The Poetry Portal Net

Too many novices make the mistake of just having to see. And I have some rather harsh advice for them, but sometimes the truth isn’t what you want to hear. And this one is a doozy of a money saver. Sometimes you should give your poker opponent credit instead of your chips.

Let me repeat that. Sometimes you should give your poker online opponents credit instead of your chips. Now let’s think about this. You’re in a hand and you have AQ and the board comes AK3 rainbow. You raised, your opponent reraied you and you called. You raise again, and your opponent reraises you again. What kind of hand range do you put him on? A big ace is the most logical conclusion.

Now let’s reveal a little more about this opponent. You’ve been watching him and he plays pretty tight. He’s a solid player and raises when appropriate. Now, your continuation bet has been reraised after your first raise was reraised. Do you give your opponent credit for having AK? What about A3? Well, since he’s a tight player A3 is probably out of the question. But AK seems to fit pretty nicely with his play. KK would be a plausible hand as well.

So if you get in this situation at the casino, and you have that read on your opponent, why not give him credit? It’s only to your benefit. If you continue on and find out that he is sitting on AK or KK then you’ve just wasted a lot of chips when you could have just folded. And even if your AQ was good there, just remember that there will be another chance for you to strike, and the next situation may not be as complicated and thus easier for you to increase your stack.

So give credit where it’s due, and learn to pick your battles when you have a better idea than a coinflip’s chance of winning.

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Poker online is a game of opportunity-if you don’t get the cards that you want, the hand isn’t over yet. You can still draw out a winning hand or bluff your opponents out of the pot.

If you don’t make your hand on the flop, your next objective is to scare your poker opponents away or to see the next two cards for as little an investment as you can. If no one has made his hand, you may even get to see it for free. If you don’t want to win, though, folding instead of checking is a great way to let your opponents win a hand.

That’s where the tragedy lies for many new players. A lot of newbies will fold before anyone even makes a bet, which not only loses the hand for you, but it also lets your opponents know that you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s true that if you don’t make at least a draw to a winning hand on the flop, you’re probably not going to win the hand straight up, so folding can be a good play, but when you do it out of turn, your online poker opponents’ “newbie radar” goes off and they see you as a mark for the duration of the game. p  sM


The same pros about the flat call are also its cons. You’re seeing more cards, which in turn means possibly improving your opponent’s hand as well as your own. If you have a hand like middle pair or top pair with a weak kicker, you’re going to become scared if overcards appear on the turn or river. A raise might be the right move if you want to protect your hand. At the same time, if you’re deep and you make a raise with 2nd pair, you might be opening yourself up to a 3-bet from the aggressor. Against an aggressive player, I like flat calling for two reasons. It gets you to the turn cheaper and it still gives you the edge of seeing what your opponent is going to do in first position on that next card.

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King deuce, when it’s suited, becomes a hand people might be willing to play in short handed online poker games. The idea of making a king high flush can be a lucrative one, especially when you are able to win pots by sheer pressure. But in a full ring poker game, and for the most part, K 2 is a hand not built for speed. It might work for your heads up, where a king is better than a wide variety of random hands your opponent might get dealt, but for functional purposes, you won’t ever hear somebody wishing they’d get dealt the gnarly king and deuce. So what’s the best way to respond when you do get stuck this in the hole? Obviously folding is a good idea. In tournaments, from late online poker position, it can be worth raising to try to pick up blinds if they’ve gotten high enough to be worth snatching, and your opponents are prone to laying down. Other than straight thievery, though, or the occasional benevolent flop when you’ve been using the hand for its pressure, the king two just isn’t a hand that has much of anything going for it. You’d be better off walking home. Context context context! Patience, resilience! Poise!

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With Glasto approaching there is one particular product that comes to mind, sky lanterns. They have, in recent years, become an integral part of any Glastonbury-goers experience. In an interview in 2008 the headliner’s, Kings of Leon, cited the launch of lanterns from the Stone Circle as their most powerful memory of the festival. If you do not directly release one from the tranquil Stone Circle you are likely to witness their spiritual presence as they drift up and across the rolling Somerset landscape. It is no coincidence that the release of the lanterns, with their connotations of peace and optimism, have become intrinsically associated with the Stone Circle. This area is where festival goers seek rest in the depths of the night, sitting and talking together around fires in the friendly spirit that remains at the heart of the festival. As is traditional with sky lanterns, a wish is made with each one released. It is a powerful experience to watch from the hillside of the Circle as the wishes rise across the vast festival, oblivious to the chaotic crowds beneath them, up in to the sky and out of sight. Watching the sky lanterns take this journey in to the clouds is a divine moment to ponder and escape. It is one of the reasons that in spite of its ever sprawling size, Glastonbury remains unrivalled.

