UK2U

So, why exactly did the US ban Gambling online? To be honest, I have no idea! The only thing I can think of is that they didn’t want the wealth of their population being spent on companies outside the US.

I’ve heard of a few sites who apparently insist that they’ve found a way round this, due to some ‘loop-hole’.

I can honestly, cross my heart and hope to die, guarantee that these sites are great. For example: cyprus casino (http://www.c0d.co.uk/c0d/en/index.html) This is complete and utter class.

Trust me on this one, I used to work with the guy!

He owns c0d.co.uk and cyprus casino. He is HEAVILY involved with globalstudentsfuture.com and globalstudentspoker.com in their “grey marketing” as they like to call it. And also runs a security company called CYSecurity (http://www.cysecurity.co.uk/) All this is part of his “master plan”. The guy is called Jason and is the founder of CYGroup.co.uk. This is a shell company and all the various branches he advertises on his home page are run by him with additional experts in different fields related to the particular branches of the business.

But hey online casino’s are old hat! Any old dumbass can setup an online casino and try to turn a quick buck amongst all the other thousands out there! Some of these affiliate casino operations which offer a free website and custom brand software like c0d.co.uk have been operating for years (2004 to be exact). Which makes them a leader in their field.Unless you have a lot of money to throw at advertsing your online casino venture then how are you going to stand out from the rest with such solid competition???

This same guy has now shifted his focus to poker www.poker4pros.co.uk which is a class above the casinos in my view as you have to buy the system to begin with. Therefore, there aren’t so many mass produced websites. It’s great fun setting up your own tournaments, emailing your own players. Creating password protected tables etc can broaden your customer base and options.

So back on track, this guy has helped me a lot since I left my employment so I should be grateful to him as he has only ever tried to do the best by me, sometimes under extreme circumstances.
I know that if things were different in my current postings then he would willingly try to offer me a position with his new poker ventures and help make them as succesful as we all hope they will be.

In fact there is an art to running your own poker or casino website like those I have mentioned and an even more skillful art in getting them to be found and visited….generally called SEO.

This same guy taught me the basics a few months ago, but things have changed even since then and now there are more secret weapons out there to promote these kind of sites. I wish I had kind of stuck in there …. even if he was boring.

Anyway I am rambling on and I don’t want this post to be taken the wrong way, but there are many casino and poker sites out there and they can all equally take a piece of the pie.. some more established than others, some can allow US gaming others can’t, but does that matter as long as everyone gets to enjoy them and the games they contain and ultimately the operators make a few dollars on the way?

When you look at the big poker and casino sites like Party poker, 888 etc they all run their thing and are professional enough not to run each other down…just continue their advertising and keep their product stronger and more cutting edge

With so many new online poker rooms springing up these days, just the decision of where to play can be overwhelming. Should you just go and sign up at Party poker because so many people play there and all of your friends do? Not necessarily. Should you go with the brand new poker room because they’re offering a 100% signup bonus? Not always. You need to decide which online poker room is best for you individually.

How?

First, you should decide what your priorities are. Is playing at the most popular poker room most important to you? Then go ahead and register at Party. Do you want to play at a site with more consistent games? Then check out Poker4pros, Full Tilt or Ultimate Bet. Deciding which site to play at has to be about what is important to you, whether it’s which site has the best graphics, has the fastest gameplay, or whatever it is that you desire with your poker experience.

If you are choosing a poker site based on the size of their signup bonus, always read the small print. It might take a lot more play than you think to earn that bonus. Rarely will you find a poker site that will give you instant cash for signing up. If they do, it’s not usually very much.

Think about visiting a review site, like this one, that profiles each poker room. A good review site should profile each aspect of a poker room for you to quickly view. ALWAYS look for an original review from the website. Many site owners haven’t actually played at the site in question and are providing you with stock information found from the poker room homepage. You can find that out yourself.

You might also try the play money option at the site you’re looking at. All poker room offer play money games, and it’s a good way to try out the software before you deposit money. Something else to try is depositing a small amount of money at a few sites until you decide which one is your favorite. You can stick to the microlimits while you’re testing the waters.

