No point playing poker when you’re about to fall asleep!

Here at pokertipsbook.com we’re aware of an article, emanating from the UK, about their perceived unfairness over the transatlantic time difference when it comes to playing online poker tournaments. Now before we all jump up and down shouting “whingeing limeys” and other such good humored insults – what about a west coast poker tournament and east coast poker players participating in it?

So, with regard to things like the recent Spring Championship of Online Poker, where a buy-in of just $22 could have net you $55k – can anything be done to equalize things out time wise.

Time just doesn’t stand still

First of all you need to remember that regardless of where you are in the USA, let alone the world, the fact that online poker tournaments are open to anyone and anywhere – inevitably means that somewhere someone will feel aggrieved by the time difference. This is true for say a Las Vegas online tournament starting at 8pm local time when it will be 11 pm in New York, 4am in London (UK) and even 1pm the next day in Sydney (Australia). You can extrapolate those times backwards and forwards for a tournament based in London, New York etc – but the same is always true, someone somewhere will shout foul, especially if they’re losing at poker. Add into this equation the confusion caused by various time zones adopting daylight saving schemes and you could easily completely miss out on tournament.

The simple answer

There is, of course, a simple answer. If you truly want to play for serious money in an online poker tournament do some homework. Find out in advance what the local start time will be and what the time will be that you’ll need to sit at your computer to play the poker game. Presuming you have a day-job and can’t lead the life of a poker pro, rising when most folk are just getting home form work and then playing cards ‘til dawn the next day … If it is something like a 4am start for you sitting at home, then you can’t expect to have worked all day, stay awake and still stand any sort of chance of making any money playing poker before falling asleep by 5am. So prepare yourself! Get home early from work, have a meal and get some seep for a few hours then, on getting up, shower and change your clothes and then you’ll feel ready to hit those poker tables.

If you’ve ever wanted to be able to play a true online poker tournament, just like a poker tournament in a bricks and mortar casino with cash prizes, then keep an eye out for online Sit ‘n’ Go poker tournaments. They could be advertised as SitnGo or just SNG – but they all add up to the same thing in that you’ll get a cash prize according to the tournament position you finish in, which typically means being one of the final three poker players.

Advantages of Sit ‘n’ Go Poker

You might prefer her to sit ‘n’ stay?

You can of course enter any one of the thousands of online poker tournaments to test your skills acquired from playing in straight cash poker games, but the new Sit ‘n’ Go poker tournaments have two advantages that might be particularly attractive, especially to any poker tournament novices. First they are invariably single poker table tournaments, meaning that there will typically be an absolute maximum of 10 players and that the event can be concluded in a relatively short space of time – this feature being highly desirable if you’re playing online poker on a mobile device whilst travelling or away from home. Secondly, buy-ins can be as low as $1 making them ideal for the rookie poker player or, for more experienced poker players can rise to several hundreds of dollars.

Sit n’ Go poker games

So, what can you expect in a typical Sit ‘n’ Go poker tournament? Regardless of how much the buy-in is, everyone will be given the same size stack of poker chips to play with. Thereafter, essentially, to win it you need to be the ‘last man standing’. Exactly how much of a cash prize you will win depends on how the organizers want to distribute the cash prizes. They could just award one single ‘100%’ prize to the winner, but will more typically hand out a 50% prize to the poker winner, 30% to the runner up and 20% to third place. Of course should the organizer decide to distribute prizes to the top 5 places or even for everyone that competes – expect those percentages to drop.

In our recent poker blog posting “Super Euro Online Poker”, on this poker website, we informed you that PartyGaming was looking to merge with the Austrian online betting and poker site BWIN. Well it now looks like that deal has been sealed and is heading for completion sometime this summer, which is little wonder having seen the latest figures for PartyGaming.

USA online poker return

Looks like they know how to have some real Party Poker fun.

Late last week PartyGaming published its first quarter figures for 2010 which show a very nice increase on last year; and will surely have PartyGaming eyeing up a return to the poker in the USA. Q1 returns show PartyGaming revenues up by 27% to $127 million – despite PartyGaming currently not offering its PartyPoker website in the USA, having voluntarily withdrawn it in the wake of the 2006 anti online poker legislation of 2006. Having had time to see how well the other online poker sites that stayed operating in the USA have done – they are now looking for at least an online partner in the USA to resurrect their American poker tables; ahead of the long-hoped for overturning of the punitive anti-poker laws – when poker is finally accepted by the US legislators as a game of skill every bit as much as Bridge, another popular card game.

Share’s gambling

Despite all this good news for PartyGaming their share price has actually fallen by the odd percentage point during the early weeks of Q2; something that PartyGaming puts down to it simply being a quieter time of the year for them. With BWIN shares still available, and at an eighth the price of PartyGaming ones, you’ve got to ask yourself – “do you feel lucky today”? If you do then how about applying some of those poker skills to figuring out if buying some BWIN shares could pay a handsome dividend when PartyGaming finally moves all in for BWIN?

