National Heads-Up Poker Championship

With Poker being ever popular, there has been a flood of events being aired by television networks in the US. The WSOP airs on ESPN, the world poker tour, a worldwide series of poker tournaments broadcast on the Travel Channel. The National Heads-Up Poker Championship on NBC is one such made for TV event .It is a $20,000 buy-in invitation-only tournament centered around no limit Texas hold 'em.

The participants include many of the world's best poker players. The 2009 edition was a three day event with 64 poker players facing off at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Out of these 64, six spots were reserved for qualifiers – four from online competitions and two from tournaments at Caesars.

There is a slight difference in the way the NHPC is conducted over other poker tournaments. In the NHPC, players are seeded randomly in the first round with players divided in four brackets – Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades. Players winning a match advance to the next round. Here winner of the spades bracket plays the one leading the clubs bracket. The same holds for the remaining two .A best of three final then decides the champion who takes home the $500,000 check. This year Huck Seed emerged victorious taking the event from Vanessa Rousso.

Online poker

Online poker is the game of poker played virtually over the internet. Online poker rooms have contributed greatly to the increasing popularity of the game all over the world. Traditional brick and mortar casinos generally hesitate to promote poker as they feel that other games of chance such as slot machines are far more profitable.

Even though the rake of a traditional casino is quite high the cost of running the poker room is even higher. Online casinos, on the contrary attract lower overhead costs. Players are allowed to play for low stakes and freeroll tournaments offered on most of the poker sites are a major attraction to beginners as it allows them to play and win at the game without paying any entry fee.

This, however, does not mean that online poker rooms run a loss. The rake is collected from most real money ring game pots, calculated as a percentage of the pot based on a sliding scale and capped at some maximum fee. Every online poker room has its own rake structure.

Multi-table and imprompt sit-and-go tournaments are charged an entry fee around five to ten percent of the tournament entry fee is added to the cost of the tournament.

Online poker sites sometimes offer games like blackjack or side bets on poker hands where players play against “the house” for real money, where the odds are usually in favor of the house.

Online poker sites invest the money that players deposit. This is a good source of revenue as the sites do not have to pay interest on players’ bankrolls.

Better Choice: Internet Poker

It wasn’t that long ago that Internet poker became so popular and now it seems that almost everyone has played Internet poker at least once. If you haven’t played Internet poker yet then you’re definitely missing out on some fun and I would suggest checking it out. Let’s now take a look at some of the reasons why I feel Internet poker is better than live poker.

There is no organizing that you need to do to play Internet poker and you can simply sign in to your account from any computer and begin playing. Whenever you feel the urge to play some poker you’ll be able to just by jumping onto your computer.

Since you’re playing online you can play as long as you want whereas if you’re at a casino you’ll need to drive home at some point. Internet Poker rooms are open 24 hours and this ensures that players around the world can play poker whenever they want without any problems.

You can do other things while playing Internet poker such as watching television, playing a game, doing some work or whatever needs done. It will take away from how focused you are in the game, but if you need to do some stuff then you might as well pound it out while playing Internet poker so you don’t have to do anything afterwards.

You can quit at any point to take a break and come back to play. At a casino you can take breaks, but only for a certain amount of time and if it’s busy you might lose your seat.

There are tons of tournaments with low buy-ins so that even if you don’t want to risk $100+ on a ring table game you could still play poker. Most casinos have a minimum $100 buy-in for games, whereas Internet poker has tournaments starting at $1 and ring table games starting at $.01/$.02 with a $10 minimum.

If you’re a new Internet poker player you don’t need to be worried about giving away any tells to your opponents while playing over the computer.

You can say what you want about the cards or opponents without offending anyone since you’re playing at your home and no one can hear you anyways. This venting process can payoff since you won’t be bottling the anger up. Bottling your anger up in poker can be costly because you’ll start playing differently and most times losing more money.

Poker Table Position Matters

Most poker players who have been around the game for a while know that to win a person has to be both lucky and good. It is easy to tell what exactly the luck factor is, however, the skill part of playing poker is more of a gray area. Most players equate skill with being able to correctly read an opponent, or choosing the right hands to play. The truth is that being able to decide when it is a good idea to play a certain hand and when it isn’t, based on where a player sits with respect to the dealer, is equally important.

There are few hands that a player can raise and enter a pot with without giving concern to where he or she is betting. These hands are the obvious ones, such as pocket Aces or Kings. On the other hand, when dealt a hand such as Ace-Eight or Ace-Seven, entering any pot recklessly can result in big losses. With a hand like that, one high card and one average kicker, it is best to only bet into pots with as few players as possible. The problem is that if you call or raise in the wrong position, you have no way of telling how many players will be doing the same.

This is where poker table position comes into play. Someone sitting directly to the left of the blinds will have to act first in the pre-flop betting. In this case, it is probably best to only make a small call with a mediocre-good hand if not a fold. On the other hand, someone sitting to the right of the blinds will be able to full analyze the situation and see how many players enter the pot or what, if any, raises are made. In this position, calling or folding is a much easier decision and it is a good idea to enter the pot if it is not too expensive or overfilled with other players.

