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Back in the good old days of online poker, if you had a good sound technical game then you were going to make money…..a lot of money. There were fish a plenty and especially in games that were not popular or not well known at that time. It is amazing to think that by referring to the good old days, I am actually going back just five years and certainly no more than ten as the first online poker site to my knowledge didn’t start until 1999.

The games were soft and easy even when I started playing in around 2000-2001. In fact the games were so easy to beat that I turned full-time pro in 2002 and stayed that way until about 2006. A good solid technical game is still important of course but you really need to start table selecting with greater efficiency now. This even applies at the lower levels as these are where the grinders live.

There is a great compression of skill these days as the low level pro’s use table selection software and poker buddy tools to find weak players and profitable tables. You may have wondered why some waiting lists have much longer queue’s than others. Well quite often this is because these players have been using table finding software and if players are taking the time to do this then this tends to be an indication of a decent player.

Weak players simply will not take the time or make the effort to do such things. If you see a poker table with eight people on the waiting list, should you put your name down? Well if these players have put their names down to find a few fish then what chances have you got of finding fish by the time that you get onto that table?

One of two things will have likely happened, either the fish have lost their money and left the table or they will have amassed some winnings and left simply because they don’t want to give it back. Either way the table dynamic will simply not be the same by the time that you get there.

So what options do you have? Well firstly you could go down the route of getting these items of software yourself. This is always useful as information is power as they say. But there is a problem with this in that you may then end up hunting the same tables as everyone else. If you desire to make money in any form of gambling then you are going to have to do something different to what the masses are doing….within reason of course.

One tactic that I have often used is to open a new table. Now before you reel back in horror at the thought of playing heads up or short handed poker then consider this. Weak players don’t like to put their names down on long waiting lists! They logged on to do one thing and one thing only….play poker! They didn’t log on to sit waiting for thirty minutes.

This means that they want to play poker in the shortest time frame possible and if that means sitting at a table with only two other players then they will do this or at least some of them will. What I am trying to advise you to do here is to try and think differently to the masses and thinking differently means doing different things. If you can put yourself into the mind of a weak player and then do what they do then you may just find more of them.

This article was produced by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

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In my previous post I was critical of one particular online room (network) for their announcement of “updates” - which put them just a few light years behind other online poker rooms, rather than many light years. But today I’ll be talking about an online poker room, Full Tilt Poker, who are the opposite, and who have just demonstrated once again how innovative and ahead of the game they are. That’s right, I’m talking about Rush Poker.

Rush Poker has been billed as “the world’s fastest poker game” - and it has certainly caused a lot of buzz in the online poker world. I won’t give a long description of the game, because you probably know about it already. But if not - in this new online poker format you join a large player pool and get moved to a brand new table to face different opponents from within this pool, each and every hand that you play. When you fold your hand, you get moved to another table and get to play a new hand. There’s even a ‘quick fold’ button for the truly impatient. It’s like multi-tabling, but all from one table. Andy Bloch (Full Tilt Pro) summed it up nicely when he said, “It’s the difference between watching TV and watching TiVo. You get to skip the commercials.”

Players at Full Tilt have flocked to Rush Poker. I’ve read many different views about Rush Poker, and I believe a lot of players are basing their initial impressions on whether they’ve won or lost at Rush Poker. For those who’ve started off winning at Rush Poker, they usually love it. For those who’ve bit hit by bad variance, they probably hate it. I’m sure there’s also a ton of players who loved it at first when they got lucky, then played a couple of losing sessions - and are left undecided. Poker players can be very results orientated, can’t they!

Well, I’ve played it a fair bit this past week, and have enjoyed both winning and losing sessions - ahead overall though, thankfully. I like a lot of things about Rush Poker, and some things I’m not so keen on. Let’s start with the positives. I really love the fact that you don’t have to worry about table image. In a regular game if you steal from the button a lot, players will notice after a while. That doesn’t happen on Rush Poker because you’re constantly switching tables and finding new players each hand. So you can steal everytime, without having to worry that you might be tagged as a persistent thief.

In Rush Poker you don’t have to wait for a hand to finish. Obviously this is just super convenient, but it also means you stop being so results orientated. Sometimes it’s nice to see how a hand played out among your opponents, but being less results orientated is a good thing - and helps keep the tilt-ometer from ticking too much. And anyway, you’ve folded so who cares if you would have won that pot, right? Let’s play the next hand!

