When the decision to pause the tournament for four months was first announced a couple of years ago it was met with mixed feelings. Some only saw the negative qualities such as it detracting away from the history of the tournament or the fact it takes the momentum away from the final tablists. But others saw some positives including allowing the WSOP to gain extra publicity and the players who made the final table receive great deals from poker sites wanting them to endorse their product. Regardless of your views the “November Nine” as the gimmick has been called has been a success so it looks as if it is here to stay.

Each of the nine remaining players are guaranteed to take home no less than $811,823 but all of them will have at least one eye on the $8,944,138 first prize, and of course the coveted WSOP bracelet that comes with winning the Main Event.

The biggest story of the November Nine is that Michael Mizrachi, the player who won the inaugural $50,000 Poker Player’s Championship and with it his first bracelet, has also made the final table of the Main Event. He already has over $8.8m in live tournament winnings and a win or runner-up finish will see him overtake Phil Ivey as the number one in the all-time money listings.

The rest of the final table of nine are relatively unknowns with many of them playing online poker professionally. The only other player at the final table with at least $1m in live tournament winnings is Tampa based poker pro John Racener, all the rest have won around $600,000 between them.

All but one player, Cuong “Soi” Nguyen have listed their profession as a professional poker player which adds substance to the claim that poker is a game of skill but the non-poker playing public love an underdog story and would prefer a rank amateur to win poker’s biggest prize.

When the players return to The Rio on November 6 they will be seated as follows:

Seat 1 – Jason Senti – 7,625,000 chips

Seat 2 – Joseph Cheong – 23,525,000

Seat 3 – John Dolan – 46,250,000

Seat 4 – Johnathan Duhamel – 65,975,000

Seat 5 – Michael Mizrachi – 14,450,000

Seat 6 – Matthew Jarvis – 16,700,000

Seat 7 – John Racener – 19,050,000

Seat 8 – Filippo Candio – 16,400,000

Seat 9 – Soi Nguyen – 9,650,000

This makes playing in one of the later positions at the table much more attractive as you have more information at your disposal before you have to make your decision. Many players are aware of this, especially online poker players who have a plethora of information available to them via forums and software but a large percentage of these players fail to actually fail to fully utilise their positional advantage over their opponents.

If you are playing position properly then you should be playing aggressively preflop, raising limpers and isolating weaker players. You can actually force your opponents to tighten up dramatically preflop by three-betting them lighter than usual. Some players will try to become the table captain and try to run things their way but if you have position on such a player then you should retake control and show them that position is king.

You should also run more multi-street bluffs, particularly in a cash game. There is a large percentage of players who will limp into the pot, call your preflop raise and then check/call your continuation bet. At this point many players will give up on their hand, unless they have a made hand of course, but having a position means you can fire again on the turn and even the river if needed to put your opponents under maximum pressure. For example, a player limps in and you raise with 9h8h. He calls and you both see a flop reading Tc4d2h. He checks, you continuation bet and he calls. Now the turn brings the Ac, a lot of players here would check behind if checked to but it is perfect for firing again and you will take the pot more times than you would give the move credit for.

Finally, you should be willing to value bet more thinly whilst you have position on your opponent. Many players will simply check behind their opponent on the river when they have a hand they think to be best but are not 100% sure but when you have position on them you should bet a large percentage of the time and put the pressure back onto your opponent to make the call. The amount of pots you will win without showdown will far outweigh the times you lose when you are beaten or have to fold to a check-raise.

At least three players who have already won bracelets would come under the umbrella of being an online player. Although British pro Praz Bansi, winner of a $1,500 no-limit Hold’em event, now plays predominately live poker, he first started to play poker online before the lure of big money live tournaments became too much.

Simon Watt, a New Zealand based player stated that he mainly plays online and that the experience gained from playing a large number of hands helped him win another of the $1,500 no-limit Hold’em events, a tournament where he had to defeat the iconic online poker star Tom “durrrr” Dwan heads-up in order to win his first WSOP bracelet.

Another British pro who has won a bracelet this year, James “Flushy” Dempsey, said in his final table bio that he prefers to play pot-limit Omaha cash games online and that the majority of his income stems from playing online poker from the comfort of his own home.

There is an age old debate that is still raging where the online poker players say they are better than their live counterparts and vice versa. Whilst the live players have the advantage over physical tells and reads, the online players are much more used to navigating huge fields in tournaments and thanks to the ability to play multiple tables simultaneously, many of the big name online players have played many more hands and tournaments in just a couple of years grinding than some of the big live players have in their entire careers.

With the likes of Paul Foltyn, Chris “Moorman1” Moorman, Annette “Annette_15” Obrestad, David “Bakes” Baker and David “Doc Sands” Sands all taking part in numerous events at this year’s World Series of Poker, it would not surprise me if online poker players do far better than the live players by the time the entire 57 events have been completed.

Whilst I am an advocate for making standard raise sizes preflop in order to completely mask the strength of your hand, I do believe that you should be making different sized bets on later streets, but not based on your hand strength but instead based on the texture of the flop.

When discussing flop texture, two terms are generally used. If a flop, or board, contains a number of possible draws it is often referred to as being wet, whilst one containing no or very few unlikely draws would be called dry. A typical wt flop would be one that reads KhQhJs but a dry flop would look something like Kh7c2d.

Bets made on dry flops could and should be smaller than those made on a wet flop. This is because on a dry flop it is usually a case of hit or miss, in that your opponent will have either hit the flop hard or completely missed it. He will miss more often that he hits so it makes sense to bet smaller and put less chips at risk.

Quite the opposite is true of wet flops, which require a larger bet than their dry counterparts. Poker Tips suggest that wet flops are much more likely to have hit your opponents in some way and even if they have not pair one or both of their holecards, they could have picked up one of a number of draws so you risk being outdrawn by the river. Betting enough to give your opponents insufficient pot odds and implied pot odds, often with a ¾ or pot sized bet, is a much better idea than betting a smaller amount such as ½ pot as this will force your opponents to pay the maximum for their draws, making a mistake in the process.

