If you’re aiming for more though, you should consider switching to a poker prop deal. Poker prop deals are overly generous rakeback deals which begin at around 80% rake rebate and can go all the way up to 135%. If you earn over 100% rake back, you’re essentially getting paid to play. How can a poker room afford to pay its players you may wonder…

To achieve critical player liquidity, poker rooms often resort to hiring poker props (there’s an article on this, link it to that). A poker room needs to have players at most of its tables all the time, because otherwise they simply won’t be able to retain any of the newly signed up players and the development of the poker room will come to a dead end. In order to achieve this critical liquidity, it makes perfect sense for poker rooms to pay some of their players to play. Poker propping is a phenomenon which exists in live poker as well.

Now then, if it offers players such great opportunities, how come some people stick with their regular rake rebate deals instead of becoming poker props? While rakeback players are free to roam to their heart’s content and to participate in all sorts of promotions and bonuses, prop players are tied by a set of restrictions. They won’t be eligible for a sign-up bonus, they will not be able to play in any of the promotions featured (unless the poker room states otherwise) and they will not be allowed to play on any table they wish to.

A poker prop will have to sign in with a shift manager through IM before every session. He will have to play at the tables the shift manager sends him to. Have no illusions, these tables are usually short-handed, possibly Omaha or Stud tables. He won’t be allowed to play at a table where another prop player is playing and he will not be able to join the waiting list of a full table. There are other restrictions as well, so you can see that a prop player’s life is not all milk and toast and honey either.

How come then that whenever you try to emulate the recklessness of a professional player like Gus Hansen or Ilari Sahamies, all you end up with are major swings driving you mad and a bunch of losses to top your day off?

Well, you should not confuse looseness with aggressiveness. Being loose means to play loads of starting hands, which means that – inevitably - you’ll end up playing junk every now and then. Being aggressive means to swing your stack around daringly and thus to exploit your edges to the maximum.

Now there’s a little bit of a dilemma when it comes to starting hand selection. If you’re too loose you’ll find yourself playing loads of EV- situations, and that will lead to your losing money. If you’re too tight on the other hand, and only play A,K and high pocket pairs, you will not solve the dilemma either, because you’ll become predictable and you’ll rob yourself of the chance to “milk” your good hands to the max. Obviously, the solution is finding the right kind of balance between being loose and tight. Professional players are great actors. Being good at acting is something that’s required of a good poker player. They may look like they’re reckless to you, or even to their opponents, but they’re not. Being reckless is just an image that they push, more often than not, successfully.

There’s just no way a successful poker player can be reckless and stay successful, unless he’s an out of this world luck-bag.

In the world of high stakes professional poker, felting an opponent is much more difficult than in a low-blinds cash game. Playing tight-aggressive “healthy” old poker is not going to cut it there. These guys need to bring something extra to the table to generate action, otherwise they’ll end up wasting their time at the green felt.

One of the techniques to successfully generate action and commotion at the table is to appear reckless. A big time gambler who’s only interested in taking down large pots and who’s always willing to let Lady Luck take care of his/her finances. This is what they want to look like. They’ll convince you they don’t care, but in the same time their minds work feverishly in the background, calculating odds and looking for the opportunity to pounce on their victims.

One way to sow this image of recklessness is by playing suited one gappers (like 5h, 7h etc). These hands offer several advantages to their owners: first of all, the guy shoving his chips in on such a hand looks like the definition of a reckless gambler. There’s nothing better to promote the right kind of table image than playing such hands.

Contrary to what it looks like, the suited one-gapper is a pretty good hand to take to a multi-handed flop. Would you believe me if I told you that a suited 6,8 is almost twice as likely to win at a 4-handed table than K,10o? It is also much better than A,Qo. It’s an excellent drawing hand and most people fail to realize that.

On top of all that, if your suited one-gapper is hit for a monster, it will almost impossible for your opponents to read you.

Never play online cash games without a rakeback deal. Most rakeback deals (like Merge rakeback) give you around 30% rake rebate, but some special deals called poker prop deals offer you more than 100%.

Das alles muss leider noch immer am Rande der Legalität veranstaltet werden, da es in Deutschland immer noch keine klare Gesetzgebung zum Thema Poker gibt – obwohl es sich nachweislich nicht um ein reines Glücks- sonder vielmehr um ein Geschicklichkeitsspiel handelt.

