Best Online Poker Sites
| Site | Bonus | Review | Visit | |
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Titan Poker | $525 |  |  |
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Luckyace Poker | $400 | | |
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Bwin Poker | $1000 | | |
Recent Articles
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Odds For Chasing a Flush in Poker
Chasing a flush (or straight) is an error that many novice players make when first visiting online poker rooms. Being dealt two suited cards can be of great advantage if at least one of them is highly ranked or they are adjacent in order, giving the possibility of multiple outs. However, it is not worth going full guns into the pot in the hope that you catch further cards of the same suit on the flop.
Unless you are already a student of pot odds, or read the trategy here on best poker site you may be unaware that that the odds of seeing two or more cards in the flop (of the suit that you have been dealt) are just over 25/1 – to catch all three is 125/1. Furthermore, if you are not holding the top rank, what chances of a further card of the same suit catching on the turn or river and blowing your winning hand out? A relatively paltry 8/1.
Knowing what chances you have of making a winning hand can be of great value to a player when looking at the options in front of her/him. Now that you are aware of the odds of achieving the flush from the flop, and the risk of seeing it getting beaten, you know you have to try to see each card as economically as possible until such time as you are certain that you have the unbeatable hand. If it came to the river and you were still waiting for your fifth card, your chances of winning are around 4/1*. Yet if there are only two of you remaining in the betting, do you want to call a large raise, effectively taking even money on a 4/1 chance?
* The odds really are 4/1 and not 3/1 as many players suppose. The reason for this is that you know four of the six cards you can already see are suited and therefore there are nine (say) hearts left in the 46 cards you have not yet seen – odds of slightly over 4/1 ([46/9]-1).
Your betting, indeed your participation in the hand, is largely going to depend on what other options you have with your hand. For example Ah Kh would suggest that your opening bet should be quite significant, however Ts 5s should be avoided unless you are in late position with very little coming in to you. Post flop, you may have other options available to you. The top pair, possibility of a straight – maybe even a set. The outcome of the flop will determine the level of your betting in later rounds, but an equally important consideration is the other players and your position amongst them.
If you find yourself on a fairly tight table and you start betting with volume, the players around you may choose to fold rather than get involved – particularly if you are located in late position. This could reduce the amount of money that you win or save you from getting caught if the cards fall against you. If you are situated early, and you have a short stacked aggressive player behind you, it may be to your advantage to check through, see what action they take and follow on from there.
Ultimately, realising the odds of you getting the cards you need to make your hand, and betting accordingly, are key elements to successful online poker.
The Importance of Taking Notes
If you have joined one of the best poker sites or larger online poker rooms, you may consider whether taking notes about other players is of any benefit to you. After all, with a hundreds of thousands of players online, what are the odds of ever meeting one of them again? The answer is pretty likely.
After a while most players will settle down into a particular game type and stake value. If you take (for example) NL Hold´em at $0.50/$1, which is probably one of the most popular levels of the game, half the ring table players will prefer to play short handed, whereas the other half will prefer to play full table. There will be others who just play STTs and more who just enter the site to play tournaments.
There are those who will play in the evening, those who can only play during the day and those who are on the other side of the planet from you – and probably sleeping right now. So, all of a sudden, you are down to playing with just a core number of several thousand and, if you chose to play full table, there are eight of them already sitting with you. As you play more and more frequently, those eight (or some of them at least) will be on the same table as you, possibly every day. The quieter the poker site, the more relevance you can see in this.
The best way to use your notes facility is to have a summary at the top of your notes page which characterises the type of opponent that your player is, and below more comprehensive details such as the dates that you played (pretty important for comparing standards of play over a period of time), the stake levels that you are playing at and any patterns that you notice in the way s/he plays.
You should try to make your notes as comprehensive as possible, recording suspected “slow” play, a fondness for continuation betting or any aggressive tendencies – also how they react to certain circumstances and at different stages of the betting. This information will be useful to you in the future, and over a period of time you will develop a significant library of facts and figures about your opposition.
No matter how painstaking the physical act of making notes may be, the more comprehensive you make them, the more effective they become. Being able to refer back to your notes during a game is an advantage that you have over all the players who overlook this facility, so the more importance you place in note taking, the more you will be rewarded.
Fasttrack to a Poker Bankroll
When you start playing poker for real money, there are hundreds of different options available to you for where to deposit you funds and where to get the best bonuses, and inasmuch as these are an important part of developing your poker bankroll, you need to consider what your long term aim is and how much you need to initially deposit to reach that goal.
The majority of new players will not be sufficiently confident or willing to deposit amounts of $600 or more – even though that is what makes the most sense on paper – and their reticence to deposit these sums of money without experience is absolutely justified.
In order to reach those goals you have set yourself, you will have to become a competent player very quickly, and what you really should be aiming to do is double your initial bonus and then double it again through winning at poker. Effectively, this means that if your first target is to have $1.000 in your poker account, you need start with no more than $250.
Thereafter, you should be maximising the player points you have been awarded for your initial games by entering tournaments and valuable “Sit `n` Go” qualifiers. Some sites also offer “reload” bonuses to encourage you to make further deposits with them. All of these, once added to your initial deposit, bonus amounts and winnings, should double your bankroll yet again in a short space of time.
So, you can see from this, that it is not necessarily the biggest initial deposit bonus that will make the start to your poker career successful, but the standard of the other players in the games which you choose to play, and the ongoing bonuses and promotions offered by the poker room to which you subscribe.