There are a ton of online poker rooms out there who want your money. Do your homework and decide what’s important to you before giving it to them

One thing that people should consider, especially if they have limited time, is when the best time to play poker is. Very few people have the time, the patience, or the desire to play poker all day every day. Most of us just play it some in our free time, have some fun, and hopefully make some money. So the question is what is the best time to play in order to maximize the making of the money.

The two things that need to be considered for this are if there is a game available, and how people tend to play at different times. Now in general, a game being available isn’t generally an issue. Unless you are playing at one of the smallest or newest sites there are almost always games going on. Large sites such as Party poker never have less than 10 or 20 thousand people on them, so availability really isn’t an issue.

So the real question is, how people are playing. Through the use of poker tracker, and my own observations, I have noticed what you might expect. Late night games are generally looser, wilder, with most hands being won at the showdown. As a college student, my schedule is pretty free so I have played at a variety of times. Sitting down at tables during a week day it is generally hard to find a table with more than 25% of the people seeing the flop, and often the table is even tighter than that. Also during the day there are much less calls, pot sized bets will often take the hand, and you don’t have to show down as frequently.

At night, and especially Friday and Saturday nights, everything changes. Presumably this is because many of the nighttime players just got off work and they want to kick back and have some fun, not sit there and fold every hand. Also presumably on the weekends, many of them are drunk. Because of this, at night, it is not unusual to sit at a table that has 35 or 40% of the players putting in money to see the flop. Throwing in the big blind that means almost every flop has 5 people in it, and sometimes this is a low estimate. Additionally it is much harder to get people out of a pot, flush and straight draws are chased until the bitter end, and top pair hands are never thrown away.

As a result, if you have a limited time to play poker I recommend doing it in the evening when most people are getting home from work and finishing dinner. The play will be looser and your hands will be paid off more. This situation is ideal and very profitable. However you need to know that with all the callers people will suck out on you more frequently and your bankroll has to be prepared to handle it. If you are playing these games be very aggressive with premium hands preflop, you will get callers, so get the money in when the getting is good. Additionally you should be much more reluctant to bluff hands; you aren’t going to get people out.

If you are playing in the day try to steal pots more frequently. If people are willing to throw away their blinds they might as well throw them your way, and if people aren’t willing to stay in and defend a pot, so much the better for you.

In general I strongly believe that you need to trust you instincts when you are playing poker. If you make a bet and someone calls you may think to yourself, they are on a flush draw. The turn brings the flush card, as it is want to do, and both players check. A river blank and your opponent bets. Are you willing to call that bet? In general you need to trust your first thoughts. If you think that someone is drawing, don’t be dissuaded just because they didn’t play aggressively when the draw hit. And don’t think to yourself, if I hit the draw I would bet, because all players don’t play like you. However if you strongly believe that a bet is a bluff, and you are not just trying to rationalize to yourself a reason to call then by all means do it.Now on to when you shouldn’t trust your instincts. Never play cards or make a loose call just because you think that you can predict which cards will hit. Trust me, you can’t. Those cards are governed by random statistics, and assuming you haven’t marked them, you don’t know the cards that are about to come. If you still believe that you can predict the cards then I invite you to take up this challenge http://www.randi.org/research/ they offer $1,000,000 to anyone who can prove that they have paranormal powers, and I’m sure they will accept your card predicting ability as a claim.

Personally I love playing against people who say things like “I felt that card was coming” or “I could tell my flush would hit” When ever I hear this I always chalk it up in my mind, a little note that says this person might be an easy mark. And I offer one prediction of my own, that they will be very whiney when they lose.

Here are some good ways to tell if a player is bluffing. Hopefully they will enable you to pick off a couple of bluffs, and make some extra cash.

1) The player slams his chips into the pot. - Players who have strong hands rarely try to make themselves even more forceful. They usually just slip their chips gently into the pot. Weak players are the ones who slam the chips into the pot, hoping that their action will intimidate you into folding.

2) The player acts almost immediatly when it is his turn. - This tell isn’t 100% accurate, because it could also mean that they player has a very good hand, so it should be used in conjunction with other tells. However what you can know from this is that if a player wait a fair amount of time before acting, then they probably aren’t bluffing, they probably have a relatively strong hand and are deciding just how strong it is, and how to milk the most money out of it. The hands that can act immediately are the ones that it doesn’t matter what the other player does, the hands that are either so strong they can’t be beat, or so weak that they have to get the other player to fold.