Eins ist klar: Solange kein Geld den Besitzer wechselt bzw. nur um Cent-Beträge gespielt wird, kann man spielen, was man will. Auch mit vielen Leuten und als Turnier. Manche Zeitgenossen finden ja schon den Ausdruck „Poker“ anstößig – und in einigen US-Bundesstaaten soll illegales Spielen ja sogar so hart bestraft werden, wie sexuelle Übergriffe.

Wenn Sie allerdings ein Turnier veranstalten wollen, bei dem z.B. eine Startgebühr erhoben wird (z.B. um die Kosten zu decken) und ggf. sogar (Sach- oder Geld-) Preise zu gewinnen sind, sollten Sie sich mit den örtlichen Behörden in Verbindung setzen. Sonst kann aus einem netten Pokerabend mit guten Absichten schnell ein (zumeist folgenloses, jedoch ausgesprochen unangenehmes) Gespräch mit den Herren in grün/blau werden…

*Anna Kournikova – schön anzusehen, gewinnt aber selten. Ähnlich wie Ass und König (AK) als Hole Cards bei Texas Hold’em.

The final table participants were Dennis Phillips ( in the chip lead with 26,295,000 chips), Ivan Demidov with 24,400,000, Scott Montgomery with 19,690,000, Peter Eastgate with 18,375,000, Ylon Schwartz with 10,525,000, Darus Suharto with 10,520,000, David Rheem with 10,230,000, Craig Marquis with 10,210,000 and Kelly Kim with 2,620,000.

 Craig Marquis was the first one to head to the rail roughly 3 hours after the final table action had begun. Despite the fact that he started the final table well ahead of Kelly Kim in chips, he failed to survive him and to take home any additional money. He went all-in on a pair of 7s and got called down by Scott Montgomery on A,Q. Even though he hit trips on the flop, Montgomery wet on to make a Broadway straight and to send him home.

 Short-stack Kelly Kim hung in there, and the simple fact that he managed to survive one player at the table gave him an additional $387,547 on top of the over $900,000 he’d already pocketed in July.

Kim’s 4,4 got a call preflop from Suharto’s 9,9 and failed to improve.

 Darus Suharto himself would be the next player to head to the payout line, as he moved all-in preflop on a A,8 and got a call from Scott Montgomery who once again held an A,Q. Montgomery made a flush on the turn and thus ended Suharto’s day, sending him home in 6^th place and in possession of a prize of $2.4 million.

 Montgomery – responsible for the demise of two of the final table players, was next to bust out. He got crippled by Ivan Demidov first, then he was soon with his back against the wall. On his final hand he managed to pair his ace up on the flop, and he even hit a set on the turn, but Peter Eastgate made a boat on the river to break his hand and heart sending him home in 5^th. Montgomery won $3.1 million.

 Ylon Schwartz decided to attempt a bluff on Peter Eastgate just when the latter hit a boat again. This hand sent Schwartz to the rail, and gave Eastgate the chip lead over the two other remaining competitors.

 The final two was set when Dennis Phillips ran a bluff into Peter Eastgate who had a set of 3s and decided to keep him honest. Phillips walked away from the final table with $4.5 million in his pocket.

The heads-up confrontation for the title between Demidov and Eastgate will take place tomorrow.

 Play online poker and win a seat in an event as prestigious as the WSOP, or the WSOP Main Event itself for some extremely low buy-ins. Don’t forget to sign up for a rakeback deal when playing online. It’ll provide you some nice EV+. Prop deals will give all your rake back, and some of them will even pay you for your play.

Many of these cash players – provided they’re acting in the shadow of a large chip-stack – completely reduce their strategy to set mining. Set mining is the habitual playing of small pocket pairs, solely with the purpose of hoping to be hit by a set on the flop. In order that you should really understand how set exploitation works, you need to understand the concept of implied odds.

Let’s consider that you are playing a pair of 6s from the cut off, with several people staying in the hand. At this moment, you are well aware of the fact that your hand is most probably not the best one at the table, but you do see the flop nonetheless hoping that you’ll land a set.