Determining the biggest poker bonus is not particularly difficult. Pretty much all of them are listed on a multitude of web sites, each offering links through to the most lucrative opportunities. A little bit more research is required to find the poker rooms and tables that will provide you with the greatest earnings. These are the sites that have a high percentage of players per flop (a statistic that is advertised in most cash game lobbies) and are where the loosest players abide. It is the players on these tables who will provide the majority of your funds provided you stick to “ABC” poker against them. Finally you have to consider the ongoing loyalty bonuses that the web site offers to players for remaining with them.
In this respect, we have identified a superb opportunity for new players. Lucky Ace Poker is part of the 888.com casino network that has over a decade of providing a consistently solid gaming experience. This site has a very loose standard of player (very many tables consistently showing higher than 50% players/flop), from whom it should be possible to win regularly. Furthermore, it offers a cashback facility to players based on the amount of rake they pay during their games and a fast-track method to VIP status. Their initial 2x deposit bonus is limited to only $400, but as demonstrated above, it should only take $250 initial deposit to reach $1.000 in little time AND Lucky Ace Poker immediately credits your account with 25% of the deposit bonus, so there are no qualifications you have to go through to release it.
Overall Lucky Ace Poker offers the new poker player the best opportunity to fast-track to a substantial poker bankroll, and for more information about how you can get involved and create one in super-quick time, please click here >>>>>>>
Knowing When to give Poker a Break
There was an exceptionally good article on www.ukpokerplayer.co.uk recently (in fact, most of their articles are excellent) regarding “When not to play online poker”, and the author listed several standard reasons such as, not playing when you are drunk, tired, or playing with money that you cannot afford to lose - and then added “Never Play For Playings Sake”.
The article continued that switching on your computer and logging into your favourite poker room because you are bored and have nothing better to do, is equally as detrimental to playing under the influence of alcohol when you have not slept for a week. The author correctly pointed out that, if you have gone to your virtual games room in a non-winning frame of mind, then guess what – you won’t win! S/he concluded the article by writing that they wondered if there were any more good reasons not to play.
Well, there is. When you stop going online to learn how to play poker, that is when you should stop playing poker. The world’s greatest players confirm this every time they write a book. Do you think they actually need the £11.95 that we will happily fork out to read their latest musings about the game? Of course not. Writing about poker for the poker pros of this world is both cathartic and educational. They get to analyse their own play, identify their own weaknesses and use the opportunity to improve their game.
This is what every player, no matter what their standard, should do every time they enter a game. Inasmuch as the ultimate aim of your participation is to leave the table in profit, you should also have learnt something about the game and the other players who were involved with you. You should be trying different strategies, playing different starting hands from various positions and identifying others players traits and weaknesses. You should be using every opportunity to hone your game and increase your skill level until it is time for you to write your own book!
The cause of this problem can often be due to having spent too much time online recently, in which case it is better to give it a break and come back to the game when your enthusiasm is rekindled and your desire to learn has returned. For failing to do so displays an arrogance that will damage your game, and eventually your bankroll.
How to Win WSOP Satellites
By the end of April, practically every online poker room will be offering a satellite tournament with the chance to get to the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. We would all love to be there, if only it was not for the $10.000 entry fee, and costs of flights and accommodation. So, entering a qualifying series with a WSOP package as a prize, is an ideal opportunity to get that dream trip to Vegas, and play live with the pros.
The obstacles that are in the way are the other fifteen or twenty thousand players with the same goal in mind, who will be entering the qualifiers at the basement level and making it exceedingly difficult to get through to the next stages. The answer is to fast-track your path to the higher levels by paying the higher entrance fee – after all, if you consider yourself to be good enough to be playing at Las Vegas, you should be capable of winning the $50 or so needed to enter at a later stage of the series, and you should be able to do it in the time that you would have spent fighting off twenty thousand other hopefuls!
Now comes the hard bit, as the web site that you choose to play your qualifier on may only have one package available, or you could choose to take on a bigger field on a site offering multiple packages. There are pros and cons with whichever route you choose, and there are a number of other considerations to take into account before you get involved with this satellite series or any other.
Winner Takes All Qualifiers.
These are the satellites that only offer one place up to the next stage or final. They are most commonly found on the smaller poker web sites, or those on the networks with a lower volume of traffic. In “Winner Takes All” you have to take the approach that if you do not win – you lose. Whereas normally reaching the final table in a tournament would guarantee you something, with WTA you might as well come last as second. Therefore, expect to see ultra-aggressive play throughout the game, as the initial aim is to get to the final table with the largest chip stack and, from there, control the betting.
The correct way to play these games is to abandon your opening hand criteria and make massive bets whenever possible against short-stacked players. At times, it is like being on the play chip tables when you first started playing poker online, but if it gets you to where you need to be, it is an acceptable strategy.
Multiple Package Qualifiers
The aim in these tournaments is to get to the bubble and stay there until the end. In complete contrast to the WTA games, as the bubble approaches towards the end of the game, you will witness some of the slowest, tightest poker ever seen. Players have been known to muck AA because they do not want to risk the damage a loss would do to their chip stack and those chips going to somebody else.
If you find yourself on a tight table, where none of the players are willing to contest any of the pots, it is a good opportunity to steal a few blinds and ensure that you remain firmly within the bubble until you reach the position where you are certain you are safe.
Because of the nature of WTA Qualifiers, many players tend to avoid them, and this could be your opportunity to take advantage of a weak field, and win your way to the WSOP Main Event.