3) The player stares you down after he puts his chips into the pot. - This is another variation on the ‘I’m acting like I have a strong hand, but really i’m very weak theme. ‘ Players who are really very strong don’t go out of their way to antagonize other players and try to get them to fold. It is the players who are bluffing who try to add a physical intimidation to their play and get the person to fold.

4) The player overbets the pot on the river - When the river comes, there are obviously no more cards to come, and no more drawing hands. Thus players with strong hands aren’t looking to push out draws, they are looking to get paid off by weaker hands. Thus a player with a strong hand usually doesn’t make more than a pot sized bet. In fact they often make a bet that is 1/3 or so of the pot size in order to induce calls from people thinking that they have to call since they put so much money into the pot already. So when you see a player, especially a late position player, make a bet that is 1.5, 2 times or more the size of the pot, they most likely have a weak holding that would not survive a showdown, thus they are trying to get the other players to fold.

5) They player is sitting upright in his chair, near the table - Players with strong hands tend to sit back in their chair, they are relaxed and confident that they are going to win. Additionally they don’t want to sit up and be all the more intimidating. Players with weak hands are the ones who generally sit up. They are anxious to see if their bluff worked, and could not relax if their life depended on it.

6) If a player is sloppy with stacking his chips - Generally, conservative players tend to make their chips into nice organized stacks. These players are more likely to only bet when they have something of a hand. Loose, aggressive players are more sloppy with their chips and tend to leave them in disorganized piles. They players with loose piles are more likely to throw those chips around in an attempt at a bluff. What you often see is a set of nice organized chip stacked up, with sloppy ones on top. What this means is that they player is currently winning. The organized chips are the initial buy in, the sloppy ones are the profit. He is much more likely to play loose with the profit, but if it bites into his buy in he will only put the chips up with a solid hand.

If you’ve come across this page looking to find out how to cheat in online poker, then look no further. This page will not help you cheat, it is intended to help people spot cheaters, and tell them what to do when they see them.

Many people are concerned about cheaters in poker. They feel, and rightfully so, that the cheaters can be the difference between a winning poker session and a losing poker session. Thus that cheaters should be avoided at all costs, and moreover that they should be identified and punished where ever possible.

There are several different forms of cheating possible in poker, and they should be distinguished between what is possible in live games and what is possible online.

In online games you are much less likely to encounter physical cheating, because it is simply impossible to mark the cards or stack the deck in an online game. However, you are much more likely to encounter different forms of collusion in an online games. Usually two or more people telling each other their cards over the phone or on AIM while they play at the same table. Because collusion is the most common form of cheating in online poker, I will first talk about how to identify it.

A first rule of thumb is that most cheaters are inept. They are not doing anything that will make them win in the long term. They are in it for the short term, trying to make a few hundred dollars right now, in the long term they are very likely to get caught. Because of this most people colluding at online poker employ unsophisticated techniques. The most common being they will try to trap another player between them while they get into a raising war, when on of them holds a nut hand. They player trapped between them loses several bets thinking that they might as well call one more bet since they have put in so many already. Then, after the player gets sick of putting in bet after bet after bet, they dump the hand, and one of the colluders also folds, leaving the other to win the pot uncontested, and without having to show his hand.

The best way to identify this kind of cheating is just to watch for two people who often get involved in pots with one another, but rarely take each other to a showdown. If they go to a show down they know that they will have to show a good hand to account for all the betting that took place. Since they don’t usually both have good hands, they can’t afford to let people see what they have.

If you ever suspect collusion, the greatest weapon that you have is to report the hand to the poker room. They have all the hands ever played, with all the cards ever dealt logged in their servers. Thus they can look back at the player’s histories and see if they often sit at the same table, and if they play differently against each other than they do against every one else. If they spot cheaters, they usually confiscate their accounts and refund money to the people that were scammed. Remember, the whole online poker industry is built on trust of the online casinos. If people are able to cheat in the long term without being punished the industry will go down the drain and the poker rooms will lose billions of dollars. Thus it is in the casino’s best interest to catch the cheaters.

