I put up some links on the right to Cool Poker Sites. Well not all are about Poker.

The $10,000 project is a guy who is trying to build up a $10,000 poker stake. He must not have a job. I don’t know what the heck he does for a living because he seems to play poker all the time. It doesn’t really give much strategy but it does have bits of strategy as he learns to build his stake.

Chicks Dig Poker Geeks is a guy who has a job but enjoys playing poker and is learning to play both in real casinos and online. He seems like a pretty cool guy. I like the fact that he keeps a log of his progress. He is starting from nothing and trying to work his way up to $1000. He gives actuall details of hands he faces in his tournaments. It is kinda cool. You can tell he is a writer because he puts together some cool stories of his experiences.

HOWEVER TheFilmGeek as he is called has completely ruined my opinion of him. He has become a shill for an online casino. He is what they call a prop. His job is to play poker in the casino and keep the other players playing. That way the casino makes a bunch of money on the rake. One of the reasons I like to play at Poker Stars is because they admit their are such shills in the casino industry. They do NOT utilize such strategies to steal your money away from you.

Finally I want to point you to Wil Wheaton .Net. You might recognize the name. He is an author, a celebrity, and a poker player. He is a pretty good writer and I enjoy reading his blog. Plus he digs poker and science fiction and all this other stuff that I’m into. My wife actually thinks he and I are a lot a like.

Thats all for now. I’m about to play some poker!

- Fittsy

Posted by as admin at 6:53 PM BST

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There is a big difference in playing in no limit Hold’em vs. limit or pot limit.

The thing about limit tournaments is that the limits start out very low. This means you are going to have some players calling every single hand in order to see the flop. If you raise the hand, they will likely call. You cannot initially bet* enough to make these idiots fold their hand.

So let’s say you have pocket Aces. In many of these tournaments you’ll have 5 or 6 people calling you no matter what. Keep in mind pocket Aces only win 32% of the time. That means they are beaten 68% of the time!

When you have so many people calling your hand there is a strong chance that one of these other players will get lucky and make their hand on 4th street or the river.

Don’t raise wildly unless you know you can convince some of your opponents to fold their hand. Wait until later when the limits are higher and you can raise enough to make some of your opponents fold BEFORE the flop. If you get them to fold before the flop you have a much better chance of winning.

Remember that once you see the flop you’ll have seen 71% of the total cards for the hand. There are only 2 more cards coming. If you didn’t get some help for your pocket aces chances are some of the other players at the table did get help for their hands! You might find you’re facing a set, a straight draw, or a flush draw. Don’t be afraid to fold your hand quickly! Don’t be afraid to check and see what your opponents are doing.

With No Limit it is a different story. In no limit you can make significant raises that cause people to fold their hands early. Generally speaking I see a couple of strategies in No Limit.

People who play REALLY tight. They only bet on the top cards: high pairs, suited high cards, or off suit connectors. A connector would be something like Q, J, off suit or 10, 9 off suit. They can make straights in both directions.

On the other side of the coin you see guys that play REALLY aggressive. If they have any Ace they’ll bet wildly. They are hoping to double up quickly and take an early chip lead.

Posted by as admin at 1:44 PM BST

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If you don’t believe Poker School online can teach you to be a better poker player, you are crazy!

Last week I had a hard time breaking through the top 50% of the players in a tournament. I usually only lasted about a half hour before I’d get desperate and get knocked out of the tournament.

So on Thursday of last week I joined Poker School. I started playing in their tournaments and between tournaments I would spend time studying their poker lessons. I did some of their tests and I played in lots of “fun money” tournaments at PSO. I went from being one of the worst players to consistently being in the top 20% of all players.

Sunday morning there weren’t a lot of tournaments going on over at Poker School. So I decided to check out Poker Stars and maybe even play a little cash games. I have $50 on account there so I decided to play some 10 cent 25 cent No limit holdem. 10 cents was the small blind**, 25 cents was the big blind*. I found a table that was playing a bit loose. In about an hour I had won $17. That isn’t enough to make a living playing poker but it was kind of nice.

