Since the poker boom some years back almost all decent casinos have installed a poker room manager who facilitates the various poker tournaments that take place during the week and on weekends. Along with roulette, slots and blackjack, poker is now considered a major part of the casino gaming experience. If you are a poker player and not a casino enthusiast then you need to know what to expect from your first visit to the casino to play poker. The poker room at your local casino should have a range of cash games, regular poker tournaments and even impromptu SNG poker tournaments if things get busy enough so you should always be able to find a game.

When you first arrive at the casino you will need to join as a member before you can gain access to the gaming area. This is vital for the casino as you need to be old enough to legally gamble in your country. Click on the link if you want to research more about gambling law before you visit the casino. For me, that meant being 18. Which is fine by me as I was 27 before I even stepped into the casino as my entire poker experience was gained playing online poker for many years!

After you have signed up, which is normally free at the casinos in the UK, you get given a membership card which you must bring with you each time you visit the casino. You then go into the gaming area which is usually filled with slot machines, roulette tables and blackjack tables. Towards the back of the casino floor you will find the poker section (if not find a new casino!) This usually looks like a bunch of empty poker tables tightly bunched together with possibly one or two tables playing if there are cash games active. At larger casinos obviously things will be on a larger scale.

Casinos place the poker tables at the back of the poker room to force players to walk past the other games and hopefully be tempted by them before they reach the poker section. Also after a player busts out they may be on tilt and decide to play some Blackjack in anger. The casinos make more money from the casino games where the game odds are fixed in their favour. Poker is a good way to get people to visit the casino but the rake and fees are relatively small compared to what can be earned from other games. If you are not a Blackjack specialist then like a player new to poker you should tread carefully.

There is normally a board next to the poker room showing the schedule of upcoming tournaments. Most casinos have a weekly schedule that is set for up to three months at a time so you can plan which tournaments you would like to play in advance. In a larger casino there will be ongoing cash games, if not there is sometimes a board where you can sign up with your name and telephone number and if a game is going ahead someone will call you and let you know.

Ask the poker room manager for more details as they are always keen to get a game going. I prefer online poker as I cannot multi-table playing live poker and it costs more in rake to play live but it is certainly fun and a nice change to play some live poker once or twice a week.

Hopefully this article will help you out being more confident in entering the casino to play poker. If you can win in a live poker setting you will certainly feel more confident at the online poker tables.

By Malcolm Clarke

There is a tendency for players to want to check monster hands in the hope that their opponents will bet. This addiction with being deceptive is one that is widespread amongst many poker players. However it is based on misconceptions brought about by seeing other forms of poker and through not understanding the differences.

For example, let us look at a limit Texas Hold’em poker game where one player raises from a steal position and the big blind called with A-J. The flop came A-7-4 and the big blind decided to check and then call to disguise the strength of his hand. In this instance a check could induce his opponent to keep on firing on the betting rounds where the limits double.

So in this instance the slowplay is viable. Or how about taking a situation from tournament poker! A player with 18 big blinds open raises and the big blind calls. The big blind has a stack that is not much bigger than the pot size and when they check, our hero who has flopped top two pair and in this instance decides to check it back.

Texas Hold’em Cash Games

Here the payoff or potential payoff is your opponent’s entire stack as they may decide to launch a bluff attempt based on your apparent weakness on the flop when you checked. Look at the differences here with no-limit cash games, one instance was a limit game where the reward for not betting on the cheap better round on the flop could have been extracting bigger bets on the turn and river and the other was in a tournament where the blinds had risen so sharply that the average stack size was small compared to the size of the blinds.

Now compare these examples to a deep stacked no-limit Texas hold’em online poker game where both players had 100 big blinds before the hand started. Our hero raises before the flop to 3.5 big blinds and it gets called by the big blind. The pot has now around 7 big blinds in the middle if you factor in the small blinds money and the rake. Our hero has Q-J and the flop comes A-K-10 to give him the nut straight.

Simply Make The Bet

The big blind checks and I see many people check behind in this situation. But what this has effectively done is to reduce the hand from four betting rounds to three. What this means is that stacking your opponent will now be that much more difficult simply because the pot will not escalate enough with one less betting round.

If our hero checks this hand and another straight card comes like a jack then not only may his opponent hold a queen for a split pot but if they don’t hold a queen then the board looks so scary that all future action will dry up anyway.

If you bet the flop and your opponent folds then the chances are that there was nothing to win anyway. But if our hero had bet say 5 big blinds on the flop and that bet was called, this would have then placed 17 big blinds in the pot for the turn round. Another pot sized bet and call on the turn would have put around fifty big blinds in the pot by the river which is now close to being an all-in situation.