You are also aware that you will miss your set most of the time, and only make it on a few lucky hands. It would seem like you’re pouring chips into a negative EV value play. This situation – if contemplated from a strictly mathematical perspective – is indeed a negative EV one, but you – as a skilled player – know more about the nature of the game than cold-hard math does.

You know that on the few occasions you fill up your set, you’ll take down huge pots, because your set is going to be next to impossible to read. You’re bound to get a lot of money off people on a top pair, and even more off those who hit two pairs.

In the long-run, the money that you win on such hands will not only make up for all the money you spend seeing the flops in vain, it’ll also hit you with a nice profit. The implied odds turn this apparently negative EV setup into a positive EV one.

It is theoretically possible that you will lose on your set, in case one of your opponents gets hit by an even higher set on the flop. The odds of something like that happening though are small enough to make getting all your money in on your flopped set very profitable in the long-run. Upon hitting your trips, your sole goal should be only to get as much money into the pot as possible. You want to felt an opponent or double up at the very least, so be prepared to go for the kill when the opportunity presents itself.

Whether or not such set-oriented strategic approach is correct depends on a few key factors. First of all: the size of your stack. You need to be deep stacked to exploit this strategy, which means you need a minimum of 100BBs in your stack, but 200BBs is more like it.

You need the large stack because: you will be spending chips on seeing all those unrewarded flops, and your stack needs to be able to take that strain. On the other hand, you need the large stack so that you can “milk” your sets (when you do hit them) to the max. You will only be able to take as many chips from your opponents as your stack size allows you to.

This is the reason why set mining will not be a viable strategic approach in tournaments, where being deep stacked is a luxury you won’t really be able to rely on.

The exact way you need to play your small pairs is also dependent on a few things. On one hand, you need to put as little money into the pot preflop as possible, because you know you are going to lose the majority of that money, so you want to minimize your losses. On the other hand, in aggressive short handed games, betting or raising preflop on your pairs gives you a much bigger spectrum of possibilities to take the pot down.

Whether you mine sets as a part of your cash game strategy or not, you should always play with a rakeback deal backing you up. A rake rebate setup will open up an entirely new revenue stream for your online poker effort.

To bluff simply means “to raise or bet” even with a weak hand. Bluffing is an important element and a needed skill for any poker player wishing to hit it big. However, bluffing is not as easy as it may seem because you need to know when and how to bluff in order to fool your opponents. Since the odds of being dealt with aces every hand is next to impossible, the only way you can win poker frequently is to learn how to play inferior cards.

Bluffs come in two forms – a pure bluff and a semi-bluff. When your opponent makes a pure bluff, he raises with an inferior hand that has little or no chance of becoming a good hand. On the other hand, a semi-bluff occurs when a player raises with a hand that is not good, but has a possibility of improving later in the hand.

It is important to know when to bluff because if you do this all the time, it will lead you to more losses than you’ve planned on. The best times to bluff are when you are facing only one opponent, when you are in late position and no one else before you represents a strong hand, when you have read your opponents’ tells and believe they are weak enough to fold to a raise or bet and when the cards you have shown allow you to represent a superior hand.

However, some of the worst scenarios to make a bluff are when there are still many players in the hand, when you detect that your opponents who are still in the hand is the type who never folds and when a player has a lot of money in the pot that nothing can force him to fold.

Be aware that bluffing involves plenty of training, but should be mastered in order to win poker. However, bluffing is not part of any poker rules. You will not have points every time you bet or bluff, but by how often your bluffing works.

Intricate strategy (or basic for that matter) is impossible to learn at the play money tables, and efficiency is truly one of the last things that ever cross a play money player’s mind. This is one of the reasons why it is much more difficult to make the transition from play money tables to real money ones for beginners.

Another reason for it is a much less anticipated one: the presence of the rake and its effects on the player’s bankroll over the long-run. Real money tables feature rake. The rake is a small percentage “raked” off each and every real money pot that is won in a poker room. That’s how the poker room generates revenue, and that’s how it collects the money it needs to keep up the services it provides.

The rake is paid by all players who take an active part in a hand and not just by those who win the pot. The pot is a standalone entity at the table, it doesn’t belong to anyone until after it’s been raked, so do not fall under the false impression that you are not paying rake unless you win.

The bad news is, whatever you do at a real money table, you will end up losing money to the rake. In cash games each individual pot is raked in the above described way, in tournaments, you’ll be required to pay a tournament fee.

