Super Ping

There is always an air of suspicion by some as to the authenticity of the play in online poker. Many people are inclined to think all poker online sites are “rigged” or “fixed” regardless of whatever the actual facts are. And certainly, the news that came out last year about Ultimatebet.com and Pokerstars.net having their random number generators hacked did nothing to quell these accusations.

For the most part, playing online poker is safe. However, any bad news that comes out about the industry is bound to once again raise concerns.

Such was the case this week when news broke that Full Tilt, the world’s second largest poker site, is being investigated by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on money laundering charges. According to the Financial Times of London, world famous poker pros Howard “the Prpfessor” Lederer and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, two players closely associated with Full Tilt Poker, are also being investigated, according to the report. Both Lederer and Ferguson were named as having an ownership stake in Full Tilt in a civil suit filed last year.

Now, it is not known yet what the full accusations of this alleged money laundering are. And certainly, it doesn’t have anything to do with the integrity of play, just some corporate malfeasance is its true. Still, any bad news about online poker is damaging for the industry as a whole.

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I am often loath to make distinctions on such a hazy line as gender, but I think there is something to be said about the ways that the Average Man and the Average Woman approach the poker table. You could play like the Average Man or the Average Woman, no matter your actual gender. It is all about mental approach and understanding of the poker online game. For example, the Average Man plays poker loose at the table pre-flop. This tendency tends to be amplified if they are playing against a woman, perhaps because some cave man instinct kicks in that urges them to be nice to womenfolk. Or maybe they are just looking to score in more ways than one. Whatever the actual reason behind the loose playing style of men, it is a proven fact that they are less disciplined at the table. On the other side of the gender divide you have the Average Woman. She is distinguished by her tight playing style, analytical playing style, and intense concentration. Unlike the Average Man, she only plays hands that she thinks will win. She does not often bluff, or show off at the table. Knowing the gender differences in playing styles puts you in an excellent position to understand why people do the things they do at the table. It will also let you know the gender of your favorite playing style.

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Here’s some good news and bad news for you: The bad news is that the odds of you making a set on the flop when playing online poker are pretty slim. The good news is that the odds are just as bad for everyone else. If the flop comes out with a pair in it, you can be fairly sure that nobody has the third card to make the set. Even better, those two cards that nobody hit make it less likely that your online poker opponents have paired any of their other cards. If the flop comes out with a pair in it, the first person to bet into the pot usually takes it home, so it’s a good idea to get your poker online chips in there if you can do it first. If you can act from an early position, place a bet that won’t show your weakness. Usually a bet of about half the pot is a good size to show strength. Any more and your opponents will think that you’re trying too hard to show strength and they’ll smell a bluff, any less and they’ll think that you don’t have any confidence in your hand. More importantly, bet this amount consistently when the flop is paired. If you bet the same amount whether you’ve made a set or not, your opponents won’t know how to play against you.

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I know you guys are out there, the ones who want to play real money poker but have no way of sustaining a bankroll. Well friends, I have a solution. You can get free money as long as your eligible for a money account on various poker online sites. First you find the freerolls on the different online poker networks. Then, you just start playing. There are new network skins coming out all the time, some of them with exclusive freerolls that may have only 40 or 50 players. This works to your advantage two ways. You get experience for one. And that’s always a good thing. You learn tournament play and you learn how others play tournaments. With this knowledge, you get to develop your own style of play this is optimal to you in tournaments. Next is the winning part. After a few hundred freerolls, you’ll start getting pretty good. And you’ll start winning money. And with this money, you’ll get to start playing real money games. They’ll be small at first, but with all your tournament experience, you’ll soon be gaining ring game experience, too. And this is the benefit of building your bankroll from scratch. The experience. Not only do you get free money, but you get honed poker skills, which is far more important than the little money you get from the freerolls. It gets you ready to play with the big boys when you finally have enough to step up into the real stakes.

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When you play Texas Hold ‘Em, the dealer button rotates around the table, with the action starting to the dealer’s left and rotating clockwise around the poker table. This gives each player a chance to act from every position, from first to last.

Being the first is known as playing “under the gun”, and for good reason. Acting first is a dangerous proposition when you play poker online-you have to make a decision with the least amount of information out of all of the other players at the table. All of your opponents get to see what you are doing and can analyze and interpret your actions as they see fit, and any time you choose to play from under the gun, you run the risk of being raised by any other player at the table. With the risk of being raised by a player acting after you, it’s a lot tougher to see the flop from the early position.

The best strategy that’s worked for me from the early position is to play extremely tight. Since I plan on being raised before I get to see the flop, I only play hands that I’m supremely confident in from early positions. Another tactic, although a bit riskier, is to come into the hand with a decent raise, rather than just limping in. You put more chips at risk, obviously, but with a raise, your online poker opponents are more likely to call your bet rather than raise it before the flop.

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Every time an individual or an organization starts to think about raising funds for their projects the main question which arises in their mind is what should be the way to raise funds. One should be really careful when implementing an idea which is powerful enough that it starts to attract people enough that they happily take out time to listen to your cause.

Before getting started first evaluate how much money you need, what would you or your fellow members like to do. Then determine a right time and place i.e. holidays, football match to maximize the output of your efforts. It also depends on how soon you need the money, which means you can wait till the holidays for the money. Before starting on any idea do a research about what was successful in the past and based on that you should try to come up with an approach which is unique and exciting for you and others. It would be wise that if in the past you had great success with the same fundraising ideas, stick to them; then you can implement little changes to make them more interesting and exciting.