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In online poker, the hand known as a ‘dead man’s hand’ is famously known as two pair of aces and eights. The name comes from a famous story in which Wild Bill Hickok, the famously outlaw, but also a well known gambler and poker online player, was playing draw poker with a group of men at a bar. He’d just made two pair, aces and eights, when another man came into the bar and shot him in the back, killing him. From then on, the hand he died holding became known as the dead man’s hand.

This story also adds to the common superstition of gamblers or wildmen who prefer not to sit with their back facing the room. Unlike Bill, they’d prefer not to get walked up on.

Superstitions such as these in poker online mean little to some, but other players take the game of superstitions greatly to heart. Though I’ve never seen a man fold the aces and eights hand simply on the fact that it might have helped kill Bill, there’s a reason these stories get passed along. Though it may be unwise to believe too much in little totems and stories, sometimes a mind for ritual or luck can help put you in the right mind you need to play cards to the utmost of your ability. Not for everyone, for sure, but in the right spots a little can go a long way.

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Before you even consider quitting your day job to become a online poker player full time, you need to consider your location. You are in luck if you happen to live near a gambling center like Las Vegas or Atlantic City. If you happen to live farther away than a casino than would be convenient for a daily commune, that should make you think about the practicality of making poker a career. Are you willing to move to a different city, away from your friends and family, in order follow a new career path?

If you are not willing to move near a brick and mortar casino, you are limiting yourself to online poker. In many ways, online poker is a very different game than casino poker. The stakes tend to be a lot lower than the games on the casino floor. Professional online poker players need to put in long hours. They need to be focused at all time, because they will need to play multiple hands at once. It can be very hard to keep this kind of concentration when in your own home.

If you happen to live near a gambling center, you can avoid these problems. Of course, you may be a little too close to the casino for comfort. If you live too close to your new place of employment, it could be tempting to take a trip to the casino more often than is healthy. No matter where you live, you will need to make some serious decisions about location before you decide to become a professional poker player.

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This was over a year ago, and it still makes me sick.

I’m sitting at a poker table with a lot of people I know, and I’m holding the large stack of chips, and I’ve just been dealt an Ace-King suited. I’m a happy camper. Just to my right is a new player who has had a few decent hands and has about half my chip count. I double the blind and watch as three more players, including the rookie, call.

The flop comes-a ten and two Kings. I’m sitting on trip Kings and I’m stoked, so I keep betting. The turn comes-3 of clubs and it’s no help to anyone. I throw some more chips into the pot and eventually it’s just the me and the kid, who tentatively calls every time I raise.

The river comes-an Ace completes my full house. I check and the kid raises me. I decide to have mercy and leave him enough chips to keep playing. I call him almost all in and give him a lecture about being more careful with your chips. When he calls, I turn my cards over with a smug grin…one which evaporates as he turns over his pocket Aces. The kid had a full house, Aces over Kings, beating my full house, Kings over Aces. It hurts to even write about it.

poker lesson learned. Keep your mouth shut at the table, because some bastard might end up with the one hand that can beat yours.

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I’m of the belief that anything, when done in moderation, is just fine, so long as it does not infringe on the rights of others or hurt other people in any way. This includes poker, especially if it’s being done for charity.

So you can imagine my dismay today when I read a PokerNews brief about some firemen in West Virginia who got in some serious trouble over a few poker fundraisers they held to, well, raise money.

Authorities say the poker tournaments the poker tournaments the Westmorland Seward Volunteer Fire Company organized are illegal, and now the law is coming down on them.

The fine that the West Virginia Attorney General’s office is seeking to impose on the fire house is equal to what the department raised with its charity tournaments: $40,000. The Texas Holdem tournaments were held over the course of the past year. The attorney general said that the tournaments were illegal regardless of what the purpose was, charity or not.

Now, since this was a charity, I’d argue the department wasn’t in this to make any money. It was definitely more for the fun, and the fact that it was a game many people enjoy playing pretty much any time of year, it enticed people to donate who might normally not have done so.

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