Imagine having your own online Poker Club, for just you and your friends – where you can arrange your own private poker games whenever you want! It’s called Home Games. It’s free to use. And it’s really easy to set up.
PokerStars introduces Online Home Games
Now you can take the experience of home games online! PokerStars Home Games lets you create and manage your own private poker club to play online poker games of your choice, with just your friends, on your schedule.
Creating a club is easy – just pick a club name and invitation code. You’ll then be presented with your own exclusive poker lobby that you can customize with private Home Game tables and tournaments of your choosing.
Inviting friends is simple – just send them the club ID and invitation code, then accept them as members when they join.
Scheduling games and tournaments is moments away – just choose the game type and buy-in level, then set the date for your online Home Game. The system will automatically notify your club members of the scheduled game.
Your exclusive online Poker Club includes these key features:
Club Management Tools – appoint administrators, accept/remove members, customize your club lobby, set length of club seasons, and more.
Club Leaderboard – ranks players by points earned through tournament play
Player Statistics – view points earned, top finishes, knockouts for each club member
Game Management Tools – customize game parameters and schedule games
Save Favorite Game Setups – easy to replay your favorite customized game configurations
Game Schedule – list of scheduled tournaments and open ring game tables
Game Results – view tournament results including finish order, points earned, knockouts
Private Games – all games and tournaments are available only to members of your club
Custom Tables – your club name appears on the felt of your customized game tables
Full Range of Poker Games – Choose Hold’em, Omaha, Stud, mixed games like HORSE and others
It’s Free – there is no charge for opening and running your own online Poker Club
Check out the rest of the Home Games section to learn more, and see how easy it is to manage or join an online Poker Club with PokerStars Home Games.
Home Games Romania
You are invited to join my private online poker club, Home Games Romania.
- If you don’t already have it, download the free PokerStars software
- Open the main poker lobby, then click on the Home Games tab
- Click the ‘Join a Poker Club’ button
- Enter my Club ID number: 194031
- Enter my Invitation Code: homegamesro
That’s it! Once I’ve approved your membership request, we’ll be ready to start playing Home Games online together.
In my continuing self-education as a no-limit Hold ‘em player, I think it’s fair to say that few players have been “short-stacked” in tournaments as often as me. Be it a one-table sit and go type of match or a multi-table tournament with hundreds of players, my conservative style of play will frequently find me as the low stack with four people remaining at a 9- or 10-player SnG or 11th of 11 players when the tournament pays the top 10 places. Lately I’ve been able to improve on that, but it took time to get beyond being eliminated “on the bubble”, which is – as you probably know – a frustrating experience. But take heart, fellow students; the day will come when you’re first among the final 4 at an SnG or in the top five of a multi-table tournament when everyone gets in the money. It has happened to me and, if you maintain the discipline I’m trying to teach here, it’ll happen to you, too.
Let’s face it; when you’re the smallest stack at the table, your opponents want only one thing: your financial demise. If three are paid and you’re in fourth place, knocking you out gets everyone else “in the money”, so the attacks on your stack are going to come from all directions. I know, I’ve been there plenty of times and, while I cannot take credit for inventing the betting technique I’m going to explain here, I will say that I have used it to great effect; most recently at a multi-table satellite tournament where I was 9th out of 9 players, but went on to win it.
Almost all of the advice you’ll read or hear about playing when short-stacked (which I define as having less than 7 Big Blind bets remaining) is to pick a spot and push all-in, hoping to get lucky. Well, I’m not one to depend upon luck – I welcome it, but never depend upon it. Unless you have a really great hand like pocket Aces or Kings, my advice is to avoid a pre-flop “all-in” bet, which looks like sheer desperation and attracts callers like blood in the water attracts sharks. To add to your problems, you’ll probably have to play a less-than-great hand like K-10s, A-x offsuit, etc., which is not the type of hand your opponents usually see you playing if you’re using my starting hands matrix.
