Poker Trap and Psychology

Every One who plays poker has heard about "having a poker face" or capture. To have a poker face is more than just watch your face, your whole body language and actions combined.

A good poker player needs to be friendly in nature. He must learn to associate his opponent facial expressions, body language, speech, and even the stakes in what are ultimately found to have been held in the hand.

Facial Expressions: With online poker, you of course cannot use this. But in a real poker game you can. Start with the eyes. When they call or raise a hand, do they look down, to the right, to the left, at an object in the room? Then what did they have when they did that?

Do they smile? Grind their teeth? Immediately take a sip of their drink after or before the bet? Look for these things each time they call or raise.

Body Language: Do they play with their poker chips under certain circumstances? Lean back or forward? Look for things they do with their body and then what kind of hand they had each time they do that action.

Betting Amounts: Some poker players don't realize they have a pattern at all or they figure no one will figure out the "code" they use for themselves. Watch how much they bet, then what type of hand they had and see if you can associate particular hand strength with a specific range of bet or even a specific raise amount.

If you find a pattern where your opponent always does a specific action in relation to having a good hand or bluffing, you have their number and can beat them at poker easily . . . or can you?

The Trap: You can establish a pattern that will be picked up by the other players. Let it cause you to lose a little money here and there. Let your poker opponents think they have your number by doing specific actions associated with different hand strengths.

Don't let it cost you too much money and watch for the signs they are taking the bait and are using your patterns to beat you. Then you can rock. Wait until you have a very good hand and do the things he did when a bluff or if you had a lowest strength hand.

Your poker opponents will imagine they have you and bet the limit. You'll win what you lost and a lot more. Play poker much more than know how to bet the cards in your hand. There are a lot of psychologies involved, mind games, if you really want to play with the best.

Fold – A Good Strategy

Frightening your opponent for folding him his hands is a better option than allowing him to see your cards. Here your ability and skill for frightening your opponent at right time is required. This is very important in order to win the game.

There was a research held for knowing that how much time does a player takes for folding his hands. In it was found that one hand is out from the game in about 70% of total time. Through this we conclude that skill is a key factor for overcoming the deals of the game. Any player’s skill and talent will make other player out from the game or to make his hands fold is considered to be very important. This helps you to win the game easily.

You should be smart enough to fold your opponent’s hands at the right time. For this reason you should make proper strategies and game planning. You should exactly know when to raise and when to fold. This is the most powerful talent of a player which is possessed by very few ones. To possess these types of talent and ability you need more and more practice and experience.

There are lots of strategies in the game of casino for Folding. You must play at the casino with more concrete strategies in your mind. One of the strategies is ‘Fold. Get out while you can.’ Folding in the odd situation is the smartest thing to do. It may also mean to leave heaps of chips on your table.

As a player you need to collect information about each casino player and the casino table. From this way you will be able to win the casino game. If you want to win this game then you compute the casino odds that you have won in your casino game.

TEXAS HOLD 'EM

Texas hold 'em is a variation of the standard card game of poker. The game consists of two cards being dealt face down to each player and then five community cards being placed by the dealer—a series of three ("the flop") then two additional single cards ("the turn" and "the river"), with players having the option to check, bet or fold after each deal, i.e. betting may occur prior to the flop, "on the flop," "on the turn," and "on the river." The three most common variations of texas hold 'em are limit hold 'em, no-limit hold 'em and pot-limit hold 'em. 

In Texas hold 'em, like all variants of poker, individuals compete for an amount of money or chips contributed by the players themselves (called the pot). Because the cards are dealt randomly and outside the control of the players, each player attempts to control the amount of money in the pot based on the hand the player holds.

The objective of winning players while playing texas hold’em is not winning every individual hand, but rather making mathematically correct decisions regarding when and how much to bet, raise, call or fold. By making such decisions, winning poker players maximize long-term winnings by maximizing their expected gain on each round of betting. A pair of aces is statistically the best hand to be dealt in texas hold'em poker.

Texas hold 'em is normally played using small and big blind bets – forced bets by two players. A dealer button is used to represent the player in the dealer position; the dealer button rotates clockwise after each hand, changing the position of the dealer and blinds. The small blind is posted by the player to the left of the dealer and is usually equal to half of the big blind. The big blind, posted by the player to the left of the small blind, is equal to the minimum bet.

In general, an overall tight/aggressive style of play is probably the most profitable, especially in intermediate/strong games. Texas hold’em is the most popular poker variant in the world today. It has caught the imagination of people from all possible age groups. Texas hold’em is simple to play and easy to understand.