The next time you sit down to play cash games or a poker tournament take extra notice of the texture of the flop, even when you are not involved in a hand, and think of an amount you would and would not call based on a specific hand. Doing this will help you to decide how much to bet on both types of boards when you are next in action yourself.

The concept also shows that by calling a player only has one way of winning a pot, that is by having the best hand, but a player who raises has two as he can win with the best hand or cause their opponents to fold and win the hand immediately.

Most solid players are aware of the gap concept but there are many that are unaware that the gap can increase or narrow depending on their opponent’s playing style, which position the raise came from, the stage of the tournament or a player’s stack size. Continually folding when an opponent raises is not how to play mtt poker successfully. Instead you need to make a judgement of your hand strength in relation to the factors mentioned above.

If a tight player opens during the early stages of a tournament from early position you should only play the very best of hands as the gap will be very wide. It is wide because you are risking a large stack of chips by calling the raise and a tight player in early position is unlikely to be raising weak hands. In this scenario I would probably fold most of my holdings but consider playing, and re-raising, with queens, kings, aces and possibly suited ace-king.

However, if the same player open-raised from the button I would be much more likely to play back at him with a much wider range of hands as I know his raising standards will be much less when my opponent only has the blinds to get through with his raise.

Likewise, if your opponent is loose and has been raising many hands preflop, meaning the gap is narrower, you can start to call him with less then premium holdings as many of them will be in front of his range. This also goes for the latter stages of a tournament when players begin to raise much more lightly in order to steal blinds and antes.

The latest iteration of the online festival also includes a ‘Mini’ series of tournaments with smaller buy-ins but substantial guarantees; the Mini ECOOP VI is scheduled from May 14th to May 23rd and features ten tournaments with an overall guaranteed prizepool of $600,000.

Following on from previous ECOOP festivals, Holdem, Omaha and 7 Card Stud are included in both series, with ECOOP VI buy-ins ranging from $100 + $9 to $2,500 + $100 and Mini ECOOP VI buy-ins from $5 + 50c to $75 + $7.50.

Satellites to the ECOOP VI and Mini ECOOP VI tournaments run daily on Paddy Power Poker, with buy-ins from less than $1.

To register for an ECOOP VI or Mini ECOOP VI tournament or qualifier, visit Paddy Power Poker, register, open the software lobby and select ‘ECOOP VI’ or ‘Mini ECOOP’ from the left-hand navigation pane, then sort the tournaments by name or date and select the tournament of your choice.

One overly simplified example to quote when you learn Poker issues like this, would be to make a very loose call on the river so that your opponents, especially the one you called lightly, will be less likely to bluff you on the river or value bet thinly. This is because they will now expect you to call their bets. Another example would be to three-bet a raiser with a hand like six-five suited and show aggression on every street then show your bluff at the end of the hand, or to start playing loose-aggressive then switch gears and play very tight and hope to still be paid off because of your loose image.

For metagame to be successful you need your opponents to be intelligent enough to adjust to his or her surroundings yet not enough for them to understand exactly what you are doing and your change or play needs to be dramatic enough so that it is remembered long enough for you to take advantage of it.

One of the main problems, especially with online poker, is that your opponents do not actually take any notice. Online your opponents may be playing on multiple tables and fail to see your metagame play properly. You also need your opponent to start to act they way you want them to, something you have no control over. The biggest risk is you not actually getting inside your opponent’s head at all and therefore making a risky move for little or no reward to yourself.

Suppose you make bluff the river and get called by one of your opponents, you may begin to assume you can now bet most rivers for value as your opponent called your bluff and saw you had nothing. However, this particular opponent may have actually been bluffing himself and each time you bet for value on the river in future he may actually bluff himself, essentially turning a solid, straight forward player into a crazy bluffing machine!

Metagame is probably best used in a live arena and at medium stakes because low and micro stakes players are simply too bad for the plays to work consistently. Metagame often works, but sometimes backfires, at high stakes games were each player out-think s themselves each time they act rather than just playing strong, solid poker.

One hand history I saw recently depicted a player wondering how to play his set because he thought by check/calling he would give his hand away so he thought betting out would be a good option but then he thought his opponent would think like this so he check/called anyway! Confused? Me too!

Humans, by nature, love to talk and in doing so they will inadvertently give away valuable information about their thought processes and how they play the game. If you listen in on the table chatter at any live event a common conversation you will hear is people discussing big hands they have won and bad beats they have suffered. This happens whether you are playing in your local casino or taking part in a wsop tournament.

Another thing people love to do is exaggerate their stories to make them more interesting, so try not to pay too much attention to people bragging about their exploits. By all means listen in because you may get some clue as to how experienced a player is but if they start saying they are a regular winner at the $100 games, question why they are sat playing in a $10 re-buy.

You should pay more attention to how they describe hands they have been involved in as this can give a good insight into the sort of player they are. If a player says something along the lines of “I had a pair of aces, went all-in and some donkey called me with a pair of tens and hit a ten on the flop to bust me” then you should assume they are either an amateur player or do not actually pay much attention to table dynamics or what components make up a typical hand.

However, if the same player described a hand by saying, “I had a stack of only eight big blinds and open shoved with a pair of aces from on the button. The big blind, the chip leader, made the call with tens and flopped a set to bust me,” then I would be wary of this player. In those couple of sentences he has shown he is positionally aware, observant of his and his opponents’ chip stacks and also that he realises the big stacked big blind was compelled to call. This type of player is more likely to be a solid winning player than the previous person is.

Keep your ears open, you never know what you might learn.

When a player decides to start taking the game a little more seriously, he or she will usually purchase a number of poker books, join an online training site or go on the search for the ultimate poker training guide. Unfortunately, no such guide exists, if it did we would either all be very rich or the games would be so tough because everyone would know how to play perfectly, that there would be very little money to make from the game.

