Texas Hold’em poker players almost dread getting dealt a middle pair because they are so tricky to play. Middle pair can get you in so much trouble and the purpose of this article is to help you make smart decisions when you have to play such hands. For all the examples used in this lesson, your middle pair will be two jacks.

LONDON, UK—9 November 2009—Sky Poker kicked off its six-leg live tour in Manchester on Saturday with a hotly contested tournament that saw David “David36″ Bryan, beat 149 players to walk away with the first prize of £4000.

Some people play poker exclusively online, without going anywhere near a live game. Others like to mix it up and play poker live and on the internet. Despite the huge popularity of online poker, there are still some poker players who avoid online poker and instead prefer the green felt to the click of the mouse. These people are missing out on the huge opportunities offered by online poker. Here are some of the reasons why online poker is better than live poker:

Action 24/7

The number one reason why online poker is better live poker is because there’s always a game to be found. Sure, some times of day are busier than others- such as evenings and weekends. But it doesn’t matter what time of day, there’s people playing poker online 24/7. Possibly the most annoying aspect of live poker is waiting around for a game to start. Of course this is assuming they even have enough people wanting to play poker. While with online poker, you might not be able to always jump straight into the game of your choice, there’s never much waiting around.

Comfort of Home

Not only are there an abundance of poker games waiting for you, you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your own home. There are no travel costs, no worries about how you’re going to get home, or getting stuck in traffic. There’s no need to bother getting dressed up either. Heck, you can even play poker naked if you like. Doing this at a live poker game would get you locked up. Let’s not forget, you also save money on food and drink, as the fridge is never far away when you’re playing online poker.

Online Poker is Cheaper

Online poker doesn’t just save you money on travel, food and drink. The poker itself is also much cheaper, which is particularly beneficial if you’re just starting out learning how to play poker, and don’t want to spend too much. If you go to a casino or card room you might find many cash games below $1/$2. The rake at live poker venues is also much higher than at online poker sites. Plus if you win a hand playing poker online there’s no obligation to tip the dealer – you can’t anyway!

Play More Poker Hands

The most noticeable difference between online poker and live poker is the hands per hour ratio. When you play poker online there’s no waiting around for the dealer to shuffle the cards, potential miss-deals, working out the pot, and the players are generally much quicker to act – to name just a few things. You get to see so many more hands per hour playing online poker, which means more opportunities, more decisions, and less boredom.

Multi-Tabling

Many online poker players like to play on multiple tables at the same time. Just playing one table at a time means you get to see more hands per hour than in live poker, but if you’re playing on multiple tables then obviously this becomes an even bigger factor. Playing multiple tables also reduces the variance, and you can play at much lower limits – thereby spreading the risk. If you are playing poker in a live venue, let’s say a $1/$2 NL game, you’d probably want to sit down with about $200 – which is at risk on any given hand. You could spread this same $200 across multiple tables, at lower stakes, when you play online.

Tracking Your Game

It’s always nice to know if you’re winning, losing, or breaking even at poker. Sure, you can keep notes on how much you’re spending when you play live poker. I used to keep a spreadsheet to track my income and expenses from live poker games. But sometimes it’s easy to forget how much was spent, particularly with re-buy events. Of course, this is just basic tracking. When you play poker online you can get instant hand histories, and access to a huge wealth of data. It goes far beyond just saying if you’re a profitable player or not. You can find leaks in your game and plug the holes. By analysing your play you can improve your skills as a poker player.

Bonuses and Promotions

Online poker is a fiercely competitive industry, and with so many poker sites looking to attract customers, there are a multitude of bonuses and promotions on offer. Casinos like to offer promotions to their patrons, but when it comes to poker they care much less. Poker rooms don’t make much money for casinos, so they don’t really bother trying too hard. However online poker sites are only too eager to offer bonuses and promotions, be it 100% signup bonuses for new poker players, or re-load bonuses for existing players. They really want you to play poker at their site, which is something you can and should take advantage of.

Conclusion

I think the advantages of online poker that have been outlined so far, are fairly comprehensive. Of course playing poker in a live environment has its advantages too – such as the social interaction, and being able to see players’ reactions. The purpose of this article is not to knock live poker, but to give valid reasons for why online poker is superior in so many ways. It’s fair to say this has been achieved. Good luck at the tables!

Let’s-Play-Poker is hosting a UK Poker Championship between August 29th and September 3rd.  This is a £100 buy-in event with a cap of 750 players, yet it suggests a £100,000 first prize with a further 9 players making the money. Some quick math tells me that, if this is a straight tourney (no re-buy, no add on), they are only bringing in £75000.  First prize is more than all the money collected from the tourney.  A little strange? Also the website doesn’t use the word ‘guarantee’ at all with regards to the prize pool.