So the trick here is to decide that you’re going to go all-in and (ideally) do it when you’ll be first to bet on the flop, which means you’re either in the blinds or in early position. Your 3 times the Big Blind raise from early position or from the blinds might induce everyone to fold, but more likely one or two players will call with “premium” hands, just as they might if you weren’t short. But here’s the difference: when the flop comes, you then go all-in regardless of what effect it had on your hand. There’s a possibility, especially if you have only one opponent, that the flop did not improve his or her hand, just as it may not have improved yours. But at least now your opponent has to think about what to do and we all know that forcing our opponents to make decisions may inspire them to make the wrong one. If your opponent does make a hand, the result is the same whether you pushed pre-flop or only raised the bet; you’re toast. But if the flop missed your opponent completely, s/he just might fold. Sure, it’s a long shot, but it doesn’t cost you anything to try – you’ve already decided to put in all your chips. The downside here is that everyone may fold if you bet 7 times the Big Blind bet (“folding equity”), but that might be offset by having more than one player call, thus giving you the chance to win more if this works.
The bad thing about being short-stacked is that your opponents know they likely won’t have to risk an amount above what you’ll be pushing out there, so they’ll often call with any kind of decent hand, especially if they have one of the bigger stacks. In a way, that’s good because you might well be a favorite in the hand, but the best you can do is double up if only one other player calls. By making a more modest raise, hopefully you’ll get multiple callers, which automatically reduces your winning probability, but it reduces theirs as well, yet you may still be the favorite to win the hand. It’s a fair trade to make in an effort to increase your stack by more than double.
Probably the ideal time and place for this bet is when you’re in the Small Blind and the player on the Button raises, but not enough to put you all in. Rather than re-raise, which may cause the Big Blind to fold, just call. If the BB also calls, that’s a bit worrisome, but it’s now a nice pot and you’ll be betting first. After the flop cards are shown, you push all in and cross your fingers for luck. If it’s a rag flop like 2, 5, 9 “rainbow”, your all-in bet might cause the others to fold, especially if they’re playing big cards that aren’t paired. Remember, the player on the Button is making an almost-obligatory raise and the Big Blind likely has a “random” hand, so you have a decent shot at winning. As I told you earlier, the last time I used this bet I was 9th of 9 players and in the Small Blind. The Button raised, I called and the Big Blind folded. The flop was nothing special and I went all in, which caused the Button to fold. I scooped the pot and it was enough to get me back in the game, which I went on to win. I remember that I had made a pair of 7s on the flop, but it didn’t really matter because the hand ended with my bet. Was I lucky? Perhaps, but it wasn’t my cards that won the hand – it was the way I bet them.
“Okay, GM” I hear you say, “it worked that time, but will it work against experienced players?” Fair question. Of course, nothing is going to work all of the time, but let me quote you a passage out of a great book, “Harrington on Hold ‘em” (Two Plus Two Publishing, 2004 – Vol. 1) that was co-authored by Dan Harrington who is the WSOP Champion for 1995 and who made it to the final table in both 2003 and 2004. In discussing a hand where the short-stack (Player A) opens the betting with a minimum raise, he says this on Page 94:
“A had only $6000 left, just 2.5 times the pot. He had only a couple of rounds left before he’s blinded away. With any kind of reasonable hand, Player A could easily have justified shoving all his chips in the pot and rolling the dice. But he didn’t. Instead he made the minimum raise. That’s what a player does when he wants other players in the pot against him. He wants to make sure he gets some action before he gets all his own chips in. Conclusion? Player A has a very strong hand.”
Like any event or sports league, the WSOP also has corporate sponsors and licensed products, which like any leagues or events, pay fees to market themselves as an official sponor and/or licensee and exclusively use the WSOP insigina and cross-promote with their events. Besides the Harrah’s properties and ESPN, major sponsors have included Miller Brewing’s “Milwaukee’s Best” brand of beers, Pepsi’s SoBe Adreneline Rush energy drink (sponsors of the 2005 TOC), Helene Curtis’ Degree brand of anti-perspirant/deodorant, Card Player magazine, and GlaxoSmithKline/Bayer’s Levitra erectile dysfunction medicine are all official corporate sponsors. Licensees include Activision (video games for different plaforms such as Nintendo’s GameCube, Microsoft’s Xbox, Sony’s PlayStation 2 and PC featuring computer generated versions of stars like Ferguson among others), and products made by different companies ranging from chip sets, playing cards, hand held games and clothing like caps and shirts. The fees and licences bring in over a million dollars to Harrah’s.