Okay, so that’s just a couple of the positives (there are more). Now let me say what I don’t like about Rush Poker. Firstly I don’t like the fact that it promotes ratholing, because you can leave and buy-in again right away for the minimum. This is perfect for a short stack strategy, and I hate short stackers. But the good news is Full Tilt have increased the minimum buy-in from 20BBs to 35BBs.

One of the greatest thing about Rush Poker is the fact nobody can data mine you. But this is also one of the worst things too. I have no clue about my opponents, other than where they are from, their username and their stack size. Reads are an important part of online poker, and in Rush Poker it’s very hard to get reads. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t import hand histories of players I’ve never played with before (because that’s cheating!), but I do use a HUD compiled of my own personal history. Not knowing the fish from the regular, is a big drawback. However, the fact they have nothing on me either gives it some balance.

Problem the worst thing about Rush Poker is that it encourages the fish to tighten up, and wait for big hands. Of course some bad players just can’t help themselves, but in general - they can now wait for a good hand and at a rate of 300 hands per hour, they don’t have to wait too long. 

So, there’s both good and bad points about Rush Poker. I appreciate that I’ve not shared any Rush Poker strategies in this post, but that’s because I’m not yet convinced on the optimum strategy for success. Hopefully in my next post I will have come to some reasonable conclusions, and I’ll share my thoughts. But for now I’ll just say that if you’ve not yet tried out Rush Poker, then I recommend you give it a go. It could well be the future of online poker! 

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It came to light recently that a player was awarded a pot with the worst hand, over at Cake Poker. The revelation was revealed on the 2+2 forums - where a player with a king high flush beat an ace high flush. While it was amusing that the first few posters on that thread didn’t even spot the winning hand, online poker software should spot it. We take it for granted that a poker site will award the pot to the best hand. These kinds of mistakes aren’t meant to happen, but as anyone with a computer will know - they do some strange things sometimes.

Software has bugs, and this was clearly a bug in their system. Such a mistake is obviously not great PR for an online poker room (”don’t play there; they don’t know what beats what!” etc). But depending on how you handle the situation, you can either turn it into a huge issue or limit the damage. Cake Poker should be applauded in the way they dealt with this situation. The poker room manager at Cake Poker, Lee Jones, quickly responded to say that it was indeed a genuine mistake, and a short time later came up with a detailed explanation - which is entirely plausible and while I’m no programmer, I’ve no reason to doubt them.

Compare this to Ultimate Bet, where a similar situation occurred. This involved none other than Phil Hellmuth, who won with the worst hand. How did they respond? Well, the opposite to Cake Poker. Of course that’s no surprise to anyone who knows anything about Ultimate Bet - a site with zero integrity and one that should be avoided at all costs (Google ‘Super User’ for more on them).

So, credit where credit is due. Well done Lee Jones. Well done Cake Poker!

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It’s that time of year when millions of people decide to stop smoking, start an exercise regime, or change one of endless other things in their life. For the 90% of the population who decide to do something different for the new year, it usually lasts until the 2nd week of January. Yes that’s very negative from me, but it’s pretty accurate. Good luck to all of you who do decide to make changes and let’s hope you’re in the 10% group.

Of course this is a poker blog, so let’s talk poker. The key to success at poker is improving your game, plugging leaks (don’t say you have none!), and doing it all over again. While you should always be studying poker, reading the latest poker strategy books, articles, analyzing your stats, etc - now is a good a time as any to reflect on your game and start afresh for the 2010. Here’s a brief list of what I’m going to do come January 1st 2010:

* Spend more time reviewing my hands after each session. I usually play 90 minute cash game sessions, and I might have a quick look at some hands. From January 1st I’m going to play 75 minute sessions and spend 15 minutes or more reviewing some poker hands - ones I played well, and ones I played badly.

* Controlling Tilt. I try my best to avoid tilting, but I know I could do better. I’m going to play much closer attention to this part of my game, and if I feel myself tilting I’ll leave the tables immediately. I think this one will have a massive impact on my bottom line.

* Table Selection. I’m going to be more selective in which tables I play at, and stop being lazy by sitting in a poker game with no fish. I’m going to leave and rejoin tables regardless of how well or badly I’m doing, but based on the quality of the table. I should do this anyway, but I often fail.

