Extreme Poker Blog

Author: Jack Reider

Famous poker rooms enclose hundred thousand people playing online poker simultaneously. Online play is faster and more convenient than a live game: some players watch TV, talk on the phone or read while others even play in more than one game at a time. Without a doubt, online gaming, especially poker, possesses unique features that turn online experience into a real pleasure. Any person with a computer and proper internet connection can learn poker game and earn the game’s initial capital from zero.
Let us take a closer look at incredible advantages of online poker industry.
Economical Benefit

One of the main reasons of online poker development is that unlike the online casino where you are not guaranteed against dishonesty of a casino, online poker gives much more sufficient opportunities for absolutely fair prize of money. Poker players have a very clear economical benefit by playing online. They can play about 10-15 times more hands per hour online with multiple tables and the rake is significantly lower at the higher limits. In addition, they are not necessary have to be professional poker players because in most cases it is enough to acquire simple poker strategy and to know elementary mathematics to win the game.
Accessibility

Probably the greatest advantage with online poker is its fast accessibility. It is always possible to find a favorite game to play twenty-four hours a day from anywhere in the world, as well as from the comfort of player’s home. Once upon a time, a poker fan had to travel long hours in order to get access to poker room, but now no airfare, no hotel room and no bar tab are needed to get access to live poker game. In addition, the accessibility of online poker has speeded up the education process of various poker players. The quickest way to learn poker is actually to read up on basic strategy and play at micro-limits online.
Promotions

While the practice of free money promotions is quite common in various casinos, online poker rooms have needed to develop new ways to honor faithful customers. The most common way of doing this is through deposit bonuses, where poker player receives a bonus code when placing money into an account. The bonus code adds either a percentage or a set amount of chips to the value of the deposit. Moreover, several online poker rooms employ VIP programs, monthly promotions and referential bonuses to reward loyal players.

Clear Pot Odd
When you play in a live game, some players find it difficult  to keep track of pot odds and determining if they are getting the correct odds to call a bet or not. When you play online, you always know exactly how much money is in the pot. You can easily calculate the pot odds for each decision you have to make. If you are unsure, you can refer to an out chart and even quickly use your calculator to do the math. This is not something you can do sitting at a table with other players.
No Physical Action
Sitting down in a live game and facing other players can be very intimidating for a new player. Playing online poker resembles video game as you sitting in front of your computer facing a monitor instead of a live person and nobody can see if your hands are shaking because of nerves. On top of all, it is hard to read your opponent by his physical actions, a skill which in right hands turns into a powerful advantage. Since online betting lacks physical players, it takes away the advantage of the old time card sharks who rely on reading your "tells".
 

Author: Tyler James Ellison

Online poker strategies are crucial in order to succeed at online poker, although succeed means different things to different people. For some, success at online poker means winning the big jackpots all the time and for others, success at online poker simply means winning more than losing and this second objective is far more reasonable and achievable. Online poker strategies will require you to develop an appreciation for and understanding about the odds that concern various games and card hands, as well as the chances of success/failure.

All online poker strategies will require the player to be consistent, all too often a winning streak is jeopardized or a losing streak compounded by the greed and or stubborn nature of the overly emotive poker player. All too often online poker strategies are derailed as a result of the player’s inability to concede defeat, or know their limits. What this means in the long term is that they end up losing more and more money as they continue playing, and this begins the vicious cycle of chasing debts with more money, and as they lose their focus they make more and more errors which in turn equates to losing more money.

Knowing when to quit and cut your losses when you are in the mid of the losing streak is imperative, because you are simply not thinking straight.  Online poker strategies differ from ordinary poker strategies in that there is a greater emphasis on the player being able to temper his feelings and control his emotions so he does not make mistakes.

The danger with online poker is that you are in your comfort zone, in your own home, and so the temptation to play for longer periods of time is quite strong. Online poker strategies sometimes actually advocate that you do not eat or drink whilst playing online poker, the rationale behind this is that you do not get too comfortable, and settled in. Whilst by all means enjoy yourself, make sure that you are able to make that crucial disconnection (both literally and mentally) when the time comes.

Online poker strategies require one crucial thing, commitment to the rules. You do not need to be a master card shark in order to become proficient at online poker, you just need to be committed to your strategy, willing to learn and above all else diligent.

