Doyle’s Room $150K Extreme Points Race

Posted by Dave on April 5th, 2010 filed in Poker Tournaments
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Doylesroom.com is offering $150,000 that will be up for grabs this April. They are calling it the $150,000 Extreme Points Race and the winners are going to haul away some large amounts of cash. You will have a chance to win one of five large prizes.

All you have to do is play a lot of online poker. The game is a race to see you can get the most Frequent Player Points (FPPs) throughout this entire month.

Extreme Points Race Prizes

Here are the prizes that you have a chance to win:

Each of the 4 weeks this month will have a $25,000 Weekly Race. This $25k will be split between the top 200 players who finish with the most FPPs. The poker player with the most FPPs will get $1,500 to take home, the top 3 get over $1,000 each, and the top 60 get over $100 a piece.

Also, there is one Big $50,000 Monthly Race. This poker race lasts the entire month of April at Doyle’s Room. In this race, the top 300 players who accumulate the most FPPs have a chance to split the $50K prize pool. Top prize is $3,500 and the top 4 places get over $1,200. If you get in the top 15, you can take home at least $500 and the top 120 get $100 in cash.

How do you get FPPs?

At Doylesroom.com, you will earn 1 FPP for every dollar raked (accumulative amongst players) in a real money ring game. You will also get 7 FPPs per dollar paid in tournament fees.

You don’t have to worry if you are starting late. Each week you have a new chance to win some money in this April Extreme Points Race, but you need to start soon if you want to grab a piece of the Month long race $50K prize pool.

Click the banner above to become a Doyle’s Room member. For more poker news on Doyle’s Room tournaments check out pokernewsvine.com.

Understanding Positioning in Texas Holdem

Posted by Dave on March 22nd, 2010 filed in Poker Strategy
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In a game of Texas Hold’em, the position at the table that you are at during a particular hand should dictate the way that you play. This is the third most important determining factor on whether or not you should get into a hand before the flop; the first two being your cards and your chip stack.

You may ask what’s the big deal about your position in a hand? But the position of a player alters the way in which he makes his decisions. A player can put significant pressure on the other players if he positioned strongly on the table, but this can only be done if he understands the significance of his position. There are 4 types of positions in a game of poker; lets have a look at them:

1. Blinds: The blinds are the first two players sitting on the immediate left of the dealer. The first player is called the small blind and the second is called the big blind. ‘Blind’ is the amount of money they contribute at the start of the game, to make up the pot. As all the rounds of in the game, proceed in clockwise direction, the blinds are the first to make their decisions on the table. All the other players either follow their decisions or go against them. So, it’s the blinds, who direct the game.
2. Early position: the two positions after the blinds are called the early positions. This is probably the hardest position to play in, as this is the middle of the table. In this position, you have neither the advantage of making the first moves nor the advantage of waiting for the other players to make their decisions first. You can be successful on this position only if you have a good hand. If you know you have a good pair or two and can make a great hand, you should play confidently and make your raises. In this position, it is essential to be confident of your game play, as the other players, who are sitting after sitting after you, will be looking to take advantage. And if they turn out to have better hands, you will end up bearing the loss.
3. Middle Position: The two positions after the early positions are called the middle positions. These players do have the advantage of knowing the decisions of a couple of players before they make their decisions, but also have the disadvantage of making their decisions before the players in late positions. The cards that the players in these positions can afford to chase can be a bit weaker than those in the early positions.
4. Late Positions: These are the last two players to make their moves. They sit to the immediate right of the dealer. They have the advantage to see the decisions made by all the other players before they make their moves. Of these two positions, the player sitting to the right of the dealer is called the button. This player can take the maximum risks. He can even chase the weak cards, as he is able to get an idea of the hands and strengths of all the other players on the table.

Of all the positions, the blinds may be the hardest for the new players, as they are the ones who start all the rounds and thus set the standards of the game. In case you don’t have a big chip stack under your chin, prefer not to sit in the blinds or the early the positions.

Things to remember about Positioning

Don’t always protect your blinds, but don’t always fold your blinds when some raises either. If people know your a calling station, they will get more money out of you when they have good cards. If people think you play your cards too weak, they will raise to try and get you out of the hand.

The Small Blind is also always in a good position. After the flop, the small blind is always first to act. This can work for or against you though. If you suspect nobody has anything, then a bet will probably chase away those who would try to catch a card. You may also be betting right into the teeth of a monster though. At least this will give you a chance to know someone is sitting on something better and get to fold for cheap.

