Learn Play Poker

Hey Everyone,

Hope your ok guys, got a lot going on this week with my house, we are on another decorating spree and its spare room and stairs this time. Not so great becase painting and papers those high bit is no fun.

The weather has also turned this week and Britain loses its summer again. Looks to be going the same way as last year meaning floods and rain for 3 months. I look forward to roads closing and me getting annoyed with traffic.

Lol but on a light note we have some great poker stuff going down, if you didn’t already hear Virgin Poker is comming to Nottingham which is really cool, I hope local poker fans do this best to support the event and try and get tickets.

There is also a bunch of stuff going down at WassPoker this summer, a whole bunch of sxclusive poker tournaments so why not check them out?

The article below is not one of my favourites but it was requested by a reader so I am hoping a lot of you out there wanted to know about this subject too.

The subject is poker calculators, something which I sometimes don’t  always condone but they are not completely unethical. Read more and make your own mind up, I would be interested to see what most people feel about poker calculators so leave comments as you wish.

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Poker calculators are online tools that illustrate to a user the value of many different poker hands.  Poker is a constant game of percentages, you must make many decisions based on what you think can happen during the remainder of a hand.  Poker calculators give you the tool to gain this information.

There are two kinds of poker calculators available.  Passive calculators allow you to input cards for several players and then with the press of the button show you the odds each player has to win a given hand.  You can step by step tinker with the cards to see how different holdings compare.

Active calculators are a different animal altogether.  They attach themselves to the online game you are playing and instantly give you your odds of making a certain hand.  Within seconds of dealing the cards they will tell you what your chances of making each rank of hand are. This is of course extremely valuable information you need to make an informed opinion.

In the game of poker you are constantly faced with decisions. You need to have the correct information to make these decisions properly.  Your success or failure at the poker tables is often a direct result of making proper mathematical decisions.  Using a poker calculator you can quickly learn you have a 35% of making a flush when you have flopped four cards of the same suit.  Even more importantly however is that you can learn how much a backdoor or gutshot draw in combination with your flush draw affect the value of the hand.  It is often easy in poker to calculate in your head the value of one specific drawing hand.  Poker calculators teach you the value of hands that have multiple draws with speed you could never match in your mind.

Another key use of poker calculators is for games like Five and Seven Card Stud poker.  In these games there are many cards dealt face up to other players that affect your hand.  When drawing to a straight or flush it is very important to know how the other players upcards compromise your drawing possibilities.  It is an impossible task to generate this information in your head with the same speed and accuracy as a calculator.

In conclusion I advise every player to spend time with both active and passive calculators, learn the odds. But at the same time remember poker is a game of more than odds. Like any other machine a poker calculator must be used properly but not relied on too much.

Hey Guys,

Hope everyone is well. I am doing pretty good this week, lots of work, play and food and not much sleep! Anyway one thing that I wanted to mention was that I got a kick ass Jack Daniels dealer chip come, very nice although some scammer is trying to sell it on EBay.

Anyway, here is you article, this one is about video poker, it’s a good read especially as most people in America actually don’t play video poker. Hope you enjoy and remember you can get in touch with any questions and I will sort out an answer ASAP.

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Video Poker is in many ways a cross between poker and a slot machine.  It is poker in the sense that it is played with a standard deck of fifty two playing cards.  The cards are shown electronically on a video screen.  The payoffs are set forth in a manner consistent with the game of poker.  The better hand you form the higher your payout becomes.

Video poker is also very similar to a slot machine when you consider the payout schedule.  On most machines there is a massive jackpot for a royal flush that increases with each pull of the handle on one or sometimes a series of different machines.  This is why you play a hand of video poker much different than you would play the same hand at a table game.