This article was produced by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Bluffing is an integral part of online poker and especially in high-stakes poker games. The levels of aggression in these games means that bluffing and being bluffed are common themes! Short handed and heads up play demand aggression but then again, you must do your fair share of bluffing in full ring games as well and even in situations where you feel bluffing should be at a premium.

Limit hold’em has a very big presence in online poker and there are many people who think that full-ring limit play is devoid of bluffing opportunities. There are ample bluffing chances that crop up in limit play and you must be alert to them otherwise you will be in serious danger of missing out on vital profit opportunities that will form the bread and butter of your earn rate.

Let us look at an example to show exactly what I mean. The game is $10-$20 full-ring limit hold’em and you are playing online poker. Here you have the Jc-5c in the big blind and three players limp in so you see a free flop. The flop comes 10h-6c-3c and you decide to bet into three opponents with your flush draw and overcard.

Your bet gets called by one of the limpers but raised by the button, both you and the limper call. The turn card is the 7s giving you an inside straight draw to go with your other outs as well. You check and to your surprise so do both of your opponents. The river card pairs the seven and now the betting is on you.

Here, many players would neglect to bet here in the big blinds situation. They would fear having two opponents with no hand and a player who raised on the flop. These are all valid arguments but your bet represented something on the flop and that was top pair. Your opponents checking this back on the turn indicates players who may be drawing.

The limper who called your flop bet and then called the turn raise could have merely been getting pot odds. Online poker is jam packed with situations like these and you need to be aware. The play of the flop raiser smacks of someone who was raising to get a free card and when they checked the turn then this seemed to be indicative of that.

You cannot win by checking as a jack high will not take this pot but you are getting very good pot odds to launch a bluff. Many novice players forget about the pot odds when looking to launch bluffs in limit play. They also neglect to take into account the play of the hand up until that stage as well.

Here it was a combination of the pot odds and the situation that indicated that a bet was in order and is all part of online poker strategy. If the flop raiser had followed through and bet the turn then you would have been forced to call and your initiative would have been lost in the hand. You couldn’t really then bet the river into this player and would have been merely making a pot odds call on the turn.

Online poker in all of its various forms is rich with variety and bluffing is what makes the game as exciting as what it is. But try to bluff intelligently and not blindly.

This article was written by Carl “The Dean” Sampson

How many times have you had middle pair or even a premium pair and raised it up to isolate your opponent only to see the board pair on the flop? If you play online poker cash games or tournament poker you have been in this situation more than you probably would like. However, this is not necessarily the worst thing that can happen to you and it can be managed without taking unnecessary risk.

How should I proceed?

Considering most players raise pre-flop with a premium hand or middle pair we will also assume that you are in position as well. With two players in the pot it is easier to manage this kind of situation but with a third player it can get really tricky. The standard rule of thumb is to bet out with the mind set that your opponent does not have the paired card. I happen to agree with this poker strategy. However, I am not going to make a bet so large as to put myself in position to lose a great deal of money until I am confident that I am not being trapped.

For example:

You are in a cash game on the button and your two opponents are about even with you in chips, ($300), with blinds of $1/$2:

Hero holds [A][8]os
Opponent #1 holds [J][T]os
Opponent #2 holds [5][5]

#2 opens it up for $6 from early position and #1 calls.

The action folds around to you and you make it $18 to go. #2 flat calls the raise and #1 mucks their hand.

The flop comes down [9][4][4] rainbow.

#2 bets out $10 in attempts to scare you away and take down the pot immediately. You smooth call believing your hand is still best.

The Turn brings an [8]

Since your opponent raised pre-flop and you have a reasonably good read on his play and determine that he is likely to be holding anything from [A][Q] – [K][J]. You do not put him on a big hand despite his raise from early position as he tends to raise a lot of pots from just about any position holding mediocre hands.

NOTE: The key at this stage is being able to put your opponent on a hand! If you have not developed this skill you will continue to have trouble playing paired boards.

#2 decides to bet out $16 in attempts to push you off the hand again. However, instead of smooth calling you raise it up and make it $35 to go and your opponent insta-mucks his hand.

Why did our Hero make the decision to raise when our opponent bet out $16 on the Turn? A couple of things tipped me off that it was very unlikely that he held Pocket Nines or a four. First, if he actually had Trips or a Full Boat why would he bet so big after the turn knowing that it could possibly push me out of the pot? It is much more likely that he would have made a smaller bet to keep me in the pot until the River.