* Play at more online poker sites. I keep meaning to play at more online poker rooms, but I always seem to end up on Full Tilt. I might (haven’t decided on this yet) avoid playing on Full Tilt completely in January. You could say I’m going on a Full Tilt detox. Though I think this one will only last till the 2nd week of January.

* Blog more. I’ve been a little lazy updating the blog lately, so I’ll try harder with this.

Well that’ll do for me. If you’re making any plans for 2010 then good luck with them - see you at the tables!

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I was having a conversation with a player from my home game the other day. We were talking about online poker, and after saying how he struggles to win online, he said “I think Poker Stars is rigged”. He’s been playing poker long enough to know it’s unlikely that Poker Stars is rigged. I was too polite to suggest it might be that he sucks at poker (actually he’s not a bad player, but online poker is a different ball game).

The whole conversation reminded me of post match interviews with football team coaches. If they won, the interview is usually about how well they played, how they took their chances, and so on. If they lose, they blame external factors, usually the referee, the rotten luck, and so on.

I believe many poker players think they are better than they truly are. They win at their local casino, so why can’t they win online? It doesn’t make sense to them. Their local game might be soft, and while there are plenty of bad players playing online poker - there’s a huge number of skilled poker players, even in the micro stakes. So rather than blame it on ‘online poker is rigged’ and jump on that bandwagon, some introspection should take place. I’m sure if I were to observe their play or analyze some hand histories, it would become clear why they are an online loser.

Some players just don’t want to know the truth - that they might not be as good as poker as they think. I know someone who regularly tells me about his bad beats, how he’s on the worst run ever, how he can’t even win with Aces in the hole, and a million other complaints. Everytime I see him he’s got a bad beat story. I suggest he puts some tracking software on his computer so we can review some of his hands - but he refuses. “I don’t need tracking software to tell me how unlucky I am” he says.

The truth is, some players just bury their heads in the sand. Maybe the truth hurts too much.

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I play on quite a few different online poker sites. I’m lucky because I don’t live in the USA, so I have a wider choice of rooms to play at. Although I tend to spend most of my time with my American cousins playing at Full Tilt and Poker Stars, I do occasionally play at a few other sites. The problem is, apart from maybe Party Poker and the iPoker sites, the software at some of these poker rooms is so out of date. It’s amazing how bad some online poker sites are, when you think how much money they make. The prime culprit here is the Boss Media poker network. I’ve given them a bit of a bashing in the past (fully justified), but here’s part of an email they sent me this week: 

We are proud to announce that on January 14th, we will be introducing new features that will make your gaming experience even better!

Which made me think: Oh great. It’s about time they updated their software, which is incredibly annoying. Now I can play with all the fish who frequent Poker Heaven without tilting from the crappy software. Great. What changes have been made, I wonder.

         • Multitasking whilst playing poker has just got easier as you can now choose to have your table pop up when it is your turn to act. To enable this function, go to the ‘Settings’ tab in the lobby. 

Hmmm, not exactly cutting edge stuff. Helpful, but this should have been done light years ago.

         • Our new ‘Join Waiting List’ button means you will never be disappointed again if the table you wish to play at is full.

Right, okay. How long have the other online poker rooms had waiting lists? Forgive me if I’m not getting excited by this email.

         • To make you feel even more comfortable at the tables, you will also be able to choose your preferred seat by selecting the ‘Sit Here’ button.

Whoppido! And that’s the extent of their software update. It’s now 2010 for crying out loud. These changes are way overdue, but they’re still so far behind it’s untrue.

Maybe I’m being harsh, I don’t know. But when you play on Full Tilt and Poker Stars, you just get a little spoilt with there excellent software. Rant over.

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Are you searching for Free Facebook Poker Chips? Want to know where to snatch your freebies from? Please do not get caught out by the scams on YouTube and other sites where conmen ask for your Facebook login, with the promise they will hand over free poker chips – it’s a scam, don’t be conned they will rob your existing chips!

The safest way to locate free Facebook poker chips is to simply log on to Facebook and go to your Texas Hold ‘em application then click the ‘earn chips’ flap at the top of the game play area, you will then notice a register of valid offers where you can get free Facebook poker chips. Some of them are without charge and some call for a purchase so be sure to check if the offer has a small yellow ‘FREE’ mark attached.