The main event
The main event of the WSOP is the $10,000 buy-in no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em tournament. Winners of the event not only get the largest prize of the tournament and golden bracelet, but additionally their picture is placed into the Gallery of Champions at Binion’s.
There have been many memorable events during the WSOP, including Jack Straus’s 1982 comeback win after discovering he had one $500 chip left when he thought he was out of the tournament.
A few players have won the WSOP multiple times, including Stu Ungar who won in 1980, 1981 and 1997. Ungar had a drug problem that spanned decades, which makes his 1997 win all the more amazing. Since Ungar had no money to enter the tournament in 1997, his friend and six-time WSOP bracelet winner Billy Baxter gave him the entrance fee. Ungar split the $1,000,000 prize evenly with Baxter.
Johnny Chan won back to back in 1987 and 1988. Chan finished 2nd in 1989 to the youngest WSOP main event winner of all time, Phil Hellmuth. The final hand of the 1988 event between Chan and Erik Seidel would later be featured in the movie Rounders.
Chris Moneymaker won the main event in 2003 after qualifying through a $39 satellite tournament at the PokerStars online cardroom. Four players at the final table of the 2004 main event qualified through PokerStars as well, including the winner, Greg Raymer and second place finisher David Williams. In 2005, eventual champion Joseph Hachem entered the old fashioned way: with the $10,000 buy-in. After winning, he signed a contract to act as a representative of PokerStars also.
It may be that winning the WSOP makes legends out of people, but some living poker legends have tried unsuccessfully for years to win the main event, including: T. J. Cloutier (2000 and 1985 runner-up), Erik Seidel (1988 runner-up), Dave “Devilfish” Ulliott, Barry Greenstein, Men “The Master” Nguyen, and Howard Lederer.
From 1971 on, all WSOP events have been tournaments with cash prizes. In 1973 a new event, five-card stud, was added to the main event of No Limit Texas Hold ‘em. Since then new events have been added and removed. In 2006 there will be 42 events at the WSOP, including poker games like Omaha and Razz as well as events only for seniors and women. Event winners get, in addition to their prize money, the coveted golden bracelet.
Doyle Brunson (nicknamed “Texas Dolly”) and Johnny Chan have each won ten bracelets, while Phil Hellmuth has nine. Doyle’s son, Todd Brunson, won a bracelet in a pot-limit Omaha event in 2005, making them the first father/son combo to win at least one event at the WSOP. Also, actress Jennifer Tilly became the second non-poker celebrity to win a WSOP event when she won the Women’s No-Limit Texas Hold-’Em event in 2005. French singer/actor Patrick Bruel won a Limit Hold’em championship in 1998.
The number of participants in the WSOP has grown every year, and in recent years the growth has exploded. In 2000 there were 4,780 entrants in the various events, but in 2005, the number rose to over 23,000 players. In the main event alone, participants grew from 839 in 2003, to 2,576 in 2004, to 5,619 in 2005. For the 2006 main event, a cap of 8,000 players has been established. Much of this growth can be attributed to the WSOP airing on ESPN and the World Poker Tour being shown on the Travel Channel, along with other USA television over-the-air and cable networks such as Fox Sports Net and their “Poker Superstars” series, Bravo with the “Celebrity Poker Showdown” series and GSN with their “Poker Royale” series, as well as the boom in online poker cardrooms on the World Wide Web.