In the early position, the weakest hands that you should think about playing are a pair of 7′s, Ace-10, or any two suited cards higher than 10. End of story. Don’t play with a pair of 6′s or lower because your chance of getting the third card for a three of a kind is only about 1 in 8. This will be a waste of money folding the times you don’t get it in the long run.

In the middle position, you can sometimes makes some inferences about the hands before you. This definitely depends on who is sitting next to you. Some players will go in with any face card just about. Other early position players play so tight that they are likely to even throw away an Ace or Queen/Jack. This can be helpful to determine what could be left and usually a small raise will chase the late position players with questionable hands out.

In the late position, you are really helped during the pre-flop round of betting. If nobody else is in the hand, you can pick and choose times to try to snipe the blinds. This is the least risky move that can increase your chip stack. The reason for this is that you don’t have many players left to decide and the big blind will likely call unless they don’t have anything at all. If one of the blinds re-raises you, then you know that someone left is still strong and can make decisions accordingly.

The idea in Texas Holdem overall is to play as few people as possible. Finding the right time to take the blinds will really help you out in the long run. Here is a really good article that I have found about classifying other poker players. This should be used in correlation with your position during a hand in order to maximize your chances of building your chips.

Starting Hands in 7 Card Poker Games

Posted by Dave on February 1st, 2010 filed in Poker Tips
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So there are a lot of relatively new poker players out there that have gotten the hang of Texas Hold’em and everything it has to offer. They are familiar with all the ins and outs of the action that they should expect to see.

But when it comes to the other major poker games, most of these players would have a very hard time knowing which starting hands are good enough to play and when to fold or raise in any seven card poker game. The most common game you will see is 7 card stud.

The basic premise of this game is simple enough. Each player can receive up to 7 cards total. Each player will be dealt two cards down and one card up. The player with the highest card up gets to start the betting. From that point, one card gets flipped up at a time and betting takes place after each round.

The goal is still to make the best 5 card poker hand and the hand rankings are the exact same as Texas Hold’em.

Starting Hands in 7 Card Stud

Most of the players in this game don’t survive till the last round of the game because with most of the cards being face up, it is not difficult for player to realize that he is in a weak position. A very important thing to know in this game is the way to choose the right starting hands. If you know that, you can surely make much more well informed decisions and have a much better chance of profiting overall.

As in most forms of poker, a pair of aces is a wonderful set of hands to have in the hand. However, a pair of aces is definitely not unbeatable and there are combinations with which your opponent may just topple your hopes of winning the pot. If you have more than 2 aces, you are in a lovely position and should be aggressive with the betting for sure.

If you don’t have a pair in your hand, you should call to try to making pairs unless you have several high cards or can possible make a straight. Even straights are a great option and can make for a winning hand. But while playing for the straights you have to remember that you winning chances will only materialize if you have 5 cards making up the straight. If you only have 3 or 4 cards making it up, then you should be careful in making the bets.

In both of the above cases, we see that if we don’t have strong cards, we should be careful with our betting. The more aggressively we bet, the harder we lose. However, people say that it is not right to fold either, because in that case you are eliminating your winning chances with your own hands.

The right thing to do, you think that your hand is no good and is not going to be any good at any point in the game is to fold. Be sensible. Sensible designs can make you a lot more money in the long term.

In case you are playing 7 card stud hi-low, then you still have a chance to get a share of the pot, even if you don’t have the best hand. But to really have a share of the pot what you should is the worst hand. So, it’s either got to be the highest hand or the lowest. In such a case, a pair of 2’s is very good. All the 5 cards of you hand should be below 8. So, if you are not matching those criteria in the earlier part of the game, you can opt to wait longer to get the right combination.

But don’t opt to wait in case you just ‘feel’ that the right cards are going to be dealt to you. Take all the events in the game into consideration before you make the decision to survive further in the game. Try to keep a track of the cards that have been dealt and those, which must still be in the deck. If you do that, decision making will be easier and better. And better decision making will make your odds better.

Best Starting Hands and Odds of Getting Them

A lot of the above is opinionated and will help you get a feel for things, but this section here is about cold hard facts.

You should know what the odds you have of getting a certain 3 card starting hand and how powerful that hand is.

The best two starting hands that you will have a chance to receive is a three of a kind or mini straight flush. Either of these starting hands gives you a dominating position over any other player almost all of the time. You have a 0.21% chance of getting a three card straight flush and a 0.24% chance of getting 3 of a kind.

The second two highest hands to receive is three cards to a straight or a flush. You have a 3.26% chance of getting a three consecutive cards to a straight and a 4.96% chance of getting three cards to the flush. If you get three non-consecutive cards to a straight, don’t hang around long unless you hit something significant.