Then Poker Stars was hosting a $10 No Limit Holdem tournament. It was a “satellite” tournament. That means that the winners would win a free entry into a bigger tournament that cost $200 $15 to enter. For you new players that means the entry fee is $200 PLUS $15 which goes to Poker Stars for hosting the tournament. Your total entry is $215 but only $200 of it counts towards the prize pool.

The top 55 players would make it to the $215 tournament which had a guaranteed prize pool of $250,000!

Posted by as admin at 7:37 AM BST

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What a difference a day makes!

When I started out today I was a fish. I was easy prey for strong players to beat up on.

Then I spent a bunch of time over at Poker School. It is really hard to describe all the COOL tutorials and stuff they have.

I’m attaching a picture of one of the tutorial games they have:

In this game, you compare the hands to the flop. You pick the best hand. Simple right? It gets harder. They eventually get you up to the point where you are looking at 8 different hands and have only a limited amount of time to pick the best hand. This is a GREAT way to learn the game and learn to quickly read the hands. Professional players say that one of the things that makes them better than the average joe is that they have seen SO many hands. Thousands even tens of thousands of hands of poker. It is very easy for them to read the game. Well this game at Poker School helps you learn those same skills. And they have competitions for fun money. If you get really good at reading these hands you’ll win some extra fun money to play in theit tournaments.

Another thing Poker School does is they have small games called “sit n go” or “sng”. Every game is run in a tournament fashion. So if I sit at a table of 10 people to play Hold’em, we go in order and people are eliminated just like in a tournament. It isn’t like Poker Stars where people can join in on your “fun” game if there are empty seats. I tried this for awhile and actually got down to the final two a couple of times. This allowed me to see the difference in playing with a few players versus playing in a full table. I think this really helped later in the tournament when I was playing at tables of 5 and 6 instead of 10.

Posted by as admin at 10:27 PM BST

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So maybe I found my game!

I played in a
Poker Stars freeroll tournament of 7 card stud high-low. I had NEVER played this variation before. I didn’t even realize it was a high low until the tournament started. I folded the first few hands and went to google and did a search for some 7 card strategy sites. I used the following resources to help me learn the game:

http://www.pokersyte.com/seven_hilo.htm
http://www.studstrategy.com/7cardstudstrategy8b.htm
http://www.cardplayer.com/poker_magazine/archives/?a_id=13968
http://www.thepokerforum.com/jvpr14.htm

This gave me the rules and helped me learn some strategy. I really didn’t understand the “low” part for awhile! I played for probably an hour before I realized a small pair didn’t neccessarily disqualify me!

Basically 7 card stud high low is like this.

Anything 8 or lower qualifies for the low side. You can use any of your 7 cards to create the low hand. Straights and flushes do NOT disqualify you. The best low hand has the lowest high card. So you need 5,4,3,2,A to have the best hand. An 8 as your highest low card will help you make low but it will be beaten by anyone whose largest low card is a 5, 6, or 7. It is best to view some of those sites above to get a feel for how this works.

The really amazing thing about 7 card high low is that you can actually win both the low and the high. A straight 5,4,3,2,A is one of the best hands in the game. You have a strong chance to win both the high and the low. This is called “scooping” the hand.

Anyway I really enjoyed the 7 card game. I lasted over an hour and a half and placed 1202 out of 3993 players! That is the best I have ever done in a tournament. That means I was in the top 31% of players in the tournament. Not too bad!

I’m definitely going to find some more 7 card games to play today and see how well I do. I wonder if it was just a fluke?

- See you online
Fittsy

Posted by as admin at 1:45 PM BST

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So many updates in one day! What will you do?

Obviously my wife is out of town so I’m getting to play a lot of poker!

I played my first Poker School tournament today. Poker School is entirely fun money so I had nothing to loose. Their software is a bit different than Poker Stars. I think I prefer Poker Stars software.

However Poker School is cool because everyone there is learning. It is also cool because Poker Pages, Poker School, and Bugsy’s Club are all run by the same people. So you can play for fun money and play in unranked games over at Poker Pages, you can play for fun money and satellite entries into real tournaments at Poker School, and you can play for real money over at Bugsy’s Club. All of these sites are linked into the same poker software! Pretty cool right?

