Poker

How To Play Omaha Poker: A Step-by-Step Guide

Omaha is generally considered a more skillful game than Holdem because players have more opportunities to make strong hands. This means you could have a great starting hand but still lose due to poor play on later streets or by running into someone who has an even better hand than yours.

Omaha poker is a community card game, like Texas Hold’em, that ranks among the most popular variants of online poker in USA online casinos that are available to use by players in the UK. Omaha poker is played by at least two and up to ten players. In order to win, you can either make everyone else fold or simply have the best hand.

Let us review the rules of Omaha poker.

Draw for a Dealer

A player first needs to draw the high card for a dealer. The player with the highest card becomes the dealer. If two players have identical cards, they receive another card from the deck, or the suits of their cards are used to determine which one wins. [Read more…] about How To Play Omaha Poker: A Step-by-Step Guide

Unwritten Poker Table Rules You Should Know

By Martin

Poker requires a level of socialization and interactions. Good poker players have mastered the table etiquettes that make them good at reading people and fun to play with.

There are unwritten Poker rules that every player should know. These rules ensure professionalism, sportsmanship, and mutual respect amongst players.

Pay Attention

While at the table, it’s important that you stay focused and concentrate on the game. It’s not cool to be the player that needs to be constantly reminded that it’s your turn to act.

While there’s no rule saying you should pay one hundred percent attention to the game, an obvious lack of interest can be frustrating and quite disrespectful to your opponents.

Sometimes, the game can get exhausting especially when things aren’t going your way. However, you should try to make an effort. [Read more…] about Unwritten Poker Table Rules You Should Know

How to Get “Into“Online Poker the Right Way

By Martin

We realise, for people who just turned legal age or considering entering the world of poker, it’s challenging. You may not know where to start, what site to play on, what books to read or advice to listen to. Fortunately, we are going to offer some advice from personal experience to help break you into the online poker world. By the end of this post, you will be ready to tackle the low stakes cash games and tournaments.

Learn Basic Strategy

There is not need to learn advanced concepts when you’re starting out. That would be a waste of time and will go over your head. The expression “walk before you run” is true for most hobbies and online poker is the same. We recommend visiting poker orientated sites that are catered for beginners. You can easily access important information like pre-flop Texas Hold’em strategy. This will give you a good idea on what hands to enter the pot with and what hands to discard. [Read more…] about How to Get “Into“Online Poker the Right Way

Protecting the blinds in MTTs

By Martin

If a player wants to be successful in multi-table tournaments in Texas Hold’em, a number of factors came have to come together. First of all, you have to stick with the right strategy. Secondly, you need to get lucky. Of course, this component doesn’t allow you to improve your odds (aside from wearing a lucky charm or two), but the game of strategy and tactics is entirely up to you. The optimal strategy consists of dozens or even hundreds of small things. Protecting the blinds has a special value.

Get ready for war!

If you decide to defend the blinds in Texas Hold’em, then you have to be ready for combat. Basically, it’s a necessary business – but it’s dangerous nonetheless. You can be sure that almost every opponent will try to snatch a piece of your stack. Virtually any multi-table tournament will make you witness how the player who is in the big blind made the call and subsequently found himself between the rock and hard place. Many poker players do not want to give up their blinds, so they are ready to take unnecessary risks in order not to lose them. During such times, they completely forget about following the strategy and simply battle for blinds. It turns out that most of the poker players are ready to risk losing the war to win a battle, which is fundamentally wrong. The excessive defense of the blinds is a mistake.

Passive blind protection method

The main problem and the danger of blind defense is that the player continues the take action out of position. It’s like the importance of playing in the position no longer standing applied. Being in such an unenviable spot, the big blind must act aggressively. Mike Caro said, a well-known poker author once said: “Money is moving in a circle at the poker table. But it is very hard for me to win when I’m in the big blind. This is a very bad place to be at the poker table. ”

In such a situation, do not rush when it comes to making important decisions.It is better to play passively (check-call) from the big blind. Let the opponents control the hand and simply follow the situation. Depending on the actions of your opponents, you might be able to understand their intentions, so try to read them. It is not necessary to force things and make it your hand, as you could be walking straight into the jaws of a tiger. When playing a passive game, you may just as well protect their blinds. With the help of this trick you control the size of the pot and you don’t have to inflate it. The best situation would be a small pot and small bets coming from your opponent. [Read more…] about Protecting the blinds in MTTs

The Poker Position guide You needed to see Yesterday (Read It Now)

By Martin

Listen, seasoned players: this isn’t your guide. Maybe if you don’t know anything about poker position it might be useful to you, but we’re not talking to you today. Later, we’ll talk about other things that might be of value to you. But for right now, we’re talking to new players that are trying to get that horrible fish smell off of them. You know that smell, right? It’s the smell of desperation, of helplessness, of ignorance. Mind you, ignorance is used here in its most polite form — you didn’t know what you don’t know, and it’s not because you’re stupid. You’re just uninformed of real strategy at this time.

Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, let’s talk about poker position. If you’re going to play out of position, you’re in for a rough time. If you’re in position, you’re the last person to act on a round. This is the best place to be in a poker game, because it means that you get the most information. Contrast that with early position, where you’re the first person to make a move. If you raise, then you have to realize that other people are going to fold or even go in stronger because you put blood in the water.

Playing tight out of position is the key to making sure that you can stay in more hands. But if you’re playing aggressively out of position, you’re missing out on key information that’s going to make your poker play a lot smoother. [Read more…] about The Poker Position guide You needed to see Yesterday (Read It Now)

Texas Hold’em Poker Tips

By Martin

Most of us love a good game of poker. The levels of suspense, anticipation and excitement are unfound in other sports and due to the stakes usually involved, the joy of winning is multiplied. Due to the birth, rise and development of the internet and subsequently the availability of online poker, the sport has grown significantly in recent years.

There are more poker players now than at any other point in history and the number of players is growing rapidly. With more and more beginners being introduced to the sport, tutorials on how to play the game are invaluable. Here are a few Texas Hold’em tips.

Patience

The first tip is patience. When you’re playing in a home game or an online casino there will usually be nine or ten players playing on the table. You therefore need to be really selective about the hands that you play, especially when you’re first or second to act.

If you happen to be playing a heads up or 6-max tournament then you can play more hands. Usually however, patience tends to win the day, especially when you’re one of the first players to act.

Bet Sizing

Bet sizing is both a skill and an art in Texas Hold’em. Before the flop, we like to think about our bet sizes in relation to the big line. So if the big line is 100, a good bet size would be three times the big line, so 300 chips.

Now after the flop, we ought to think of our bet sizes in relation to how many chips are in the pot. A good general framework is to think about betting somewhere between half pot and full pot. Think about your plan for the hand as you bet. Are you trying to get all the money in? Or are you planning to fold to a raise?

Position

Professional poker players are obsessed with position or acting last. If you’re acting last, you always have position on the hand. Similarly, if you’re raising from early or middle position and players in the blinds call, you’ll also have position on the hand.

So what’s so great about position?

Your opponents are always going to be betting throughout the hand first. Therefore you’re always going be having a little extra information to decide whether you want to call, raise or fold. This is really important when you’re trying to decide whether to slow play your monsters or block when you have nothing.

So pre-flop, if you’re deciding whether or not to call, raise or fold in a marginal situation, think about whether or not you’ll have position after the flop.

Always Adjust

Poker’s fun but it’s also an intellectual game. You might think that you have your table figured out but there’s always something new to think about and new plays stepping into the game, blinds going up or players getting eliminated.

You should therefore always have your thinking cap on and keep those wheels turning in order to bring home the money.