Poker variations

A couple of days back we headed out of town to visit some old friends for some mid-summer celebrations.  I didn’t know that Eric (our host) had discovered poker and was now fully hooked on poker.  Somewhere through the course of the discussions it came out that he had just won some money playing in an online poker tournament… actually I think it was his wife complaining about how much time he spent playing poker ( the usual story…)

Eric had been driving into town to play poker at a casino with his friends, because they lived out of town this drive had been getting him down.  So he looked around at online poker sites.  We all have our preferences of online poker rooms, depending on what the sites offer etc..  But he dragged me aside and said come and look at this…

He plays poker online at pkr.com and I have to say their 3D poker room is quite impressive.  Eric likes it because it is the most life like poker room and instead of him having to drive into town to play, he can play poker at home.  Their 3d graphics and animation create an amazing online poker room that looks very realistic.

You can build your character into however you want to be.  And, he even showed me his character’s hotel room.  Although his character looks just like him, I did laugh because his online poker character was a lot slimmer than him in reality…  Eric showed me how you can change your characters waist profile.

Why is it, that rakeback is beneficial for all players, not just for those who win? After all, it’s the winner who takes the pot and the rake comes off the pot right? Well, the winner does take the pot, but the rake comes off it before it is awarded to the winner. At the moment when it’s raked, the pot does not yet belong to the winner, it is a standalone entity at the table in which all those who wagered money have equity.

In conclusion, the pot belongs to all those who put money into it either via the rake (or some other type of compulsory bet) or via a voluntary bet.

All this means is that if you play, you will pay rake, regardless of what you do. You will be forced to pay antes or blinds and thus you will end up generating rake. So much for the myth of the winner paying the rake…

Now then, poker rooms use various ways to determine players’ individual rake contributions. Take Full Tilt Poker for instance. Full Tilt uses the dealt rake method. What this means is that if you’re dealt into a hand, you’ll be allotted rake contribution, whether or not you contribute any money tot the pot. The resulting rake is simply divided with the number of players who are dealt into the hand and thus the rake contributions are determined.

This is why there’s so much value in the Full Tilt rakeback.

Other poker rooms use the contributed rake method. They only allocate rake contribution to players who contribute money to the pot, and only these players will be eligible to receive rakeback. This rake calculation method is obviously much fairer than the dealt one towards aggressive players who won’t end up generating rakeback money for tight players. They will still end up generating rakeback for those who are active but are stingy with the amount of money they put into the pot.

The most accurate rake calculation method is the weighted contributed method. This method takes individual contribution amounts into account. If you shove a lot of money into the pot, you’ll be officially responsible for a larger amount of rake. That means you’ll also be entitled for more rakeback.

As you can see, rake contribution is a tad more complicated than the winner paying it all. In theory, a player who doesn’t win a single hand can actually actively influence the amount of resulting rake.

I played some Wii video games with my cousins a few days back.  They are into Legend of Zelda and brought out a whole range of their games.  Its amazing to see the development of video games and how they have changed.

Legend of Zelda is a role playing game where you play the main dude, Link and get to do hero stuff like rescuing the princess…  I got some inside info from one of the Zelda guides, once you get into the game, it hooks you and you cant help but keep playing…

Spent all night rescuing fair maidens and killing all sorts of things with my sword… all in a nights gaming!

Poker strategy is simple really, or should be simplified at least.  Sometimes I think we over complicate things in life.  On a recent High Stakes Poker episode it was very interesting to hear Patrik Antonius say that he had never read a poker strategy book, everything he knows about poker was self taught.  Wow!!! and to have got to the level where he is, that is incredible!

But then again I was reading Alan Schoonmaker’s column in the CardPlayer magazine, “Winners are Selectively Aggressive”.  And it is so true.  He talks about three sentences that stuck in his head when he read a poker book by John Scarne.  And these were:

When you have nothing, get out.
When you are beat, get out.
When you have the best hand, make your opponents pay!

