Luck vs. Skill in Poker

Texas Holdem is a internet poker game which has gained a massive amount of attention over the past five years and it’s now a mainstream hobby which is considered a sport in some countries. There are hundreds of land based casinos and online poker rooms where you can find cash games and poker tournaments to participate in. The thrill of winning money attracts thousands of poker player’s everyday to these locations.

When you’re playing Texas Holdem the game has a lot of skill and it’s apart of the reason why so many people enjoy playing it. 80% of the time you lose your money due to a mistake you make during the hand and you only have you to blame which most people can handle. The other 20% of the time you lose your money is usually because of luck which is a pretty big part of Texas Holdem, and handling a loss due to luck is much more difficult to handle.

When you play poker online, whether it’s a cash game or tournament players are going to run into a hand where two players have excellent hands. In these situations the chips end up in the middle of the pot before the flop and then it’s down to the board to determine who wins the pot. If you end up all-in with pocket aces and your opponent makes the call preflop with pocket aces then you’ve done your job and got into the pot with the best hand. All you can do is get into the pot with the best hand and then you need to let the game take shape to see if your hand holds out. If your opponent ends up hitting a king on the board and beats your pair or aces with trip kings then you just got unlucky. There is nothing you can do about this in poker because it’s apart of the game.

Always make sure if you get beat out because of bad luck that you take it graciously and not like Hellmuth might handle it. As long as you learn Holdem and the strategies involved in the game then you shouldn’t get burned with bad luck often which means you’re still going to be a profitable player. So skill remains a huge part of poker because if you don’t have skills then you’re not going to win enough pots to cover your losses on the bad beats.

Texas Holdem is still a card game consisting of many skills and feeling for other opponents, but you need to factor in the luck aspect as well. You should know before sitting down at the poker table that you might get a bad beat on your which is why you never bring your entire bankroll to the table with you. You need to be able to lose a bad beat hand and then bounce back with your skills to win it back. On a final note you should never let the thought of being unlucky influence your pocker game whether or not you call an all-in, if you feel you have the best hand then you need to push your chips into the pot and hope for the best.

Decked Out on Blackjack

As with all casino games, blackjack is based on odds, mostly with them not being in your favor. Such is the main reason why you see huge clumps of cards made of multiple decks meshed together, instead of just playing with a single deck. In fact, most of the blackjack strategy charts you’ve seen or may find are only giving you the scenarios under a multiple-deck situation. This shows you how rare it is to find a single-deck option out there at a real casino. They’re going to increase the odds of reducing your advantage as much as they possibly can.

Quick example/math lesson: Obviously, there’s a 1/13 you’ll pull any given card on your first up-card if you’re only playing with a single deck. However, once these cards come up, it changes the percentage of all subsequent cards in your or the dealer’s hands. If you get a nine, the odds of another nine coming up anywhere in the hand decrease by 1.9 percent. Likewise, if you decide to split a pair of nines, the odds of you receiving a third nine on either of those two initial nines is only four percent.

The point of citing that is to show that even one blackjack.com card can yield fairly significant information a seasoned player can use to his or her advantage.

If you start playing with multiple decks, however, these odds are reduced to numbers basically insignificant to the game. Their presence will have little to no effect on the outcome of your hand.

Here are some other basic tips for each scenario to take with you to the casino.com websites:

If you’re actually in a single-deck game, make sure you practice these double downs: Soft 19 against a four, soft 17 against a two, soft 13 and 14 against a four, nines against a two and eights against a five or six. Also in a single-deck game, it is recommended to split paired threes against a dealer’s eight.

Some strategists will make blanket statements that you shouldn’t double after you split, but I disagree. If you look at the different scenarios, there are a rare few instances where this is acceptable and, hopefully, rewarding to the player.

If you have the choice to play with a single deck on goldencasino, take it. It won’t guarantee you better results, especially if you don’t know what you’re doing, but it will help you see your chances increase or decrease of receiving a certain card (one you may be looking for) since there are fewer cards to account for overall.

Full Tilt Poker Bankroll Management

One of the first things you need to learn if you want to become a successful poker player is bankroll management. Bankroll management is simply establishing an amount of money that you should use for each Full Tilt cash game or Full Tilt tournament you play. With varying stakes in both cash games and tournaments online you’ll be able to play in a zone you’re comfortable with until you can increase your bankroll.

The first thing you should know right of the bat is that poker is a gamble and no matter how good or tight of a poker player you think you might be you’re still going to need some luck on your side. I’ve seen great players lose thousands in days online before due to getting bad beats on the river in huge pots and there is nothing those players can do about that. You should never play on full tilt poker with money that you can’t afford to lose because you always need to assume the money you’re using to play poker could be gone. If you win then it’s a bonus and you need to make sure you withdraw some of your winnings and not keep all of your money on your account.

Once you’ve got that figured out you need to determine what stakes you should be playing at. If you’re a cash player make sure you always use a Full Tilt Poker bonus code when you register. If you are playing limit poker then you should generally have about 300 big blinds in your bankroll and you should use maybe 1/3rd of your bankroll each session. If you want to play a $1/$2 limit game then you should have $600 minimum in your bankroll and you should bring $200 to the table. This will allow you to have a chance to make your money back if you don’t do well your first session. You should never bring your entire bankroll to the table with you at once in case you lose and have nothing to fall back on.