Like most tournaments, the sponsoring casino takes a “rake” (a percentage of between six and ten percent, depending on the buy-in amount) from the buy-ins and distributes the rest, hence the prize money increases with more players. In the 2005 main event $52,818,610 (US) in prize money was distributed, including a $7.5 million first prize. Subtracting the $10,000 buy-ins, over $47 million was won by 560 players in the event. Carl Ygborn finished “on the bubble” (in 561st place), and Harrah’s gave him a free entry into the 2006 Main Event.
One event, that was scheduled for Biloxi, Mississippi, was canceled after the Grand Casino Biloxi, which was scheduled to host the event, suffered major damage from Hurricane Katrina. The Rio also hosted the 2006 World Series of Poker, which began on June 25 with satellite events and formally began the day after with the annual Casino Employee event, won in 2006 by Chris Gros. 2006 featured the “Tournament of Champions” on June 25 and 26, won by Mike Sexton. Various events led up to the main event, which was held from July 28 until August 10. The first prize of $12 million was awarded to Jamie Gold.
While some tournaments offer a mix of games, like H.O.R.S.E. events which combine Hold’em, Omaha, Razz, Stud and Stud Eight or Better and Dealer’s Choice events, at which one may choose from a similar menu of games, most tournaments feature one form of stud or community card poker, such as seven-card stud, seven card high-low stud, Omaha Hold ‘em or Texas Hold ‘em. Both Omaha and Texas Hold’em tournaments are commonly offered in fixed-limit, pot limit, and no limit forms.
Tournament venues
Informal tournaments can be organized by a group of friends; for example, most colleges feature poker tournaments. Casinos and online gaming sites often offer daily tournaments.
However, these are not the only venues. Several World Poker Tour venues are cruise ships at sea. The 2005 World Series of Poker primarily took place in the conference hall of the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Major tournaments
The two largest and most well-known tournaments are the World Poker Tour championship event and the World Series of Poker, held at Binion’s Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas. The World Series has traditionally been featured on ESPN.
The 2005 World Series of Poker was the first held outside of Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, though the final few days of the main event were held in the legendary Benny’s Bullpen. Future tournaments will be held at one of the Harrah’s Entertainment properties; 2005 saw the Rio as primary venue.
Arguably the most publicised European tournament is the Poker Million, which began in 2000 on Sky Sports, following on from the success of the Late Night Poker television show.
One of the easiest ways to cheat at poker is with a partner or many partners, called collusion. This is basically playing differently against one or more players than you do against others at the table (in contrast to mechanics, which is directly manipulating cards or chips in violation of the rules). The gravity of such cheating ranges from the subconscious to the conspiratorial. Some common forms of collusion are soft play, that is, failing to bet or raise in a situation that would normally merit it because of your opponent; whipsawing, where partners at opposite ends of the table raise and reraise each other to trap players in between; and dumping, or deliberately losing to a partner (perhaps someone you are backing financially or with whom you have traded a percentage stake). Signalling (that is, trading information between partners) is probably the most egregious example of such cheating, but all of these are considered bad play and should not be tolerated at any poker game.
In friendly games it is common to be playing against someone you know well. Perhaps your spouse may be playing at the game with the rest of your friends. Suddenly your luck turns for the worse. Subconsciously, you are less willing to take the money of the people you know or love. Perhaps one fellow has been getting bad hands all evening, and you know he has car payments to make, and this changes the game being played. The best advice is to leave friendship outside the poker game. Especially in tournament poker, soft-playing a friend is cheating all of the other players out of their chance to see you bust your friend, getting them closer to the prize money.
For this reason, there are laws in some U.S. states saying that a husband and wife cannot play poker at the same table. Perhaps the easiest way to exploit such a situation is to agree to split the profits (after all, couples often have shared bank accounts). Even without any explicit collusion during the game, this reduces the variance of the team as a whole.