Also make sure you are selling a quality product (buttons, badges, flowers etc) which is cost effective and anyone can merrily open their pockets for it. The more people will find it affordable the quicker you will get success. And when you will start keeping the benefit of your audience in mind, you will attract more people to pay for your cause.

Fundraising is a hard task but you can make it easier for yourself by doing a complete homework before going out to ask people to pay.

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In this .25/.50 NL online poker Holdem cash game, I limped with K, 4 of diamonds. The table had been playing very passively, and I knew I could see a flop if I called. The flop came out King high and all spades. This board kind of sucks, but I thought I could manipulate it if the right turn and river came down. Top pair, at this point, I felt was good.

I checked and this girl at the casino bet $2. She was laughably the worst player I’ve ever seen. She knows what hands are worth and knows poker, but has no sense at all about how to play the game. She will call flop turn and river with a small pocket pair and there are all big cards on the board. I’m not sure if she’s hoping she will get three of a kind along the way or just likes her pair.

Anyway, she bets $2 and I call, everyone else folds. The turn is a 4 of spades. I’ve made 2 pair and the board now has 4 cards to a flush on it. Anyone holding a spade has a flush. I have two diamonds. I check again and she bets $3. Now I don’t know if I am ahead or behind, but it’s going to cost me $3 to see the river. I’m getting about 3-1 to make this call, which is not the right price if I know I am drawing to 4 full house outs. But, I think she might just be betting because she thinks she can win if she bets, and there’s always the chance that I will boat and win a lot of her money. If the river is nothing I might bet and see what she does, or maybe even if I check she will check behind having given up.

The river is a blank and I decide to check. She throws $20 in as a bet. The pot is now about $11 or $12 and she’s betting $20. Her last bets were $3 and $2 and now she’s betting $20! I immediately put her on absolutely nothing because this bet is so peculiar, she must be bluffing and hoping to win by making a large bet. I call.

She has Qs 3x for a queen high flush. She bet $2 on the flop with a draw, $3 with the made hand, and $20 on the river with the 2nd nuts. Against a regular player, you would think that she should bet maybe $5 or something; a price they don’t want to get away from a decent hand for. By betting $20 she’s assuming I have a flush and will call her. I kind of like her bet, only because it was against me. I’m probably the only one at the table that is willing to call people with middling hands under the suspicion that they are full of crap (Hero calls).

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In theory, online poker is one of the few places where players of all skill levels can mingle together and learn from each other. This is where the fish are supposed to sit and obverse the habits of the masters so that they can incorporate them into their play. On the same token, the fish constantly educate the sharks by showing them the newest ideas and common mistakes.

Before you get caught up in the supposed egalitarianism in the world of online poker, remember that everything is not always as it seems. Online poker is no more egalitarian than the casino floor where skill levels tend to group together based on blinds.

The average online poker player has between two and three years of experience playing poker before they begin to play online poker seriously. This means that the large majority of players will end up playing with medium to high skill levels somewhere in the middle blind ranges.

For beginning players, who have less than average experience, you need to know what you are facing in online poker. Sure, you can learn from your mistakes if you want, but there are less costly ways to acquire a poker education. Seriously consider online poker sites that allow observing how players interact at the table without having to actually engage in play. You can save some money this way, while still learning from the experience levels of other online players.

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One of the biggest mistakes poker players make is to focus only on their own hand rather than trying to figure out what their opponent has. Putting your opponent on a range of hands is crucial because you won’t always have a great hand, sometimes you’ll need to pull off some big bluffs or make difficult calls based on what you believe your opponent has.

Let’s try and put a poker opponent on their hand. It’s the second level of a single table sit-n-go tournament (15/30 blinds) and the villain is 2nd to act pre-flop with 2,380 in chips while our hero is in the big blind with 1,970 in chips. So far the villain has been raising often and betting with mediocre hands and draws. He min-raises to 60, the player in the cutoff calls and the hero has AdJc and decides to call the extra 30 and see the flop. The flop comes Jd5h4d giving our hero top pair top kicker as well as a backdoor nut flush draw. Being first to act our hero bets 120 into the 195 chip pot. The villain min-raises to 240, and the other player folds.

What does our opponent have? Possible holdings for him include a pair of jacks with a smaller kicker, a flush draw, a pair in his hand (66-TT or even QQ or KK), and possibly a flopped set. It’s hard to tell whether we are ahead or behind at this point so our hero puts in a 3rd raise to try to narrow this range down. Our opponent then min-raises again. His raises are small which could mean he has a big hand, but our hero, getting good odds, calls the bet planning to shut down if the villain shows strength again on the turn. The turn is the 9h and our hero checks and the villain does as well. This is a huge clue. There are two flush draws on the board so if our opponent has a set or a large pair they would usually bet this turn to try to get any draws to fold. He likely does not have strong hand. The 2h falls on the river completing a possible flush draw and when our hero checks the villain bets only 1/3 of the pot. He either really wants to get called or wants us to think he wants a call. It’s a tough spot but our hero is beating almost every possible hand we can put the villain on other than two hearts. The hero makes the call and the villain shows Ah9s for a pair of nines and the pair of jacks takes the pot. The villain could have won this poker hand with a bet on the turn, but by checking he exposed the weakness of his hand and therefore gave our hero the ammunition needed to make a tough call on the river.

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