How To Play Poker For Beginners

I want to take a step back and reflect on what's been going on in my blog. For anyone reading this that actually wants to learn how to play poker and especially if you are a beginner, here we go.

I feel as if my blog has been rambling some over my last few posts and hasn't spent very much time on the important things such as figuring out how to actually make money. That's why were all here right? To learn from each other in a never ending quest to hone and sharpen our poker skills?

So lets get back on track, I want pass on some of the lessons that I've spent an incredible amount of time (and money) on getting right.

I firmly believe that being good at poker is less about the regurgitation of information and more about the ability to think for ones self. I constantly get asked by friends, students, members of poker forums etc, how do I play X, Y or Z hand when it's already been raised pre flop, blah, blah, blah.

Now rather than think of any one situation we are going to take a step back and start looking at the bigger picture. I'm going to teach you how to play each player type and talk to you about why taking different lines with the same hand vs different players will show more of a profit.

So lets call this lesson one and in lesson one I want to talk about why raising as the first player to act pre flop is better than limping?

Why Raising is better Than limping

I often find players that are beginners like to limp in to a lot of pots in order to see a 'cheap flop'. The irony to this situation is that you are in fact (in the long run) making the flops you see more expensive and lets look at the reasons why.

Firstly when you raise pre flop with all the hands you want to play to play (and are first to enter the pot) you just give yourself a lot more ways to win the pot. If you're limping in then you are normally going to see multi way pots and have to make a hand in order to take the pot down. If you raise though, you can win the hand pre flop or on the flop with a continuation bet, not to mention that you will be letting less people see the flop for free (the blinds) and thus when you do have some sort of hand, you will win more often as you are facing less opponents.

Let us look at a few other good reasons to raise pre flop with your entire range of hands rather than limping in. Well for a start it makes you much harder to read. if you're raising AA, KK, 22, 89s, JQs etc then your opponents have no idea what your playing. If you limp small pairs for example in order to hit a set but raise big pre flop with AA, then you become very transparent to play against and easy to read.

Lastly your image at the table. If you are constantly raising with every hand that you decide to open first with then you'll start to get less respect from the other players which means they are more likely to start playing back at you. They have no idea when we are strong or weak as our bets are consistent so it's for this reason that they are a lot more likely to make a mistake in a hand against us than we are against them.

In short we'll keep our opponents guessing and off guard, we'll win more pots pre flop, more post flop and showdown winning hands more often because there are less people in the hand with us on the whole.

Remember this the next time you're sat at the tables.

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Time To Stick It To The Donkeys!

So most you (my loyal followers) know that I love to play poker online. However the same cant be said for playing live, especially in tournaments.

The few live poker tournaments that I have played in have (to be fair) been full of droolers. Granted I'm not exactly playing in a WSOP event but still the quality of play from most of the opposition that I saw should be the equivalent to Usain Bolt racing a stag beetle.

So why haven't I destroyed the local tournaments week in week out and why on earth am I not even trying? Tesco is why!!

Yes you heard, Tesco!

Well maybe not directly, I mean I'm not trading out a game of poker to eat a bowl of Tesco value cornflakes, or sit down to try the free taster foods that funny old woman keeps trying to tempt me with. You see the problem goes deeper than that. Let me start by asking you a question, do you remember when shops used to be shut on Sundays? I may be showing my age a little here but I do, vaguely.

The point is that if you wanted to shop, you had to do it within the opening hours of the shop. Roll on the 21st century, 7/11, 24 hour tesco and more importantly, Internet poker.

I don't want to que up and wait around for everyone to sit down. I don't want to wait for the dealer to finish cutting the cards, because no matter how fast he is, like the abacus vs the Pentium, he's too slow.

I'm so used to playing 4 to 8 tables and seeing 300 - 600 hands per hour that the painstakingly slow, mind numbing idea of only playing around 30 in the same time makes me want to suck my eyes out through a straw.

I don't want to feel this way, really I don't. I'm like an impatient child on a road trip constantly screaming "are we there yet?" except I find myself screaming (in my mind at least) have you dealt yet. So I point the finger of blame to Tesco. It's their fault that if I want to get four beers and a tub of Hagan Das at 3:30am then I expect to be able to get it. It's their fault that I have no patience, they've killed my live tournament poker chances.

But alas I won't let them beat me. That is why I'm going to make a concerted effort to get down to the card room, hang out with the guys, have a drink, enjoy the socialising first and the poker second because after all only geeks get off sitting, playing games on the computer all day, right?

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An Exciting New Room On The Entraction Network - Tricky Play

Today I'm going to talk about stepping outside the poker box somewhat. You see I started writing this blog as an online journal if you will. I talked (sometimes moaned) about the ups, downs, thrills and spills of my poker life. Then one day, rather unexpectedly, the blog started to gather a following and before long a Google page rank.

So what does this actually mean? Well I could post a tonne of bright, flashy banners all over the place to promote poker rooms and/or plaster my beloved blog with Google AdSense to earn a little extra money. However, that's not going to happen. The point I'm trying to illustrate is that if you have a love for poker there are so many different ways you can make money from it that you may not even realise.