H.O.R.S.E Poker

H.O.R.S.E poker is a mix of five different games. The games are Texas Hold’em, Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz poker, 7 Card Stud and 7 Card Stud Hi-Lo. These games are always played in fixed limit format. The most important thing to consider when first trying out H.O.R.S.E poker is that you must have a working knowledge of each game, if you do not, you will find yourself doing really well at one point, and then simply giving all your money back as soon as its time for a game that you don't understand as well.

In terms of actual game mechanics, there is nothing different about H.O.R.S.E poker than if you were to simply play these games individually. The main things you will have to consider is your ability to switch gears each time the game changes.

You will probably start to figure out how each of your opponents plays, but remember that when the game changes, they might have a completely different poker strategy, so you really have to be able to adapt in many different kinds of situations to be able to be successful at H.O.R.S.E poker.

The best idea for a beginner is definitely to start out at the low levels when first trying H.O.R.S.E poker; you may even want to just try a cheap tournament to get the feel of the different games. Another suggestion is to simply make sure you have sat down and put in a few hours at each of the different games before you sit down to play them all at one table.

In H.O.R.S.E poker it is actually much harder to learn each game because you only play it for one round at a time before you have to switch gears and play a different game.

Poker Celebrities – Tony Cascarino

Anthony Guy "Tony" Cascarino better known as Tony Cascarino was born on the 1st September 1962 in St Paul's Cray England. Tony Cascarino is a former association football player. His father was Italian and his mother English. Regardless of his background Tony Carscarino played 88 times for Ireland. His name was made whilst playing as a striker for a number of British and French football clubs. Tony Cascarino furthered his name by playing for the Republic of Ireland National Football Team.

Tony Cascarino has now retired from football. Tony has also presented on TalkSport radio and written for The Times and the Irish magazine Hot Press.

It is unknown how long Tony Cascarino has been playing poker for but his cashing started back in 2004 and to date he has cashed 12 times with two first place finishes. Tony Cascarino's poker tournament record is as follows:

• Nov 27, 2008 Grosvenor UK Poker Tour - Grand Final No Limit Hold'em 6th $54,795
• Nov 21, 2008 Caribbean Poker Classic 2008 Main Event - No Limit Hold'em 12th $4,400
• Sept 11, 2008 Grosvenor UK Poker Tour Leg 7 (GUKPT) Main Event - No Limit Hold'em 1st $99,078
• Sep 29, 2007 European Poker Championships / EPT Event Season 4 Event #7 - EPT No Limit Hold'em Championship 14th $41,993
• Nov 27, 2006 Caribbean Poker Classic No Limit Hold'em 1st $28,400
• Nov 26, 2006 Caribbean Poker Classic No Limit Hold'em 2nd $4,800
• July 29, 2006 Bellagio Cup II Tournament No Limit Hold'em 20th $1,460
• Nov 29, 2005 Caribbean Poker Classic No Limit Hold'em 9th $2,820
• Oct 30, 2005 The Irish Winter Tournament - EPT/Pokerstars Season 2 No Limit Hold'em 17th $786
• Feb 19, 2005 The French Open - EPT/Pokerstars Season 1 No Limit Hold'em 7th $3,866
• Oct 17, 2004 Ladbrokes Poker Cruise No Limit Hold'em 11th $8,000
• Apr 10, 2004 Irish Open No Limit Hold'em 9th $4,469 

The sheer talent of Tony Cascarino meant that he transformed from a successful football player to a great poker player and therefore he features on our list of poker celebrities.

Overcoming bad beats in Texas Hold'em

In order to win at Texas Hold'em or for that matter at any poker game, you need to have the right strategy. The kind that helps you win pots of money. Your poker strategy could be based on any aspect of the game ranging from specific in-game theory to the psychological aspects of play.

A major setback to any poker players' game is a bad beat. The kind that drops you from the high of being all in on the flop with top set against two over cards, to the low of being outdrawn to a runner-runner flush. This is where your strategy comes in, where you have a game plan before playing your next hand.

Losing a lot of money in the game can be pretty frustrating. An aggressive player will determinedly chase after it for the rest of the session while attempting to pull off huge bluffs and losing more money in the bargain. Some beats are so bad, they drive you insane and you waste the rest of your chips on that ten-high flush draw.