Here is a list of a few of the free offers that were open at the time of writing this post.

Our favourite – take some Facebook quizzes and get some free chips.
Quizzes are simple, entertaining and you don’t need to put in your private details and have your inbox spammed with junk mail.

Quizzes Offering Free Poker Chips
Are you a lazy bum?
Which transformer is your favourite?
What kind of drive are you?

Other free chip deals – sign up for these free offers and get your chips.

Win a £15000 shopping spree
Win a Renault Clio
Fill out a survey and win £500 to spend at Carphone Warehouse
Get a free Argos voucher!
Eat Laser Sword Aliens! – win an x-box
Turn yourself into a 3D image with ZWINKY
Dress up your desktop with Free Screensavers!

Further ways to pick up free chips

Keep checking back at the Texas Hold’em game because they very often run offers where they will hand over chips for free. At the moment of writing they are running a lottery where you could win chips just from logging in to the game. Drop by every day and you will slowly but progressively build up your chips. I have been claiming 0 – 00 in chips most days I drop by. Another promotion they were running in recent times saw your bankroll increase by 00 just for logging in and if you ask all your friends to join in you will get still more chips for each one that installs the application.

You can also give your friends free poker chips and get them to send them back to you. At the time of writing you can give each of your friends 0 chips each day you log in.

There are numerous websites that will seek to sell you the ’secret’ of obtaining free Facebook poker chips and loads of of them will try to rip you off and steal the chips you already have – so the safest advice is to go directly to the Facebook poker game and seek out the legitimate deals only!

And keep in mind – if you can’t be bothered jumping through hoops for your free poker chips you can find the cheapest offers to Buy Facebook Poker Chips online here.

Grab practical suggestions about poker hand calculator – your personal tips store.


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As a kid I used to play a lot of card games, most of the time I played a game we called jokeren and I was pretty good at it.

A few weeks ago I came upon a site where you can play card games online called Rummy, and I was very pleasantly surprised when I found out that one of the games you could play at that site, Kalooki, a form of rummy, was almost exactly the game I used to play as a kid.

I joined the site, played some games for free, and after a few days I found out I was still pretty good at it. Of course you need a bit of luck as well, if you get terrible cards you will lose, but after I played a good few games for free, I decided to play for real money.

I do not regret this decision; I have played a lot of Kalooki games, I have lost a lot of them, but I have won more then I lost, so in the end I did win some money. What is even more important, I just love to play this game again.

One of the reasons I do win more games then I lose is, at least that is what I think, experience. As I said before, I did play this game a lot when I was a kid, and that must be an advantage. The game is not very difficult, but still you must make the right decision every time it is your turn, and you must do it quick. There is a certain amount of time you have for every move, I think it is one minute; else you lose your turn.

The site I have joined provide 4 different games you can play, Rummy, Gin, Oklahoma and the game I do play Kalooki. They are all rather similar, so soon I will probably play all 4 games. They do organize a lot of tourneys, and they are fun to play, especially if you win and I won a few already. They do organize so called free rolls, tourneys you can play for free, but you can win money. Most free rolls are for but sometimes they do organize free rolls for pretty large amounts, up to a thousand dollars, and that is of course very interesting. There are not many sites on the Internet were you can win this type of money for free.

The site has grown a lot since I joined, there are now a considerable amount of players who play for money, and so the prizes are getting bigger all the time. Every month there is a big tourney and on the moment the big tourney has a prize amount of .000, I sure would like to win some of that.

All in all I am very pleased with this site. I get to play the card games I like, and I earn a few dollars as well. Not a lot, I have made a few hundred dollars so far, but as I said it is great fun. Maybe I get even better at it as I go along; I might win a few big tourneys, you never know, but even if I do not I do not mind. Card games online are here to stay and I am having great fun playing Rummy, Gin, Oklahoma and Kalooki

Grab valuable hints about how to play 7 hand poker – this is your personal knowledge base.


