The second Day 1 flight at the PokerStars EPT Vilamoura was larger, as expected, drawing a total of 203 players out of the sun and on to the felt for eight hours of deep-stacked tournament poker action -- 119 made it through all eight levels...
UltimateBet and Absolute Poker are currently hosting the fifth installment of the Ultimate Bet Online Poker Championship Series. The UBOC5 is a series of twenty tournaments offering a combined $4 million in guaranteed prize money. Two UBOC...
Miss one of the Nightly Turbo's this week? Well, we're bringing you the top stories from the week so you don't have to feel left out. Poker players are banding together to get the Commerce Casino to change its stance on Internet gambling...
The PokerStars.net Empire State Hold’em Championships wrapped up a few days ago after several successful events took place at Turning Stone Resort and Casino in Verona, New York. After a total of 1,966 entrants took to action over the course of...
More northerly European cities might have begun the inevitable descent into Autumn already, but Vilamoura, in the Algarve region of Portugal, was bathed in heat and sunshine on Saturday for the beginning of the PokerStars EPT Vilamoura. The first...
Daniel, Annie, this little scandal of yours didn’t have to go this far. Unfortunately, we’re in a slow news cycle right now, so a name-calling session between two of the most successful, visible, and polarizing figures in the poker world is...
UltimateBet and Absolute Poker are currently hosting the fifth installment of the Ultimate Bet Online Poker Championship Series. The UBOC5 is a series of twenty tournaments offering a combined $4 million in guaranteed prize money. Only one UBOC...
A. Call This is the “smooth call” you hear about and it gives away the least amount of information about what you’re holding. Of course, you have very little information about the bettor’s hand at this point, so this is probably the weakest play you can make unless you hold a really strong hand like a “made” Straight, Flush or Full House. The problems this play produces are several, not the least of which is that it’ll probably slow down – or kill completely – the betting on the hand. In my (admittedly limited) experience, a lot of players will put you on a hand of Ace-something if you were the opening raiser and, if an Ace doesn’t fall on the flop, they’ll bet into you, whether or not they made a hand. If you call at this point, they’ll usually check on the turn, unless they put you on a draw. Of course, a draw may be the farthest thing from your mind, but if the board supports the notion, that’ll likely be the first hand your opponent puts you on. If s/he thinks you’re on a draw and has a hand like top-pair, top-kicker, then you can pretty much figure on looking at a big bet if the turn card doesn’t help a perceived Straight or Flush draw. If your opponent cannot, because of the flop’s “texture”, put you on a draw and bets on the turn, s/he either has a real hand or is “firing the next barrel” of a bluff. Your response will largely be determined by what you hold, the pot odds offered and your perception of what the bettor holds, plus the response from other players still in the pot. Besides folding and calling, you can choose to:
B. Raise This play really gives no information about your hand, but it can gain a lot of information about your opponent’s hand. Because you raised pre-flop, people perceive you as holding a strong hand of some type. But as I mentioned earlier, if an Ace didn’t flop most of those who will bet into you are figuring you “missed”, while they may or may not have made a hand. Your raise goes a long way toward confirming your hand was, and is, strong. This is a point where the size of your raise also “talks.” A minimum raise says one thing and an all-in raise says something else. To be sure, either might get called, so you can’t always go all-in and expect to win the hand, but nether can you expect to chase away many players with just a minimum-sized raise. You really want your raise to accomplish one of two things: force your opponent to fold or force your opponent to make a bad decision. As an example of the latter, let’s say your opponent is on a Straight draw and has bet into you as a semi-bluff. If you just call, you might be “pricing” the pot, thus making a draw profitable. But if you raise, you’ll alter the odds and, if your raise is big enough, your opponent may fold just because the favorable pot odds are no longer available. Oh, I know many of the “newbies” out there don’t give a damn about pot odds, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore them, too.
In tonight's Nightly Turbo, we'll give you the scoop on all the hullabaloo surrounding the Commerce Casino and the poker players that are discussing a boycott of the casino. We've also got a story on the trapped miners in Chile who are passing...
Tom “durrrr” Dwan is hardly prolific when it comes to his Twitter feed, but a message he sent out at around Midnight last night drove railbirds around the world to fire up Full Tilt and break out the popcorn.
“Gonna start playing...
Bianca Games Inc. just announced that it was acquiring the Cereus Poker Network. We have all the details on that transaction for you, but that's not the only recent news from business side of the virtual felt. It's been a busy week for Internet...
UltimateBet and Absolute Poker are currently hosting the fifth installment of the Ultimate Bet Online Poker Championship Series. The UBOC5 is a series of twenty tournaments offering a combined $4 million in guaranteed prize money. Two tournaments...
A few weeks ago, the PokerStars.net Million Dollar Challenge was in Las Vegas filming brand new episodes for its upcoming season. We went down to the South Point Hotel and Casino to check out the set and chat with some of the competitors. While we...
A. Call This is the “smooth call” you hear about and it gives away the least amount of information about what you’re holding. Of course, you have very little information about the bettor’s hand at this point, so this is probably the weakest play you can make unless you hold a really strong hand like a “made” Straight, Flush or Full House. The problems this play produces are several, not the least of which is that it’ll probably slow down – or kill completely – the betting on the hand. In my (admittedly limited) experience, a lot of players will put you on a hand of Ace-something if you were the opening raiser and, if an Ace doesn’t fall on the flop, they’ll bet into you, whether or not they made a hand. If you call at this point, they’ll usually check on the turn, unless they put you on a draw. Of course, a draw may be the farthest thing from your mind, but if the board supports the notion, that’ll likely be the first hand your opponent puts you on. If s/he thinks you’re on a draw and has a hand like top-pair, top-kicker, then you can pretty much figure on looking at a big bet if the turn card doesn’t help a perceived Straight or Flush draw. If your opponent cannot, because of the flop’s “texture”, put you on a draw and bets on the turn, s/he either has a real hand or is “firing the next barrel” of a bluff. Your response will largely be determined by what you hold, the pot odds offered and your perception of what the bettor holds, plus the response from other players still in the pot. Besides folding and calling, you can choose to:
