09/13/13

Poker Bonuses

Who Gives Poker Bonuses?

Poker Bonuses are mainly credited by poker web sites to their customers after a deposit was made. This is a great strategy conducted by all online gambling sites which offer poker rooms and tournaments. The goal of this way of conducting business online is to replace real time poker parties with friends and colleagues with virtual space tournaments where anybody can become a high roller. You should not confuse the Poker Bonuses given by web pages with the game of Texas Hold’em Bonus Poker. This game is actually a traditional multi-player Texas Hold’em where all bets stop after the river card.

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Why Online Poker Rooms Invest so Much in Poker Bonuses

The main reason is probably the fact that the online poker market has increased more than 20 times in the last decade. Second on the list of reasons is that brick and mortar casinos actually don’t make that much profit from average players and because of that they don’t promote it so heavily. Also players feel more comfortable playing online because of the location of actual casino.

How to Choose a Poker Bonus

When you research which online casino or poker site to pick as your poker tournament provider consider two important things: reliability of the site and Poker Bonus terms and conditions. These two things are most important because you need a site that you can trust and terms and conditions that won’t make you feel trapped and unable to retain your money.

What is Considered to be a Good Poker Bonus

Usually online casinos that are industry leaders offer bonuses that will match 200% percent of your initial deposit and sometimes the limit is high up to 2000 US dollars or even more. But be careful because you should always read the terms and conditions first.

Most of these sites have great VIP programs where the player is the king and they give away bonuses more frequently. Also here the roll over requirements and hands played needed to make withdrawals are not that big.

 

09/13/13

Poker Basics for Beginners

To understand how poker is played and its basics all players that are considered beginners in this game should know something about poker variants and game mindset.

Poker Variants

Poker has great number of variants with different rules and hands but the basic three which are used in casinos and poker rooms and are a must know for beginners are: Draw Poker, Stud Poker and Community Card Poker.

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The community card poker is in some terms a combination of Stud Poker and Draw Poker. It is the easiest to learn and most interesting for beginners. Here the players are dealt an incomplete hand which they can complete with shared face up cards dealt in multiple betting rounds. Texas Hold ‘em, one of the most famous types of poker, is actually a community card poker game.

Poker Mindset

Every single variation of poker is complex and has specific rules, when beginners start playing they should try to keep track which cards are dealt and know the order of winning hands to improve their chances of winning. Also they need to be calm as well as concentrated and read other players gestures throughout the game.

How To Play Poker / Poker Rules

Before starting a poker game every beginner should learn some poker basics. You can call poker a game of combinations because, if you take in consideration that the card order is irrelevant, you could be dealt with one of 2,598,960 possible combinations in five-card poker and one of 133,784,560 combinations in seven-card poker.

Before the game starts one player is appointed as dealer. The position is known as the button and it is followed by the Small Blind and Big Blind, they all rotate clockwise after each hand is finished.  The Big and Small Blind are required to put initial bets when the hand starts and don’t have the right to fold without wagering. The amount is predetermined and changes after each round. Usually there is an increase of the amount between 25% and 50%.

After the dealer dealt the hand and the Big and Small Blind made their wagers all the other players need to place an initial bet that must at least match the Big Blind or otherwise they fold which means that they are not playing in that particular hand anymore.

Players can increase their bet and all other players that want to continue playing need to match or raise that bet. Everything that is wagered is contributed to the central pot which is won by one player or split between players at the end of the hand.

Players that haven’t folded are considered as active players. After every active player has wagered a same amount as the other players and the dealer has finished with all rounds there is a showdown. That means that all players face their cards up and the player with the best hand takes the content of the pot. In some cases the pot is divided between two or more players in different percentages.

There are two possible ways to win a poker game: to have the best hand or to make all other players fold their hand. These are some poker basics for beginners; we recommend them to play couple of home games before playing for real money.

09/13/13

Pick a Poker Room

There are a lot of gambling sites offering poker services on the web, so when you open your browser it could be a pretty complicated task to pick a poker room. You should consider things like freerolls, player volume, bonuses, deposit issues, safety issues and compatibility. If you use operative systems like Linux or Mac it will be pretty hard to find a decent gambling site as you will have narrowed choice.

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Bonus

I online gambling every poker room site has a bonus. Bonuses have a good side and a bad side. The good thing is that they almost always double or triple the amount of your initial deposit so you automatically make a fast profit. But the bad thing is that there are some rules and conditions that you need to follow so you can make withdrawals after using a bonus. Usually poker sites ask for a predetermined amount of hands played by a player who has redeemed a bonus before making any withdrawals. So before you pick a poker room you should really take good look of the bonus terms and conditions.

Freerolls

Freerolls are often a good thing. In this way you get to play tournaments for which you wouldn’t have enough money to buy-in. Poker rooms give freeroll tickets for various things like playing real money and collecting points that you can use in freeroll tournaments or even giving you freeroll pass tickets just for making a deposit.

Safety and Deposit Problems

Depositing some cash to your online poker account is not always the easiest of things. There are a great number of variables that affect how fast you will finish this process. Sometimes there are country restrictions, age restrictions, identity checking etc. You should real look up from existing customers how easy are the deposits made at a specific poker room.

Also you need to know by which authority is the poker room licensed and how do they keep a track of their money. Also there are some casinos that don’t treat their players fairly when generating odds and giving customer support.

Number of Players

You surely don’t want to enter a poker room and wait a half an hour for a table. This is why you should pick a poker room with moderate number of players so there will be tournaments with sustainable pot size but also no waiting time. On other hand the tournament prizes are directly connected with the number of players of the poker room.

09/13/13

Is Poker Game Of Choice Or Skill

Importance of This Question

This is one of the great dilemmas in poker and probably one of most discussed topics in gambling circles. The question went so far that even a Hollywood blockbuster was filmed based on this, staring Matt Damon, Edward Norton and John Malkovich titled Rounders.

This also triggers the question, are poker champions really players with great skills or just rich buds making good choices on poker tours.

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Poker is More Game of Skill

The side that supports this part of the statement thinks that real poker professionals are great readers of people behavior that can guess their opponents’ moves and why are they making them after which they will disguise their own moves. Also they need to make great deal of calculations trough out each hand played including quick decisions on wagers and folding.

Probably one of most famous cases in modern history that support this statement is the verdict of respected New York Judge Jack B. Weinstein. He ruled out the indictment of a person that ran a gambling business in Staten Island. The reason for this kind of action was that because of the fact that poker is more a game of skill than a game of choice and illegal gambling providers shouldn’t be prosecuted by federal law.

In an article called Poker, Chance and Skill written by Noga Alon there is a great number of pages spent to determine the importance of being unpredictable when playing. This means that a player needs to change its way of thinking and the applied strategy throughout the course of one game of poker and try different ways to win more money than his opponent. The Central Limit Theorem is also introduced. According to which skilled players have more chances of winning compared to unskilled players. The advantage becomes greater as the played hands increase.

Poker is More Game of Choice

This is probably how most of the public feels and also considers poker as pure gambling and takes it on same level as slot machines. The biggest point that people who defend this statement like to prove is that not so often, but it happens sometimes, some of the poker greats no matter on what level (doesn’t matter if we talk about worldwide tours, state tournaments and so on) loose against complete unknowns that take great risks with their stakes. Also they claim that poker is pure game of variations and combinations of the 52 cards that are in the deck.