Week 6 of the 2010 WSOP and the countdown to the final of the Main Event game, a $10,000 buy-in No Limit Hold ‘em tournament, has begun. As in other recent years the actual champion won’t be known until November as, once again, that is when the final table of 9 poker players will reconvene to battle it out for the most prestigious of all poker titles.

WSOP national results so far

So, with just one game left what can be said about the nations that have produced winners at WSOP 2010?  A question here of course is should we measure this by cashes, totals or bracelets awarded?  Well, for the reason you’ll appreciate soon – we’ll go with gold bracelets awarded. Somewhat unsurprisingly the USA has produced the biggest number of bracelets at 39 winners and some 5000 cashes. Total earnings for USA poker players are over a staggering $81 million. With a surprise in store in second place – it was Canada that was third in the international stakes with 4 bracelets and about 450 cashes totaling over $8 million. The surprise in second place was the United Kingdom, or Britain as we prefer to say, who despite only making around 230 cashes totaling some $7 million – they actually accumulated 5 gold bracelets.

5 gold bracelets – big deal huh!

Sure looks like a British winner to me!

OK, so 5 gold bracelets might seem small fry compared to the number that the USA won but – there is a real significance in this. Quite simply in winning 5 gold bracelets at WSOP 2010 the Brits have set a new record as – never before has a foreign nation won so many gold bracelets at any particular world series before! So, for all the online poker players out there – FTW! The winners were: Praz Banzi, James Dempsey, Richard Ashby, Mike Ellis and Steve Jelinek. Although Praz was the biggest single winner taking home $515k along with his bracelet Steve Jelinek probably produced the best win, for $245k – as he was playing in a $1500 buy-in Pot Limit Omaha Hi Low Split 8 or better game. So, being a Hi-Low game both the highest and lowest poker hands can claim a share of the pot – requiring a whole different strategy to the more regular games. As in a regular Omaha poker game looking for the nut flush is always a good bet, but you’ll always be hoping to have an ace in your hand to be confident of pressing for a win.

Knowing how to take advantage of the poker position you find yourself in is one of the things a rookie poker player needs to learn. It is all too tempting to automatically think that being in last position will always be best, after all everyone else has played so surely you can’t fail to make the correct choice in your betting option? Well, let’s just see what options might open up to you – according to the seating position you find yourself in at the poker table.

First or last?

The received wisdom is always that being in last position has to be best as, even with a fairly modest hand – if the first player bets then you can always call without being worried about a raise hitting you from behind. Meanwhile, you can watch the players before you sit and squirm trying to decide whether to throw away their hand or pay heavily to continue with the possibility of a raise behind them. However, being in last position does carry a risk – that of a check-raise. But, in a game where check-raising isn’t allowed, being in last position is ideal if a player in front of you checks, as then you can be confident they’re not trying to sandbag you with a big hand. So, and conversely, being in first position could actually be advantageous to you – if you do want to check-raise. Also, if you want to drive players out early on then being first puts you in the driving seat to raise early before they can call the first bet.

The other players positions

Any thoughts on what her favorite poker position is?

Of course the seating position of any player can affect your playing, regardless of where you are sat at the poker table. Depending on whether you like to play loose or tight or you might prefer to have other loose players on your left, playing and betting before you – with the tight poker players on your right making their conservative bets after you’ve played. The advantage here is that you can read the aggressive tight players move and make your play being fairly confident that the tight players on your right are unlikely to challenge you.

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?

Feeling tired? Feeling old? Think you’re losing your memory? If any of those things describe you then perhaps it’s time you took to playing more poker, rather than just sitting in front of the fire with your slippers on and watching TV. Whilst the TV adverts would have us think that the only way to stave off dementia is to rush out and buy a Nintendo DS or whatever, think again as most surely all the skills required for such a device – little more than a bit of math and logic, are also what is required for playing poker.

Exercising your brain at poker

Hey Grandpa - looking good and ready to play some poker?

Unless you’ve actually never played poker at all – you’ll already know that poker really is far more of a game of skill, than the chance one that some US gambling regulators would have the population believe. I guess you could sit there, receiving cards and innocently and blindly play a few poker hands without understanding what’s really going on. However, the chances of you actually winning at poker are probably as remote as the ‘infinite monkey theorem’ – that a monkey sat at a typewriter could, by chance hitting of the keys, type a Shakespearean play! No, to stand any sort of chance of winning you actually need to have the skill and ability to understand and calculate the poker odds and know the poker bets worth making, not to mention the ability to concentrate possibly for hours on end, to keep your wits about you and, don’t ever forget, keep your sense of humour.

Does brain training work?

However, the fact of the matter is that none of these so called ‘brain trainers’; be it a Nintendo electronic gadget, cross-word puzzles, Scrabble or even playing the  poker table – can actually have any impact in protecting us from Alzheimer’s disease – if it’s in your genes, it’s in your genes! So, bearing that in mind what are you going to do? Cosy up in front of the TV after all or get yourself down to the local casino or hooked up to an online poker website and start having some fun? Even if you’re not actually exercising your brain by playing poker – you’ll surely be keeping it active, trying to both outwit your opponents and having a laugh with them too.

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