Finally, it is equally critical to realize that if you are in fact the player who has to blind, whether it be small or big, then you are in the best position of all. Not only do you not have to give away having a playable hand by entering the pot, but you also get a pass on playing cards that are easily foldable in any other position. Not to mention the fact that the players who blind are the last to act unless there is a raise.

If you are just looking to have a good time and don’t care much about winning money or playing serious poker, than it is easy to overlook using table position as an advantage. But all the professional players, and the good amateurs, know the importance of using where they are sitting to determine whether or not it is worth playing so-so hands. The more hands you can play in small pots, the better chances you have to win big by the end of the night. So do yourself a favor and don’t mechanically call or fold poker hands.

Patience Tells in Poker Skills

The really good poker players will tell you that one of the must haves for being a good poker player is patience.

Patience is required to hang around in a game until you get just the hand you were waiting for. A good player also needs to be disciplined enough to know which games he can play and which he should quit early. A disciplined player will quickly realize when the edge is lacking, would bother to take notes of how each hand transpired and would take steps to ensure mistakes are not repeated. When you have both of these almost half the skills required to be play poker is acquired.

When you are playing poker for money and there is lot of it involved it is imperative that your mind is sharp and thinking is lightning fast. Learn to think on your feet, take mental notes, and use the data in a statistical sense to make each hand as effective as possible. One another very important aspect or skill that is required in a poker player is the ability to keep emotions under check. Your face should not give away what you are feeling. Keep what is called a poker face…it is a skill…

Don't Let Your Mistakes Compound

The fewer bad decisions you make, the more successful you’ll be at poker…

Poker is a game of decisions. It doesn't matter if you're multi-tabling online or playing a single table live, you'll be put to the test often and every decision is important.

You are playing poker - by definition, you win money by making better decisions than your opponents. The fewer bad decisions you make, the more success you will have.

Mistakes are inevitable however. Nobody plays perfect poker, and even the best in the world make mistakes.

If nobody made mistakes, nobody would ever win in the long run. Everyone would just trade money back and forth playing perfect poker while slowly losing money to the rake. That's not my idea of fun. Mistakes are what fuel the poker economy.

So if even the best players in the world make mistakes, what makes them different from you or me?

Great poker players never let their mistakes compound. They take each decision independently and make the very best choice of action they possibly can, whereas when a new player makes a mistake, they often fall off the rails and allow their blunders to multiply.

How to Play Poker Smart

Everyday there are thousands of beginning poker players joining us…

One of the most important things that you can do as a novice is to play every hand as smart as you can. Of course, that is easier said than done, but a smart poker player will beat a dumb one more times than not. What it takes to become a smart poker player?...

The good thing is that there are several steps that you can take in order to enhance your smarts as far as playing the game is concerned.

The first step to playing a smart poker is to know what you are doing before you ever sit down at poker table at the first time.

Another way to play it smart is to stick with your strategy every game that you play. It is never a good idea to attempt to make changes on the fly if you are new to the poker game.

Finally, playing smart means you never stop learning about how to play poker…
Remember the best poker player in the world use their brains as well as their skills to come out as a winner time and time again…

Poker Jokes on Christmas

I spent Christmas Eve with friends last night and we really had a crazy night. We talked a lot during our relaxed time while the following three jokes relating to poker games that friends told me impressed me deeply because I was crazy about poker recently.

No.1---A brain surgeon receives a phone call from a colleague on a Saturday night. "We need another poker player for tonight" the friend says. "I'll be there right away!" the doctor replies with a sense of urgency. As he puts on his coat and makes his way out the door his wife asks him "Is it serious?" and the doctor replies "Oh, very! There are 3 other doctors already there!"

No.2---A homeless man asks another man for two dollars. The man says "Will you use the money to buy booze?" The homeless man replies "No sir, I don't drink." The man then asks "Will you use the money for gambling?" The homeless man replies "No sir, I don't gamble." So the man says "Do me a favor and come home with me. I want my wife to see what happens to a man who doesn't drink or gamble."

No.3---A woman walks into living room and sees her brother playing poker with their dog. "Wow!" she exclaimed, "You must have the smartest dog in the world!" and her brother replies "He's not all that smart. I've beaten him 3 out of 5 games so far."

Today is Christmas and everything should be special and full of joy…so let’s go to have a good time…Have fun!

Speed Hold’em-----Time Limited Yet Fun Limitless

Texas Hold’em is one of my favorite poker games, while recently I’m introduced a new game named Speed Hold’em which is a kind of variant of Texas Hold’em whose difference lies in whether betting time is limited or not.

Actually, Speed Hold’em is a very fast poker game comparing to Texas Hold’em while it has many advantages. The most obvious one is that you don’t have to wait for a long time for the other players to take action so that you need not to wait and wait wasting your time. I really feel bad when I wait for a long time before. Meanwhile, when players are asked to play poker quickly, the weak poker players will make mistakes.

Similarly, in any time during the poker game the players can fold and get out of the hand. All bets will be lost at that point.

Speed Hold’em has really attracted me and I have gained more and more fun from it. So friends, don’t hesitate any more, let’s go together to have a try…