Reality Television Meets Poker

Williams is a known poker buff, and his calling attention to the industry through the new television series is yet another reminder of how online gambling regulations are needed in the US.

“I love poker. It’s a game that has everything. It crosses boundaries and borders. It is truly international, and the time is right for the International Team Poker League to take poker to a new level and a wider audience,” said Williams.

Williams acknowledges that his series was made possible through the advancement of poker on the Internet. Part of Williams’ new show will take place on the Internet. Tournaments will be held online and at land based casinos for the poker series. The show will run much like a conventional talent show. Once the satellite tournaments are complete, all of the winners will be brought to a Las Vegas casino and placed on different teams. Those teams will then play one battle royal type final table to become the ITPL champions for this year.

Latest Poker News

The next element of the PokerStars-sponsored series of worldwide, regionally themed poker tours has been announced with the creation of the Russian Poker Tour (RPT). PokerStars, in association with the Russian Poker Tour, has announced the first two venues servicing one of poker’s fastest-growing markets.

The inaugural RPT event will be held January 25 - February 1, 2009 in St. Petersburg, and will carry a $5,000 buy-in. The Moscow stop has also been announced, which will be held February 22-28, 2009 and boasts a $10,000 buy-in.Two emerging Russian superstars have already become members of the vaunted Team PokerStars Pro after.

PokerStars

Experiencing success on the international poker stage. Alex Kravchenko claimed a bracelet in the 2007 WSOP and nearly took down another in that year’s Main Event, while Ivan Demidov fell just short of an unimagined double, finishing third in the 2008 WSOP-Europe Main Event after qualifying for the delayed final table of the 2008 WSOP Main Event in Las Vegas, where he eventually finished as the runner-up. Both Russian stars are expected to be on hand for the RPT stops, highlighting a strong international field.

PokerStars is already running satellites for the RPT St. Petersburg stop, priced as low as $2.22 or 111 Frequent Player Points (FPPs). These satellites will be available until December 30, 2008. Final winners will receive a prize package valued at $8,000, which includes the tournament buy-in, accommodations and an expense allowance.

By Sage Kalmus

Poker Reports

This article discusses online poker and bluffing strategy, including the 3 main types of bluffs. Ah, bluffing. When you get it right, you feel like a master strategist; when you get it wrong, you feel like a doofus. Bluffing is lying, to put it plainly.

To be more specific, bluffing is lying about the strength or weakness of your hand. There is a common school of poker strategy that teaches to play every good hand as if it were a bad one and every bad hand as if it were a good one. Now while that may be a bit too simplistic to be applied across the board, it speaks to a sound underlying principle — you can win with a good hand and you can win with a bad one; it’s all in how you play.

If you’re playing No Limit poker especially you’re going to need to know how to bluff (and as a bonus consequence, how to tell when others are bluffing). Bluffing is generally more effective in No Limit poker than in Limit poker because in Limit poker, you can only raise so much at once, and you can only raise so many times in each round of betting.

A player in a Limit poker game is much more inclined to call a bet or a raise with a mediocre hand than a player in a No Limit game, and the main reason why is the size of the bet or raise. In No Limit poker, you can call “All In” at any of your turns and set the whole table on tilt. There’s just no equivalent in Limit play.

Now to extend the conversation on bluffing to the online poker arena, there are far fewer methods of bluffing online than there are offline. The main way to bluff online is to place a humongous bet or raise (when your hand doesn’t merit it, of course). You can try a bit of “coffeehousing” or blustering over the chat window, but if your opponents aren’t reading the chat window (or have that feature turned off) you’re wasting your time.

One way to heighten the impact of a bluff is to do it quickly and confidently. Though they can’t see your face while you’re doing it, like they could if you really were sitting across the table from them, but they can gauge how long it took you to come up with this maneuver based on how look it took you to execute it.
You’ll find 3 basic types of bluffs at the poker table, online or off:

The Stone Cold Bluff: Betting a huge amount right away with lousy cards; the choicest time to pull this is when you’re the last player to act in that round of betting and not much action has happened yet;

The Semi-Bluff: Betting on a potentially winning hand that for now is worthless (such as four cards to a straight or a flush); it’s considered a bluff because it’s currently a garbage hand, but since it could turn into “the nuts” or the best hand possible at that time, it’s considered to be only a semi-bluff;

Representing the Flop: Bluffing in two parts - first, raise a small amount in the initial round of betting, making folks think you have the beginnings of an excellent hand, though it seems clear you need to pull something useful on the flop to make it happen; in this round, you raise just enough to get the majority of players at the table to fold. After the flop, then, go ahead and bet a ton (maybe even going so far as to go All-In) suggesting that you just pulled whatever cards you needed on the flop.

It takes nerves of steel to pull off a good bluff, but it takes even more than that to fold when you believe your opponent is bluffing. If your hand is weak, especially, then no matter how convinced you are that your opponent is trying to pull one over on you, you still want to walk away and save your chips for anotherhand. If you don’t think you can win this round with the cards you’ve got, then by all means you can try bluffing. But if you sense you’re being bluffed, make sure you can beat it before you go ahead and call it.

By Dennis B.

Online Poker News

This series of guides aim to let you in on the real value of online poker tools. When should you use them and which ones to choose. The short answer is “Yes” but it will probably be easier and more profitable to use the best poker tools to help you along.

There are many different kinds of Poker Tools available today: some are just plain fun to use, some are pretty worthless and a small number of quality tools are really worth your attention.

The house rules of your local online poker room are significant. Just as most land based casinos doesn’t allow card counting in Black Jack or the use of electronic devices in the casino many online poker rooms are selective when it comes to the use of poker tools.

Pokerstars probably has the most restrictive policy in the business with a long list of banned poker software tools and programs. This article will give you a good idea of the characteristics that are typical for banned software types but to make sure please check the rules of your local poker room.