Keep in mind that when you have the nutz the last thing you want to do is push your opponent out of the pot. So, it was relatively reasonable to surmise that my opponent did not have a big hand at all. Sure, the nine on the board was a bit of a concern and had he decided to come over the top of me after I raised the pot I would have likely mucked the hand as it would have been a very difficult call to make in that spot.

These kinds of scenarios happen in poker rooms around the world every single day. As with just about any scenario in poker I implore you to put your opponent on a hand or range of hands and utilize whatever information you have about that individuals play to make what is likely the correct read. The more you play the game of poker the better at it you will become.

By:
Curtis Mayfield III

Reading around the Internet I am constantly looking for ways to increase my bankroll and remove some of the volatile swings that cause us poker players to lose sleep at night. For those of us who sweat the bad results or the bad beats like it is a punch to our stomach, this type of information would make a real difference. Reading a forum or two, I noticed that many players advocated the grinding of multi table SNG’s. Some of them reported an ROI of up to 50%, so I decided to investigate further.

The payout structure on a standard SNG with 10 players fighting for the top three spots are 50/30/20. That is 50% of the prize pool to the winner, 30% to second and 20% for the third place finisher. This helps shape strategy as just to make the money doubles your entry fee. Larger SNG’s with 27, 45, 90 or 180 players have payouts usually of 10%, so you do not have to do quite as well to cash. A win, however, can see you earn many times your buy-in due to the large field. Payouts are not as top heavy as standard tournaments and are more evenly distributed, but like MTT’s the variance increases the more players are involved.

I posted a question on a poker forum asking for opinions on whether or not I should focus on the single table poker tournaments (STT’s) or the multi’s. The response was mixed. Some players used the fact that the larger tournaments take longer as a reason not to play them. This argument is valid if you are able to beat the smaller field SNG in a shorter space of time. You are aiming to maximise your hourly rate at the table, which is important as your earnings are capped in a SNG and you can never go on the cash game heater and earn lots in a short space of time due to the structure. Knowing earn rate is important to making the right game decisions.

I also noticed that the ROI (Return on Investment) for players can be misleading. If you play a 180 man SNG and win, your ROI will be increased massively. If you then go on a terrible run of losses, playing badly and taking beats you will still be showing a positive ROI thanks to your big win. A player with a smaller ROI could still earn more money than you due to more consistent performances.

Grinding takes time as you need a large sample size of games to work out what you’re true ROI is. The more games you play (there is no correct amount just the more the better) the more accurate your calculation becomes. From this percentage you can work out your hourly rate and calculate whether playing that much can be worth it for you. I found in my research that SNG players crunch the numbers as well as the hands.

Multi-table SNG offer me many advantages as many players just want a game and make bad decisions as they are simply taking part. Of course you have your grinders who are probably playing 12+ tournaments at once, but if you concentrate and play well the field dwindles around you. Two of three nice hands and well played moves are enough to see you get into a good position to cash. The extra money available due to the larger field makes the cash on offer more lucrative. Once you get a feel for the game you may develop a tendency to do better in the 45 man games or the 90 man games, that all depends on you.

I constantly assess whether I should be playing cash or SNG’s during my daily play. I play tournaments but normally as a way of shooting for the big score. I do not class myself as a grinder of tournaments as the variance causes me pain! It is definitely worth your time researching each type of SNG. Try them out as they are a great way of earning rakeback and getting tournament experience, as well as some good profits.

By Malcolm Clarke

How long before Poker Marketing is offered as an option for a student to read at University? Poker players who play professionally are supporting themselves financially by doing a very unpredictable profession. There are not many self-employed businesses that rely so heavily on luck to determine whether or not they make a profit or a loss. Most businesses require the knowledge of procedures to earn money a certain way, then repeat as often as possible. With poker, the outcomes are never guaranteed. For this reason players usually do things alongside their table play to give themselves a more reliable income.

Phil Hellmuth owns his own clothing and publishing company alongside playing professional poker. His antics at the table and his affiliation (possibly even part ownership) of Ultimate Bet serve as major parts of his income these days. Simply winning a lot of money playing poker and winning 11 WSOP bracelets was not enough to secure his life forever. He could still lose money in the high stakes cash games he played in, so he developed his businesses to allow him security in an insecure profession. This clever investment in his own poker profile is what has given him most of his wealth.

If you look at any top poker player, most have a large sponsorship deals or another major stream of income. All of the top Full Tilt players make a massive income from the site each month. Daniel Negreanu has Full Contact Poker and Poker VT, Doyle Brunson has Doyles Room, and so on. Playing $10,000 buy-in poker tournaments week after week diminishes any bankroll quickly so these players understand the need to invest to keep them in the public domain and in the game. Not many players rely solely on the turn of a card for their money. Even top cash game player Tom “Durrr” Dwan, who is seen as the young crazy gambler willing to risk everything for poker, has invested his money in businesses away from poker whilst battling it out at the very highest stakes both online and live.

