Poker Winner Blog

The rowdiest game in the casino is dice, also called craps, a fast and exciting game with a language of its own. Players shout, cheer, scream, curse and gesticulate. The shooters elaborately shake the dice, blow on them for luck and yell for them to fall on the desired score, while the stickman commentates incessantly. For novices, dice appears complicated due to the arrangement of the layout and the terminology used, but it is actually quite simple once the basic aim of the game is understood. Craps is extremely popular everywhere, not only because it is fun to play, but also because it is the best value game in the casino. The house advantage on some bets is less than one per cent. Read the rest of this entry »

Poker conjures up images of saloons in the old West where hustlers and gun fighters did battle. It seems that no Hollywood Western is complete without a gunfight over a poker game, but this way of life was often the reality for professional gamblers in the Wild West. In 1876 one of the west’s most famous lawmen, James Butler ‘Wild Bill’ Hickok, lost his life in a poker game in Deadwood, South Dakota. To this day his last hand — a pair of aces over eights — is known as the ‘dead man’s hand‘. Read the rest of this entry »

Games of Chance and Skill

Casinos offer a choice between games of skill, where the player can affect the outcome; and chance, where players have no input and rely on luck.

Games of chance include roulette, slots and punto banco. Once players have decided what numbers to play there is no further action to take.

Poker and blackjack are games of skill. As players make all the decisions about taking cards, they are able to use their intelligence to win. With games of skill, a combination of knowledge and experience can make the difference between winning and losing. Read the rest of this entry »

Although the strategies herein were developed for the Sands World Championship of Casino Games Tournament in Atlantic City, they are adaptable to any tournament in any casino.

If you are entering a tournament with only a single game, e.g., Sahara Blackjack Tournament, you would risk the entire buy-in amount instead of 25% of it as described herein. Read the rest of this entry »

By avoiding marginal situations that require you to put additional money into the pot when it’s a close call, you can play with a smaller bankroll. If you’re a winning player, you’ll eventually win just as much money. It will just take more hours at the table to reach your goals.

There is no right or wrong way to put money at risk in a poker game. Some people are comfortable with a high level of risk and have the bankroll to accommodate the fluctuations, which inevitably accompany this kind of play. Read the rest of this entry »

How large a bankroll do you need to outlast any bad run of cards and ensure that you’ll never go broke? This question comes up repeatedly whenever poker players start talking.

While “How big a bankroll . . .” is a complex issue that can’t be resolved by applying a rule or formula, there is one fact you can bank on with absolute certainty: If you are not a winning player, your bankroll will never be large enough. To eliminate the possibilities of ever going broke, losing players need a big enough bankroll to outlast their life expectancy. Without one, they’ll find themselves regularly infusing their playing stake with fresh cash. Read the rest of this entry »

Video poker shares some of the characteristics of a slot machine. The gambling gear itself is housed in a similar cabinet, and most have a coin slot and a payout hopper. Many have a slot-club card reader and/or a bill acceptor. The important difference is that on a reel slot you just pull the handle and hope for the best, but video poker involves an element of skill.

To the novice player, the main attraction of video poker is the prospect of pitting wits against the machine in fast action with a chance at a big jackpot. To the skilled player, however, the appeal is that some games offer an opportunity for a long-term profit. Just as in a live poker game, you can expect a considerable amount of risk and luck involved in the short term, but a player’s skill can make the difference between a winner and a loser in the long run. Read the rest of this entry »

Getting lots of practice quickly

Here’s another fabulous timesaver available in some of the Wilson Software programs. Once you set up a game and click to start it, a screen instantly pops up to ask whether you want to be dealt random hands, hands worth at least a call, or strictly raising hands. (Now don’t you just wish you could do that in a real game?)

The zipping and hand-skipping features enable you to play 60,000 hands — the equivalent of a full year’s play in a live game at 30 hands per hour, eight hours per day — in a quarter of that time (or less). It’s a lot like typing; you’ll get faster and faster as you practice. How many hands can you play per hour? Except for those hands you elect to play out, your speed will be limited mostly by how fast you can click that mouse. Read the rest of this entry »

Interactive Poker Software Programs

Computer poker programs have come of age. The best programs offer interactive learning opportunities that were unavailable only a few years ago. Improved versions are hurtling down the pipeline at warp speed, each leaving its predecessor light-years behind. The realism of contemporary programs has largely negated statements made by poker gurus only a few years ago:

“I suspect poker is just too difficult a game to program reasonably well,” wrote one expert in 1996. At about the same time, another expert wrote that computer opponents were unable to learn from events in previous hands when making decisions, something a human player always does (or should). Read the rest of this entry »

What the games are like

Most Internet play-money games are loose action games. (That’s putting it mildly!) Players enter pots with guns blazing, firing bets and raises at will. Much of this activity is just smoke and mirrors, but when the smoke clears, someone will have made a hand. Don’t expect to win a pot without a struggle!