This means you have a total of 8.67% of receiving any of the hands above. If you do, you have about a 10 to 1 starting advantage over the other players most of the time.

Pairs come next in line. You have a 1.3% chance of receiving any pair in particular in the first three cards dealt. That comes to an overall chance of 16.94% overall of getting a pair in your first three cards. You should assume that someone has a pair in any seven card stud hand played with more than 5 people.

This leaves you with a 74.39% chance of getting nothing of real value in your hand. From here there is only one way to separate hands worth staying in and hands worth folding. If you have two cards 10 or over, you should think about sticking around for a little bit at least, as long as it isn’t too much to call. Otherwise, you should really think about folding your cards because it is likely that someone else has a much better hand than you.

Things to Remember Playing Heads-up

Posted by Dave on January 15th, 2010 filed in Poker Strategy
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Every hand of Texas Hold’em offers a unique scenario for poker players to encounter. With more experience, players get a feel for timing and managing the right ways to handle different pressure situations. This is especially the case when you are playing heads up.

Throughout the course of a tournament you can afford a big mistake here or there. But the thing that you can’t afford to do it to make multiple costly mistakes because that’s a signal that you aren’t capable of handling the pressure.

No matter how small these mistakes these may be, they show that you are not able to read the game well and other players will not respect your hand. This is why aggressive poker players are able to constantly defeat weaker opponents, in spite of the odds of an upset.

Heads-up Play

At the table, it’s essential to read your opponents eyes. Reading players means observing the playing styles of the players and deducing the methods. Their methods can give you the lead to their further moves. This can be especially useful if you play with the same players often. If you happen to know the playing styles or tendencies of that player, you might easily be able to predict their moves.

In this way, you shouldn’t even be playing your own cards when you are heads up. A good poker player will know what the other person has by the way they call, raise or check. There’s also a good chance that the person will act just a little bit different when they have a good hand.

All-in bets

One thing that you must respect: if the person you are playing heads-up against goes all-in, you have to be very careful if you ever consider calling them.

Here are a couple of important tips:

• How many chips does your opponent have left?

  If this amount is more than 1/4 of the total stack, you should consider folding your hand unless you have Jacks or better.

• Dominate the blinds!

  This is the easiest way to build up a lead in heads-up action. We both probably got 8-5 offsuit or very similar. But if I raise the blind 3 times, the opponent will either reraise (causing me to fold if I don’t have anything) or will more likely fold. This is also the most likely place for someone to try an all-in.

This means that you know their weaknesses and know the right times to hit them. This also means that you can build strategies based on their weaknesses and have an edge over them even if your cards are not really, all that good.

Now of course poker is a game of luck, just as the other gambling games are and sometimes you’ll have a crushing defeat when you did everything right. That’s just the way it is. If you don’t like it, don’t play poker.

But you can develop your skills, knowledge of the game and knowledge of your opponents to reduce the role of luck considerably. If you have better skills, you will be more confident. Confidence leads to aggressive betting and chip stack building.

Aggression is very important in the game. The reason behind this that you are not always dealt the best cards and there is always a probability that some other player on the table has better cards then you and will take you down in the showdown. The only way out is to pressurize the other players into folding with our aggressive and confident moves.

Like I said before, aggression only works when you know when to fold and not challenge the heads-up opponent. They are more often than not looking for an easy way to win or get back into the game. A flip of the coin or better are good enough odds for them to go.

Falling for these tactics can lead you from the promised land to a land of failure.

And such confidence is very useful when you are playing heads-up because you can’t hide from the player who is the only opponent left at the table. The only thing to do is to play the player more than you play the cards.

What to do when you are behind in heads-up play

You can be tempted to do anything, but you have to keep self-control and make the right decisions. You may run out of choices and may have to go all in, almost with every good hand you get.

The advice that I have if you are behind is to play for the blinds. Try to take them as often as possible. Remember that any face card should prompt you to raise and see how the other player reacts to the raise.

You have to scope out your opponent, but if they are not going to bully you with their chipstack, then you can a relatively inexpensive look at the flop, especially on your big blind.

The flop is where you want to do most of your decision making when you are behind. It’s likely both of you don’t hit the flop. When you get any hand after the flop, its a good time to go all-in when you are or are about to be short-stacked.

In case you are playing limit-heads up you and your opponent will have lesser space to move in and this lets both of you have more control over the situation. You should try to position yourself on the button in such cases as from this position you can pressurize the big blind after the flop.