A number of major UK forums have been questioning the legitimacy event, most of which think that this could be a possible scam. I don’t want to say it is for sure a scam, as there are many reasons this could be happening.  Although, I’m hard pressed to think of any, maybe it’s a promotional event? Maybe it’s an intro into bigger events.  Maybe it’s just to get their names out there.  But before i plonked down my 100 quid, I’d make sure that i knew where the prize money was coming from and how they justified paying the top 10 players with more than they’re making from the tourney.

Some other concerning items have been raised such as the fact that you have to pay for the event with a credit/debit card after one of their Representatives calls you. You have to register an interest online and then await a phone call, rather than being able to ring them directly to register. A number of people have been contacted by the call centre (And when they are the phone number is blocked) and been told that over 1000 people have registered an interest, yet the call staff have rang several players multiple times to request payment for the event from them.

The website is very basic, contains no tournament structure information and does not include any terms & conditions. The listed phone number does not appear to work when called.

Overall it doesn’t appear that a lot of thought went into this tourney.  If i got a call from a rep asking for my credit card to pay for this tourney, i probably wouldn’t give it.  I’d much rather place my money into a reputable online poker room, or just go to a casino.  Much less risky, and probably much better pay off.

That’s right, I’m talking about the WSOP main event.  It started today.  About an hour ago actually.  So if you’re in Vegas, and are a bit hung over and trying to get there…you should get there quick..Late registration is closing over the weekend!!

There are more than 1,100 players trying for the top prize at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino this year (In the first day last year there were 1,297 registered players).  Pros,Amateurs, Celebrities (I’m looking at you Jennifer Tilly) anyone who has won a ticket online or just had the cash sitting under their mattress is there and the blinds have already started counting down.  Will it be a “moneymaker” year or more of a Raymer year?  It looks like Pro’s are at the top of the betting line to win the main event this year, with the co-favorites being Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Gus Hansen, and Tom Dwan. Each is listed at +12000, and as a close second are Andrew Black, Juha Helppi, Ivan Demidov, John Juanda, Barry Greenstein, and Allen Cunningham at +17000 (according to betED).  But hey, anything can happen in poker right!

Last year’s winner, Peter Eastgate, took home $9.15 million after topping a field of 6,844 players — including eight others who had a four month break before the final table in November.  Raphael Zimmerman, a 27-year-old poker player from Oneonta, N.Y., was the first player eliminated from last years tournament when his aggressive play on a straight draw ran into three queens after the first three community cards were dealt.  Zimmerman hit his straight on the turn, but his opponent hit a full house on the river to end Zimmerman’s tournament. “Next year, I’m going to be last out,” said Zimmerman, who said he regularly plays cash games with $50 and $100 blinds. “For a minute, I thought I was going to win anyway.”

I guess we’ll see soon if Zimmerman’s prediction will come true.

Who do you think is going to win this year?

Every year Bluff Magazine puts out a list of top “amateur” players to watch.  It’s a great list with some fantastic talent, but that’s not really what this post is about.  What i noticed about the list is the fact that it’s all WSOP Rookies, or to put it another way, they’re all 21.  Young players with very little live experience is becoming the new norm for WSOP final tables.  They are starting when they’re 18, honing and really translating their online skills to live games.

Starting Young

Players who start playing online at 18 years old are able to make the mistakes all newbies make, but do it in a way that is very minimal risk to them.  By the time they’re 21 and able to play in major live tourneys in the states, they have had 3 years to correct those mistakes and are already well past the nerves of most first time players.

The other advantage to playing online early is all of the tournament entry’s possible to be won.  A lot of these players are able to not only win entry into tourneys in the Caribbean or Monte Carlo (or Canada), but they’re able to cash.  These tournaments have as wide a variance as any tourney in the states, and gives these players a real look at what live poker is all about (not to mention some nice paydays).

Translating their Skills to a live Game

I don’t care what anyone says, online poker and live poker are 2 different monsters.  Translating your skills from sitting in front of a computer to sitting across from someone at a major tourney is a huge challenge.  Even the most  veteran online player has bad habits that need correcting and new skills that need to be learned before becoming a really successful live player.  But i think this discussion is something for a different post.

Overall i think that starting young, online is the way to go.  It really gives you the ability to, at 21 years old, walk in and sit across the table from any of the big names, and realize that everyone is playing the same game…and you know it as well as they do.

“I’m just preparing for the live poker grind. Six weeks of live poker is a shit ton, so I think getting in the right mindset and trying not to burnout,” – Harder

Link to the article

This past weekend many records were shattered for online poker in general and for Pokerstars.com.  The biggest record of all was Pokerstars set a new record for most people playing in an online poker tournament when their $500k guaranteed tournament reached its capacity of 35,000 people!  A player under the alias stan34powa went on to win the tournament and the $30,000 that was guaranteed for first place.  Not bad for an $11 investment!  This record will go down in the Guinness Book Of Records but you can guarantee that Pokerstars will do their best to shatter it again in no time!