Books and videos are great for giving you examples of how to play specific hands in specific situations but there is no substitute for experience. It is no coincidence that the better online poker players also play dozens of tables simultaneously. Yes they do this to make money first and foremost but some of them will have played more hands in a five year period than someone like Doyle Brunson would have played in their entire 50 year career.

Brunson once stated that each and every day he sits at the poker tables he learns something new, even if he is playing with the same group of players he has done for many years. One of them will look at their cards slightly differently, one will make a slightly different bet size, it could be anything, even learning something about himself.

By all means read some of the better strategy books out there, join a training site and discuss hands on a poker forum but once you have done this take some money and play some poker in an attempt to apply your new found knowledge. If you play enough poker you will come across similar situations day in day out that you will know exactly what to do regardless of the actions of your opponents meaning you will rarely be left in difficult, confusing spots and your poker playing will be a much more comfortable experience.

Bankroll management is important for playing rebuy tournaments and I would suggest having around 1,000 buy-ins available if you want to play rebuy’s regularly. This may seem overly excessive to players of standard freezeout tournaments, especially as around 100-200 buy-ins is usually sufficient in those, but you have to account for at least two rebuys and an add-on at the break, which means you will be spending around four buy-ins per tournament.

The jury is still out on the optimal strategy to play during the rebuy period but the general consensus is that you should be willing to gamble very early on when you and your opponents can buy back your chips. Watch any rebuy tournament online and you will see hand upon hand going all-in preflop, some open shoving with AA-QQ and others calling with some amazingly bad hands. You need to gamble to acquire a big stack to carry you through the rest of the game.

If you manage to survive the rebuy period and make it to the break, you will usually be offered an add-on to purchase. Unless you have only just managed to get through the rebuy period with minimal chips then I would advise to always take the add-on if you can afford it. In most cases the add-on offers a larger stack of chips than you received for your initial buy-in so there is value to be had in just purchasing the add-on.

Straight after the restart it is not uncommon for people to either not know or have forgotten the rebuy period is over so be wary of all-ins for ridiculously large amounts but also be aware that the players who are left in the tournament will, on average, have a much deeper stack that they are used to handling which leads to some great value to be had as players play out of their comfort zone and fail to adjust to being so deep.

Rebuy tournaments can be fun and very profitable if played correctly but set yourself an amount you are prepared to lose and stick to it religiously or they can become very expensive. To aid you in doing this download poker tournament results into a basic spreadsheet so you can see how often you and your opponents rebuy and what seems an optimal amount for you.

Those who play mtt poker tournaments are the ones who really should be taking detailed notes on their opponents, even more so than cash game players, I would argue. The reason I say this is because you will play against cash game players more regularly than tournament players so you will have a larger sample size of logged hands but you may only meet a tournament player again on a rare occasion so any extra information you have at your disposal is extra welcome.

So what sort of notes should you be taking when playing in a tournament? Thanks to a number of websites that track tournament play every player’s results, for most of the big sites, are available to view. One of the first things you should do, especially if deep in a tournament, is to check these websites and see if the players on your table are winning players or not.

Secondly, when making notes on key hands, make sure you note what size stack the players in the hand had, what position they were all in, what hands were revealed at showdown and how close to the money places you were at the time. The reason for all this detail is so that you can start to picture together how the player you are taking notes on plays at certain stages of a tournament. You should also note the tournament buy-in amount as some players play a variety of stakes so it is good to know at what stakes you saw them make a play.

Some players start off by playing tight and gradually play more loose and aggressive when they have a certain sized stack or are close to the money. Others will isolate short-stacks with marginal hands whilst others will only isolate them with premium holdings. The more information you have to hand the better as it will allow you to avoid dangerous confrontations and also allow you to win some vital extra chips in the right spots.

Each and every player online has had to select a screen name to represent them at tables. Whilst most people will only notice bizarre or funny names being displayed, you should take a few minutes to read each of the names, and how they are written, when you sit down to play your session..

One of the oldest tricks in the book is to pretend to be female when the player is actually male. In today’s climate there are some fantastic women players so this is becoming less common with each passing month. The thinking behind pretending to be the opposite sex is that women are perceived to be less aggressive then men as a whole so they are hoping to be given extra credit when they raise or bet.

Watch out for numbers at the end of names as this can give an indication to a player’s age or poker playing experience. Someone with the name Bob81 is likely to have been born in 1981 where as a name such as ProPlayer07 would suggest they have been playing since 2007. Generally, the older a player the less likely they are to be loose and aggressive and vice versa. You should be less likely to bluff or make complex moves on an inexperienced player such as Tony10 than you would the aforementioned ProPlayer07.

Some other pointers you should look out for are names written in uppercase are generally aggressive players as writing this way on the internet is interpreted as shouting. Names that suggest they are extremely poor players are usually quite the opposite so beware of the player called IamAFish or WhatAreOdds as they are likely to be experienced players.

Along with names you should also pay attention to the avatar each opponent selects to represent them. Many, stupidly, use the logo of a training site which means they have joined a poker school online which in turn can be interpreted as they are a decent, or at least trying to be a decent, player as they are actually paying a site for poker training.

No name or avatar based tell is 100% accurate but you can use it with other information you gather and they can certainly help to profile your opponent.

A common question on poker forums around the world is how to play poker cash games and it is a good one to ask as they are completely different to tournament poker and require a different set of skills in order to win.

The first major difference is that in a cash game the blinds static, where as in a tournament scenario the blinds will increase after a period of time and continue to go up until the tournament is completed. With the blinds remaining the same there is less pressure to play hands so you can literally wait for premium or playable hands when in a cash game.

The second difference between cash games and tournament poker is the stack sizes. In a typical online tournament players will start with 75-100 big blinds and, unless they add to their stacks significantly, they will often find themselves playing with a stack between 20 and 50 big blinds. Compare this to a cash game where most players will buy in for 100 big blinds and if they lose some of their chips they will reload to a full stack. Playing deep-stacked poker gives you increased implied odds and better chances to fold your hand.

