A typical example is the skill of reading body language, this factor requires two skills, projecting confidence and making appropriate ‘poker faces’ and being able to premeditate moves by opponents based on certain visual cues present in the opponent. With online poker though, one variant that is observable is the time a player takes to make a move, this skill can be mastered by calculating the average time an opponent takes to make a move and detecting when this time fluctuates by more than a negligible amount.

Another advantage with online poker is there are services that allow playing free online poker games as well; this is mainly beneficial to new or out of form players to brush up on their poker skill. This is also great for people who consider gambling as unethical but still enjoy the game without real money involved. Most of the popular poker services like Party Poker offer both free online poker as well as real poker integrated into a single software client. Thus, switching between free and real poker games is very convenient and great for players who feel the need to brush every now and then.

As aforementioned, online poker is open to everyone interested in the game, whether you want to play for free or with money, whether you are a newbie or a professional. Even if you are broke, there are certain services that offer a sign up bonus to get you started. Online poker also follows a different trend to traditional poker in the way players approach the game, they tend to be more aggressive and play many hands. This can be an advantage or a disadvantage depending on the situation.

An important thing to watch for with the Internet is scams. With the state of the internet today, it is quite simple for virtually anyone with a $10 bill to register a domain name, setup a legit looking website with the numerous, free professional looking website templates available and even create a software client meant to steal your credit card information. Always look for secure connectivity when using these services and enough of online feedback from other players of a service to verify that a site is legit.

With the positive points heavily outweighing the negative ones with online poker, it is safe to assume and it is apparent too that online poker is the future, so if you are a traditional poker player who refuses to budge, you might want to reconsider your decision.

To excel in poker, a player must know about the other aspects of the game. A winning player must be adept at “reading the opponents” or “knowing the odds” or “money management.” However, there is one strategy that is most important and stands above all the rest. This one strategy must be learned early on and must continually be honed and improved to win.

This strategy is called “bluffing.” Bluffing is the act of betting a weak hand with the intent of driving the other players out of the pot.

There are different types of bluffing. One form is betting with a hopeless hand (or a powerhouse hand with the intent to lure the other players into a trap). Another form is betting on the inexpensive betting rounds to get a free card later on in the hand when the cost of bets doubles.

Yet another form is semi-bluffing, which is betting with a hand that has a chance to outdraw the other hands, but probably is not the best hand. With a semi-bluff, the player can win by causing the other players to fold, or if the opponent calls, the bluffer may catch the card he needs.

As mentioned, bluffing itself has many strategies. It may seem confusing how a beginner may start to master this strategy. The best way is to learn general rules and tips. A beginner can then come to the table with a good foundation for bluffing and winning.

Here are the top 10 tips on how to bluff.

1) Limit bluffing against one or two opponents at the most.

2) Getting caught bluffing can work out in your favor, especially if you can get opponents to call when you do have a strong hand.

3) Avoid bluffs against experts or novices. Experts can see through bluffs, and novices just keep calling.

4) Only bluff if there’s a chance to succeed, rather than to just advertise. Bluffing is not 100% successful, so bluffs can be picked off no matter how much of an expert you are.

5) Do not bluff on a hopeless hand when there are cards still to come. In those cases, you can semi-bluff to get the opponents to fold or hope that you can draw a card that will give you a strong hand.

6) A good time to bluff is when all your opponents checked on the previous betting round.

7) Bluffs that represent specific hands (flush, straight, etc) have a higher chance of succeeding.

Bluffing against players who checked the previous round is easier to bluff against than those who bet.

9) A players seen as selective and aggressive will have a good chance of succeeding in a bluff.

10) You can attempt to bluff with nothing, but if you have enough to beat a draw, save the bet and try to win in a showdown.

Remember that mastering the strategy of bluffing is an ongoing endeavor. Find more resources and learn from other players. Bluffing is definitely one of the most important strategies that a poker player must utilize.

Now I had a funny experience a few weeks back. I’m a hypnotherapist and I sell a lot of mp3 downloads from my website. I had an e-mail from a would-be customer asking why I sold cds for winning poker and not for winning at the dog races…Interesting concept.