You know how sometimes, when you’re out and about you really feel that ‘lady luck’ is with you and you suddenly get the urge to have a quick poker game – well if that describes you, then its time you started looking for some of the video poker games that you can play on your smart-phone. Particularly if you’re on the move – playing a video poker game will be ideal in terms of satisfying your curiosity as to whether or not the luck is with you, without distracting you from the task that you’re actually going about.
 

Jacks or Better – is always best

I don’t know about Royal Flush - but she’s giving me a hot flush!

Watch that bankroll

We started out by saying how satisfying it can be playing video poker when you’re out and about; and it can be – but your chances of hitting a jackpot Royal Flush on the move are slim. If you really want to chase that poker jackpot then you’ll need to put some serious playing into your video poker. Playing one machine regularly you can only reasonably expect to hit the Royal Flush jackpot once in every 80 hours or so of play. Now then let’s do the math – that’s 80 hours at a minimum of 50 hands an hour, even for a 25 cent game that’s over $1000. Sure you’ll pick up some poker winnings in that time, but you’ll really need to recycle them back into the video game. 

With over 120 variants of the poker game, you can be forgiven if you’ve never heard of three card poker. A relatively new addition to the list of poker games three card poker, with similarities to Caribbean Stud Poker, can be played in side-games, casinos or at online poker tables and basically pits you against the dealer, or possibly the odds.

Three card poker basics

A Three Card Poker table.

Three card poker is played with one 52 card deck with up to seven players and a dealer. All the players are dealt three cards face down – including the dealer. Your aim is simply to beat the dealers hand in terms of having the winning poker hand. The ranking hands in this game are three cards with either; a straight flush, three of a kind, a straight, a flush or a pair. Before the cards are dealt you bet in the Ante spot against the dealer’s hand on the assumption that yours will be better. If you think you’ll receive a pair – then the bet is placed on the Pair Plus spot. To stay in the game after viewing your cards you have to make another wager or fold by placing the cards face down. When all the betting is done the dealer reveals his/her cards, if the dealer has a Queen or better their hand is called a ‘qualifier’ and the dealer turns over the players cards to see if they’ve been beaten. If you beat the dealer you win even money for the antes and play bets, anything less and the dealer takes it all. However, the best bit in three card poker is if the dealer hasn’t at least a Queen – all the players still in get even money on the ante and the play wager becomes a push.

Three card poker strategy

When it comes to betting - play like the dealer. If you have a Queen or better then play other wise fold. Pair plus betting is risky, you only stand a 25% chance of winning. If pairs get thrown up a lot it might be worth it, otherwise best to skip it. Expect the dealer to get a Queen on about two thirds of the hands and forty percent of the ante hands will make an ante bonus. Bonus payouts are: Straight 1:1, for Three of a kind 4:1 and a Straight Flush 5:1.

Ever since the start of online poker back in 1998 with PlanetPoker, online poker security has been an important issue for many poker players over the internet. Of course online poker security isn’t just an issue for the poker player, but also the websites providing the online poker have vested interest in both ensuring their players financial details are kept safe and secure – and that everyone is enjoying a level playing field when sat at an online poker table.

Player’s security

As the computer technology that drives poker websites keeps on developing it is pretty well impossible to guarantee that a poker website will always be 100% safe and secure from determined criminals and hackers. So, in many respects playing poker online carries no more and no less a risk than carrying out any transaction online. However, it is in the poker websites own interests to make sure that at their end they employ security systems to protect all of their customers personal and financial details. To this end the best online poker websites use digital encryption methods that are exactly the same as those used by the best of the world’s banks and financial institutions.

What about the poker websites?

Hope she’s comes to make sure I’m secure!

Online poker security goes beyond protecting your data, as the poker websites are very sensitive to the possibility of online poker cheats. After all, just think how easy it could be, just using a cell phone let alone online communications, for two players that are apparently in two different places etc, to collaborate feeding each other details of their cards and bets – giving them an advantage over other players sat at the table! Needless to say it’s usually only the high stakes games that are targeted like this, but the more reputable poker websites will be monitoring all of their games, even if on a random basis. So, to counter these sort of risks online poker websites deploy sophisticated software to look for unusual betting and play patterns in their poker games – all to make sure that everyone can enjoy a fair game of poker.

News coming in this week indicates that a super Euro online poker consortium could shortly be realized and that just could be good news for online poker players in the USA as well as Europe.

Partying whilst gaming

One of the top UK based internet poker companies, PartyGaming who own the PartyPoker website, has been in talks for some time with the Austrian online betting firm Bwin about a potential merger, worth some $3 billion. Although these talks haven’t been exclusive, with PartyGaming looking to also merge with other online gambling operations, the potential for a partnership with Bwin is looking the strongest. The talks must be going well as over the week-end PartyGaming shares rose 6% on the London Stock Exchange.

