remain popular. Of a poll of 1000 people across Scotland, Wales and England just one person had not heard the possibility of playing poker online to make money. It seems poker is now a part of the United Kingdom’s bread and butter and will be here to stay for good. Overall, the study found that fifty percent of people influenced by the downturn in the economy are scheming of ways to get rich quick and of that half approximately 10 percent have turned to poker to beat the recession blues. Only a mere twelve months ago the same survey found that only 1% saw playing online poker as a way to adding extra income to their basic salary. The economic retraction has had an enormous impact on people’s abilities to pay their bills and mortgages and the recent uptake of online poker is just one curious sector to appear in recent months on how people are trying to solve this problem. I have often said, and written, that for many people online poker is a source to make some additional income to one’s base salary. And in these uncertain economic times, many more people are turning to online poker to make money. Well, the more the merrier I say. Online poker will continue to be a very popular game.

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Picking an Online Poker Room

Obviously before you can get started playing online poker you must choose which web site gets your business. There are probably thousands of them out there now and all have a lot to offer generally. But what options should you be looking for and which put an individual site over the top? Many of these sites offer individual strategy and rules sections. Evaluating these sections is a good first step in deciding to choose a particular game. Look for customer reviews or reviews from different poker reviewing sites before you decide to commit to a company. Here are some other suggestions.

Bonuses are a major factor in sites trying to lure your business. Just about every site offers some kind of bonus for signing up and playing in their room. Yet I would argue this is the least important aspect of any poker room. If it comes down to a couple different rooms and you like them all the same then you might want to look at the bonus, but it shouldn’t be the No. 1 decider on your list.

Software, on the other hand, is pretty important. The playability and the features are important for you to feel comfortable. Make sure the play is fast and that it’s easy to navigate around the site. Multi-table play factors into the software. Some of the best online poker players in the world play many different games at the same time and that’s an important feature to them. If this isn’t your cup of tea, then fine. But if a site has a small multi-table limit and you want to play, say, 6 at a time you may move on.

Also monitor the traffic of a site. Generally speaking, the more traffic a site has the better because that site will offer more options and more tables. Without a high volume of traffic, you may have issues trying to get into the game of your choice. I know that sounds backward, but trust me.

Perhaps your best option is to sign up for, say, your top three choices and try them all out. Once you test all of them, a clear favorite should emerge. Perhaps it’s because of payouts or customer service, etc. While the games themselves don’t change much from site to site, each does have its individual “personality.”

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