You start a hand of video poker by placing coins in the slot and pulling the handle.  You are then dealt a five card poker hand.  The mechanics of the game now are very similar to five card draw poker.  You decision now is which cards to keep and which cards to discard.  To make this decision you need to know the payoff schedule for the machine you are playing. Not all machines are equal.  Most video poker machines only payoff for a pair of jacks or higher.  In table poker you would consider a hand like a pair of tens to be good. In video poker it is preferable to discard this hand often.  After you make your decision you press a button and the final cards are dealt.  You win based where your hand fits on the schedule of payouts.

The key concept you must consider is the payout schedule and most importantly the amount of any progressive jackpots.  Assume you are playing a $1 machine that has a current jackpot of $15,450.  You are dealt king of hearts, king of spades, jack of spades, ten of spades and two of diamonds.  In real draw poker you would keep the two kings are draw three cards.  In video poker this is all wrong.  The concept of a progressive jackpot must change your thinking.  Keeping the two kings ensures you win a small prize, maybe a medium sized prize if somewhat lucky.

Consider what happens when you keep the three high spades.  By drawing two cards you give yourself a chance to hit the progressive jackpot of $15,450.  Sure the odds are long; you can mathematically calculate them to be 2070-1 against (46 x 45).  But the payoff justifies the gamble.  When you are getting paid over 15,000 to 1 to take a gamble of only just over 2000 to 1 it is a good bet.  You therefore must rethink your strategy when playing video poker. You cannot play as you would a real poker hand, that is how a casino makes its money on these machines. You must think big and take long shot bets when the numbers dictate.

Hey Guys,

How are you all today?

I am busy at work this week, lots of stuff flying in and out the office and it’s all hitting me

Anyway I did have time to finish off the latest article in our “Poker Players” series, it’s about famous poker players and should be some handy trivia for the next time your down the pub or in a poker room. It’s not one of the articles that is going to particularly boost your strategy but it’s still interesting to know

I have been spending a lot of time on WassPoker this week, if you have not already checked it out I recommend you give it a try they have a lot of freerolls on over the next month as well as it being a busy poker room. Had some good beats and wins already but I may write a little more about them soon

Hope you enjoy the article, as always comments are welcome!

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Doyle Brunson is perhaps the most famous, and probably most loved, poker player of all time. Nicknamed “Texas Dolly” Doyle Brunson has won ten events in his lifetime at the World Series of Poker, the game’s premier event. He has won the main event (No Limit Texas Hold’em) of the World Series twice.
He won both main events while holding 10-2 as his starting hand. This hand is now known throughout the poker establishment as “Doyle Brunson”, making him the only poker player to have a specific hand named after him. His booked titled Super System is looked upon by many as the bible of poker strategy.

Phil Hellmuth is commonly referred to as the “poker brat”. His antics at the table are very similar to those of John McEnroe on the tennis court. He draws much attention to himself when he complains about a bad beat or berates a player for making a play he thought was unwise.
Phil creates controversy and is a person who is either liked or disliked but rarely ignored. Behavior aside you can also make the case that Phil Hellmuth is the greatest No-Limit Texas Hold’em tournament player to play the game. He has won a record eleven World Series of Poker events. He is a specialized tournament player; he is certainly not regarded as a great cash game player. In tournaments however his record is second to none over many years. Any discussion of the greatest players of poker must have his name near or at the top.

Chris Moneymaker is a famous player for a variety of reasons. First consider his name, if you were to create a fictitious story about his exploits in poker you could not come up with a better character name than in real life. His fame comes from what he meant to the game of poker. Chris won only one World Series of Poker event, the Main Event of 2003. The storyline behind his victory is what fueled the massive popularity boom of poker in this decade.
He won entry into the Main Event through a low dollar amount satellite on an online poker site. In the main event he knocked out famous players like Johnny Chan and Phil Ivey. Then while playing heads up for the Championship he made perhaps the most famous bluff in the history of poker on Sammy Farha. He proceeded to win this head up duel and claim the championship with a full house. His tournament win showed players throughout the country they too could hit it big without having to invest large sums of money to play. This was the fuel for the massive engine that drove poker to heights it now enjoys today.