PartyGaming and the WPT

Why not have a party whilst playing poker?

Still not interested? Still think – big deal this is a European thing? Well perhaps you don’t quite fully understand exactly how influential PartyGaming is in the world of poker, let alone online poker. In it’s quest to acquire other online gambling and poker websites, last July it took over Cashcade, for a mere $170 million, who owned the popular Foxy Bingo website. However, not content with that in November they also acquired for a relative song the WPT Enterprise assets – yes, which means they are now in effect the organizers of the World Poker Tour. Prior to the WPT acquisition PartyPoker had upwards of 80 million players a day and, beyond doubt, the acquisition of WPT signals their intent to increase their stakes (like it eh?) in the American online poker business.

PartyGaming and PartyPoker back in the USA?

PartyGaming, or more importantly PartyPoker, was a player (like it again eh?) in the US online poker business until a crackdown by US authorities in 2006. One thought at present is that the merger with Bwin would give them the financial leverage to talk to the US authorities about a return to the USA and its lucrative online poker market – tying in with established US media companies looking for gaming offshoots

For many poker players one of the reasons they play the game is for the social interaction they get with, and against, the other players. Indeed for many non-professional poker players, getting dressed up and going out in the evening to a casino has become their favorite way to socialize. However, is it possible to also get that same sense of being sociable in an online poker game?

The poker purists of a few years ago

There can be no doubt that poker purists a few years ago thought that internet poker was the invention of the devil. It would make people slovenly in their approach to the game, it would kill casino poker, casino poker is the only way for a ‘man’ to play poker … etc; I’m sure you’ve heard all the arguments before. However, I believe that the professional poker players, especially in say the last three or four years, have embraced online poker making many other poker players review their stance regarding online poker. So what caused this shift in their, and the majority of poker players, attitudes toward online poker?

Online poker does present socializing opportunities

Who knows who might want to play with you online?

Quite simply, using modern Web 2.0 technologies, online poker websites can provide a social context for players – which in a virtual way is every bit the same as at a casino poker table. You could of course pick any of the excellent online poker websites to play at and, using their chat and interaction functions, quickly start to socialize with other players just as you would when meeting strangers at a casino poker table. However, the best poker sites will also have specific search functions to help you find players you might regularly enjoy playing and socializing with, where you can immediately interact with them – just as if they were in the room with you. Another point worth making here is that online poker may well prove to have been of benefit to casino poker, rather than as was feared causing its downfall. Online satellite tournaments are giving players a taste for the big casino games that they otherwise might never have even dreamed about. Finally, and even better, at this time of year you can enjoy a game of poker from the comfort of your own home – without having to go out in the cold and wet!

As you get more experienced player in online poker or at regular poker tables there’ll come a time when you fancy trying your hand at a tournament. The problem with tournaments is that we’re all so used to seeing and reading about the big tournaments worth hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars – that finding one we can actually afford to compete in can be quite a challenge.

That first tournament buy-in

Going to your first poker tournament you might fancy some comapny?

How much you want to spend on that first poker tournament buy-in is, of course, a matter of personal preference. However, the higher the buy-in the more experienced most of the players there are likely to be. You’re just starting out on the tournament trail so, like most things in life, don’t try to run before you can walk. Look for a local tournament with buy-ins around the $1000 to $1500 mark. How local you choose to go is again a matter of personal choice, for some players that could be in their county/state or it just could mean in their own country. One thing to remember here is that if you choose a tournament a long way from home you’ll need to add travel and accommodation costs into your overall expenditure for the tournament, not to mention taking someone with you, meaning your buy-in could easily end up being just half of the total outlay!

Online tournament entries

One way to keep the cost of entering a poker tournament down is, of course, to enter it via one of the many online poker competitions. Getting a free roll of winning one of the numerous and relatively cheap online satellites is a great way to get into your first casino/poker room tournament. Even better, if you’ve won your place through an online poker satellite then you’ve the bonus of having added confidence from your online winning position.

If any of you online poker fans fancy winning big this month then, with just a few days to go now, a European poker website, Titan Poker, could be the site to go to. Until the end of the month Titan Poker is running a ‘turbo’ poker tournament totaling $50,000 and this week-end is your last chance to cash-in on the $5000 weekly prize and have a chance of scooping the end of November $10,000 grand prize.

Who can enter?

What is she reaching for? Looks like he’s living the dream!

Live the dream

If you feel you’ve been doing pretty well lately in your regular small poker games and have been dreaming about some serious competition then here’s another reason for playing the Titan Turbo series – the overall top seven places will win seats to the fifth European Championship Of Online Poker, with total prize money of $4.5 million spread over 14 days of play. So, what are you going to do – dream the dream or try living the dream?