There are many family pots (pots in which all players participate in the action), and you won’t find many wallflowers sitting on the sidelines hand after hand. Betting is frequently capped (when players put in the maximum number of raises allowed). Hang on for the ride — if you have a hand. Read the rest of this entry »

Sometimes you simply have to know that you’re playing against, well, real people — not against computer creations. When the computer opponents of interactive software games have you talking to yourself and longing for human adversaries to gripe about, what can you do?

Just as you can find almost anything else on the Internet, you can find poker games. These cybergames have no physical location, but you can summon them up from your personal computer at any time. Like genies in a bottle, they await your command — all it takes is a few clicks of your mouse! Read the rest of this entry »

Online poker casinos offering real-cash games often offer introductory play- money games. These are a great place to start. Here’s why:

Because they are meant to get clients used to the graphics and procedures of cash stakes games, these play-money games are user-friendly by design. You’re a potential cash client, and the online casino hopes to expand its business by making you feel welcome and comfortable.

Although the games are remarkably easy to use, the programming and graphics are highly sophisticated — they’re identical to those used in the money games. Overall, the games are far superior to games offered at Internet sites intended strictly for entertainment. Read the rest of this entry »

Poker is amongst the mainly accepted card games among all. It has been extensively conventional all over the world and right through all casinos as well as online casinos. If you emerge at it correctly, poker is a plan game. Anything that involves strategy can be learned and applied.

With the correct strategy and guidelines from the experienced poker players, one can be a master in this game. I recognize a numeral of Poker Company who creates a living by now playing poker. Every one they accomplish is poker. It will obtain awhile for a learner to be a master in this game to make a living out of it. Read the rest of this entry »

Poker is the only popular game of skillful human interaction where it’s possible on any given day to play against the world’s best players. At any of the hundreds of major poker tournaments held in the United States or Europe every year, you could find yourself face-to-face against former world champions such as Scotty Nguyen, Phil Hellmuth, Jr., or Huck Seed. Ever heard of them? How about T. A. Preston? Name sound familiar? He’s better known as “Amarillo Slim.” If No-Limit Texas Hold’em is your game, you might get raised by none other than Johnny Chan, who appeared in the film, Rounders. Chan won two World Series of Poker titles back to back! Read the rest of this entry »

Bookstores are filled with self-help books. Seminars galore promise to teach you how to be a winner in business, in love, and in your personal life. Some of these same principles can make you a winner at the poker table. Here are ten you may want to think about.

Be Aware of Your Strengths and

Weaknesses

An outrageous image at the table may work for some people but not for others. Some players are better suited to tournaments, others to ring games (cardrooms). Play your best game and play within the confines of your own comfort zone. In other words, know yourself, and do what you do well. Read the rest of this entry »

Practice with Computerized Software

No matter how many hands you play at the table, using software like Wilson Software’s Turbo Texas Hold’em to practice against lifelike opponents and run simulations that will test your own theories will help you make rapid progress in your development as a poker player.

Computers can do things humans don’t have the time to accomplish. We’ve run experiments that simulated a lifetime of poker. We could have tested that same hypothesis by playing eight hours a day, five days a week, for 30 years, but what could we accomplish with that knowledge once we finished our research? It might be helpful if poker is played in the afterlife, but we’re more concerned with earthly uses for our know-how. Read the rest of this entry »

Do you want to become a better poker player today? Right now? Here are ten specific things you can do today, and each one of them will improve your game.

Know Your Numbers

If you don’t learn, understand, and use poker’s mathematical parameters, it will prove difficult to be a consistent winner in the long run. For example, if you’re playing Hold’em and flop four cards to a flush but don’t know the odds against completing that hand, what will you do when it’s your turn to act?

How will you ever know whether calling, raising, or folding is a play with a positive expectation? Finding positive expectations is the essence of winning poker, and it’s no more complex than recognizing those situations that will show a profit if they could be replayed time and again. Read the rest of this entry »