Make Jet

Whenever I head out to a online poker tournament, I like to go over the fundamentals of my online poker game. I’ve found that a few strategies have been working out for me over the years, and it seems that sticking to them usually end up making me a decent chunk of cash. In the excitement that comes along with starting a new poker online tournament, I have a tendency to forget the strategies that are most effective for me and if I’m not careful, I can end up acting rash and sabotaging my game plan. To keep myself from abandoning my game plan, it helps to go over how I plan to play the tournament so that it’s fresh in my mind when I arrive. As I’m driving up to the venue, I go over the main tenets of my plan-fold anything but big pocket pairs for the first few rounds to establish a tight image; find out how my opponents play before I play against them; don’t bluff or semi-bluff until the blinds have been raised three or four times; figure out which opponents are easy marks and which ones to watch out for. If you start a tournament with a few basic rules for how you’re going to play, you’ll have much better odds of playing up to your standards during the game.

Your betting position in each round of poker online is a critical factor in how to play your online poker cards. The big and small blinds put in forced bets. If no one raises, then from these positions, you get to see a “cheap flop” which no one has raised. And sometimes that cheap flop will connect with your random hand. Even 7-2 off suit wins sometimes. The small blind will bet first in every ensuing hand, so it’s a vulnerable position because you have no information on how the flop connected with anyone else’s hand. If it missed yours, then simple check, knowing you will fold to any bet. It miracle cards came out to give you trips or two pairs or even better, then raise it up to chase off other contenders. The big blind is a similar situation to the small blind, with early position in the betting, so the poker strategy is similar. From these early positions, you can’t call any bets behind you unless you’ve got a really strong hand, which is unlikely in the blind spots. Some players will always “defend the blind” and call a bet even with rags. It’s not a wise policy and will leak away chips. Sometimes the betting will come down to a battle of the blinds, especially in tournaments as the blinds get high. Then each blind is up against a random hand, and any high ranking card, like an Ace or a face, might be good in this heads-up battle.

Have you ever noticed that big stacks seem to play much looser online poker than you usually do? It’s even more frustrating when they play bad starting poker hands and win with them-it’s not fun to be the short stack as you watch the richest guy at the table get richer by catching a hand with crummy pocket cards. It may seem incongruous to see the big stack playing loose poker, but that player is just taking advantage of the his good fortune. When I’m the big stack, I like to loosen up my starting poker hands to see how they pan out. As the big stack, the blinds are a small percentage of my bankroll, and if my 8-2 turns into a set of 2’s on the river, no one will be the wiser. Think of it this way-if you have a bad starting hand miss the flop nine times out of ten, it sounds bad. But if you win more than ten times the big blind on the one time that it does hit, then you’ll be pulling a profit. Add that to any steals or legitimate hands that you win with, and you’re looking pretty good at poker.

With her introduction towards the end of season one, no one had an idea how much havoc this maenad will cause. With her ’social worker’ status, she won the hearts of the locals, and still they haven’t realized the extent of the damage she has caused to them, their families and their town.

True Blood is loosely based on the books of Charlaine Harris which tell the stories of Sookie Stackhouse and her adventures with the mythical and mystical creatures. Accept for the characters, the whole premise has changed. The once calm and distant Bon Temps is in the midst of a war between human, supernatural beings and the undead.

Despite the war started by Fellowship of the Sun (who want to eliminate vampires), humans have to join forces with the vampires to somehow get rid of Maryann. Even though it’s not their fight, still the vampires will be helping out humans for multiple reasons: love, lust, sexual desires and the reason that Maryann can poison them with her blood.

With her ability to influence or control the behavior of people, forcing shapeshifter to changing shape, immortality, blood which is toxic for vampires, and those dreaded claws (Sookie would know better), Maryann has created an army out of the Bon Temps residents, which our heroes can’t kill. Which in a way is awesome, as the Vampires are not scary anymore and this maenad can cast a spine chilling spell on the humans and undead alike as she has a particular affinity for supernatural beings, and knows the perfect recipe for the human hearts. With her Goddess-like presence and the temperament of Ares, Maryann has become the un-crowned queen of Bon Temps.

As the book suggests, True Blood season 2 will end with a possible death or disappearance of Maryann, but the nightmares will haunt the people of Bon Temps for a long time.

When you play poker en ligne, you should find yourself playing a game within a game. Internally, you should be putting poker online players on their hands every time the cards are dealt. As soon as they get their cards, start assessing each player and decide for yourself what hands they are holding. Pay close attention at every showdown and see whether or not you were right.

If you find yourself wrong more often than not, don’t get discouraged. After a while, you will start to find tendencies in other players. How they react to their cards, how they bet when they’re holding a good hand and how they bet with a bad one, and which cards they’ll play to the end will start to make an impression on you. Eventually, you find yourself making correct assessments and even better, you’ll be doing this automatically. If you’re not in the poker hand, guess what each player has and play against him or her in your head. It will keep your mind engaged and will make you better prepared when your chips are at stake. When you make a habit of putting players on their hands, you’ll much more adept at valuing your hands against theirs and eventually, you’ll find that you can take a table whether you are getting great cards or not.

As we all know, poker online is a casinogame of skill, thought is sometimes involved. And here’s another study that proves it.

The Poker Players Alliance (PPA), a poker online grassroots advocacy group, today lauded the “Statistical Analysis of Texas Hold ‘Em” study released this morning, which provides raw data showing the outcomes of games are predominantly determined by the players’ decisions, not just chance. The results of this study are sure to assist members of the poker community with ongoing legal challenges to protect the game from being categorized as gambling. Earlier this year PPA witnessed a string of legal victories, with judges and juries in the U.S. states of Colorado, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina all determining that poker is predominantly a game of skill, not chance, and should not be classified as “gambling” under the law. The study, released by Cigital, Inc. in conjunction with PokerStars, used data acquired from 103 million hands of Texas Hold ‘Em played online in December of 2008. According to Cigital’s report, more than 75 percent of the cases saw an outcome determined with no player even seeing more than his/her own cards and the community cards. Nearly 25 percent of the games witnessed a showdown where the cards were revealed to determine the winner, but only half of the showdowns were won by the player who had the best five card hand. The other half of the showdowns were won by someone with an inferior hand because the player with the best hand decided to fold prior to showdown.

Granted, folding in a poker game isn’t fun. You can’t win a hand that you fold, so in essence, folding may feel akin to losing. Don’t worry, though- laying down a hand now, even a good one, can lead to some big wins later on.

One of the best signs of a good poker player is the ability to pull off a good lay down. A lay down is the act of folding a good hand when you’ve got the feeling that another player has a better one. It may suck, and I know it hurts, but sometimes you’ve got to lose that hand.

Say that the guy you’re playing against has raised your bet, and all the cards are on the table. You’re sitting on two pair, but there’s a flush draw on the table.

Maybe that guy who just raised you has been pretty conservative until that fourth spade hit the table.

I know you may be stoked on your cards, but it’s times like these that you need to think objectively. What advice would you give somebody else in your position? If you analyze the situation and honestly think that he has the cards to beat you, you gotta fold.

Remember- sometimes a good lay down is just as good as a win in poker.