Another way people suspect other people are cheating is by using programs to predict cards or to see other player’s hands. In fact, if you google ‘cheating at poker‘ right now, you will probably get several sites offering to sell you programs that will let you cheat at poker. You will make millions! Not. These programs are scams. If they worked the proprietor would not sell them for a couple bucks or even a couple hundred. If they worked a person could literally make 10’s of thousands of dollars a day multi-tabling middle limit Party poker. The fact is, online poker security is some of the best in the world. The large online poker rooms employ state of the art security techniques and the best people. What most of these so called cheating programs actually do is install a back door into your computer to allow the person who wrote the software to see what your cards are. So in a sense they do allow cheating, just not to your benefit. What should you do if you bought the program, found out it doesn’t work, and now suspect that you are being scammed? Just run a good virus scan and spyware scan and they should catch the malicious programs.

If there is one thing that is common among poker players, it is that they all want to win.  Everyone wants to go to the felt and come back with a lot more money.  Everyone wants the thrill of defeating their opponents.  The difference between players, is how they going about doing it.

If you are good poker player, you probably aspire to move up from playing low limit poker into higher limits so that you can make more money.  You may even get good enough to start playing Texas Holdem with the celebrities that you see on televised poker tournaments.  So what is the best way to build you poker bankroll so that you are able to move up in the limits?  Below are several tried and true methods of making more money in online poker, so that you can move up faster.

1) Be a bonus whore.         If you are playing very low limit games at any number of poker sites, i.e. Party poker, Poker4pros, poker Stars, poker Room, etc.  They all offer redeposit bonuses that can be very significant in terms of the stakes that you are playing at.  Party poker often offers a reload bonus ever month that you can make $100 off of.  All of the other sites offer good reload bonuses in order to retain players.  Since it is such a buyer’s market for online poker, you can take unfair advantage of the sites.  The trick is just to keep shifting your bankroll between 4 or 5 different sites.  There are so many out there, you never have to be playing without clearing a bonus.  Whenever you clear a bonus, take your money out and move on to the next site, until another bonus is offered.

What is important for this to work is that you only play at sites that let you deposit and cash out using virtual checking.  Neteller and Firepay are fine and good in their own way, but if you are withdrawing and redepositing money into your accounts 5-10 times a month, it can be murder to pay 1% every time you do it.  However since many sites allow you to deposit and withdraw directly from your checking account, you can avoid paying any fees what so ever.

Personally one of my favorite sites for working the bonuses is Bodog.  They have a continuous reload bonus system set at 10%.  Which means you are effectively able to put money in, get the 10% bonus, take it out and repeat.  Best of all is that if you play tournaments or sit n go’s on Bodog, the bonus money clears at exactly the same rate as you buy into the tournament for.  Therefore, say you have a $500 bankroll that you move between online poker sites, if you put it into Bodog, you can play $50 worth of tournaments without risking a dime of your own money.

2) Multi-table.     If you are a winning poker player who doesn’t have enough money to move up to the next level, there is no better way to increase your winnings faster than to multi-table.  If you can win $8 / hour playing at one table, then it stands to reason that you can win $32 / hour playing at 4 tables.   In fact this is generally not the case.  Clearly as you play more tables the ability to focus on any one poker table decreases.  However it generally decreases at a slower rate than the tables you add.   So if you win $8 at one table, you are more likely to be able to win $22 / hour at 4 tables.    By judiciously using programs such as poker Tracker, you can help offset the negative results of increasing tables.   Trying to read tells online is less important when, at the click of the mouse, you know exactly how a player has played his last 150 hands.

However, if you are a winning one table player than by no means should you jump right into 4 tables or even more.  You should always start by adding one more table at a time and getting a decent number of hands playing that many to see if you are still a winning player, and how much you are winning.

Additionally, if you are going to be heavy on multi-tabling, use thought onto where you want to play at.  Good sites for multi-tabling are ones such as Party poker, where you can open many independent windows and see them all at one time.  You can even resize them to make them fit better on your screen.   Bad sites to multi-table at are ones such at Sun poker, where you can only see one table at a time, so you have to constantly flip back and forth.