If you are a fairly inexperienced poker player don’t be too quick in starting to invest time and money in the different poker tools - start out by reading a few good poker books (David Sklansky: “The Theory of Poker” and Ian Taylor + Matthew Hilger: “The Poker Mindset” are good for starters after those pick one specific to your preferred poker variation) and play a lot of free or low stakes poker. Once you have mastered the basics of the game you can start to think about moving on to thinking about which online poker tools are best for you.

This is the first in a series of articles meant to explain the different poker tool types, their unique value in specific situations and teach you how to select the tools that will help you improve the most. This article supplies an introduction to poker tools and categorizes the different tool types. Later articles will give more detailed info on specific tools and how to extract the most value from them.

If you expect to buy a couple of poker tools, install them and then start playing (and winning) much better poker than you are now, you will be disappointed. The best poker tools all demand that you put in the time to learn how to use and understand them. This can be many hours but the better poker tools are definitely worth your time, as you will improve over time.

Once you have read this guide (hopefully all the articles) please don’t rush out and buy 2-3 or more poker tools. The best approach is to focus on one tool at a time - spend some time deciding which tool type you stand to benefit the most from and invest in the specific tool you find most promising. Then concentrate on really getting to know this tool and once you have gotten most of the benefits the tool can offer move on to the next tool.

The single most important reason to use online poker tools is to improve your skills and thus win more. The good news is that this is entirely possible to achieve the “bad” part is that is takes time. Now please move on to the next part in which you will learn which poker tool type is best for you: Trackers, HUD’s, Online Databases, Calculators, Charts or Poker Robots.

The author is an experienced Webmaster, IT Professional and seasoned poker player, currently working with SEO and webmaster of the poker information site, Cool Poker Guide - the high quality free online poker guide.

Online Poker Awards

They’ve been around only a few years, but Full Tilt Poker has some of the best action going. We give them this award, not because they have the most active players, but because they have the best action of all the great poker rooms.

There are rooms that have more players, but none of those rooms come close to the combination of a classy room, great customer service, excellent graphics, and many players at all levels.

Best Poker Book (General): Super System by Doyle Brunson

This classic book is considered by the pros to be the best book ever written on poker! Jam-packed with advanced strategies, theories, and tactics and money-making techniques - no serious new online poker player can afford to be without this hard-hitting information.

Includes fifty pages of the most precise poker statistics ever published. Features chapters written by poker’s biggest superstars, such as Dave Sklansky, Mike Caro, Chip Reese, Bobby Baldwin, and Doyle - two world champions and three master theorists.

Best Online Poker Education: Poker School Online

Once again, this is an easy award to give out for two reasons. First and most important, Poker School Online is a high quality, professional, economical, and well-respected online school for poker players of varied skill levels.

Second, no other similar school even comes close to providing what Poker School Online does.

Best Online Poker Room and Sportsbook: Bodog

Bodog Poker has one thing the other winners this year do not - an online sportsbook. With one account you can use your money to play poker as well as bet on a game, horse, or any of the weird-ass propositions going.

Best Online Poker Room: Absolute Poker

Absolute Poker is this year’s winner of the of the best online poker room. Absolute Poker features all of the standard ring tables and tournaments. Ring game tables range from micro limits ($0.02/$0.04) on up to high limit tables.

The graphics and user interface are excellent. Beyond the tables, Absolute Poker features their Player’s Lounge where users can read poker articles and information as well a view multimedia material.

Best Online Poker Software: Poker Office

Poker Office comes with a Live Advisor Window that displays real time opponent modeling of the players you are currently facing, real time probabilities of future hands, hand rankings, pot odds and live graphs and statistics.

Poker Office tracks all of your opponents actions as well as your own game. It stores all of the collected data and brings you summarized statistical reports, spreadsheets and graphs of your own and your opponents play. Need we say more on poker awards?

Winning Omaha/8 Poker by Mark Tenner, Lou Krieger

This excellent book from two top Omaha players is top notch. Mark Tenner has been playing and winning on a regular basis for 40 years, and can generally be found playing in the highest limit games. For the last several years, Mark has played Omaha/8 almost exclusively.

His peers consider him one of the finest minds in the game because of his almost uncanny feel for how Omaha/8 should be played. It is this special gift, along with general expertise, that Mark Tenner brings to this book.

Because he is also a skilled communicator, he succeeds in imparting not only tips and techniques but his unique process of analysis and thinking.

New Online Poker

Whether you are a novice or a pro, these sites can be useful to you and your game. Several benefits of playing online are listed below.

The action over the Internet is quicker than in live games. You can see and play many more hands an hour over the Internet than at a casino or in your local home game. All these sites also offer you the ability to play at more than one table at the same.

This means that as your game improves, you can “round out” money quicker and more efficiently. This also enables you to play in online poker tournament news, while still playing in a regular game. We love these option smaller rakes. Yes, the rake is smaller on the Internet. These sites don’t have to pay dealers and they offer many more hands an hour. Both these facts enable them to offer lower rakes than casinos and still make money.

Simply put, lower rakes equal greater profits you can’t tip the dealers. In most live games, often players feel pressure to tips the dealers. This is understandable because dealers work mostly for tips. But online, you can’t tip! Tipping the dealer always cuts into profits, period. Even worse is when you’re having a bad night, you’re down money, and when you finally do win a pot, you have to toss a chip to the dealer.

This is money lost, gone forever, and many players often view this as an additional rake. The large number of tables at all of these sites provide for great game selection. Our site does have information about online poker award. Over the Internet you can play anywhere from 5¢/10¢ hold’em all the way up to $50/$100 Holdem. All these sites also offer play money tables, where you can learn and perfect your play for free.