How can the average player like you and me learn from this? Firstly, this is yet another example that poker is never reliable enough to play solely forever. I would recommend any player to look at ways of ensuring they invest any substantial earnings to secure their futures. You can set up a poker website or a blog and look to gain money through poker advertising. Once you have a good win or a notable final table appearance this should generate interest in you and when people search on Google for your name your site will appear. Always be on the look out for people willing to pay you to wear their logo. Be willing to network and give people your email address and contact details. You never know what idea they may think you are suitable for that they will pay you to participate in. If you are worried about giving out a personal email address, then simply set up a free account with yahoo or hotmail that you use only for poker business.

Be unique but not foolish. Marcel Luske is a player that always wears a suit and appears very smart and is well known for this preference. Other players like Andy Black wear their sunglasses upside down on their face (common in poker). You may even like to design some poker apparel and tell people about it when you play. A good bomber jacket or pair of sunglasses may give you the look to sell your products.

As with any type of enterprise PR is everything. You need to network furiously but not like a salesman. Drop into the conversation that you can write articles, you keep a blog; you design poker clothing, or whatever you do so that people remember you and want to associate with you. Always be extremely friendly and warm, this will draw people to you as a person. Marketing is about developing an image and then profiting from that image. Poker is a unique niche where people are willing to spend money in the right circumstances so ensure that if you do arrive at a point where you can profit from your poker success you are able to offer something unique to the willing poker sponsors who will come knocking.

By Malcolm Clarke

A recent poker tournament that I won was a real lesson on how to ride the hot deck. I played in the local casino, with a small entry fee. I was a little nervous as it had been a while since I had graced the live felt. If you ever have a hiatus away from live play you will sit down at the table feeling like everyone has more experience than you and that you will bust out early. That is exactly how I felt. Watching the other players helped me settle in and the early levels were slow which gave me a chance to wait for good cards.

I did not have to wait long as my first hand was KK in middle position. I made the standard two and a half times the big blind raise and received one caller, a player sitting to my right who seemed like a regular. He shuffled his chips well which is always a sign of a decent player. The flop gave me KXX with no draws so I focused on extracting value. I managed to get the player to stay with me until the turn where he gave up and folded with me winning a nice hand. I was card dead for the next full hour and twenty minutes not really hitting any cards, kept entertained by the lady sitting to my left who was very outgoing. I was fortunate that the flop textures were being kind to me throughout the tournament allowing me to improve most times I was in a pot which kept my decisions relatively straight forward.

The next major hand I was involved in had me holding 9 10 offsuit and I limped in. The flop was a tasty 4 9 9. I had around 15,000 in my stack and the pot ended up around 10,000 with my opponent showing me 9 3 and I won with the better kicker. This player had a tendency to play weird starting hands and I was concerned that he might have the A 9 as I was pretty sure he had the other 9 the way the betting worked out. Fortunately I had the winning hand and that gave me a really healthy stack. My online game suffers from not chipping up in the middle levels, so this was a major obstacle overcome in the tournament for me.

I appreciated that I was catching cards, nearly every draw to a flush that I had generally hit, with me getting paid off. Gradually players started respecting my raises and allowed me to steal the blinds a few times when I needed to.

For other players reading this it is important that if you feel the deck is running your way you do not alter your game too much. I held KK and made the set four times during the tournament and fortunately no flushes or straights hit that would dent my stack. I still played conservatively, resisting the urge to throw my chips in when the right move was to smooth call and see how the hand developed. Playing for 5 hours straight was a rarity for me but I felt my concentration levels were good. The same way that you should play through a bad run, you also learn how to win correctly. I have lost more chips pushing good hands in tournaments than overplaying bad hands. Folding those trash hands is the easy part. I kept an even temperament throughout the tournament which is important if you wish to give yourself the best chance to win when you get to the final table.

I ended up winning the tournament. After getting heads up with my opponent we decided to chop and I had a slightly larger stack going into heads up so was credited with the win on paper. I had a good run of cards which helped me and it gave me confidence that I can play good poker against decent players.

By Malcolm Clarke

With poker becoming more and more mainstream, there are millions of people the world over either wanting to play poker, actually playing poker or wanting to educate themselves in how to play the game better. This is a natural process but yet at the same time, there are also millions of people the world over who are both risk averse and who also don’t have money that they can set aside in order to be able to play the game without being financially stretched.