Make sure to pace your bank roll, nothing will kill off your online poker strategies as quickly as losing your entire bank roll in your first game.  Online poker strategies that pay off well usually involve the players playing at several tables at once, and studies have shown that the best number of tables (and by extension the absolute maximum) number of tables to play at is 4. Also, make sure to rotate around different tables as this will also help improve your odds of a win and different sites will allow you to take advantage of the benefits on offers.

Ok, I have completed a simple version of my online poker tool.. but I am having some issues in trying to make the program up-loadable, apparently Microsoft only allows the uploading via Front Page (another product of theirs). I was hoping to have it available on this site so those who wanted to, could give it a try could test it for me.

But alas at this point I cannot figure out how to make it happen.. anyway stay tuned I will figure it out eventually. Oh, I almost forgot I  have not had much luck online lately. It has been a week of very bad beats for me. I played 3 consecutive tournaments yesterday and lost on all-ins first with pocket aces, next with pocket kings and lastly with A-K suited. Hopefully all this bad karma is behind me

See ya at the tables

PhxRising

(My Full Tilt Poker Name)

I apologize in that lately I have not been posting much content to my blog, but, but.. I have somewhat of an excuse. I am working on a Poker Tool that can be used while playing online Poker

The program is in its infant stages and so far I have tested 3 different interfaces but I have finally settled on what I think is a very user-friendly one. The idea behind making this tool was simple, first of all I can make it available much cheaper than the major online tools available.

My idea of what this program will do for the user is pretty straight forward. As you are playing online poker you tell the program what cards have been dealt (Blind, Flop, Turn, River) and each time the program will simulate 2500 hands and let you know your percentage of winning.

I will also be adding some bells & whistles as I progress, what I have in mind is to provide betting advice & information about the probabilities of other players hands.

I have been beta-testing at Full Tilt and have to say I am pretty satisfied with the results. Here is a tid-bit for ya, I hate hate hate playing 9-10 come to find out you have an average 28.6% chance of winning, which is about the same as playing a 9-6 (for those of you who know me, one of my favorite players is Doyle Brunson and 9-6 is his favorite hand) . So I began playing those ^&&*T* cards and guess what I actually won a few hands!

Anyway I shall keep you up to date on my progress (I am assuming about a two month time table) and as soon as I am satisfied I will make it available to those interested

Author: Alex Poker

This Texas Hold Em Poker tip can be boiled right down to this. What is the objective of poker? What is YOUR objective when playing poker? Is it to make money? Is it to win the most pots? Well, if winning the most money and pots was your objective then you should play every single pot, raise big at every go. You would most likely win the most pots but that’s not beating the game. What about enjoying yourself? Is that the objective of poker. Yes, for some people, but that’s not beating the game, that’s enjoying the game. You can do both.

At the end of the day, poker is all about making the correct decisions. Understanding that making correct decisions is  the critical point this Texas Hold Em Poker tip is trying to convey. Take just that home and you’ve done well for today. If you make all the correct decisions you will succeed. You you make poor decisions you will likely fail very quickly.

Playing poker is kind of like investing. You get your money, gather and learn as much information as possible, make a decisions on investing you money and hope you get a good return. If you do or you don’t, that goes back into the information pool, you change or alter you decision and invest again, trying to get a good return. This is investing. Funnily enough this is exactly what poker is. You get your money, in the form of chips. Gather information on the other  players and the cards you have (odds etc.), make a decision when to investing and how much and hope for a good return. Depending on what happens alters how you will do it next time, and the cycle goes on. The thing is, in poker, you get results within minutes instead of having to wait years. You can chop, change and fine tune much faster then you can with normal investing.

Making all the correct decisions is what investing, or poker, is all about. The mental challenge of competition, the financial risk and the possibility for reward all lure people into playing poker. But really what it boils down to is making decisions. If you make the correct decisions you will succeed. If you make less the perfect decisions you will learn very fast. After reading this Texas Hold Em Poker tip you should realise that every decision you make is vital to your poker game, and if you are making the wrong ones you need to fix this and make the correct ones.
 

Author: Roy ‘the Oracle’ Winston

Unless you have a monster draw or are slow playing a big hand, calling is often the wrong play at the table. In fact, it often times takes a stronger hand to make a call than it does to make a raise.

"You raised with that?" is a question I hear a lot after showing down a hand. You can make a raise with any two cards (sometimes less than that), but it takes a real hand to make a call.