It should come as no surprise that two people sharing information about their hands enjoy a great advantage over the other players. If you do not believe this, deal out a few poker hands, but deal yourself two. The idea is that these players signal one another and only play the better of the two hands. Signals can take many forms, from the placement of the chips on the cards to morse code tappings on the table. The key ingredient in all signaling systems is the ability to be repeated unobtrusively. In order for this advantage to make money it has to be done many times without someone realizing it. In a game where people (hopefully) are always watching each other, this can prove problematic. When a cheat is signaling the value of his hand to his partner, he is also signaling the value of his hand to everyone at the table. The result of a system of signals being figured out is nothing short of financial disaster. Some games are more susceptible to this kind of cheating than others: in Five-card stud and Lowball, for example, signalling the rank of just one card can give another player sufficient information to make many otherwise difficult decisions.
Collusion in online poker is relatively easy and much more difficult to spot if executed well. The main reason is that the cheaters can engage in instant messaging discussing their cards with no one looking at them. Sometimes the same person can be using two or more computers and playing under different aliases. This gives him an advantage that’s difficult to work against. However many poker rooms have imposed a maximum of one account per household, though a determined cheater can still bypass this by using multiple connections thus having different IP addresses. However, online poker sites keep records of every hand played, and collusion can often be detected by finding the appropriate pattern. Many sites also offer head-to-head (heads-up) games, where collusion is not useful.
Another concern in online poker is the use of software called “bots” (short for computer robots). These are programs that make decisions on behalf of the player based on odds etc. and also play on their behalf. Though their accuracy and ability has been questioned, it has nevertheless been seen as unfair practices by the poker room and has sought to ban them. With improvements in software and hardware it is expected that in the near future a bot that can beat a human consistently is a near certainity.
Should two people wanting to cheat be in close proximity, they might decide to hand-muck. That is, to switch hands or alter them in some way (though this particular form of cheating might be considered mechanics rather than collusion). A simple idea of this is to have two people sitting next to each other in a game of draw poker. While they receive two mediocre hands, they could switch certain cards between themselves in order to form a worthless hand and a winner. There are many sleight of hand methods to this. Hand-mucking is also a problem in blackjack.
Perhaps the most odious way of cheating with a partner is to have a weekly game at your house, agreeing with all your regular players that you split the profit from cheating a single player. This hot-seat game invites a new player every week, only to play against six players all working together. The mechanics are the same, players signal their hands, then play proceeds as to drive the hot-seat out, or to put all his money in the pot.
If you are at a poker game and you detect that your opponents are cheating, but are not very good at it, you can use this information to your advantage. You may be better off exploiting their inept cheating than leaving or turning them in. Dr. Frank R. Wallace wrote a book on this, in which he coined the term neocheating (He later developed a philosophy called Neo-Tech. The book consists of 2 parts easy to spot cheating techniques (marking the deck, crimping cards, false cuts, etc) and 5 parts philosophical content and stories.
Celebrity Poker Showdown was a celebrity game show on the cable network Bravo. It was a limited-run series of five celebrities playing poker. The series ran eight tournaments in five seasons.
The first series was hosted by actor/comic Kevin Pollak, and each episode (except for the Championship Game) was an hour. The Championship telecast was two hours in length. Each succeeding series has been hosted by Dave Foley, and all episodes were two hours in length. Professional poker player Phil Gordon provides the color commentary throughout each series. The series is produced by Joshua Malina.
Steven Culp won the series’ seventh tournement final, aired on November 17, 2005.
In an interview with TV Guide, host Dave Foley said that a ninth tournament is not being produced, as Bravo did not order any new episodes.Some of the celebs on this series have parlayed this into visits onto the World Poker Tour and/or the World Series of Poker. In 2005, Brad Garrett, Shannon Elizabeth and James Woods all participated in the WSOP’s $10,000 Texas Hold-Em Main Event.