3) Learn to play a game other than NL Holdem well.  The proliferation of Holdem on tv has driven an increase not only in that game, but in many other games such as Stud or Omaha.  This is, in a large part, due to Holdem Players deciding to try their luck at a different game.  Many of the players who do this are losing Holdem players who think that there won’t be as many bad beats if they change games, and that the poker site won’t be able to cheat them as much.  If you learn how to play another game well, you should be able to make money a lot faster than you can at holdem.  Most players, even low limit players, have a good idea of what makes up a good hand in Holdem, tv has shown what are good plays and what are bad plays, so there are hardly any Holdem players who are stupendously bad.  There are some that are over aggressive, or overly passive, or call too often, and that is how people make their money, but they are still better than the bad players at other games.   

Take Omaha Hi/Low for instance.  On the face of it, it seems a lot like Holdem. The only difference is that you get four cards instead of two.  No big deal, and the play should be about the same, many holdem players think.  This is not the case.  There misconception as to what constitutes a good hand leads many low limit Omaha players to call down all the way with top pair or any two pair, and not just play when they have the nuts or a draw at the nuts.  this causes them to lose money at a great rate, hopefully into your pocket.

One of the keys to winning at a game of poker is to not let your opponents know what you have. And the key to this is to make them think that you are a different kind of player than you are. If you are a tight player, than you want the other people at the table thinking you are a maniac, that way they will give you action when you get you actually play a hand.  If you are a loose player who bluffs frequently, you want the other people to think you are the rockiest person since Balboa.  You want them folding to your steal attempts and not prone to looking you up with ace high.

So how can you accomplish this deception?  Clearly there is only so much you can do. If you play every hand, people are not going to think that you are tight no matter how much you wish it. However there are actions you can take to influence the image you project to the poker table. Below is a list of several characteristics of tight players and of loose players.  Simply act out the image you wish to project, but be careful not to let the projection actually influence your game
Stacking Chips
Tight Image  -  Tight players generally have their stacks neatly piled in front of them.  They generally know how much they have, and can cut an even stack whenever they bet.
Loose Image - Loose Players are often sloppy with their chip stacks.  They may have many stacks of different sizes, or one or two huge stacks in front of them.  They will rarely have neat, even stacks

Talking
Tight Image  - Many tight players are relatively silent at the table.  They are there to play cards and not to get distracted. If you want to appear more tight, be quiet at the table and don’t engage in banter with other players
Loose Image - Many loose players are often boisterous. They will razz the other players, the dealer, waitress, and themselves.  They will often be drinking, and loud, and fairly easy to spot. To look like a looser player, start commenting on other people’s play.  Say things like you can’t believe they folded that hand.  It will make you look like a jerk, but it will change your table image in a hurry.

Showing Cards
Tight Image  - If you want to look tight, you generally never want to show your cards.  If you show your cards even occasionally, like when you have the nuts, people will wonder why you don’t show your cards the other times…. you must not have the nuts then.
Loose Image - This is easy.  bluff someone out of a pot, show them and rub it in. They will be looking to get back at you. Next time just make sure you have a solid hand when you get involved with them.

Appearance
Tight Image - Looks sharp, like you just came from the office. Wide awake and paying close attention to the game.
Loose Image - Sloppily dressed.  Looks like something you just threw together.  You don’t care how you look, just like you don’t care what cards you are playing.

Mucking Cards
Tight Image - When you throw your cards away, gently place them in the pot, or flick them into the center.
Loose Image - Throw your cards into the center of the table.  Act you like are angry that you got a hand that is bad enough that even you won’t play.

If you are playing in a live poker game you have probably seen a player lose most of his money and have only a few chips left in his stack.  A lot of times, especially if it is late and a reasonable time for a person to end a session, is the player throws the remainder of his chips in with a poor hand.  The thought process goes something like ‘I have already lost most of my money, and I already have a losing session, I might as well gamble and try to win it back, and if I lose the rest then I will just go home.’  I have seen this not only in the lower limit games, such as the $200 buy in NL Holdem, but also in higher limit games such as $1000 or $2000 buy in.

You need to learn to take advantage of this mentality.  If you are able to recognize it then it can add a nice amount to your win rate over time, after all, what is just a small amount to the losing player, who is willing to just throw the rest of it away, can be a big amount to a winning player, who wants to add to his chip stack.

There are a couple of factors that make it more likely that a person is ready to give up the rest of his chips without much of a fight. Some of them are listed below

It is late
Late at night, the losing player has most likely had a long session.  They have taken a beating, had a terrible night, and are ready for it to be over.  If it is earlier in the day they are more likely to rebuy for another rack of chips.