There are many ways in which a player can lessen the burden of playing poker and the most common way is to either get some sort of backing or sponsorship deal. This can either be from an online card room or in most cases from other sources like individuals or companies that may not necessarily be connected with poker.

There is of course another way…..you could go on national TV and ask for it. Next Wednesday the 22nd July, poker player JJ Hazan will appear on the program “Dragons Den” where he will go before the Dragons to put his case forward for them to back him to play tournament poker to the value of £65k. This is an intriguing proposition and to be honest, you have to hand it to the guy.

It takes some nerve to go onto national TV and ask for this but I have a sneaking feeling that even if he gets the knock back next week, that he wont be short of offers and may even get the 65k from a combination of individuals who want tiny percentages of him.

I fully expect the Dragons to have done their homework on Hazan and they will probably notice that he hasn’t had a decent result in a major event since 2006 so he will need to have an answer ready for that question if it comes. Variance in tournament poker is extremely severe but my question to JJ would be “tournament poker has got an awful lot tougher since 2006, what makes you think that you can still compete amongst the newer generation of clued up players?”

Actually there would be lots of other questions as well and I think that the poor guy is going to be in for a torrid time but that’s the nature of the beast or in this case the nature of the Dragon. Personally I hope that he does it but it will open the floodgates for people asking for sponsorships and backing over the coming months and especially if he pulls it off.

Primarily I have always been a cash game player so for me tournament poker doesn’t have an awful lot of value and certain tournaments like EPT’s for instance have almost no value unless you happen to be a world class player and there are not many of those around. Personally 65k isn’t going to buy JJ into many large poker tournaments and the variance is so severe that he may not be able to get the Dragons a meaningful return on their investment anyway.

But much depends on what they are looking for. It’s a bit like a person who buys shares in a racehorse purely and simply because they want to experience the excitement of wanting to see it run. If he can arouse one of them who has a slice of adventure and likes the proposition then he may just pull it off. I for one will be glued to the television set next week, anyone with that kind of vision and determination deserves to succeed even if he doesn’t get anywhere on the night.

By Carl “The Dean” Sampson

Every poker player dreams of getting their big moment in the spotlight, running through the large field of professionals and amateurs and getting down to a World Series final table. Eventually they make it heads up and after a gruelling battle, defeat their opponent and capture the treasured bracelet and the prestige of being a WSOP winner. Finally they have the adulation they knew their skills deserve, or have they?

In reading about the World Series I noticed a contradiction in the way people talk about the bracelet wins of players before the poker boom, and after the boom. The fields of players were a lot smaller before poker become mainstream, but the quality of the fields were a lot higher with tournament professionals such as Phil Hellmuth, Chip Reese and Doyle Brunson all very highly skilled poker players still involved in many events. If you were to win through these small but tough fields, you gained the respect of being a worthy winner. If a top professional plays in one of the monster fields today, they cannot rely on just skill to make it through to the latter stages of the tournament. Tom McEvoy is quoted as saying poker tournaments are about “surviving long enough to get lucky”. This suggests he believes luck plays a larger factor in a current bracelet win than before.

Newer players will argue that to win a bracelet from 1500 or more players is much harder than beating 200. You must demonstrate tremendous mental agility and concentration, as well as the stamina to stay competitive for sometimes three or four days before you eventually can win the event. The modern WSOP bracelet demonstrates the player has sufficient skills to cope with the demands of a long tournament, as well as the ability to play poker. The old school players were better overall at playing the game, and winning a bracelet meant outplaying the better players rather than benefiting from easier tables of amateurs that a player can enjoy when placed on fishy tables. The modern player adapts well to large fields and the additional factors that come with dealing with many mediocre players.

But with the fact there are so many unknown people getting a bracelet, is the bracelet just a crown on the head of the player to whom the cards happened to hit that day? You would expect a bracelet winner to be able to make a living from cards and be a consistent winner, better than most ordinary players. But this quite often is not the case with many bracelet winners being average players who struggle to stay afloat in the world of professional poker. Particularly in the main event where around 5000 – 7000 players usually play over many days, there is rarely a player that is known as one of the best that make it to the last few tables. The players who do make it become famous, but are rarely famous before becoming a member of the November nine. The larger the field the more you need to stay lucky in order to have a chance of success.

This is the appeal of poker. As an amateur player you are not out of the race to win. But there is an argument to suggest that winning the bracelet is not treated with the respect from other professionals as it once would have been. You almost need to win a second bracelet to be regarded as a good poker player, reducing the chance that luck was the major factor in your first win. But when players are raising their first bracelet into the air, I doubt whether they worry about such things as how it is viewed by the players they have just defeated.

By Malcolm Clarke

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