Tournament winnings
The first six tournaments were played for a total of $250,000 in prize money as follows:
The four players eliminated in each of the first 5 games: $5,000 each
Fifth Place in the Championship: $7,500
Fourth Place in the Championship: $10,000
Third Place in the Championship: $12,500
Second Place in the Championship: $20,000
First Place in the Championship: $100,000
Starting with the Seventh Tournament, the “prize pool” was increased to $1,000,000 and divided thusly:
The four players eliminated in each of the first 5 games: $5,000 each
Fifth Place in the Championship: $25,000
Fourth Place in the Championship: $75,000
Third Place in the Championship: $100,000
Second Place in the Championship: $200,000
First Place in the Championship: $500,000
Post-show poker
Some of the celebrities on this series have parlayed their game play into visits onto the World Poker Tour and the World Series of Poker. In 2005, Brad Garrett, Shannon Elizabeth, Nicholas Gonzalez, and James Woods all participated in the WSOP’s $10,000 Texas Hold-Em Main Event. In 2007, Shannon Elizabeth advanced to the semifinals of the NBC National Heads-Up Poker Championship.
In 2005, prior to appearing on the show, Jennifer Tilly won a WSOP Gold Bracelet for coming in first in the Ladies’ No-Limit Texas Hold ‘Em event, and won the third annual WPT Ladies Invitational Tournament.
Parodies
For the December 10, 2005 episode of Saturday Night Live, Foley and Gordon lent their voices (playing themselves) to a Robert Smigel animated TV Funhouse parody called “Celebrity Mugshot Poker,” where, as the title suggests, various celebrities (like Nick Nolte and James Brown) are represented by animated versions of their infamous mugshots.
Saturday Night Live also did a parody of this show on the season 29 episode hosted by Will and Grace star Megan Mullally, with Phil Gordon played by Chris Parnell and comedian Kevin Pollak played by Jimmy Fallon.
MADtv did a parody of this show as a ninth and tenth season recurring sketch called “Celebrity Quarters” (based on the drinking game “quarters”) with Ron Pederson as Dave Foley and, replacing Phil Gordon, was Nick Nolte (played by Ike Barinholtz).
For the November 3, 2005 episode of the Friends TV series spin-off, Joey, Foley and Gordon played themselves in a fictitious tournament in which the character of Joey (played by Matt LeBlanc) participates based on bad advice and incorrect rules from his neighbor, Alex, who is trying to sabotage his efforts. This includes a so-called Texas Earthquake that occurs when one card of each suit is present in the face-up community cards, during which Joey believes that players jump onto the table and attempt to steal chips from their opponents.
Betting, in tournaments, can take one of three forms:
In a structured (fixed limit) betting system, bets and raises are restricted to specific amounts, though these amounts typically increase throughout the tournament. For example, for a seven-card stud tournament with the stakes at 10/20, raises would be $10 in the first three rounds of betting, and $20 in the latter rounds.
Semi-structured betting provides ranges for allowed raises. Usually, in this format, one may not raise less than a previous player has raised. For example, if one player raises $20, it would be illegal for another player to raise an additional $5. Pot limit is a semi-structured format in which raises cannot exceed the current size of the pot.
Unstructured betting, usually called no limit. While blinds, antes, or bring-ins are fixed, players are free to bet as much as they wish, even early in a round of betting. To bet all of one’s chips (risking one’s tournament life, in the event of losing the hand) is to go all-in. In no-limit tournaments, players will sometimes take this risk even early in the betting; for example, in some no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em tournaments, it is not uncommon for players to bet “all-in” before the flop.
The betting structure is one of the most defining elements of the game; even if other aspects are equivalent, a fixed-limit version and its no-limit counterpart are considered to be very different games, because the strategies and play styles are very different. For instance, it is much easier to bluff in a no-limit game, which allows aggressive betting, than in a fixed-limit game. No-limit games also vary widely according to the proclivities of the players; an informal, emergent, betting structure is developed by the players’ personal strategies and personalities.
The stakes of each round, as well as blinds, bring-ins, and antes as appropriate per game, typically escalate according either to the time elapsed or the number of hands played. (Raising stake levels according to hands played is usually considered preferable, because it defeats strategic stalling.) This is done for two reasons. First of all, as players are eliminated from the tournament, the average chip counts of the players increase. Secondly, it prevents the game from getting into a rut where chips are exchanged among the players, but players do not run out.