Something else to consider is that when you lose all of your chips in a tournament you are eliminated from the game but in a cash game you can reload your stack and continue. This means it is much more difficult to force your opponent to fold in a cash game as they know if they make the wrong decision they can carry on playing. Tournament players are much more likely to fold in order to save their tournament life.

Finally, if you are making the switch from tournament poker to cash games you should be aware there is much more post-flop poker being played at the cash tables. Towards the middle and late stages of a tournament, it is quite common for hands to be settled preflop or on the flop due to the shallow stack sizes but in cash games, where players are often 100-200 big blinds deep, there is much more scope to fire bets and raises on all three streets.

Irish Open satellite tokens can be won in more than a dozen tournaments each week. Two Irish Open freeroll (free-to-play) tournaments will take place daily from Saturday through Thursday at 7.30pm and 9.30pm, with a special with $200 in satellite tokens scheduled each Friday evening at 8pm.

The Irish Open freerolls appear in the Paddy Power Poker tournament lobby 90 minutes before each one is due to begin; this helps to ensure that all players will have an equal chance to register and take part.

Any player who wins a Paddy Power Poker Irish Open ticket after participating in the freerolls and going on to win a super satellite tournament will be eligible to take part in the €100,000 Sole Survivor qualifier promotion in April.

“We want to give all of our players, even those who are temporarily light in the wallet, a chance to win their way to the Irish Open 2010″, said Paddy Power, Communications Manager at paddypowerpoker.com. “Our daily freerolls are perfect for new players with a limited bankroll or existing players who want the chance to get to one of the biggest live events for free; if I wasn’t working at the Irish Open I’d be playing these myself!”

The paddypowerpoker.com Irish Open 2010 takes place in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin from Friday 2nd – Monday 5th April 2010. Weekly super satellites to the Irish Open 2010 Main Event run on paddypowerpoker.com each Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday evening, with a variety of feeders running daily.

Visit Paddy Power Poker to book your place at the final table.

Like many poker players, years of playing backgammon has contributed to his developed skill and aggressive gambling style. Hansen credits the lessons learned from being a ranked professional backgammon player for his rapid rise to success in poker.

Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, Hansen is relatively new to the world poker scene but has already amassed winnings in excess of $1.8 million and has three WPT championship wins to his name. Hansen plays cards that most of us would rather walk away from the table then play but incredible skill, great bluffing techniques and hard-line betting goes a long way – it’s taken Gus Hansen to three WPT titles so how bad can it be?

Gus Hansen even has his own personal website ‘www.gushansenpoker.com‘ so check it out if you’d like to know more about this great player.

Instead she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania for Cognitive Psychology. It was while she was studying for her doctorate that she proposed to Ben Duke, an old friend, and then left her doctorate with one month to go, to live in good old-fashioned romantic poverty! In order to try and make some money she started playing in local poker rooms to help pay for their mortgage.

At the suggestion of her brother Howard she entered the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas in 1994, and shocked all (including her brother) by placing 13th, knocking him out of the game! She made $70,000 in her first month of competition and decided to move to Las Vegas with her husband, so that she could player poker professionally. Duke quickly moved up the ranks establishing herself as one of the best poker players in the world and in 2004 won her first WSOP bracelet, beating 234 other players. This was a winner takes all event which featured 10 of the best poker players in the world – for her victory she received international acclaim and even featured on the David Letterman programme in the U.S. In the same year she also won $2 million in the No-Limit Texas Hold’em winner-take-all, invitation only WSOP Tournament of Champions.

Duke has famously taught Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Ashton Kutcher and Charles Barkley how to play poker. She has written an autobiography ‘Annie Duke: How I raised, folded, bluffed, flirted, cursed and won millions at the World Series of Poker”. She has also released poker tutorial DVDs which include ‘Annie Duke’s Advanced Texas Hold’em Secrets: How to Beat the Big Boys’, ‘Annie Duke’s Beginner’s Guide To Texas Hold ‘em’ and ‘Annie Duke’s Girl’s Guide To Texas Hold ‘em’.

In 2007, her career live tournament winnings exceeded the $3.4 million mark and her sibling rivalry with her brother Howard, who was once her former coach, continues. In 2004, she eliminated Howard in four WSOP events, and the rivalry is likely to continue especially when their sister Katy Lederer, an author and poet, writes books such as ‘Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers’ about Howard and Annie.
Duke is widely regarded as one of poker’s best players, and by many as the best woman player in poker, but she declines to participate in women’s only tournaments. She has said (fairly) that poker is one of the few sports where a woman can compete on a totally equal footing with a man, so she can’t understand why there’s a ladies only tournament. Annie fits poker in between being a mum of four children and working for several charities.

As online poker action happens very quick, most players using a kind of short hand to speed things up. Online poker acronyms can be very which confusing to new player. So I’ve have put together a list of the most common poker terms used online.

• vnh = Very Nice Hand, sign of appreciation from other players for your hand.
• gg = Good Game, If you leave a table sign out with GG.
• nh = Nice Hand, same as VNH.
• n1 = Nice One, sign of good play.
• nfh = Nice F*cking Hand.
• gh = Good Hand, like VNH.
• gc = Good Call, someone was bluffing and you correctly called them.
• str8 = Straight.
• zzz = This means someone at the table is taking too much time.
• WTF = What The F*CK, as in “I can’t believe you just beat me with that hand”
• LOL = Laugh Out Loud, amused by a play or joke.
• TY, THX = Thank You, it’s always nice to be polite in victory.
• BRB = Be Right Back, if you leave a table for a short time.
• ULB = You Lucky B@stard = another player gets a lucky card.

That’s just some of the poker terms that pop up during an online game, if you know of any other terms then add them below in the comments section.

Even then you’re going to need a miracle of biblical proportions to win with these hands! If you see these cards at any other time, fold faster than Superman on laundry day!