So my first tournament at Poker School was a bust. Out of 50 players I was one of the first ones out. Again I did the same thing. I drew some good hands like AK suited and went to far before I folded. I think I only saw two showdowns the entire tournament! I lost both. The last one I lost to a better flush. I pretty much knew it was going to happen, but I wouldn’t even be able to cover the big blind. So I went all in. At least I lasted for over a half hour again.

I seem to have hit a point where I can go about a half hour into a tournament before I make some big mistake. Or perhaps it is because I’m making a big mistake early and I can go about half an hour before the blinds slowly wear me down to the point where I have to make some risky moves.

- Fittsy

Posted by as admin at 11:46 AM BST

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So I just played the $1 buy-in Limit Hold’em tournament at Poker Stars.

I finished 565 out of 627.

This was largely due in part to my stats:

36 hands played and saw flop:
- 2 times out of 5 while in small blind (40%)
- 1 times out of 5 while in big blind (20%)
- 7 times out of 26 in other positions (26%)
- a total of 10 times out of 36 (27%)

Pots won at showdown - 1 out of 5 (20%)
Pots won without showdown - 0

Now I think I played a little better. I only saw the flop 27% of the time. However I think I stayed in too long on some bad hands. The problem was that because it was such a cheap $1 tournament and because there was a limit, one of the players was playing like a loose cannon. He bet on almost every hand.

In a couple of cases he got me to fold when I had better hands. I couldn’t believe my pair of Kings would end up being the high hand because I couldn’t believe this guy would stay in with just a pair of 9s. He was a real wild card at the table. No one knew how to play him. I shouldn’t say that… this one older guy Cjohn seemed to know what was going on. He played him very well and beat him head to head. He seemed to be able to read him better.

It is kind of hard online to read someone. However if they bet instantly you know they probably already clicked on the bet button and probably have a nice hand. If they take time to bet you know they are probably thinking about it more.

I actually got some decent starting hands. I had KK twice, QQ once, AJ off suit, and AK off suit. However I only one WON hand!!! Argh! I gotta realize that just because I got a decent starting hand I shouldn’t always go to the showdown.

Anyway.. I’m going to try a tournament over at Poker School in a few minutes. It is a newbie training tournament. I’ve never played one before so I’ll let you know what happens.

Posted by as admin at 10:28 AM BST

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Apparently I suck at poker!

This time I played a cash tournament at Poker Stars. I meantioned in an earlier post that I was setting up a Neteller account. It wasn’t as hard as I thought. It turns out setting up a Neteller account is exactly like Paypal. I gave them my bank account info so they can do checks online. This allows Neteller to deposit or withdraw money using what is essentially an electronic check. I deposited $100 the other day and it was instantaneous. I was able to then use that money to buy chips at Poker Stars and to signup for a 3 month subscription to Poker School Online.

With my $50 deposit to Poker Stars I was ready to play in their tournaments. They have several free tournaments every day. These are called freeroll tournaments. However I don’t blame Poker Stars, but they only host about 8 or 10 free tournaments a day. Right now I’m only playing Texas Hold’em. I tried Omaha but I sucked even worse at Omaha! There are usually 3 or 4 free Texas Hold’Em tournaments every day. So that leaves me a lot of time to play other games. SO I decided to try some of the pay tournaments.

The pay tournaments look something like $10 + $1 Limit Hold’em. That means I pay $10 to buy in to the tournament. $1 of that goes to the casino for hosting the tournament.

There were 209 entries into the tournament. I started out playing a little too loose, trying to get lucky on the flop. In free tournaments A LOT of players do this because it is a free tournament. Free games are too loose and it is a lot different playing in a pay tournament. I went from 1500 down to about 1200 chips. However I noticed one of the players would pretty much stay in and bet ANY time he had a pair (I’ll call him a fish). He didn’t seem to pay attention to the cards and what the other players might have. I had a decent hand with two pair and there were only a few of us left. I bet a pretty good amount and the only guy that stayed in was this “fish”. He ended up going all in, and I could call him without going all in. I think I had about 250 chips left. He showed his hand and he only had a pair of 7s. I had two pair so I knocked him out of the tournament.

Posted by as admin at 9:02 AM BST

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