The history of poker is a matter of some debate. The name of the game likely descended from the French poque, which descended from the German pochen (‘to knock’), but it is not clear whether the origins of poker itself lie with the games bearing those names. It closely resembles the Persian game of as nas, and may have been taught to French settlers in New Orleans by Persian sailors. It is commonly regarded as sharing ancestry with the Renaissance game of primero and the French brelan. The English game brag (earlier bragg) clearly descended from brelan and incorporated bluffing (though the concept was known in other games by that time). It is quite possible that all of these earlier games influenced the development of poker as it exists now.
English actor Joseph Crowell reported that the game was played in New Orleans in 1829, with a deck of 20 cards, four players betting on which player’s hand was the most valuable. Jonathan H. Green’s book, An Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling (G. B. Zieber, Philadelphia, 1843), described the spread of the game from there to the rest of the country by Mississippi riverboats, on which gambling was a common pastime.
Soon after this spread, the full 52-card English deck was used, and the flush was introduced. During the American Civil War, many additions were made, including draw poker, stud poker (the five-card variant), and the straight. Further American developments followed, such as the wild card (around 1875), lowball and split-pot poker (around 1900), and community card poker games (around 1925). Spread of the game to other countries, particularly in Asia, is often attributed to the U.S. military.
The game and jargon of poker have become important parts of American culture and English culture. Such phrases as ace in the hole, ace up one’s sleeve, beats me, blue chip, call one’s bluff, cash in, high roller, pass the buck, poker face, stack up, up the ante, when the chips are down, wild card, and others are used in everyday conversation even by those unaware of their origins at the poker table.
Modern tournament play became popular in American casinos after the World Series of Poker began in 1970. It was also during that decade that the first serious strategy books appeared, notably The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky (ISBN 1880685000), Super System by Doyle Brunson (ISBN 0931444014), and The Book of Tells by Mike Caro (ISBN 0897461002).
Poker’s popularity has experienced an unprecedented spike in recent years, largely due to the introduction of online poker and the invention of the hole-card camera which finally turned the game into a spectator sport. Viewers can now follow the action and drama of the game, and broadcasts of poker tournaments such as the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour have brought in huge audiences for cable and satellite TV distributors.
A poker tournament is a tournament at which the winners are decided by playing poker, usually a particular style of poker.
Contrast this to a ring game, where the game is ongoing with no formal structure to determine a single winner in a certain length of time.
Types of poker
While some tournaments offer a mix of games, like H.O.R.S.E. events which combine Hold’em, Omaha, Razz, Stud and Stud Eight or Better and Dealer’s Choice events, at which one may choose from a similar menu of games, most tournaments feature one form of stud or community card poker, such as seven-card stud, seven card high-low stud, Omaha Hold ‘em or Texas Hold ‘em. Both Omaha and Texas Hold’em tournaments are commonly offered in fixed-limit, pot limit, and no limit forms.
Tournament venues
Informal tournaments can be organized by a group of friends; for example, most colleges feature poker tournaments. Casinos and online gaming sites often offer daily tournaments.
However, these are not the only venues. Several World Poker Tour venues are cruise ships at sea. The 2005 World Series of Poker primarily took place in the conference hall of the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas.
Major tournaments
The two largest and most well-known tournaments are the World Poker Tour championship event and the World Series of Poker, held at Binion’s Horseshoe casino in Las Vegas. The World Series has traditionally been featured on ESPN.
The 2005 World Series of Poker was the first held outside of Binion’s Horseshoe Casino, though the final few days of the main event were held in the legendary Benny’s Bullpen. Future tournaments will be held at one of the Harrah’s Entertainment properties; 2005 saw the Rio as primary venue.
Arguably the most publicised European tournament is the Poker Million, which began in 2000 on Sky Sports, following on from the success of the Late Night Poker television show.
Imagine having your own online Poker Club, for just you and your friends – where you can arrange your own private poker games whenever you want! It’s called Home Games. It’s free to use. And it’s really easy to set up.