Do not lose heart; there are ways in which you can avoid such an obvious leak of chips:
Take a break: Cool off. Poker is a mind game, and your mind needs some rest, sometimes. If you return to the game in a rational frame of mind, the probabilities of you playing at the top of your game and winning your money back are higher.

Think in terms of expectation: Think of the money you had expected to win on the hand that you lost with. As for instance, if you hold an AA against an AK pre-flop, there are 90% chances that you could win the hand. You could use an odds calculator to figure this out. You can now say that you won 90% of what was in the pot, the 10% chance of losing being an occasional situation that caught up with you this time. Okay, maybe you lost this particular hand but later on you will be winning more.

A poker lover will come across bad beats at some point of time in his play. It is what makes the player sharpen his skills at the game and not just depend on luck alone. What is important is that we overcome the bad beats by playing the right strategy.

Poker - Skill or Chance ?

I have always wondered if in poker – skill or chance matter. In December 2008, the eastern division of the Danish High Court ruled that poker is a game of chance. There have been similar rulings elsewhere wherein poker has been defined by law to be a game of pure luck, where the player has very little chance to influence the gaming. Even the scientific fraternity has also challenged the long-held notion that poker is a game of luck, where instruction and strategy are immaterial - by showing that the card game is based on pure skill.

In 2008, Michael DeDonno, a doctoral student from Case Western Reserve University, had 41 college students play eight games, totaling 200 hands, of Texas Hold'em, a computerized simulation of 10-player Hold'em poker. Overall most of the students had little experience playing poker. Half of the students in the first group were given charts that ranked the two-card combinations from best to the worst and also learned that professional poker players typically play about 15 percent of the hands dealt them. The other group was given background on the history of poker with no strategies. The findings were that students given some strategies and basic online poker rules to make decisions did better than those without the strategies.

To statistically verify the results from the first study, DeDonno conducted a second study, but had students play 720 hands. Again the group was divided into those provided with strategies and those with just a history of playing poker. While all students improved their playing with practice over the large number of hands, the group given strategies continued to do better than those without the added information. With this he was able to prove that skill wins out in playing poker.

Personally speaking I question the very idea of poker being a game of luck alone. It may take a couple of hours to learn a game such as Texas Hold'em in theory. Hand rankings and game play is pretty much standard save a few variations on rules and regulations. However it takes a lifetime of playing to really master it. Poker – Skill or chance looks to be a continuing debate for me. The existence of professional players proves that chance is not the determining factor, skill and dedication is. In the game of cricket any and I really mean any idiot who can swing a bat has a chance of hitting the ball but only a few can use the bat as a professional can. Also one would not find countless poker strategy books or web pages devoted purely to poker strategies.

A poker game is not won merely by the strength of your hand. A poker player needs to consider a lot of indicators - tells, pot odds, probabilities . before deciding on a move. A brilliant player could even make a statistically incorrect play in-order to fool the opponents into thinking that he has a stronger hand.

So, Poker -Skill or Chance ? ….the debate goes on.

Poker Chip Tricks

Juggling champagne bottles is a great trick that bartenders have been doing to attract clientele. Similarly in the poker world, poker chip tricks have come of age. Started of as manipulations of poker chips,showing off  and way of passing time, poker chip tricks provide an avenue for players to intimidate fellow poker players.

Today players and spectators alike welcome unique skills at a table and consider anyone able to do masterful poker chip tricks and poker card handling as someone who "really knows how to play poker!". The same holds true for the cheque handling skills of the dealer as well.

A few poker chip tricks currently in vogue include the Butterfly where a stack of four chips is evenly spread out between the five fingers and the Flip where in the front chip in the stack is flipped to the back of the stack. Some other interesting tricks include the Knuckle Roll, the Muscle Pass and Round the clock.

Poker chip tricks can also be used as tells by experienced hands. They will tell you that great poker hands trigger strange reactions in the competitors. It has been also noticed that poker chip tricks can be a dead give away for a few players as well. A straight flush may trigger a knuckle roll in a few players.

So flaunt them if you have them, poker chip tricks not only intrigue the spectators but also give you that added advantage in the poker game.

Online Poker Bonus

Online poker bonus is an integral part of Internet poker. Just a bonus won't make you a winning player, but it can definitely help you along the way. These bonuses are perfect for those who are building a bankroll. The bonus can cover up for mistakes new players commit or just be extra cash on top of the winnings from the game. The most common and popular type of bonus is the sign-up match bonus where a site offers you money for signing up with their site equal to a percentage of the initial deposit.This percentage can be 100 percent or even more with some site promotions. The concept of an online poker bonus has a few pros and cons associated with it.