If you play no limit poker then you should buy-in for the maximum allowed at the table. Most $1/$2 tables at no limit will have a $300 maximum buy-in. The reason you should bring the full $300 is so that you can take full advantage of a monster hand in the early stages of playing if you happen to get one. I recommend having about 10-20 buy-ins in your bankroll if you’re playing no limit though so if this is to much then look at the lower limits available such as $.25/$.50 and so on.

If you’re going to play one table sit and go poker tournaments then it’s wise keeping about 25-30 buy-ins in your bankroll. So if you have $125-$150 in your bankroll then you should play in $5 tournaments until you can increase your bankroll to about $300 and then you can play in $10 tournaments. If you take your time playing and move up slowly as you should then you can make some serious money in a little amount of time playing one table tournaments. You also have a 33% chance of making money in nine player tournaments so the odds are good that you’ll make money in most of the tournaments you play.

SCOOP – Spring Championship of Online Poker

The Spring Championship of Online Poker is an event solely created and run by Poker Stars so you need to make sure you have an account there if you want to play in this awesome event for online poker players. The event is set to begin on April 2nd 2009 and will run until April 12th 2009 so it’s only a ten day event so you need to mark your calendars. The ten day event to jump start the spring season will be jam packed with a total of 20 tournaments in different stake ranges.

You can already join the tournaments now under the SCOOP section in the events tab on the PokerStars.com lobby. You can also find satellite tournaments running with seats into the SCOOP tournaments right now ranging from small buy-in satellites to FPP satellites. The tournaments will be split up in low stakes, medium stakes and high stakes so that no matter what level of player you are you will be able to compete in some of the tournaments. All of the tournaments will have massive guaranteed prize pools as well so even if you’re only playing in the low stakes events you can still win some large prize pools.

The main event of the SCOOP events will run on April 12th which is a Saturday so there will be no excuse for not making the main event. The low stakes main event will have a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million and the high stakes main event is going to have a guaranteed prize pool of $5 million which is massive for one online tournament. The buy-in for the low stakes main event is only $109 and the buy-in for the high stakes main event is going to run you $10,300 which is out of most of ours bankroll.

With two events running everyday for ten days that means there is six tournaments running daily because of the split stakes. The poker room is going to be very busy on these ten days so if you’re planning on playing in the tournament make sure you have the latest download pokerstars software and have a solid internet connection running because you don’t want to lose your connection in the middle of an event.

Poker Stars is known to run massive events like this, but this year’s SCOOP event is the biggest online poker event in 2009 so far by anyone and is highly anticipated by players. With millions of dollars in guaranteed prize pools being offered over only ten days it’s making a lot of players get there Poker Stars accounts in order.

If you’ve never been able to compete in a live WSOP event or something of this nature then the next best thing would be to play in the SCOOP events this year. There will be tons of players in the tournaments and a couple of the prize pools will be in the $1 million+ area which is huge. If you don’t have a PokerStars.net account then make sure you get one now so you’re ready for April 2nd.

College Basketball Betting

The latest mock brackets for the NCAA tournament have UConn, Pitt, UNC and Oklahoma occupying the number one seeds. Of those four, Oklahoma is the only safe bet not to make it to the elite eight. They’ve fallen from the ranks of a deserving number one seed, losing not only without Griffin lately, but with him, as well. They’re shaky right now, let’s see how they regroup for the Big 12 tournament. I’d put my basketball betting money on Memphis as a safer bet to get to the final four than the Sooners.

Continuing on, the current #2 seeds are Duke, Memphis, Michigan State and Louisville. Again, I see an odd man out here in Michigan State. Some argue they haven’t done enough to grab a number one seed, but I’ll take it a step further and say Kansas has done more than them to earn a number two seed right now, especially after the dousing they gave Missouri, who in turn earned a big home win themselves over Oklahoma. But it’s really a toss-up. In a heads-up match, though, my money would be on Kansas over Oklahoma. With the way Oklahoma’s been playing lately, and Missouri’s weakness being away from home, you have to bet on Kansas as a favorite in the Big 12 tournament. If they win, it should guarantee them a number two seed in the tournament. Oklahoma could fall to a number two with another loss, as well. And while I’ve ragged on Mizzou in the past NBA odds, I really thought they’d done enough, even if they don’t win the Big 12 tournament, to earn a number 3 seed come NCAA tourney time. That was, of course, until they tanked it against Texas A&M. Welcome to the 4 or 5 seed MU.

Checking out the latest college basketball odds I breezed over UNC, but they deserve a mention about their defense, and why it could be a big difference maker for you when filling out your bracket. For something that doesn’t get the credit it deserves, a few statistics worth citing. First, the team is in the top 25 in the nation in defensive efficiency. Second, they are the top team in the nation in scoring margin (and no, that’s not just running it up on the other end). And third, people said the same thing about them in 2005…obviously not a crystal ball, but you can never be too sure what you believe from the “experts” these days. So, while they might not be an elite defensive team, you really couldn’t say right now it’s an Achilles Heel for them by any means.