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When you are in the blinds in poker tournaments you are in a vulnerable position. Before the flop you are last to act, so you have seen what the intent is of the opposition, and you are partially invested giving you better odds to play. The problem off-course is that you will be playing out of position, being first to act on each consecutive round of betting from the flop to the river.

In this article we are looking at the aggressive route of defense. Instead of accepting the play out of position you will be three bet pushing when faced with someone’s steal attempt. There is however three factors that you want to take into consideration before you before making this move:

* Your chip stack, optimally 12-20 big blinds
* The cards you have been dealt, in relation to the range of cards of your opponent.
* How loose your opponent is who is attempting to steal

The stack of 12-20 blinds is often called the reship stack; the reason is that this is the optimal chip stack for you to push into a stealer. With this type of poker chip stack, you will be looking for the best opportunity to present itself for you to reraise and push against your opponent.

Next you have to look at your hole cards. You do not really want to push a hand like 95o, which will be killed if you run into one of the better hands. Against the stronger hands some of the weaker you can play that do quite well are: Pocket pairs like 22-77, suited high cards JTs, QJs, QTs and KJs. With aces you want to avoid hands that easily are dominated like A9o and ATo, and then it is better to add something like A5s as the second card does not matter much if you run into some premium hand. For instance if you run into hands like AK and AQ, hands like A5s although not good will still be better than ATo.

The perhaps most important factor to consider before three bet pushing or reshoving is to determine how loose your opponent is playing. When you push you mostly hope that your opponent will fold and you simply pick up the pot without a fight. For this to occur your opponent will have to have a weaker hand, so if you have a hand like AJ and carefully tight Mr. Nitty has raised from early position, then you can be sure your hand will be worse than his. If on the other hand we have Mr. Aggressor who likes to steal and are opening yet another hand from the dealer button, then it is more likely that he might have anything. In that instance a hand as weak as A2o might be enough to reraise all in. (more…)

The world-wide fascination with Texas Holdem poker continues to grow. The success of young poker players at the World Series of Poker has caught the attention of young people around the world. Jonathan Duhamel, a part-time student and professional poker player, became the 2010 World Series of Poker Main Event Champion at the age of 22 years winning almost $9 million. Add to this the fact that the top eight players, all of whom were still in their twenties, each won at least a million dollars and you can see why the appeal of Texas Holdem poker has received a huge burst of interest. Duhamel follows in the footsteps of other great young champions, Daniel Neagreanu, Phip Hellmuth, Chris Moneymaker and Peter Eastgate who have risen to superstar status by hitting it big at the World Series of Poker. They are now rich and famous poker celebrities who have inspired great numbers of aspiring poker champions to explore the marvelous world of Texas Holdem poker.

While there are a few poker players who have gained instant wealth and fame, the road to a World Series of Poker, World Poker Tour or a European Poker Tour Championship is a long and potentially expensive, learning process. For the poker neophyte, a basic poker skill development plan must be part of their learning strategy.

The learning process begins by acquiring a solid understanding of the basics of poker. These basics will involve knowledge of the ranking of poker hands, understanding the concepts of betting, checking, raising, re-raising, bluffing and folding. The ability to calculate mathematical odds and probabilities is a great skill to possess. But for many players who are not so blessed, a basic understanding of hand strength is required. Knowing which hands are strong and which hands are weak and the chances of making a hand with the cards that are dealt is an essential skill. Without this minimum basic poker knowledge and skill, poker success at any level will be difficult to accomplish.

Unfortunately, today there is a rush to get it done, just do it! Patience is not a virtue, it is basically non-existent. The biggest mistake that a beginning player can make is to rush off to a casino, a poker room or an online poker room such as PokerStars, Poker Party or Full Tilt poker and start playing for real money. This can be a very costly mistake.

The poker learning and development process should begin by playing poker at home in a low-risk environment with family and friends. Initially, stakes should be restricted to playing for bragging rights or for very low stakes. The poker group should include players who are at the same stage of learning, at least until there is an understanding of all the basic rules and procedures. At these very basic levels, the group of players might even want to share their knowledge to help each other develop their skills more quickly. It is at this level, that they should also begin to acquire a poker library of poker instructional books and DVDs. These instructional resources should provide basic poker instruction plus information on more advanced poker strategy and tactics.

There are many excellent instructional resources available for top poker players and authors who are willing to share their knowledge and expertise. Top player authors and poker experts include Doyle Brunson, David Sklansky, Pat Harrington, Phil Hellmuth, Daniel Negreanu, Barry Greenstein and Mike Caro. These individuals have all written highly acclaimed books and/or produced top quality poker instructional DVDs on playing Texas Holdem poker and Texas Holdem Poker Strategies. These instructional materials are valuable resources for poker players over a broad range of skill and experience levels. (more…)

Offline slot machines are cool to play with if you prefer authenticity. Playing inside a land-based casino makes gambling much more authentic, which makes all of your wins more authentic too. You get to play with other gamblers inside a real casino, which could make you feel that you share some sort of kinship. So with that in mind offline slot machines make better gambling games than their online counterparts and nothing can dissuade any punter to say otherwise. Or so this writer thought.

Slot machines in real casinos have been the best game for punters until online slot machines came up, which totally blew away their land-based competition. Online poker machines have higher percentages of winning compared to the land-based ones. Poker machines in land-based casinos have around 80% to 88% chances of winning, which to any punter is significantly high already. But for online pokies their percentage of winning is around 95% to 98%, which is much closer to a 100%. It’s so close that some people might think this is a hoax just to urge them to opt playing with online poker machines. Fortunately, it is not. Those percentages are very real and online pokies do pay more than their land-based counterparts. Here’s why…

With the advent of the internet a lot of online casinos started taking to the virtual plane to open up their doors to punters around the world. Since they started emerging around the mid-1990s, almost every month a new online casino begins operations. Opening up for business on the internet is not as hard as opening in Vegas or Atlantic City. Online-casino owners don’t have to hire a lot of people to run their virtual gambling company they just need a handful of technicians to monitor their programs and one helluva software to run them. Online-casino owners don’t have to secure a dozen or more documents to begin their operations, they only need a couple to make them legit and they’re ready to run. Online-casino owners don’t have to rent a property just to build a casino because the internet is purely virtual and intangible, so no need for building permits and all that other stuff. So simply put, it’s much easier to build an online casino than a real one, which is why so many of them have started emerging when the craze for these online gambling venues came to life. (more…)