Mastering Poker: Is it Worth the Effort?

• Author: Thomas Kearns
• Filed under: Casinos
• Date: Mar 2,2011

Anyone can learn poker rules quickly enough, online access and interface are easy, and there really is no reason not to try. Online poker is vastly successful. There isn’t a gambling site online which does not offer poker games. A dedicated player becomes part of a community, acquires friends, and perhaps even his livelihood.

Nearly all poker games are available for free download. Safe practice for the novice is offered. You may adjust difficulty as you try your hand against p.c. opponents so as to easily experience successive winning. The pleasure of addiction can be felt coursing through your veins.

All online games are played with you cozily in front of your computer. You don’t have to worry about minimalizing your body language or reading the faces and posture of some ten human opponents, each with his or her make up, ticks, and poker-face tricks. But despite this fact, the mild fun of perfecting your strategy against software is rather like doing your best at tennis against a wall or shooting up cardboard targets – it is not really comparable to live action. Technically, there may not be much similarity between a gun fight and a game of poker, and you can depend on a professional not to have a sawed-off shotgun pointed at you at the other end of the table, unless you are shooting a Robert Rodriguez movie. But the parallel is warranted since both gun fights and poker for real (as opposed to virtual) money involve a constant sense of danger.

For this reason the games against human opponents are not merely fun, but eerily fun. It is this kind of fun that makes addiction of the most powerful kind. Someone may wonder whether poker is anything more than a game of patience, these people may have never handled anything more dangerous than a game of Spider Solitaire. Besides skill, chance or luck it is important that this is the essence of the game. Pervaded by danger is a live poker session without the possibility to reset only to Fold.

Many people are turned off by precisely this. While betting on the value of their hands make some people feel irresistibly “alive”. The money, time, and energy to spend are musts but these are controllable factors. You must be willing to make the effort to learn strategy. A player who doesn’t will lose and grow tired of trying if he only approaches the game simply in the crude hope for a few quick wins. Sour is the taste of danger and one wishes to rinse it out as fast as possible.

To the real player danger is delicious. That’s why he is at the table/computer. The player knows his stuff and his bluff, knows what is practically within his power, and does not indulge vain fantasies. He or she is there for the chance just as the rock climber is there for the sheer height. One must learn to hear the music of chance in the game; then, even an unlucky session will have been worth the effort.

The author of this article plays online poker and gets Rakeback at True Poker where they offer the highest True Poker Rakeback.

A Detailed Review of True Poker

• Author: David Patron
• Filed under: Casinos
• Date: Jan 2,2011

You probably haven’t heard of True Poker yet, but you will. The site is just getting off the ground, but it offers some nice perks to keep the players that have found it coming back for more. True Poker is owned by a Costa Rican based team whose members put together their love of technology with gaming to bring to the tables a nice and easy poker experience. The concentration is on creating a realistic experience with a basic, simple layout.

The set up and registration for the software is a piece of cake and the application has a nice, unusual feature in that the top half is devoted to the virtual casino and the bottom to the game tabs. You can’t miss the chat area, it is readily visible and the navigation throughout the site is smooth and speedy. Because the site is such a baby, the cash games and tournaments are also in their infancy, but growing.

When you visit the site you will find about 25 tables going with 500 players. Hold Em and Omaha are the only cash games so don’t expect the rare and esoteric variants at True Poker. You will find, however, scads of tournaments and sit-n-gos to suit your fancy and even a multi-level heads up tournament tab that you don’t run into on very many sites. True Poker pays much heed to its players suggestions for improvement and when all of them are put into place, the site is sure to rival the big guns.

As a new online site, True Poker has put most of its resources into its VIP program where players play 2,000 raked hands to be entitled to generous bonuses, and from there the only way to go is up. There are a plethora of valuable bonuses for both cash games and tournaments. Don’t overlook the many freerolls that are offered along with that worthy VIP program. Traffic is sure to flow heartily at True Poker in the future. In the meantime, you may find it difficult to find enough games to play to make it to that VIP status. But keep trying, your time will come.

The player base is small which means the support is large, personal and always available. There are nine ways a player can deposit and cash out and both can be done any time, giving player’s unusual control over their funds. You will surely like the host in the lobby and visit him often to pose your questions and receive immediate answers.

The company is small but dedicated to its customers. True Poker offers 24-hour support by email and phone, you should know, though, that some of those phone calls may have a long distance charge attached. True Poker is proud to partner with TrueCashier, Ltd., making it even more obvious that the company brings the highest standards of fair gaming and ethics to the online poker world as well as to its players.

If it’s a new, friendly and different online gaming experience you are looking for, you really won’t do any better than True Poker. Come in and enjoy some basic poker and more pampering than you ever hoped for online.

For more poker room reviews like this one please check out reviews like our Paradise Poker Review, NoiQ Poker Review, or any of the other poker room reviews at Rakeback Solution.

A Brief Outline On Playing Royal Hold’em Poker

• Author: Thomas Kearns
• Filed under: Casinos
• Date: Nov 18,2010

Those who play Royal Hold’em poker are not necessarily descended from the Gods. The game is actually very much like limit Texas Holdem – and also very different. In Royal Hold’em only high cards (ten, jack, queen, king, ace) are dealt from a deck of 20 cards. This certainly makes for a royal deck. Because of the smaller deck, the game consists of a maximum of six players.

How Royal Hold’em is Played

Royal Hold’em is in the form of standard limit where two hole cards are dealt to each player whose objective is to create the best hand with five community cards. The hands are counted as in other poker types but there are no flushes other than the Royal one and your everyday pairs count for nothing. So, a Royal flush, four of a kind, full house, straights and two pairs are what the players draw to to assemble the most powerful hand.

The Zenith of Royal Hold’em Strategy

Since there are no low cards, the high hands must be very strong to compete. A player is drawing to a serious starting hand in order to stay in the game let alone win the hand. The bare minimum a player should think about to remain in the game is ace-jack. The best hands are thought to be a pair of kings or aces, with queens and ace-king a close second. Ace-queen and a pair of jacks should be deemed as a so-so hand and the holder of this hand should only stay in the game if his position is good.

Which brings us to position: The high value of the hands renders position an extremely important factor to remain competitive in the game. A player must consider that anyone raising is in possession of a pair of kings or aces, and if your position is good, you can tell precisely the hands of those players who have stayed in the game. If a player’s hand is teetering on the edge, he should remain in the game only if he has good position or is in the small blind with no advance raise. High pocket pairs are ubiquitous in Royal Hold’em so players must understand that the odds of hitting a three of a kind are at least one in three hands considering the alterations in the cards in his hand. Should another player be betting aggressively against your hand of a pair of aces, it is probably wise to think that he is holding aces or a pair of kings, thus simplifying the task of pinpointing the kind of hands in his possession.

All players are looking to draw to three of a kind or in excess of that and hold the thought that you all have a set of 15 cards to draw from in which to build your hands (20 card deck minus two hole cards plus five community cards). This should make it clear to you that you always want to play your good hands with authority and forcefulness and to keep your pot odds in mind before you continue to bet and you can be assured that if any player is keeping up with your aggressive betting on the turn that he has a hand of three of a kind or better. Examine this scenario: You have in your hand two kings and the flop show up with an unsuited king-jack-ten which is only second to the ultimate hand of ace-queen. It is quite probable that you are in contention against ace-king or jack-jack. In this instance you must take heed of the number of outs possible to a full house or the odds that your opponent is holding a straight depending on the way he is betting and his position.

For more information on how to play other poker games like Crazy Pineapple Poker or Badugi Poker please visit Rakeback Solution.