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The game of poker is by far the most popular card game. It is played all over the world, from the Far East to Las Vegas. With such popularity among regular people and gamblers as well, it is no wonder why the game has a lot of variations.
The most popular poker game is called Texas Hold’em, and it is played in all major casinos as well as all the online poker rooms. Other popular poker games are Omaha, 5 Card Draw, 7 Card Stud, Razz, Badugi and different variations of the above mentioned games.
As if there were not enough types of poker games, all of them can be played in different formats, depending on the stakes, limits and game types. Considering the betting limits, the game can be no-limit, limit or pot limit. The stakes are usually divided into four major categories: high stakes, middle stakes, low stakes and micro stakes. While in most brick and mortar casinos you can only find high stakes and middle stakes tables, the online poker rooms have hundreds of tables of low stakes and even micro stakes as well. At a micro stakes table the blinds can go as low as $content.01/$content.02, meaning that you could sit at a table with as low as one dollar.
Poker games are also divided by game type. They can be ring games, where people sit at the table and leave whenever they want, and play directly for cash. Other popular game type is the Sit and Go tournament, where a fixed amount of players buy in for an equal amount of money, and start with the same number of chips. The game is played like a tournament, and it ends when one of the players has collected all the chips, and all the others were eliminated. A Sit and Go tournament can have different ways of distributing the prizes, but as a general rule the winner will always take a very large size of the prize pool. The bigger poker tournaments are some multi-table Sit and Go’s, where tables are closed when players get eliminated. In such a tournament a player will move to different tables during the tourney, before he gets to the final table.
While it is hard to find the desired poker game in a live casino (unless you live in Las Vegas, Monte Carlo or Macau), you can always find it online, at an online poker room. They are running 24/7 and the thousands of players online at any hour engage in all kinds of poker games. Everybody can play online poker for real money, no matter where he lives and what bankroll he has. There are many online poker rooms on the internet, and finding a good one is not very hard. You can read poker room reviews from dedicated gambling websites and you will find the best online poker rooms.
It’s impossible to say which poker game you should play, because all of them have ups and downs. The best way to find out is to try more game types, and see where you get the best results. Some players are better in tournaments, other are experts in ring games. Some people prefer limit games while others like the thrill of going all-in with their monster hands. The best thing about online poker is that you can play any kind of poker game, and it is up to you to decide which works best for you.

Access practical info for poker hand calculator – welcome to your personal guide.


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Casino or gambling, if you listen to casino or gambling word, the first thing in your mind must be money, Las Vegas, coins and gambling machine. If you a beginner in casino or you do not know everything about casino, you must check out article below.

Based on Wikipedia explanation, a casino is the location where a player or customer plays betting. A player is able to bet by playing roulette, blackjack, slot machine, or other casino games. Casino games control mathematically odds that formulate certain the house will have more probability to take gain called edge. And a player has a little or big chances to win on betting. You can obtain whole Online Vegas Casino blogs here.

There’re a large gambling games and events that you can wager online or offline. The classic casino is slot machine game. A slot machine is casino gambling machine that is conducted by coins. A player inserts coins that will wheel the machine. Then the machine will detect the validation of coins, then a player can watch the symbols in front of machines when they finish. If they end on winning patterns, lot of coins will come out from machines that means you will get many money.

The bad issue, a machine organizes all turning round which gives money to the house and the gambler can just play to obtain advantages or win the game. This is not a great option for long term player. Please see suggested Casino Software websites here.

Other famous casino games are Poker, Roulette, Craps and Blackjack.

Poker is very famous gambling card game. The gambler completely take a control to conceal cards into a middle pot system, then remaining gambler will have occasion to manage great arrangement of cards to succeed.

Blackjack is also a extremely simple gambling card game. A gambler is able to gamble this game in internet or offline. The gambler can make his own decision on gambling and control the tactic based on amount of full deal. A gambler must have great knowledge and strategy to succeed on this game.

A very renowned casino game played dice is Craps. The outcome of one roll is bet to by gamblers to opposite in order to win this game. The result can be one roll, a series of roll or two dice.

Roulette is also a easy casino betting game. This casino game is more general gambled online than other casino games. http://winvegascasino.com/ is a best web that has strategy and software to win game. United States Roulette game is more acknowledged than Europe Roulette. The number 1 to 36 will alter in red and black and a round ball roulette will rotate which shows a player winning the game or not.

If a player want to visit what are best blogs Vegas Casino, you may check out this site. Just consider that a gambling is an addictive game, you may lose your cash or turn into a new millionaire today.


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