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Poker Online

Running a successful poker home game means having the right equipment, but it’s not a one-size-fits all situation. A great set-up for one group of players might be completely out of place in another home game, as a lot of different factors such as available space and the type of game will determine what home poker equipment is the best fit.

It’s impossible to have a home game without a table, and you don’t necessarily have to settle for playing at the kitchen table as in the past. Even if you don’t have the space or the budget to buy a fancy poker table complete with felt, rails, and chairs, you can purchase either a folding poker card table that can be stowed away when not in use or a tabletop version that fits on most kitchen or dining room tables. If there’s one item to spend a little extra on, it’s a poker table, as nothing can ruin a home game experience faster than sitting in uncomfortable chairs for hours chasing chips and cards at a crowded kitchen table.

Consider the type of game you’ll be hosting as well; while you never have to worry about enough seats when playing in an online poker tournament space should definitely be a consideration if you’re hosting a poker tournament yourself. A cash game with four or five friends is easy to host at most tables but you’ll need much more room (and more comfortable chairs) if you plan on running a nine or ten person tournament.

Once you’ve got the table and chairs accounted for, you’ll need some cards and chips. While plastic chips and a deck of cards from the corner gas station is good enough in college, you’ll likely need to step it up some if you want your friends coming back to your home game week after week. While they cost more, having some good decks of Copag or Kem cards on hand will be ell worth it, as they’re not only more durable but they greatly enhance the playing experience.

The same is true for poker chips, as spending a little more for some quality clay chips like the best poker rooms use is usually well worth it, as the look, feel, and ease-of-handling make playing with them a joy instead of a chore, as is the case with cheaper chip sets. Quality chip sets will also last much longer than cheaper ones, a factor which cuts down the overall cost in the long run.

Put all of the above together and you should have all the major bases covered, as card shufflers and tournament clocks are nice accessories to have but but necessary for most home games.

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With so many people hooked on playing poker, the popularity of online poker games has steadily increased over the years. There thousands of poker sites for you to play online and there are just as many sites that manages all your poker rankings information in one spot. For those not familiar with online poker rankings sites, these are informational sites that basically breaks down everything that’s is going on in the world of online poker. Before these sites popped up, players would have a hard time tracking their betting history and win ratios.

You can find tons of poker rankings online from your personal rankings to other high profile online players. They can even break down the top players for the major poker sites on the net, and they can even tell you when that person is actually playing so you can join the table. Internet poker rankings help us organize which players we want to keep track of and any recent news in the poker industry.

Some of the world poker rankings site will even let you know which poker sites accept U.S. players and vice versa. You can see how many total players are currently online and how many of them are cash players. These are all detailed information that you should know if you’re really serious about online poker. Certain times of the day will have a lot of players and sometimes you’d rather play when there are less people. What’s great is that these sites will show certain poker sites from different countries as well.

So how can you use this information to your advantage? Well, let’s say you’ve been playing someone for a while and you basically know how that person plays. If you ever want to track someone by their nickname you can just follow on these poker ranking sites and it can tell you when that players is online and playing. This is helpful information because they’ll work with hundreds of poker sites to aggregate the information for you without you having to search everywhere.

Many people think that poker is part luck, which is true. But the more you play poker and the better you get at reading other people; skill will prevail in the long run. Sure you’ll get a bad beat because someone had an amazing hand, but your win to lose ratio will improve the more games you play on the virtual card table. Use these poker ranking sites to your advantage because they were made to organize your poker life better.

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Whenever someone thinks of bonuses, you automatically think of something you earn which is true from a career standpoint.  In casinos though, poker bonuses can mean two things:

  1. Bonus Jackpots: Usually a bonus pot that you win if you’re playing a progressive jackpot Texas Holdem game, etc.  These casino bonuses are offered in select games only.
  2. No Deposit Casino Bonuses: When you sign up on poker sites, they’ll often have many online casino bonuses for you to choose from.  These type of bonuses don’t actually require you to deposit the initial amount out of your own bank account.

Just because you’re giving “free” money doesn’t mean you are allowed to play sloppy and foolishly.  You really need to play like that was your hard earned money that you just deposited.   It’s good practice to play like this no matter if it was your money or bonus money that you’re playing.  The logic into playing like it’s your real money is simple.  If you play careless, you will adopt those bad habits of poker, which will roll over to the games that involves your own bank account.

So how do you play with your no deposit bonuses?