A common mistake many new poker players make is playing too many hands, caught up in the excitement of the game they over play poor hands. Don’t force weak hands, even for the odd time you’ll get a lucky flop, it won’t pay in the long run to push weak cards. You might see Gus Hansen do it in the WSOP, but that doesn’t mean you can do it online, Gus has a reputation and that allows him to get away with some crazy moves. Online players call more often than players in real world games, remember Chris Ferguson’s tip. “Pump it or Dump it ~ if your hand isn’t strong enough for a raise it’s too weak for a call!”

The Worst Poker Hands

These are the very worst of the worst poker hands, here is a couple of reasons why these hands are considered sooooo bad. With these hands you have no straight draw, no flush draw, and even if you make a pair it’s unlikely you’ll have the best hand at the table because the card values are so low. Just because you might see a rare 7-7-2 flop, that doesn’t make it a good reason to play these hands.

So now you know the worst poker hands, lets look at some of the best hands you can get in texas holdem.

For example, a ‘Fish’ may think that flopping bottom pair in a three or four handed game is good simply because it’s a pair! They don’t consider over pairs on the board, higher pocket pairs, potential straights, flushes or even look at the betting strategy of opponents to develop awareness for how they play the game. Fish have less ability to consider the hands of the others around the table and because of this tend to call far too much. Players like that will rarely give up, always thinking that their own hand is good enough, ignoring all the signs to the contrary. So what else do ‘Fish’ do that puts them into this category?

Firstly they limp into the majority of hands even if they hold completely rubbish cards. Secondly they call a pre-flop raise also with terrible cards (mostly out of the false hope that comes with wanting to see the blind!). Thirdly they will always pay off the river. If you get a fish to this stage i.e. at the river, then don’t bother to bluff because he will always call! Of course you can always use this to your advantage to get more chips – provided you actually have a winning hand.

Fish are easy prey in the world of poker and can, more often then not, be found at the lower end tables. But let’s be honest – we’ve all been there in the beginning, concentrating only on our own hand, insisting on seeing every flop “Just in case” and have studied our own two cards so much that we completely neglected to think about anybody else. So go easy, we’ve all been fish at some point! The basic rule of thumb is… If you’re at the poker table and you can’t figure out who the ‘fish’ is… It’s probably you!

Like Texas Hold ‘Em there is a disc to indicate the player that acts as the dealer position for the upcoming game – this is the player who is sitting immediately clockwise of the button. This ‘dealer’ places a bet called the ‘small blind’, which is usually half the value of the small bet for the stakes at the table. The player immediately clockwise of the small blind then places a ‘big blind’ – a bet equal in value to the small bet for the stakes at the table. Following the placing of the blinds all the players receive four hole cards. Now the player immediately left of the big blind places his/her bet, followed by the other players, going in a clockwise direction. When all the players have played – whether folding, calling, betting or raising – the three Flop cards (community cards) care dealt onto the board, face up. The players again act, beginning with the player directly left of the button. Following this a fourth community card, the Turn is dealt face up. During this round the betting doubles from the small to the big blind value. Following this round of betting the fifth community card, the River is dealt, again face up on the board. Once all bets have been made, the players who still remain in the game reveal their cards, and the player with the best hand wins the game. For the next game the button is moved clockwise to the next player.

Omaha is a more technical game than Texas Hold ‘Em, and the best strategy is to play aggressively when you have the best hand – straight, flush or full house. Due to the fact that you are more than likely to be playing with four or five other players, it is unlikely that you will win without a flush or full house – getting to the River with a two pair is more than likely not going to cut it – there are just too many good combinations that could be made. Your starting hand is crucial, much more so than in Texas Hold ‘Em, as you are working off four cards and therefore need strong combinations. In Pot-Limit Omaha, in particular, if the odds are in your favour either bet or raise, if they are not then quickly fold. Don’t call just for the sake of it, unless you have a good reason for doing so, such as wanting to trap your challenger. And bluffing won’t help you like it would in Texas Hold ‘Em, as it is a hand-driven game.

The following online poker rooms have free and cash Omaha Poker games: William Hill Poker, VC Poker and 32 Red Poker.

In the early position use only very strong hands that can stand up to a raise or multiple raises. In the middle position play strong and moderately strong hands. Get aggressive if your hand warrants it, as at this point you really want to be thinning out the number of players. In the late position play a wider variety of hands aggressively. This is beneficial if it’s pre-flop and is even more beneficial if you continue to play aggressively even when faced with a bad flop.
It can be more difficult to read your fellow players when playing online as you can’t read their facial expression. Watch out for those who are betting too quickly, as this is often a sign of a bluff. Use this to your advantage by betting high pairs and other strong hands – doing this encourages other players with moderate hands to increase the pot, and at the same time will encourage players with weak hands form seeing a cheap flop.

If the flop comes out as a 4-5-6 or any other sequence it is time to be wary, as a straight can turn your otherwise good cards, such as aces into bad cards. Also be wary of flops that contain two or three cards of the same suit, as chances are the other players will hold any two suited cards.

While having faceless opponents is a disadvantage in some respects; as you’re not able to read them; use it to your advantage – they can’t read you so well either, so you will have an easier time bluffing. Play a great hand after a bad one, play on your opponents fears and use the fact that you are invisible to your greatest advantage. Every once in a while let your opponents see you bluff, this makes you unpredictable, which is exactly what you want. A clever way of bluffing is to play as a member of the opposite sex – a male posing as a woman will help you take advantage of the fact that most people see women as less aggressive payers who are generally less likely to bluff. Women posing as men are sometimes able to project a more forceful and aggressive image at the table.

Observe your fellow players and keep notes on them if necessary – you will be amazed at how often you will come up against the same players. An online notebook is a facility whereby you can store your observations and pull them onscreen at a later date – very clever stuff which you would be wise to use to your advantage. Use it to record different players actions and their responses to your play.