The next big record that was shattered at Pokerstars was the most people ever online at a single poker site.  At approximately 3:30 PM EST yesterday, Pokerstars had a total of 250,540 people on their site playing poker!  This is twice their daily average and a HUGE accomplishment for the site and online poker in general.  I guess the whole “global recession” isn’t slowing down poker players!

Pokerstars also set some personal records with their big Sunday tournaments.  The Sunday warm-up had its biggest field ever with 5,836 players and a prize pool over $1.1 Million Dollars.  Also, the Sunday Millions tournament guarantee was raised from $1.5 Million to $2.5 Million, but this was shattered again when 16,260 people registered bringing the prize pool up to $3,252,000!  In the end, a player from Sweden under the alias lp_SakiSaki took 1st place and $331,378.80 in cash without a chop at the final table!

If you aren’t playing at Pokerstars.com, then you really don’t know what you are missing!

Virgin Poker announced today the launch of a 2008 poker league for their players with a total prize pool of over €150,000. The league is based on participation in multi-table tournaments on Virgin Poker and awards players league points based on how they do in tournaments on the site.

Prizes are awarded on a weekly, monthly and yearly basis including a top prize of €3000 for the best performer of 2008. Best weekly participants will be awarded from €250 (1st) to €10 (16th – 20th) with top monthly winners receiving anywhere from €1500 (1st) to €20 (41st – 50th). Additional bonus prizes include a WSOP Main Event Package for any player in the top 3 every month of the year, an EPT Package for any player in the top 5, or a GUKPT Package for a player who ranks in the top 10 every month in 2008.

This is a new promotion so there is still lots of room for those who have not signed up yet to jump on board and start ranking in the top positions. If you are interested in joining the league we offer a €100 bonus for new players at Virgin Poker. Click Here To Visit Virgin Poker

Virgin Poker will be holding their second annual poker festival coming this April to Aspers Casino in Newcastle April 12 – 13th. To gain access to the event you must qualify through online satellites at Virgin Poker. The tournament promises to be quite the event culminating with a massive £105 two day, deep stacked main event with £5000 added to the prize pot! Other features of the poker festival include prizes such as flights to Las Vegas on Virgin Airlines, Virgin experience days with activities such as rally driving and bad beat jackpots. Satellites for the Virgin Poker Festival are run daily on the website and start at only €1.65.

Last years event in Birmingham was a smashing success with the top winner taking home a cool £6,800 in prize money. If you want to qualify for the Virgin Poker Festival, you can sign-up with our Virgin Poker Link and you will receive an additional €100 bonus.

Check out some of the pics from last years event below:

The 2008 Great British Poker Tour schedule was recently announced and will touch down at five different Gala Casino properties across England before the Grand Final to be hosted at Gala Harbourside Casino in Bristol. Improvements to the tour this year include one additional tour date to allow for extra seating (a complaint in the previous year) and expand the tours player base.

Gala Casinos poker tour manager Mark O’Donnell commented on this years tour and outlined how the Great British Poker Tour is unique stating, “What sets us apart is that we attract the best poker talent from across Britain and Europe alongside amateur players and relative newcomers to the game.”

The tour kicks off on February 27th at Gala Maybury Casino in Edinburgh and is expected to attract several hundred poker players. For the full tournament schedule with venues and dates please see our list below:

Great British Poker Tour Schedule Of Venues/Dates

Feb. 27th-March2nd Gala Maybury Casino, Edinburgh

April 16th-20th Gala Casino Maid Marian Way, Nottingham

June 18th-22nd Gala Harbourside Casino, Bristol

September 17th-21st Gala Casino, Liverpool

October 22nd-26th Gala Casino Stockton-on-Tees

December 1st-7th Grand Final, Gala Harbourside Casino, Bristol

For more information, check out the official website here.

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Finding a good online poker site to play on can be very difficult as there are so many different sites, each with different things to offer. For example, some players may find the best site to be the one with the most traffic, while others may define the best as the one with the most bad players. No matter what you consider to be the best, our goal here is to find the best poker site for YOU, the player.

Below are 3 of very popular poker sites, especially in the UK. Each we consider to be the best for different reasons, which are briefly explained beside the site's logo and name.

Why should you trust us? That is a difficult question, but I can guarantee you will most likely have heard of any poker site listed here. This site is run by poker players that have been playing online for over 5 years. In this time we have been able to try out many sites and we will do our best to explain what we like and don't like about them in our reviews.

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