The sensible thing is to attack from the button and defend off it. This will make you have better control. Playing heads up is mostly about handling the pressure well and acting with an alert mind. Use these strategies for heads-up play according the situation you are up against.

Judgment is Key in No Limit Texas Hold’em

Posted by Dave on December 18th, 2009 filed in Poker Strategy
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The thing that Texas Hold’em poker is best known for is its unpredictability. Every game presents the players with a new challenge which they have to face off against each other with their wits and skills. All the players on the table are fighting for the same pot.

Of course, luck is involved in this game and the player who wins would definitely have had luck favoring him. No matter how good you are, if it isn’t your day, it isn’t your day. There’s nothing you can do but bluff or fold out.

But the role of making the right decisions at the right time cannot be sidelined. It has just as important of a role as luck does in Texas Hold’em.

From the moment, players enter the casino and make up their mind to play poker they are faced with decision that can almost decide the results of the game for them.

A player must read as much as he can from the entire hand before they are about to make the right judgment in poker.

Why did this person raise this time around when he checked before?
Did he just look at his cards again because he might have a straight or flush draw, but couldn’t quite remember?
How often has this person made a raise before the flop?

Questions like that are what you should be asking yourself.

Unpredictability in Poker

People say in order to be good at poker, you have to be unpredictable. Well what exactly does that mean? Should I fold my pocket tens preflop and raise with a 5-6 suited? That would be pretty unpredictable.

Obviously not. A simple way to be unpredictable is to put yourself on the other side of the questions that we asked before.

Are you going to call, call, call every time someone else bets?
Do you automatically raise when you have a great starting hand?
Does the way you check give something away about your hand?

Mix it up correctly and people won’t want to play against you as often. You can make other people avoid you if you surprise someone in a hand. Getting the blinds for free is one of the best ways to build your pot.

Important Decision Making Strategy

Because if he doesn’t he is certain to lose. Let’s look at 5 of the important decisions that a player has to make in Texas Hold’em

#1 – How much can I lose today? A player must decide his budget as the amount that he can afford to lose. It’s a lot more fun to play poker when things don’t depend on you winning.

Gambling can be racy and in the midst of all the excitement, credit cards can easily go beyond intended usage if your playing online. The number one rule is keeping control.

#2 – Which table should I play? Choosing the table can play a major role is deciding the fate of the game. You should not choose table with resident poker pro sitting on it or else you may face disastrous results.

Easier said then done in an online environment. The advantage of online poker is that the hands go much quicker and you can get a much quicker feel for the players at your table. A good move is to always wait several hands before playing unless you have a very strong hand. Pay attention and it should not be hard to get in the money.

Also, you should not choose table which are entertaining stakes much beyond your budget. If you have $100 to play with, then play ten $10 games instead of two $50 games.

#3 – What kind of hand to I make? After a player is dealt his cards, he starts to think. He thinks about the best hand he can make with the cards dealt to him. Which cards do I need on the flop to help me secure this hand over anybody else playing and are the odds of winning too slim.

Choosing the right type hand and choosing it fast is important to avoid aimlessly picking choices and chasing the bad cards. From years of playing in online poker rooms, I know what I’m going to do within one or two seconds. Its really up to you if you are better at math and want to take a little bit longer to know what the exact odds are rather than get the relative estimate that scanning the situation produces.

#4 – Which strategy should I use? Choosing the right strategy is very important. Strategy is way in which a players plans to make his moves. He may choose to play tight, loose, aggressive or passive according to the cards that a player is initially dealt. This is where mixing up your strategy from time to time throws people off a step.

#5- Should I bluff now? Bluffing is something that a player does when he wants to mislead his opponent. Bluffing is done partly through the expressions and the moves that a player makes. This can even be achieved online where you can’t actually see the other person. Just mix up the amount you bet and how long it takes you to bet or check and you will confuse some people.

Bluffing should not be done at a time when it is obvious, against players who can’t make it out easily and for a limited time. The best time to bluff is when you are the first player to act and several other have folded. People will assume that the other people all got low cards, so the probability of some else having really good cards is better.

It also works better later on in games where people are going in with less strength in their hands. Keep that heads up person on their toes by playing on your terms. This means bluffing at the right times and folding when you get caught. Then fold a bad hand or two without contesting them and come back with a raise.

These types of tactics are what makes some poker players better than the cards that they receive.

Some people prefer to play online poker. This is mainly due to the fact that the person does not have to worry about giving away his facial expressions over the internet.  If you looking to get into playing online poker, you may want to check out these online poker bonuses. There are instructions on how to collect a poker bonus from the top poker websites.