They have been losing steadily
A person who has been losing steadily over time if more likely to be feeling depressed than a person who just suffered a huge loss.  The person who just took a big hit thinks that he had bad luck, and is antsy to get back in the game and take the money back from his foe.  A person who has been losing all night is more likely to feel that they are playing poorly, or that they are the fish at the poker table, and they are going to be ready to leave.

They has been drinking
Although they aren’t really give up chips, they often exhibit the same symptoms.  A drunk person is willing to put all his chips in the pot with the worse hand, so you should be ready to call all ins against such a person with a medium strength hand, such as a middle pair or AJ.

Someone else is telling them to leave
If a person has a spouse who is bugging them that it is time to leave, they are not going to be playing their best.  They are going to be willing to push in with weaker hands, because they know that in a couple of minutes they will have to capitulate to their spouse.  Therefore they want to get as many hands in as possible, and not just wait for the premium ones.

They are in the blinds
Even when a person still have a significant number of chips compared to the blinds, say $35 at a $1-$2 table, if they are in the big blind with that size stack they are going to be more willing to push in with medium strength hands, figuring there is enough overlay to make it worth it.  There usually isn’t.

No Limit Texas Holdem is a game where implied odds dominate a player’s more than most other forms of poker played.  So what are implied odds?  Implied odds are the amount of money you expect to win if you call with a drawing hand, and then make your hand.  They are distinguished from pot odds, which only take into account the amount of money currently in the pot when you make your decision.  For example, if you call a $40 bet on the flop with $40 dollars in the pot, and you are chasing a flush, then pot odds state that you are Gambling $40, for a chance to win $120  ( The $40 in the pot, your opponents $40, and yours).  Since you are going to make your flush 38% of the time, this may be a good call, you put in 33% of the money, and you get 38% the entire pot back.  This seems fairly straight forward, and in fact it is.   There are numerous methods of estimating pot odds, and calculators to do it for you.  On this site I even has a table of common drawing hands, and the odds that they will hit here, and a quick method of estimating your hand’s odds, which you can figure out in the heat of a game, here.

However, there is, or at least should be, more to your decision making than just pot odds.  And one of these things is implied odds.  Just to make things simple, take the above scenario and say that both you and your opponent have a $500 stack when it is time to call the $40 bet, and to chase your flush.  Lets further state that you have the Jack Ten of clubs, the board is K spade 6 clubs 4 clubs, and that you have position on your opponent. We have already determine that the pot odds are 2 to 1 in your favor, so now let us examine the implied odds.  ( I am ignoring the odds of hitting a runner runner for two pair or a straight. There are several things that can happen on the turn. You can make your flush or not, your opponent can bet or not.  This is where reading your opponent is important, knowing his tells and his style of play is crucial to calculating implied odds, but we’ll take a shot at it with a made up person. First let us say that the flush comes on the turn. From knowing your opponent you know he will check the turn, call a bet that is less than or equal to half the pot, and fold to a bet on the river. So you know that if you make your hand, you can get another $60 out of your opponent.  This makes your implied odds 1.5 to 1, which combine with the pot odds, is a nice incentive to call the flop bet.

Now lets say that the flush doesn’t come on the turn, and your opponent puts another pot sized bet out, this time forcing you to call $120 if you want to continue chasing the flush. You are still getting 2 to 1 to call this bet, but the odds of your winning have dropped to 9/46 ~ 19.5%.  This is clearly a bad things for you, and if you expect your opponent to bet if the turn misses the flush, it hurts your implied odds.

Another scenario, what if you don’t have the best hand even if you make your flush? Say you think your opponent might has a 5% chance to be betting the flop with the nut flush draw, and if you make your flush you will pay him off, probably for your entire stack.  Then if you call the bet, there is a 30% (odds change if he has two clubs) chance of the flush coming, 5% of him having the higher flush, and you will lose all your stack.  This corresponds to an expected value of ~ -$10, which further decreases the value of your implied odds.

The net result of my analysis is that I probably wouldn’t call the bet. I would not want to face another larger bet on the turn if I didn’t make my hand, nor would I want to hit my hand only to lose my stack to a better one.  Although these are clearly not calculations that you can do in the middle of a poker game, it does help your play to investigate different scenarios and try to figure out what you would do