Now it doesn’t get more simple than that!!!  The complication comes in knowing when you have the best hand or knowing that you are beat… ha!

But still keep it simple, is a good motto to follow and those three sentences are worth remembering for basic poker strategy.

Its coming…

Have you seen the WSOP event schedule?  Things are starting to get going as the satellites start-up and the excitement builds.

Are you going to be one of the competitors?  One way is to try the online championship series and break your way through, all the way to the main event.  Why not?  Its possible.

The online poker tournaments have grown into big events and you dont have the expense of traveling anywhere.  Big prize money indeed… and all from the comfort of your home.  You dont always have huge buy-ins, some of the online poker events have multi layered buy-ins.  So you get in when the buy-ins are low, sometimes even single figures… all for multi-figure prizes… now thats some payback!

For all you die hard, wannabe poker pros… the “I want to win millions at poker and never have to work again” dreamers…

Have you seen that Full Tillt has introduced qualifiers for the poker television shows – Poker Million and Late Night Poker?  So if you are up for it and dont want to miss out on a good thing, visit the Full Tilt lobby and find out more about playing poker on the telly.

This is your chance to make it big and show the world just how good looking you are, and your poker skills whilst you are about it.

I was looking at the top 10 poker players in tourneys this last week… I dont recognize any of these guys… I mean you have the WPT Championships and the EPT stuff going on, who are these poker pros?  Take a look at the top 10 finishers and tell me that you know of these guys.

Suppose thats what internet poker has done to the poker tourneys.  People have been learning the game and improving their poker skills.  Then they enter online poker tournaments and learn how to play at tourneys, developing the winning poker strategy.

Poker online seems the way to go if you want to win the big money in the tourneys.   And we are talking some real good prize money here!  That would keep me going nicely!

New players always ask, “Which is the best online poker room?”.  And I always say there are many to choose from, it is difficult for me to recommend just one.  The best thing is to read the poker room reviews, try the sites for yourselves and then from your experiences, pick the one that works for you.  Otherwise everyone will tell you something different and you won’t know which way to turn.

PokerStars and Full Tilt are both good, but heh… you might decide that one of the other poker rooms are better… and thats your preference… aint nothing wrong with that in my book!  My advice would be to read the Pokerstars review and the Full Tilt poker review of their sites before you decide.  Its always good to get an experts opinion.

Another way is to just go to a poker review site and pick the top poker rooms out of the list, usually they have a list of the top 10 poker rooms, with all their features, pros amd cons… takes away the hard work makes it easier for you.

What a week of poker tourneys we’ve had… its been high pressure poker all over the world.  At the end of last week Rijkenberg took the European Poker Tour tourney in San Remo, Italy.  Thats a cool 1.5 million euros for the 20 year old poker pro from Holland.

And then this weekend there was the final of the WPT Championship where Timoshenko took home a cool $2 million in prize money… not bad!

You could also progress from a free bankroll, learning the game and then progressing up to the high stakes poker tourneys, if you gave it a go.  Look at these young guys grinding it out there, sure they’ve worked hard to get there, but you have to admire their tenacity and stamina for hanging in there throughout the tournament, beating some of the best poker players in the world!!

Happy Easter!

How was the Easter weekend?  Crushed eggs, hunted for eggs, got sick on chocolate… all the usual crazy things we do at Easter.  It was quite nice catching up with family again.  If you only have to put up with their nonsense a few times a year, then they aren’t too bad…

Cracked open an enormous poker bonus by trying a few new things online and experimenting with some new poker rooms that I haven’t tried before.  The bonuses kept me going all weekend, I eventually blew all my money, but I had a lot of fun doing it.  I decided to go big and take some chances, had some big swings, sometimes I was up by a lot, other times I kept getting beat.

It was fun, but I wouldn’t recommend this type of poker play, it doesn’t pay off in the long run.  As they all say – you have to play slow, steady and consistent – if you want to win at poker.