Now my mind began to work overtime on this one. The initial image which sprang to mind was all these dogs being hypnotized to win their race!! Or perhaps I was to hypnotize our would-be gambler so that he could cast spells upon the dogs to ensure a particular one did in fact win….Unable to see the feasibility in either of these, my next thought was to re-read the e-mail to check I’d read it correctly. Perhaps, I thought, he was asking why I had a cd designed to assist in stopping playing poker, and not to stop other forms of gambling; Which made me check the title of the cd in question – it is “stop gambling”, so no, this latest interpretation of the e-mail wasn’t possible, and in any case he had clearly asked the question as I had first read it.

Back to square one. What could he be getting at? In what way could you use hypnosis to assist someone in winning at the dog races? You could help someone stay calm and think clearly and therefore make better decisions. That’s more than possible. But would this be relevant? Perhaps. You could help someone to have a cutoff point at which they stopped once they reached that circumstance, thereby assisting in either quitting whilst ahead, or quitting before losing too much.

We got into a bit of an e-mail exchange, and this person’s query seemed to stem from the belief that you could learn to have a better “feel” for picking the winner. I have to admit that I wasn’t completely sold on the concept, although I’m open to being proven wrong. I still don’t quite know how you could hypnotize someone to get such a feel.

Now, with poker, it’s very different. It’s a very mental and emotional game, and assistance can be given in terms of increased concentration, better focus, remaining calm, making good reads and therefore good decisions, in picking up the unconscious cues of the other players whilst controlling your own unconscious behavior, and so on. And so for serious poker players, hypnosis can do more than just a little to help you. You might have seen Derren Brown on UK TV where in one week he assisted a non poker playing lady of fairly “advanced “ years (i.e. the most unlikely subject he could find) with hypnosis, and she subsequently beat several seasoned pros!

Returning to this e-mail exchange, I came to the conclusion that he was simply looking for every possible edge, be it credible or otherwise….and simply displaying the ever present optimistic nature of a gambler.

Read more

And another lovely poker fragment I found on youtube: full house versus full house. Btw Gus Hansen, lmao

For example, consider this hand. You are in middle position before the flop and decide to raise with

An opponent in late position calls and the flop comes:

[

You check, but your opponent doesn’t. He bets. What are you supposed to do? At this moment, you don’t have shit. But you have several outs to end up as the winner. It’s at this point you have to calculate the possible cards that would save you. First point of notice is that your opponent could have a variety of hands. Your check on the flop showed weakness, so hit bet might be just an attempt to chase you off the hand with nothing. But off course he could have hit the flop. Let’s review his possible holdings and see how many outs we have against each of them.

• He has a big hand

It’s not so likely, but your opponent could have hit a real monster, like two pair or maybe a set. In this case you need a straight, or a running flush to win. We need a K or a 9 to hit our straight so that makes 8 outs (four kings and four nines left in the deck). The backdoor flush draw gives us 2 more outs (roughly estimated) so we have a total of ten outs. But if he really has a big hand some of these outs may be worthless. If he hit a set, every card that makes a pair on the board would make him a full house, so let’s reduce our outs to max. 8 outs.

• He has a pair of aces

Mostly this would be the case. When I play over the internet, I see a lot of newbies call with any ace-x. They make the highest pair on the board and think they are good Actually this result would be quite good. We still need to improve, but when we hit an out we’re quite certain to win the hand. We’ll have 10 full outs.

• He has a pair of jacks

This could be a possible holding too. I see a lot of people calling with KJ and KQ too. And since you showed weakness on the flop by checking, they want to win the hand as soon as possible and decide to start betting. In the case of a pair jacks, you see your amount of outs raise. Every queen (there are 3 left, since you hold one in your hand) will give you the winning hand. Our outs will be 10+3 = 13! That’s not a bad result.

• He has a lower pair

Maybe he has pocket nines or sevens and decided it was the right time to take down a winnable pot. In this case, every ten will be an out too, so it would give you 16 outs.

Go Sammy Farha. I like his style! :p 

A king is gonna come on the flop. I’m a favourite you know!

haha, I love that guy