Brunson started off his early career as a basketball player, and was drafted by the Minneapolis (Los Angeles) Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA) whilst he was still in college. However a knee injury put a sudden halt to his basketball playing so he turned his competitive interests to poker. His injury could probably now be seen as a good thing as without it he might never have gotten into poker.

Brunson is the first back-to-back world champion of poker having won the World Series of Poker in 1976 and 1977, which is a huge feat as only four people have won the event more than once and only two – Brunson and Stu Ungar (1980 and 1981) have won it in consecutive years. Ungar went on to win it again in 1997. What makes Brunsons consecutive wins even more impressive is the fact that he won with the same hand each time! The hand – a full house of tens full of deuces – and a Hold ‘em ‘10-2’ hand is now known as a ‘Doyle Brunson’. Brunson also became an inspiration to many when he became the first poker player to win more than $1 million from playing poker tournaments.

When Doyle started out there wouldn’t even have been such a thing as a poker tournament, and the game would usually have been played behind closed doors, as gambling would have been considered a fairly taboo thing to be involved in, with trouble surrounding it and its’ players. There was a time when Brunson was regularly playing with thieves and pimps and every other bad element of society you can think of – he has even seen a man shot dead in the seat right next to him during a poker game, and he does admit that he has taken a ‘few scratches’ along the way. It is amazing to think that Doyle has gone from playing in this fashion to being one of the superstars of poker, even having written a book on the game, ‘Super System’ which is often referred to as the definitive work of poker literature.

His achievements in the game now span five decades and as well as winning the World Series of Poker twice he holds 10 WSOP bracelets from 7 different categories: No Limit Hold ‘em, Seven-Card Stud Split, Seven Card Stud, Mixed Doubles, Deuce to Seven Draw, Seven Card Stud, and H.O.R.S.E. He is one of only two people to hold so many bracelets. He has also placed first among the largest ever WPT field in the 2004 Legends of Poker WPT event, at the age of 71. It’s good to know that Brunson is passing on his amazing talent – he has a son and daughter who compete in the professional poker circuit and his son, Todd, has already won a WSOP championship bracelet after topping the Omaha High Low tournament in 2005.

Negreanu is often considered one of the more recognisable players around a lot of which is due to his TV appearances and poker game commentary which can often be seen (an heard) on the WPT televised events. An when he’s not caught up on the final table of a tournament or appearing at the WPT events, Negreanu writes a regular column for Card Player Magazine, with over 100 articles to his name.

You’d think that with such a lot on his plate, Negreanu would be trying to take it easy with the rest of his time but not so – he is set to appear in the 2006 poker movie ‘Lucky You’ and also has an Xbox game out – Stacked with Daniel Negreanu – clearly not just a shrewd poker player, Negreanu is also a shrewd business man!
Daniel exudes the confidence and professionalism of a new poker generation, raised on MTV, the internet and game consoles. He is renowned for his fresh candid approach to life, and his cool style embodies poker’s evolution from smoky back room poker dens to a world class sports enterprise.

Pinpointing the exact moment that Ferguson’s poker career began is tricky. Even in his childhood he was playing the game, losing thirty five cents in a 4th grade showdown, a lesson that taught him well and stuck with him for a very long time.

From there he developed his game and continued playing through high school where he would play with friends every weekend. He steadily progressed and soon his first journey to Vegas beckoned, where he managed to only suffer two losses in 22 visits.

By 1994, Ferguson decided to really focus on the game and apply all that he had learned by concentrating on poker tournaments, starting off in small time LA based tournies. 1996 saw him win a buy-in to the World Series of Poker and he has played every year since.

From 1996 to 1999 Ferguson had 12 money finishes and though he never won a series, he did end up at the final table seven times, that is, until 2000 when he became the World Champion of Poker.

To date Chris Fergus has won five WSOP series events, taken over $2,858,000 in earnings and continues to be one of the most skilled poker players in the world.

And his number one tip for all budding poker players?
Pump it or Dump it – if your hand isn’t strong enough for a raise it’s too weak for a call!

When playing online you don’t have to worry too much about knowing which order events happen, as you will be prompted when it’s your turn to act and given guidance on the correct minimum amounts to ‘call’ or ‘raise’.

Online poker rooms make it as easy as possible for you to learn how to play poker. Now we’ll look in more detail at a texas hold’em game. You’ll learn about the Blinds, The Flop, Turn and River. In no time at all we’ll have you playing like a pro! If Paris Hilton can learn how to play Poker ~ Then so can you!

The Blinds

Before any cards are dealt, two blinds (small blind + big blind) are placed in the pot by the two players to the immediate left of the dealer. The blinds are put in to start the action. The player left of the dealer bets one half of the lower limit (small blind.) The player who sits left of the small blind, wagers an amount equal to the lower limit. When playing online this will be automatically done for you.

Blinds represent the stakes of a table you are playing at, so on a table with blinds of $0.05 cents and $0.10 cents the average pot of money that you can win will be around $0.50 to $2.00 if you play at a table where the blinds are $1.00 and $2.00 the average pot could be around $10.00 – $30.00 picking the right level of blinds to play at is very important – stick to tables with low blinds when you learning and move up a level when you feel conformable you can hold your own. Normally the lowest level of blinds is $0.02 and $0.04 about 1p and 2p in English money. The highest blinds can go up to $150.00 and $300.00.

Your Cards

Players are dealt two down cards (hole cards) the action starts with the player to the left of the Big Blind. This player can fold, call, or raise. Action continues around the table with all the players making one of these decisions. You cannot “check” (make no bet) in the first round, as blinds are active bets.

Choosing the right cards to play at this stage of the game is crucial to playing poker successfully, most new players play way too many hands when learning how to play poker! Here’s a little example of how poker hands can trap themselves: You are dealt the following hand:

lots of new players love to play any face card, thinking that a king is pretty good! now lets say you get lucky. You make a pair of kings on the flop.

