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Showing posts from May, 2009

Online Poker vs. Live Poker

For hundreds of years, poker has been played in taverns, casinos, pubs and homes across the world within a group of people all looking to outwit their opponents by trying to pick up tells on each other to give themselves an advantage. The tension that can form from high stakes games means that the game of Poker has been incorporated into numerous movies, with some films being completely dedicated to the game. However, over the last few years there has been a new breed of poker joining the poker world, which is the ever so popular online poker game. Many poker players enjoy playing poker online because of how easy it is to find a good game without needing to leave the comfort of your own home. You can play at almost any stakes you want to suit your bankroll, and you can always find action at your desired game and limit no matter what time of the day. Furthermore, the game speed is much faster online than it is at a live table, as the cards are dealt electronically and there is no need ...

Online Poker vs. Online Casino

There are a number of ways for people to satisfy their urge to gamble through gambling sites on the Internet. We surfers can sign up for gambling accounts at the numerous different sites that are available to them and start making bets and wagers in a vast array of gambling games on offer. Two of the most popular forms of online gambling are poker and casino games. Most people are familiar with the game of poker as well as the different forms of casino games, including blackjack, roulette, slots and so on. But how do both of these different forms of online gambling compare to each other? In general, the casino games are more based on luck and focus on the thrills of wagering money on the roll of a dice or the spin of the roulette wheel, whereas poker involves an element of skill and strategy. There are some games such as Blackjack that allow you to use good strategy using odds and mathematics to improve your chances of winning, but the majority of casino games give you fixed odds, wh...

Money Management when Playing Poker

To be a successful poker player you have to be able to exercise good bankroll management skills. If you are unable to manage your poker money correctly, you will never be able to become a long term winning poker player. Even if you were the best player in the world, it would be impossible to be able to make money from poker if you did not use good money management skills. Bankroll management basically involves playing at a certain levels and buy-ins to help prevent yourself from going broke at the poker table. You have to set yourself limits to where you can play poker due to the variance found in every poker game. There are always going to be times where you have runs of bad luck that you cannot control, and you will lose money due to the bad runs of cards, and not necessarily due to any bad play. Therefore there is no use in putting all of your poker money on one table, because there is a good chance that you will lose it all and not be able to continue playing poker. As a result...

Position Strategies in Poker

Your position at the poker table during a hand should have a big influence on the way you play any hand. Your position can determine how much money you win, or even whether or not you actually win the hand. Position in poker is something that is all too often overlooked by newcomers to the game, and sometimes even by some of the more experienced players. To become a solid player, you have to exercise good poker strategy and use position to your advantage. If you are not always trying to keep aware of your position at the table, then you are leaving a big hole in your game. Your position in each hand is determined by the placement of the ‘button’. The ‘button’ is the dealer’s seat and all actions must take place one after another in an anticlockwise motion from player to player, starting with the player to the immediate left of the dealer. The group of players that will be the first few to act on each betting round are known as players in ‘early position’, and therefore the players t...

Maths and Poker

A big question amongst many poker players is whether or not you need a good knowledge of poker mathematics to be a winning poker player. The simple answer is that it is by no means essential to incorporate mathematics into every situation, but by doing so you should be giving yourself more of an edge. The maths involved in poker decisions is not complex by any means, and anyone with a standard level of education is able to perform the calculations quickly in their heads whilst at the poker table. Mathematics can be used in poker to work out the probability of certain cards being dealt at any point during the hand. If we are able to work out the probabilities, we can then determine whether or not it is worth calling a bet to chase after a draw. So obviously if we can work out that a certain draw is unlikely to be completed by the river, we will be less inclined to call big bets to try and catch those cards. Using the probability of completing a draw along with the amount you have to ...

Bluffing at Poker

Bluffing is an integral part of poker and is a skill that few players master. A bluff is when you make a bet to make your opponents think that you have a better hand than them, causing them to fold despite the fact you have a worse hand than them. This is a very extravagant and exciting play, which is one of the reasons why poker has become such a popular game over the years. Bluffing has been popularised even further in the advent of TV coverage of some of the major tournaments, where you can see some of the top professional players pulling off elaborate bluffs against one another. However, these coverage shows are usually edited down, and you do not see the build up to these plays and you get the impression that the bluffs were formed on the spot, when in real fact the bluff was probably set up from hours of play in numerous hands. Therefore you can find many online players trying to pull off bluffs at inappropriate times trying to imitate what they have seen on TV, and thus losing ...

Bet Sizing in Poker

Knowing when to bet is an important skill in poker, but an equally or even more important skill is to know how much to bet in each situation. A good knowledge of bet sizing can help save you from making very unprofitable plays, as well as allowing you to maximize the amount of money you can make in each session. All winning poker players have the ability to make the correct size bet when necessary, and so its pretty important piece of no limit holdem strategy that you should learn. As a general rule to start off with, you should always try and be aggressive and strong with your bets. More often than not, a small and weak-looking bet will not give you any leverage in the hand or give you any information on the strength of your opponent(s) hands. If you regularly like to make minimum bets and raises, you will find that you are almost always giving your opponent the right odds to call you if they have a draw or even a small piece of the board. So you should try and get into the habit o...

Table Image in Poker

Whenever you play poker, whether it is online or live, you should always be aware of the way your opponents are playing. It is important to try and gather as much information as possible on the other players at the table to help you influence your decisions in later hands. Are your opponents tight or loose? Are they weak or are they aggressive? It is this sort of information that is key to making profitable decisions throughout each of your poker sessions. But apart from thinking about how you see your opponents, what are your opponents thinking about you? This is also a key question that you should also consider whilst you play, yet it is something that is often overlooked. Knowing how your opponents view you as a player is just as important as having an idea of how they are playing themselves. This is especially true in the game of no limit Texas Holdem where psychology plays an important role. But why exactly is this important? And what effect should this have on your game? Dep...

Playing Big Pairs in Holdem Texas Poker

It is always great to see a big pocket pair like AA, KK or QQ when you look down at your holecards in Texas Holdem . These top 3 pocket pairs are the best possible hands you can be dealt before the flop, and so you should expect to make a hefty amount of money from them throughout your poker-playing career. However, if you are not careful with these big pairs and if you do not exercise good strategy with them, these types of cards can easily lose you money when not play them correctly. One of the biggest mistakes novice players make when playing big pairs is that they tend to slowplay them at every opportunity. Whilst it may be a good idea to play very strong hands on the odd occasion in poker, it is far too early to start slowplaying a hand before the flop, and by doing so you will just be allowing your opponents to improve on the flop and on future streets. Therefore whenever you are dealt a big pocket pair you should almost always raise before the flop to thin out the number of op...

Trouble Hands in Texas Holdem Poker

Just as there are many hands in Texas Holdem that will win you a lot of money, there are a number of deceptive hands that may lead you into believing that they are profitable when in real fact they will often lose you decent sums of money from your bankroll. The sooner that you learn about the hands that are costing you dearly, the sooner you can start saving yourself from losing money. This article will address the most common hands that novices play with and highlight the reasons as to why they can be dangerous hands to play. The ‘any two suited cards’ is a very popular hand that all varieties of beginners like to play. A flush is a pretty strong hand in the game of Holdem, and so if you manage to make one there is good chance that you will win a nice bit of money with it. Therefore many new players to the game will be prepared to enter pots with any two cards as long as they are suited just in an attempt to catch a flush at some point during the hand. There are two reasons as to wh...