So let me tell you about a site that I've come across called TrickPlay.com. Tricky Play is not simply a poker room, it's a poker room and so much more. Let me give you a little background on them before I tell you all that they have on offer.

Last Year the well known Entraction network was the fastest growing network in the industry and decided to press its dominating position in the European market. Then not too long ago a new Entraction poker skin, TrickyPlay.com was launched.

TrickyPlay has a fantastic affiliate scheme which delivers excellent affiliate support and not just any standard deals and promotions. This should be a great chance for affiliates to promote a fast growing network and earn a lot of money doing so. One thing that stood out for me was when I discovered that TrickyPlay is offering an affiliate school where you can find lots of useful articles about the affiliate industry and -techniques like SEO (search engine optimisation), building websites, and so on.

TrickyPlay not only offers an Entraction poker room but also a Netent online casino with games like Icy Wonders, Voodoo Vibes, Vikings Treasure and so on. If you’re a gambler and looking for online casino action you will have tons of fun in the TrickyPlay Netent casino. Currently they offer a 50 % up to 50 Euro instant cash bonus for the casino.

There are some good reasons to play at TrickyPlay and the Entraction network merits its fast growth. If you’re talking to European players most of them love the Entraction software because it’s fast and clean with nice action where you can make a lot of money as a good poker player. You won’t find any avatars or dealer at the table. Most of the players don’t even care about that. They prefer to play online poker rather than watching at virtual female dealers. Less is more according to these players who are happy because of the reduced distractions especially while multi-tabling.

A new trend seems to becoming more and more popular in the online poker industry which is what's known as browser poker. That means that you can play poker in your web browser without downloading any poker client. For Players who want to play on other computers, this is a big selling point. There are not many software providers that offer a browser based client. Even the likes of Full Tilt doesn't offer it right now although they may do in the future. At TrickyPlay you can play in your browser – from anywhere you want to.

I for one share Trickyplays vision for stepping outside the box and offer more choice to their players and of course players that one day may want to become affiliates themselves.

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The Future Of American Poker Players

As many of you avid readers know, I spend a lot of time thinking about poker. I think about all aspects of poker from where to play, what deals are out there to be had, what games are looking juicy and as of late where Americans are soon going to go to get their poker fix?

Right now the US players must feel like the English do about football (soccer to my American fans), we invent the sport, share it with the world and now find ourselves in a position where we can't even qualify for a major tournament.

For those of you that aren't up with current affairs, a couple of years back the Bush administration brought UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gaming Act) into effect. This act essentially makes it illegal to play online poker in America. Now I could go into detail about all the ins and outs of this bill but the truth is that right now, all is not lost for our colonial cousins.

Firstly the introduction of UIGEA has unfortunately had an impact on the games to a certain extent because a lot of poker rooms have now withdrawn from the US market. But before we panic too much, lets look at what's going on behind the scenes to put things right. Firstly the Obama administration are looking to over turn a lot of the Bush administrations last minute bills and secondly there are still a few die hard USA poker rooms that are in fact willing to take on American players.

One of the many rooms included is a site called Bodog Poker and they are really growing at a rapid pace where the likes of former online giants have slipped considerably due to no longer allowing the massive US market to play at their tables.

I can't wait to see Obama get things straight on the poker front and bring an end to the UIGEA. It's a sad day in history if people from Dallas are left unable to play Texas Holdem.


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Beat The Recession With RakeBack!

When times get hard you need to start playing smart.

I think we've all been touched in one way shape or form by the global economic crisis but despite the doom and gloom that the worlds media portray I'm happy to still see plenty of people the world over filling up the online poker rooms.

I imagine some are there to let off steam, to chase the dream of riches, to supplement their income or just hang out and relax with other poker enthusiasts.

No matter why you find yourself at the green baize one thing remains the same, and that's the fact that the poker room will still be helping themselves to your hard earned money by way of the rake.

We all know the poker rooms take their slice otherwise why would they be there? it's not as if they're a charity, they too are in business after all. What does surprise me though is the huge amount of poker playing veterans who don't realise that you can take some of this money back.

The term used to describe this is aptly named rakeback. The rates of rakeback offered by different rooms vary quite a bit from around 25 - 50%. What you have to take into account is that some rooms that offer the higher end may only have a small amount of traffic/games running. Bigger rooms such as Full Tilt who only offer 27% on the other hand make up for the lower percentage by the sheer volume of games that seem to be endlessly running.

So you're probably wondering how you go about getting your money back now? There are many companies out there that will go between you and the poker rooms to ensure that you have the best deals available here's a link if you really want to find some of the best rakeback deals.

Now go, enjoy this extra money. Perhaps treat that special person in your life with a little something, if you're anything like me, they may feel a little like a poker widow at times and a good bottle might be just what they need (just don't let them know that your poker room bought it for them)

Good Luck

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