Pros:                                                                                    1.Financial Benefit
The most obvious upside to an online poker bonus is that it fetches you free money. All you have to do to get it is sign up for the site with the proper code and play on the site, which you would do anyway. If you're a winning player, this increases your expected value. If you are a losing player, it can stop the bleeding and if you're somewhere in between, it can put you over the top.

2. Shopping Around
The online poker bonus is a feature that attracts a player to any site.The online sign-up bonus allows you to test out a new site without investing too much of your own capital. You can play as long as it takes to release the bonus, and if you decide you enjoy playing on that particular site, keep going. If you don't care for it, you can take your bonus money and head elsewhere.
 
3. No Obligation
Collecting a sign-up bonus from one online poker site does not preclude you from collecting another one on a different site. All that is required is that you play the requisite number of hands to clear the bonus into your account. Beyond that, what you do with your online poker time is up to you.

Cons:
1. Clearing Requirements
You will not be able to collect your online poker bonus until you play a certain number of raked hands, usually determined by the size of your bonus. This is a reasonable requirement on the part of the site, however, if you decide you do not like the site right away, you will still be stuck playing on it for awhile in order to clear your bonus. Fortunately, most sites have non-sticky bonuses, which mean that once you meet the requirements you can withdraw all of your bonus money without penalty.

2. Time Requirements
Most sites require you clear your bonus within a given amount of time. If you deplete your bankroll and cannot reload your account in time to play the given number of raked hands, you may lose your bonus. If you play a super tight no limit texas hold’em game, clearing a bonus might take some time.

3. Overconfidence
Resist the temptation to see the bonus chips as house money. The online poker bonus  is real money that belongs to you, and you should treat it with just as much respect as money you earned from your job. Playing recklessly with bonus money because it was so easy to get is just a waste.

In short online poker bonus can be considered as an incentive that is given by a poker room to players.The bonuses come with a code that needs to be entered at the time of depositing, this code is the bonus code. The rate of how fast a bonus will clear is called the clear rate and the expiration time is the time available to the players before the bonus expires. These are some of the terms associated with an online poker bonus.

Poker Bankroll

Poker bankroll is  the amount of money set aside to play online poker.It is also referred to as rolling money. Most of the players who prefer playing online poker with real money find it difficult to set a bankroll as they have full control on their money. It is one of the vital poker strategy that you need to know before you begin to play with real money.

Before playing with real money it is advisable to select a specific poker room and also look out for the offers provided by the poker room. Once you get used to the table and also are well versed with the rules and strategies, set a specific poker bankroll that you will able to gamble with the help of you proficiency.

Let’s see how to play with different strength of poker bankroll

$200 and less

You have two options here, either you play stakes around $.5-1.00 limit or play $5 Sit and Go Tournaments (SNG's). Also make a note that some of the $5 SNG’s involve $1 entry fee which is 20% rake. Therefore it is suggested that players who have a low poker bankroll shall go for $10 SNG's, which requires a bankroll of around $400. Make sure you do not open an account with less than $150. If at all you open an account with less than that, you would not have sufficient amount to counter strike some bad beats and have enough money to avoid going bust.

$500 to $900

This shall be considered as healthy bankroll. Now start playing some $5-1.00 games until you get used to the strategies and realize that you can take a step ahead. Once you have a bankroll of $1000, jump to $1-2 limit. All you need to do is to understand the level of competence and adapt your strategies with real money to build a better poker bankroll. $10 SNG table are also considered as a good option to get relevant experience without risking your poker bankroll and also making a consistent earning.

$1000 and more

Amazing…! This is a really healthy poker bankroll to start off with. As you have enough money to take calculated risk and beat weaker bets. You shall experiment with $0.5-1.00 or SNG’s for at least 2 weeks just to make you feel confident about the level of competition. Once you know you can do better then what you did earlier, go ahead to play $1-2 limit or $20 SNG’s. 

Your poker bankroll is your hard earned money so make sure you use it wisely. And only move to the next level until you’re confident enough that you can perform well. It is sad to know that 90% of online poker players lost their interest just because they did not understand what would be a better poker bankroll for them with respect to their proficiency. Online poker is a strategic game and shall be played cautiously when it involves real money. But before you think of setting up your poker bankroll, you should always use the play money sites to get prepared.