When I’m in late position in an unopened pot and someone in front of me puts in a raise, I’ll always say to myself, "Hey, I was going to do that!" The fact is opening a pot with a raise is a good idea because it puts you in control, while cold-calling a raise is not a great option for a variety of reasons.

First of all is the realization that I am probably behind. I have lost the ability to take the lead and be the aggressor, and perhaps represent a wide range of hands. Re-raising in position is always an option. However, if the initial raiser was pretty strong, I could wind up facing a re-raise, which could mean a decision for a lot of chips. I have now put myself in a bad position and made the first of perhaps many mistakes in the hand

Now, I’m not saying there aren’t hands I like to call with pre-flop. For instance, I’ll limp with hands like ace-rag suited (because you can make the nuts), small pocket pairs (looking to flop a set), sometimes big pocket pairs (to camouflage the strength of my hand) and suited connectors in position. But, making a bad call is almost always worse than making a bad fold.

When in doubt, listen to that little voice in your head saying "fold, fold, fold." Even if it turns out you were ahead in the hand when you folded, it’s still better than making a bad call and losing even more chips.

It takes a great player to make great lay-downs; you have to occasionally fold a winning hand. If you’re not sure what to do with a hand, ask yourself whether or not this is a good place to get your chips in the pot.

A combination of smart and aggressive play will help you to improve your results. And personally, I’d rather be a raiser than a caller…

It has been awhile since I last posted anything so I thought now would be a good time to update everyone. I have been playing a lot of poker and have not fared as well as I would have liked. It has been a weird combination of being to passive and some very bad beats.

What I find almost amusing about online poker is the persona’s you come across, I wrote earlier about the different types of online players you will find. Even though my results have not been as expected I must say I have had a great time interacting.

I still love the Poker Pro, especially since I discovered an offshoot of this species, the Pro’s sidekick — you know the guy that agrees with everything the Pro has to say. recently I played a sit-n-go 4 player 6$ tournament. I played against a guy that didn’t realize that a high card is pretty good when your playing one-on-one so this Pro was getting upset when I would push a high card or possible flush. Evidently his sidekick was one of the other two players so they were chatting as the game was going on.. calling me a fish and an idiot and so forth.. so I was up 1000 to 500 and our Pro went all in with J&Q off suit. since I had just beat him I figured he was on tilt so I wasn’t really expecting him to have that good a hand.. I went all-in with a 6-9 suited (A Doyle). and wound up getting a flush on the river.. you can imagine how pissed he was since he paired the J on the flop.

I went onto the second round and lost to the sidekick.. so they had great fun at my expense, but it was worth the $6 just to watch the interaction. The Pro was very pleased with himself as he ‘coached’ the sidekick along.. I have to admit it was a decent strategy having two buddies in a 4 player tournament, I imagine they were splitting whatever winnings they accrued.

At work a lot of my co-workers read my blog and quite often we discuss strategy and how ‘we’ would incorporate chatting into the mix. Interesting enough I find my co-workers revealing themselves as Poker Pro’s. So what is your online persona?

Author: Alex Poker
 

Once you know what the actual difference between playing poker loose and tight is, naturally you are interested in which one is going to be better. Remember, playing loose is punting on hole cards less likely to ‘purely’ win whilst tight is only playing great pockets that have a very high probability of winning.

I know that some of you who are reading this already know how to play holdem, others are still learning the game and some of you have already developed your own play style and skills but are still struggling to consistently win. Whoever you are, I’m sure that you, like me, want to discover which is better, playing poker loose or tight. That’s why you’re investing your time wisely by reading this.

With the massive amount of information available on the Internet its never been easier to become successful at poker. It doesn’t require thousands of hours of practice time, massive bankrolls or complex strategies. Just by following a few simple guidelines, you too can make money playing poker.

If You’re Not Successful, It’s Not Your Fault

In fact, if you aren’t currently experiencing the ravaging success that you desire, if you are losing a bunch of money playing poker it probably isn’t even your fault. It likely has nothing to do with you. If the humungous amount of information crammed down your throat every day has left you more confused then ever, take a deep breath and relax. Let us both take aim at the major issue here. We’ll nail down the biggest problem in this single article. And with this information we can work miracles. First, we must clear the air.