Now you have 5 players still in the hand and you – betting starts and there’s a few high raises – you think you have a good hand so you keep betting. Then the turn and river comes. example shown below.

You’ve already thrown a lot of money at this hand and you can’t bear to let it go. But it’s impossible to see how you could win even with your pair of kings, anyone holding an ace has you beat, anyone holding a King and anything higher than a 6 has you beat! Plus with 3 hearts on the table there is a danger of someone holding a flush too. Choosing your starting hands is crucial to playing good poker – we’ll take a look at the best and worst starting hands later in the guide.

The Flop

After the first round of betting, the dealer then turns over 3 cards face up on the table (known as “The Flop”). This is the second betting round when you have the choice to check, fold, or raise. The player to the left of the button acts first. A player may now check if there is no betting in front of them. If there is betting and/or raising in front of them, they may call, raise, or fold.

This is when your table position can be a great advantage, pro players love to talk about ‘table position’ table position is the proximity you have to the last person to act in the rounds of betting. Basically, if you are the last person or close to the last person to act on a table, you have a strong advantage over other players – how so! you might ask? well lets take the the example above, remember how you were dealt a K – 6, and remember how I showed it wasn’t a great hand. If you held the last table position to act you then have the chance to see how all the other players are going to act before you have to make a decision to play your hand. Lets say you’re in late table position and 4 out of 5 other players fold, you are now heads up with just one player. Your hand of K – 6 now becomes a stronger hand than before. The odds are tilted in your favor with just one person calling, if 5 players callers your K – 6 statistically would be much weaker. But against just one player you have a good shot of taking the pot. Using your late position you could raise before the flop and try and force the last remaining player out. If you get called you still have a fairly decent hand.

The Turn

After the the action on the “flop,” the dealer turns over another card (known as “The Turn”). This is the 3 round of betting. (In Limit Hold’em, the amount bet doubles on “The Turn”). The betting again starts with the player closest to the left of the button.

If you have picked up the best hand on the flop you should make sure that players with drawing hands (incomplete hands that still need an extra card or two) aren’t seeing the the ‘turn’ for free. If they are going to see another card make them pay to see it! don’t allow them to build a hand for free. If you’re on a drawing, then try to see it as cheaply as possible!

The River

Following the completion of action on “the turn,” the dealer turns over the last card (known as “The River” card). This is the final round of betting.

Very few players are going to fold once the river has been dealt (espeacilly if the blinds are cheap) they may of already commited lots of chips to the pot by this stage, so bluffing on the river should’nt be considered. This can work in your favour when you have the best hand!

The Showdown

The showdown is when two or more players have finished all the betting and the remaining players cards are shown. The player with the best 5 card hand made from the two hole cards and the five table cards wins the pot. If players have the same winning hand, the pot is split equally between them. And that’s how to play poker… If you’d like to read more about playing poker then try my poker tips page, lots of advice from the professionals of the poker game. if you feel you’ve learn enough about poker to start playing then try William Hill Poker online, they have a great range of tables and some nice bonuses for new players.

How many of us have played in games where somebody at the table makes ridiculous pre-flop raises at every given opportunity? Occasionally these are ‘Fish’ who think a K J is the key to the kingdom, more often then not it’s the trade mark of an ‘Aggressor’.

‘Aggressors’ will often bet and raise very bad hands to the river and in doing so will bluff a lot of us off the hand which gets very frustrating for the rest of the players especially when the Aggressor’s chips start piling up. But don’t panic just yet, ‘Aggressors’ make mistakes too so to beat them at their own game look out for the following: they have the betting reflex so if you check they will bet and they will frequently raise with poor hands. If you spot this you can re-raise with a better hand and take the pot.

If you hold the top pair or flop the top pair then play for everything its worth against them – raise, raise and raise some more. Aggressors are often just crazy gamblers who are only interested in the big pots. Where most of us are happy to sit back and take the frequent small wins, Aggressors are not content with that and make sure that any pot they are in is a large one.

A lot of Aggressors believe that poker is a game of luck and do not rate he skill required to be a master at the game. Use this to your advantage – in the short term Aggressors may win but over the long term, slow and steady will win the race and so will you!

It is always good to learn from your mistakes, and you will make plenty of them as a beginner, so it is best to try free sessions in the practice games before you actually start placing real money bets. However there are a few big mistakes that beginners tend to make, so don’t fall into their trap! Don’t ever underestimate your opponents hand – you may think that your hand is the best that it could be, but make sure to look at what is left on the board and judge by this the likelihood that someone else has a better hand than you – you can never be too careful with this!

Another mistake that beginners (and even some more experienced players!) make is being predictable. If you always play and bet in the same way the other players will be very quick to pick up on it. So work on using a mix of styles and try not to play against the same people all the time!

Don’t try and learn all the games at once – going from one type of game to another (eg: from Texas Hold ‘em to Limit to No-Limit) will not make you a better player, it will just make you average at all of them. Restrict yourself to one type of game until you really know what you’re doing with it, and then when you have excelled you can move on to another type of poker game. On the same token, go up the stakes slowly – the games will get tighter and tighter the further up the stakes you go.

Don’t play at too many multi-table tournaments – there could be hundreds if not thousands of people playing and you will need more luck to win! Stick to the smaller tables in order to learn and develop your skills.

Keep track of your wins and your losses. Documenting this type of information will help you determine which kind of games you play best at, making it easier for you to know and where to be in with a chance of winning money. You can check out more of our poker articles below.

The first Series had just seven players and the winner was decided by vote. Johnny Moss, known as ‘The Grand Old Man of Poker’ was the fortunate one in the first Series, being elected by his fellow players for the Champion title, winning a silver trophy and $30,000. The story goes (possibly fictional!) that every one of the players when asked to vote for the best player voted for themselves! It was only when the players were asked to vote for the second best player that Moss emerged victorious. The format obviously needed to be changed and so it was for the next Series in 1971, where they employed the freezeout tournament structure that is still utilised in the competition today – and Johnny Moss won that one too! The freezeout structure made the event far more exciting and as the years have gone by the field sizes have grown, as have the prizes. More events have been added in a wider range of poker games, but players still gravitate towards the Main Event – and the reasons for this are clear: the Main Event has a $10,000 buy-in and the winner is awarded a huge cash prize and is crowned World Champion.