The simple answer is to play smart.  Playing smart means don’t place any bets that you wouldn’t place if it were your real money.  Remember, playing online is really hard to bluff the other player because they can’t read your body expressions.  The only way to efficiently bluff someone out is to track his betting patterns, which I’ll describe below.

Do not bluff when sitting down on digital card table online if you don’t know what type of people you’re playing.  For instance, if you know that you’re playing with a lot of conservative players, you know that they won’t call a hand unless they have something really good.  Conservative players will usually call your bluff so you know not to bluff on that table.

Now, if you’re playing on a table that plays every hand and calls every blind, then you’re in a good situation to bluff some people out.

Another good thing to practice is setting your goal every time you play.  For example, in the beginning set your goal to win stop playing every time you win 20% of your initial deposit.  So if your initial bonus was $100, you should stop playing when your bankroll is at $120.  This holds true the other way as well, if you start off with $100 and you’re down to $80, stop for the day.  Learn to play with constraints and never play by emotion.

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Are you one of the millions of people accessing mobile poker on their mobile devices? There are so many smart phones and other digital media devices such as the ever so popular iPhone, iPad, etc. that the demand for mobile apps is sky high. Having the ability to play mobile online poker anywhere allows you to take the game of poker wherever you go! There are many companies developing tons of different mobile poker games for you to download for free or for a few bucks. Before you download any games like poker for mobile devices, there are a few precautions you have to take.

First of all, if you plan on using your smartphone or any other wireless device to play games even if it was a free mobile poker game, you have to double check with your service carrier and see if your data plan would cover enough data usage per month. There are many phone service carriers that have canceled their unlimited data plan for new users because they do not want their bandwidth to be sluggish for everyone else. So their solution was to cap every at a certain number of gigabytes per month (For Cingular it’s 2G per month) and every additional gigabyte afterward will be charged to your account.

Now, if you’re grandfathered in, meaning you’ve had unlimited data with them for years, then you get to keep your legacy data plan and not have to worry about their data restriction. If you have unlimited data, then you can play poker on your mobile device without any worries of going over each month.

Second, you are in high risk of security being lost if you’re playing for real money on your phone. For added security reasons, most if not all mobile poker apps won’t allow you to add a deposit or withdrawal from your mobile device. You’ll have to register an account at home on your pc and deposit your money their. If you’re a new user, hopefully you’ll get to take advantage of their no deposit bonus.

Third, if you do play a lot of poker on your mobile device, I highly suggest you put a password lock for your phone just in case you lose it or it gets stolen. If you didn’t put a password on before you lost it, immediately close or pause your poker account until you resolve the issue.

Playing mobile poker doesn’t need any other investment like you would for a normal poker game. There’s no need to buy a card table, but you still might need to read a few poker books. The game play might be different, but the strategy is still the same!

image by: aliwest44


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There are many online poker sites out there that offer a no deposit bankroll for you to start.  For those who don’t understand how a no deposit bonus works, it basically means that the online poker site is offering to give you credit for you to play with.  That means that you don’t have to submit your credit card to get that initial deposit bankroll.  Yes, the casinos online are giving you free money to play on their site.  Is it a scam?  Not at all…The reason why they are able to offer these no deposit casino bonus offers to you is simply the fact that you’ll be able to continue doing business with their site.

A no deposit casino online will basically offer you an initial bankroll to get you started, so all you need to do is sign up with the site and play with their credit.  Many people will take that offer for poker, but there are even sites with a no deposit bingo offer.  So you decide to join a site to test your luck and you being to play with your free bankroll.

There are two situations that’s going to happen:

  1. You Lose Your Free No Deposit Bankroll: If you lose all your money, its ok.  It wasn’t your money in the first place.  That’s the beauty of playing with a free bankroll.  These online gambling sites are hoping that you will continue to leisurely play on their site from time to time and hopefully you’ll start depositing with your bank card.
  2. You Win More Money: This being the best scenario, you take the initial deposit and you actually make more money!  The catch here is that you won’t be able to pull that money out until you have met their requirements.  Usually, in order to pull money from a free bankroll, you’ll have to multiply that initial deposit many folds.  If you’re able to meet their withdrawal requirement, then you’re good!  Many people get so impatient that they start playing careless hands in poker, blackjack, bingo, etc and they lose it all before they are able to withdrawal.

If you decide to play online a few days out of the week, there’s nothing wrong with that.  Sometimes its more convenient for people to play online without having to invite people over and then worry about cleaning up your card table.  It’s great also if you’re on vacation and you need your poker fix for a few hours!

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