Archive for March, 2010

Establishing Goals in Poker

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

The year is winding down to its final few weeks. Many of us have played hundreds and even thousands of online poker cash game sessions and poker tournaments. Cash game and live poker players are starting to count up their wins and losses in order to establish how well they have done for the year in hopes of improving in 2010. Do you know how much your game has progressed over the past 12 months? If not, then you probably want to establish some goals going into the new year.
Why should I establish goals?
Goals allow us to measure our performance over the long term and short term. By keeping track of how well I am doing I can establish trends that will help me define just how well I am doing each session or even from poker tournament to poker tournament. By harvesting this data on a daily basis you begin to see where your game is and whether small tweaks and adjustments are helping your game or not. Without measuring how well you are playing you have no barometer other than guessing to establish where your game is at.
Document your Sessions / Tournaments
Gathering data on your game is relatively simple. You are going to want to record every Texas Hold’em Poker or Omaha cash game session you play and document your profits and losses for that session. You also want to take player notes on the players at your table. Player notes are not just for online poker players. Smart live poker players will take notes on their opponents too. The more information you have available to you the better off you will be. Tournament poker players should document the buy-in, place finished and also take player notes as well. Lastly, no matter what format you are playing in you should document key hands. You may not remember exactly what cards fell but most times you can remember the general gist of why you lost a pot or won one. This kind of information can be studied and analyzed for later. If you happen to be an online poker player you can simply browse through your hand histories or analyze your hand history with a number of products on today’s market.
Analysis
So now that you have gathered all of this information what should you do with it? The purpose in gathering all of this information is to improve your game. As I stated earlier your job is to view the information and pick up on things that appear to be out of the ordinary as well as things that fall within the normal threshold. I think it’s fair to say that if you are busting out of a 180 poker tournament in 120th place, 130th place, 90th place and 176th place that you may have a problem with patience. True that may be a bit extreme but it serves to prove my point and reasoning in how you assess your own performance. You need to be very meticulous about how you analyze that data. You also need to be objective about your own game. It won’t do you any good to make up a reason to not acknowledge you are making mistakes or have a hole in your game. By being honest with your game and accepting the data it has established your game will improve significantly.

By establishing goals we create the mindset that we want to improve and get better at the game of poker or any other endeavor in life. The game of poker is constantly evolving and in order to keep up with it you must adopt any method you can to stay ahead of the trends. The game of poker has trends in it just like any other sport. The players see someone making a particular move and it’s working for them and the next thing ya know everyone is doing it. So look at establishing goals as a way to identify not only trends in your own game but as a way of motivating you to become the best poker player you can be. Without goals we have no tangible way to measure our success. When we do measure our successes and failure we can constantly challenge ourselves and our games to be the best they can be,.

The detail’s in the rake

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

When you’re playing the online poker you will be able to contribute on what they called as rake, this is where the online poker website makes money. Then the rakeback means to get some percent rate on the cash present in the poker site account, this will be considered as reward for you in loyalty. This rakeback has been launch originally by a program offering to those elite in poker only, it’s provided to them due to the certain numbers per month in hand. These days several rules had changed, almost everyone may get the rakeback it doesn’t matter how many hands they played already, it will serve as extension for programs that was offered, the sites of pokers in the internet.

This rake makes more money to the online poker room. This money then will be deducted in the pot from room of poker. Typically this rakes was percent rates and the cap of $3 on high limitations. The rakes is available on events, those portions in buy ins are going to pool prices then there’s little fees going to website poker. Those rooms for poker are making such huge cash in rakes which players are contributing. This is never atypical to the single poker player paying at least $3000 on a monthly basis, which is for every single player. Every room of poker has greater to a 10,000 poker players earning so much money.

This rakeback would imply as refund to players. When players of poker do receive the percentage on rake, they need to pay in the room of poker. Normally the offer of rakeback will be between 25 up to 40%; those poker players sometimes have a better rakeback. When you have more rake then there will be more rakeback that you will get. This is typically the use of rakeback.

Players of poker would usually wanted the rakeback; all they need to do is sign up in the room of poker by an affiliate site. The affiliate is the one signing up for the players then they are earning cash prices from every rake of players. There’s lots of affiliate website, they are offering poker player with good deal. Then those sites of rakeback are earning some percentage to the rakebacks that you have, totally the portion will be returned to the bankroll.

Several varieties of poker are fitted to the deals on rakeback. When you’re playing the shorthanded type of poker, you’ll be involved to several pots then more pay on rakes. When playing at a multiple tables on one time there are more hand then rakes pay are greater too. If you’re involved to many pots then you must be playing the rakeback.

I’m not able to see downsides here in rakeback. When you’re able to get back the money then why can’t you take those? Perhaps you need to switch websites because you can only get deals when you’re creating new accounts. But this will not entail lots of works. You’ll be earning lots of money, in saving cash, it depends on the lookout. You need to do that.

Read more also:  What’s a rakeback?

High Marginal Hands

Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

Lesson on playing high marginal hands

In poker, there are things that you should do while playing and things that you should not do at all. Some of them might be considered to be stupid mistakes while others are mistakes that cannot be avoided. One thing that you should know as a player is that no matter the number of hands you play, majority of them have to be folded although there are many beginners who ignore this. You can be lucky if you try this out but remember that your luck might not last a long time. What you should do for example is to look at premium hands like very strong aces and high pocket pairs and simply fold them. That way you will be very safe. Amateur players find it very hard to let go of marginal hand after the flop has hit. As an amateur, you might find it to be difficult to lay down if you hit top pair or middle pair with a top kicker. If players are betting like there is no tomorrow and there are straight and draws on the board, then it is a crazy idea to be still involved in a pot holding top pair. You should play with a lot of caution because the best hand on the flop might not always be the best on the river. Incase you are holding a marginal hand and things keep heating up, then you should not be afraid to get out. Poker is a game of smart people who always know when to quite with the exceptional of a few. In order to protect your hand in Texas hold ‘em, you can bet out as much of your stack. Like it has been said time and again, you should avoid involving your self on a table which professionals are playing because despite the fact that you might have your guard on with confidence, things might heat up and you might end up dropping your guard. Under-betting, the pot is usually done by amateur or inexperienced as a way of taking some precaution although any under-betting is not enough.

Over-betting on the other hand is another mistake that inexperienced players tend to make. When this happens, your hands are weakened more than your folds. By over-betting, you can either lose a big pot or win a small one. I really do not know why amateur players ignore position and regardless of the position play a certain set of hands. You should always be ready to protect your hand because if you do not do that then you make it easy for your opponents to draw out on you.

There is a very big difference between playing a tournament and playing cash game. In a tournament, you are likely to protect your stack more because once it goes then you are out of the game. In cash games you can take the risk and put your entire stack on the line because you have read the mood and you know that you are going to win.