Undoubtedly The Best Way To Play

There is one way that is undoubtedly the best way to play. Poker players are always asking me which is better, loose or tight? They seem to think that once they uncover the single best method of playing Texas Holdem they are going to succeed. This is true, and I tell them that there is one method that always works. In fact, it works better then all the rest and will consistently bring them the success they want. That method, is the method that they feel most comfortable doing.

Why That’s A Matter Of Opinion

The bottom line is, conservative players will not feel comfortable playing extremely loose. Likewise, brash punters won’t feel comfortable sitting and waiting for a great pocket pair. You will not be successful in any particular play style if you are not able to easily behave in the way that play style requires. This is the reason most players struggle with playing in a way that someone told them was better, or they read somewhere that it was better.

Expanding On Success Is Easier Than Ever Before

Once you have focused in on what style of player you are and can comfortably play poker using that style – it doesn’t matter if its loose or tight – you can expand on this play style to achieve real success. Have you ever seen those players that just seem to be playing in every way at once? One moment their slow pushing pocket kings and the next their punting on a pair of 4’s. The way they are doing this is simple:

1st: They are playing their ‘normal’ play style

2nd: They are analyzing the players and the game

3rd: They are changing their play style to leverage off any weak points they have found

4th: They ‘drop back a gear’ into their normal play style again

5th: Then they rinse and repeat

By doing this, you can reduce stress when playing because if you get overwhelmed you just go back to your normal style, which you can almost play on autopilot. Then when you see an opportunity, pounce on it.

For example, say your a tight player, but in the last hand a bunch of players lost a lot of chips to another player. These players will now be vulnerable so you could loosen up to attack them. Another example would be you are a loose player, but you come across a nice A-Q. You could play these aggressively as the other players will probably think you don’t have much, then you could surprise them.

Author: Gerry Miller

I was talking with my good friend Lana today about, well nothing in general. Lana asked what I was going to do today so after the regular laundry list of crap I told her I might play an online tournament.

She intimated that she had played poker before as a kid but really nothing since then. I told her I loved it, ‘it’s the simplest con game ever" I am not sure she understood what I was saying..

What I meant is that aside from playing the odds you quite often are trying to convince people that you have something better than actuality, no I’m not so much talking about bluffing, but rather the nuances of controlling the pot, convincing people that your playing is following a set style and once you convince them, then you are able to bluff successfully.

It is the set-up of possibly folding 10 hands in a row, or showing a good hand or even a winning bad hand that I love. Getting a table set-up & winning that big pot because of it.. that’s the adrenaline rush I crave when playing

Author: Sean Moronse

If you are new to online poker you may not know that texas holdem cash games are one of the most profitable sources of income today. It is a huge adrenaline rush playing in cash games online. With todays explode of new players sitting at the poker tables by the thousands daily, one can profit greatly from new players mistakes. Most new players starting out have only played free texas holdem poker online, which is FAR different then playing cash games. With free online poker, many players constantly play like maniacs without a care in the world or regard for the poker chips. Most people do not understand that to be profitable online, you need to gain experience by playing REAL money cash games, not play money. Who cares when you’re playing cash games to go all in with AJ, 54, 98, 27, etc… when you can just reload your play chips right away if you lose? There is no point in playing for play money, the only true way to gain a grasp on online poker is to play for real money. When playing for real money it is extremely important to develop a cash game strategy to make you a stable income day after day and month after month. When you are playing cash games you can go from zero to hero in a few hands. In interesting fact that you may want to know is that the largest online poker pot ever won in a cash game was slightly over $375K. Could you imagine this type of hand? If you don’t believe me go to YouTube and type in largest online poker pot and you will see it. It was sick and worth more than a house! I couldn’t imagine winning that much but I can imagine winning 10K+ a month, my current average salary.

Earning 10K a month just buy playing cash games online is a nice feat, especially when you understand that it is more than 100K a year! My goal when I first started playing cash games was just to make 100 dollars a day. I accomplished this goal in the first two weeks, not by luck but by having the kind of patience it takes to win cash games. My best profit use to come by playing a waiting game instead of getting impatient and playing rags. The most deadly hand in poker has to be a poker set. With a straight or a flush you can see it out there, not with a set especially if your opponent is holding 2 over cards. That is how pocket AA’s, KK’s, QQ’s get cracked because they are just too hard to fold when it comes a rainbow J 2 9 flop. Your sitting there holding pocket 22’s licking your lips. Depending on what stakes you are playing at, you just made some great profit. In whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best of luck in your future poker career.