The joy of the World Series is that the event of online poker has enabled everyday amateur players to win seats in the tournament – Chris Moneymaker won the Main Event after winning his seat through a $39 satellite, winning himself a cool $2,500,000!!!!! Due to the fact that amateurs can enter in this way the event has grown massively and in 2008 there were 6,844 entrants, with the winner of the Main Event, Peter Eastgate winning $9,152,416. The Main Event started on July 3rd and reached the final table of nine players on July 14th. The final table was delayed until November to allow ESPN to broadcast the event. All players were paid ninth place prize money ($900,670) in July with the remaining prize pool distributed at the end of game in November. The lowest payouts of the game are more than double the buy-in ($21,230) of $10,000, compared to $10,616 in 2006.

The 2009 Main Event, while not over until November, saw 2008 Champion Peter Eastman making a strong defence of his title, finishing in 78th place. Nine players remain from the 6,494 entrants that started the Event on July 3rd.

So what kind of strategy does one employ if they are lucky enough to get a seat at the World Series of Poker? Current world champion Peter Eastman says that the strategy that he used to win the 2008 Main Event was to not have a pre-tournament strategy! There are so many unknown variables such as quality of cards drawn, and such an abundance of players with hugely differing emotional states, it is difficult to have a pre-determined strategy. He does say that the key to playing in a long and hard tournament like the WSOP is to find the balance between accumulation of chips and maintaining your chip stack, and stay relaxed especially as the money increases.

If you fancy winning a seat at the WSOP main event then VC Poker offers you the chance to win a place at the main table via satellite tournaments online, buy ins from just $0.84!

Below is a guide to the very best ‘starting hands’ in poker. Starting hands are the cards you are dealt at the beginning of the game – the strength of these hands could weaken or improve after the flop. Remember that your position on the table and your table image could have a big effect on how you play these strong hands. Limping in with Aces or Kings (slow playing) can leave you open to players looking for a straight draw or flush draw, bear this in mind when playing strong hands, push out those players with cards that could hurt you.

The Best Starting Hands

These are the very best hands you can see before the flop in texas holdem poker, with any of these hands you should come out raising before the flop – Hopefully this will drive those on ‘drawing hands’ out of the game. If you’re playing on low-limit tables you may not be able to push those on flush draws or suited connectors out of the pot, so watch the flop careful. Having said that you will nearly always be ahead with these cards.

Strong Starting Hands

Whilst these cards aren’t as good as the ‘Best Hands’ they still remain very, very strong starting hands. If you’re in late table position then you should be raising these hands, many of the ‘Strong Starting Hands’ also carry good flush or straight potential – you’ll still need a little help from the table with these cards before you could consider them a sure thing.

These starting hands won’t always win you a pot, and as all poker players know you will always get the odd bad beat holding pocket aces. But if you stick to playing these hands then over time you will come out on top. Now take a look at the worst poker hands!

The list is just a bit of fun, I will be looking out for more entries soon, obviously one song that’s missing from the list is Lady Gaga’s ‘Poker Face’ ~ I don’t really care for it much myself. I’m more of an old skool rocker when it comes to poker songs!

• Final Table – P. Windrum
• The Joker – Steve Miller Band
• Deal – Grateful Dead
• The Ace Of Spades – Motorhead
• Winner Takes it All – Abba
• Three Card Trick – The Clash
• Draw Of The Cards – Kim Carnes
• Blues for Gamblers – Lightnin’ Hopkins
• Riverboat Gambler – Carly Simon
• House of the Rising Sun – The Animals
• Luck be a Lady – Frank Sinatra
• Losing Hand – Ray Charles
• No Cheap Thrill – Suzanne Vega
• The Jack – AC/DC
• Angel And The Gambler (The) – Iron Maiden
• Easy Money – Billy Joel

How to set your Poker Wallpaper as a desktop

To set the wallpaper as your new desktop background just click on one of the images below. Once the image has opened in a new window, right click with your mouse and select the ‘Set as Background‘ option from the list – hey presto your new poker wallpaper background will be display on your desktop – easy! I’ve just added two new Poker Wallpapers, one features the lovely Shana Hiatt from the old World Series Of Poker TV show and the other features Evangeline Lilly otherwise known as ‘Kate’ from the hit TV Lost. I’m always adding new wallpapers so check back soon for more.

I’ve just added three new Eva Green poker wallpapers, they have a cool retro feel to them.

Over-valuers do exactly that – they over value the cards that they are holding. Players like this tend to place far too much weight in suited cards and will quite often play bad hands such as 10 and 3 simply because they are the same suit. They don’t consider the fact that flushes are relatively uncommon (given the number of overall hands played during a game) and that even a top pair of 10′s (should the second one flop) is still not great given the over-pairs that can still beat them.

Over-valuers like the big cards and so while most of us would throw away a Q 2, over-valuers will play it simply because they hold the picture card Queen, believing that a second Queen will flop and win them the game. Of course they are forgetting one simple thing – not all big cards were created equally so even a pair of Queens is no good if the King or an Ace flops. What’s worse is that even if their opponent only holds Queen high as well, a 2 is no good as a kicker!

Of course knowing this can help you spot an ‘over-valuer’ at the table but be wary because like the ‘Fish’ they do over call and as such you will need a winning hand to beat them. Be careful, players like this will play anything that is reasonably connected so if the board flops low cards then there’s a good chance that they could win as many will play low connected cards.

On the upside though, you can loosen up your play against them – you know that they will play low pairs or low connected cards so it pays to go to the river with them. Also, they don’t tend to bluff, they call and raise because they believe they have the best hand which is not necessarily always the case!