Online Poker Rules

Online poker rules form the basis of all poker games online, where different games have specific rules that vary between different online casinos or website settings. The attraction of online poker game as the best-played game is that online poker rules can change slightly from one place to the next, and yet it still follows the basic guidelines that allow anyone familiar with the game and those guidelines to play.

However, there has to be one accepted set of online poker rules that all the players can refer to when confusion sets in. That is why there have been books about how to play online poker and free poker tutorials available online. What these rulebooks do is offer the player instruction on how to play poker, either in real life or online. These tutorials have poker strategy tips on how to play the hand, when to fold and when to risk you cards. 

Playing online poker game can develop your math skills, probability skills, promotes social interaction and teaches you to play smart. All this by simply following the online poker rules. The online poker game room security also run through checks to make sure that cheating and any other kind of malpractice is avoided. 

Aside from manipulating your opponent through physical behavior; there is nothing different with going online and sitting on the table for a round of poker game as, in both online and real poker game a player can bet real cash. One great advantage online is that online poker rules remain the same minus the fact that you don't feel intimidated by other players. Once you've learned the basics of poker online, you can sign-up and create your account in different poker rooms. The first online poker game can give you a head rush especially if you still do not fully grasp the online poker rules. But soon you will get how the game is played when there are other players and everything will fall into place.

One thing that doesn't change even for an online poker game is the addictive power of gambling. It is all about taking a risk, going with your gut, paying attention to your skill and winning a few lucky games in the end. But it is still the online version of poker that attracts more beginner players everyday as the Internet destroys the barriers of time, space and race in a safe online environment bound by online poker rules.

Poker Room Reviews

There seems to be a all sorts of poker room reviews floating online. With new online poker room opening every day. Some rooms fade away as quick as they hit the online gaming arena where as others grow into the largest online poker rooms. Every individual has their own unique definition on what makes a great poker room. Reading authentic poker room review could change your definition on what makes a great poker room as you may not know everything available on each site.

Comparing poker rooms in the form of authentic poker reviews is a huge help for online poker players. By doing an in-depth review on every aspect of a room points things out that ordinarily we wouldn't know. Let's face it, we can't know everything about each and every poker room without poker room reviews as we simply don't play on them all.

There are many poker room reviews on the internet. Some reviews available are less then useful as they are compiled by the poker rooms themselves as a means of advertising and also convincing you to their site. Many poker room reviews on small sites are biased and designed to sign you up to the particular room that the site wants you to play on. Usually when this is the case you find just 1 poker room or even 2 or 3 from the same network. Looking for a non biased and unique poker room review such as the ones on www.funandpoker.com are few and far between. The reviews include sites from a number of networks and include the largest online poker reviews. We can be assured that reviews like these are authentic and non biased due to one particular thing: The reviews are scored into sections and calculated into an overall score for the room. The second thing that would indicate a non biased and authentic poker room review would be the fact that the reviews are on a large number of sites, all from different networks as mentioned above.

So just how are these online poker reviews done so they are precise, unique and most importantly authentic? Well, let me tell you it isn't as easy as it looks. A person completing a non biased and authentic poker room review must analyse every aspect of the room from the download page to the speed of the game.

There are certain sections of a poker room which must be looked at very carefully, understood and fine detailed in an authentic poker room review. Doing this on the largest online poker rooms can be a daunting task due to the content in them. It is no easy task to complete, this can be assured.

The reviews on funandpoker.com show just what effort must be done to complete the reviews fairly and properly for optimum results for customers. The poker software must be downloaded, played on and have every section reviewed. These sections include:

1. Bonuses and Promotions

2. Traffic Levels

3. Available Games, Tournaments, Ring Games and the stakes and sizes they are available in.

4. The software performance, graphics and features.

5. Deposit and payment methods

6. Additional or extra features the site may offer that others don't.

This task as mentioned above is a massive task and takes many many hours, it is again not easy and takes a great online poker player with good knowledge of online gaming technology, poker sites and networks to complete. Although this can be attempted by anyone with the credentials they are going to have to have a load of knowledge of many online poker rooms and not just the largest online poker rooms to complete it.

Authentic poker reviews are very necessary to ensure that new online rooms are stacked up against the older and larger sites. Just because they are brand new doesn't mean they don't have an equal amount of winning probability, fun and enjoyment.

Check out authentic poker room reviews (make sure they have the indicated non biased factors) and make sure that you are getting the very best from your room in comparison with the others that are scored. Who knows? You may see a great new feature or find the benefits of changing rooms essential to your game and, without reading the reviews you would never have known.