The good news is though that there are ways to reduce the rake, and even to recover some of it. The most straightforward way is through rakeback. You sign up for a rakeback deal and you’ll be automatically making extra money on each and every hand you stuff money into the pot in. Rakeback is a very convenient setup, because it’s a self-sufficient system, that is, you will not be required to exert any sort of effort in order to make it work.

Some rakeback deals, called prop deals, offer as much as 100% or even more of your rake returned, but they have special requirements towards players engaging in the scheme. A prop deal can be extremely lucrative for the right kind of players, because it does have the power to make long-term winners out of under-performing players.

Game selection offers other – more subtle – ways to reduce the rake. In order to be able to dodge the effects of the rake through game selection, you need to have a thorough understanding of it. Let’s see cash games first. You pay rake on every single hand you play. The more hands you play per hour, the more money you lose on the rake. Consequently, heads-up cash tables are the worst when it comes to the rake you pay, because they feature speedy play. Short handed cash tables are rake guzzlers too, but every cash game will ultimately eat up more money in rake than tournaments.

In a tournament, you only pay a one time fee, which is around 10% of the value of your buy-in. You will not pay rake on every hand you play, and you will get a much bigger bang for your buy-in than in cash games. In Multi Table Tournaments your odds of making the money are low because of the high number of opponents you’re faced with. In a STT (Single Table Tournament), you get better odds because you’re only going up against 5-9 opponents, but your buy-in/potential payout ratio will suffer.
Make sure you know where you’re taking your hard-earned money and where you can make the most of it.

1) Never team up – Playing poker is a single sport. You should never conspire with another poker player because this simply constitutes as cheating.

2) Leave street lingo on the streets – When you’re in the casino, an online poker room, or in other private poker games, practice civil language by keeping course language, swearing and vulgar utterances out of the poker room. If you’re used to swearing when playing in your house during poker night, but you plan to go pro, it’s never too early to practice using polite words.

3) Don’t be destructive – Make sure to take care of wrinkling or creasing the cards and spilling liquid on the table. You should also keep your chips as organized as possible and manage your area of the poker table. Generally, you should respect the environment wherever you’re playing.

4) Lower your volume – Whether you’re muffling sounds, making a conversation, stacking chips, sorting cards or moving your chair, keep the volume low to avoid disturbing your opponents. Be aware that all cell phones should be turned off during the game. Similarly, avoid any movement that may disrupt your opponent’s concentration. Lack of body movement is important in poker because it help players keep a poker face.

5) No drugs and weapons allowed – Leave your guns, knives and illicit drugs at home to avoid intimidating your opponents and even compromising safety. Some poker establishments allow alcohol and tobacco, while some don’t, so make sure to check with house rules before smoking or ordering drinks.

As long as you follow these simple rules, you won’t have a problem with any poker establishments.

In Chinese poker, the cards are arranged into three sections called the back, middle and front hand. From the front hand, the hand should become better in value. The dealer would give 13 facedown cards to each player. If there were four players playing, all 52 cards from the single deck would be dealt.

Choose five cards you wish to include for the “back hand”. Be careful in choosing the back hand because it should be the strongest of three hands. However, each card that you choose to use can only be used once. Choose another five cards to include on your “middle hand”. This hand should be lower in value than the ‘back hand’, but higher in value than the front hand, which is the weakest hand and is composed of the three last cards.

The first hand everyone would reveal is the front hand. In a game with 4 players, the player with the best hand wins 3 units, the second best wins 2 units, while the third best wins 1 unit. Everyone would reveal the middle hand next and just like the front hand, the highest-scoring player would be given the most units, while the lowest scoring player does not receive any units. Lastly, show the ‘back hand’ to your opponents and award units based on quality of hand.

Some players use Royalties in scoring, which are “bonus units” given to players that perform extremely well. When this is the case, players can receive units whenever they win all three rounds or they choose good front hands. You can decide on the royalties before starting the game.

1) Forced – As its name suggest, forced betting is a mandatory type of bet. Forced bets can be post, blind, bring-in or ante bets and is usually the bet that initiates pot. As such, forced bets are usually a smaller amount than the minimum limit. Post bets are required if you just joined the game, but the rest of your opponents have already given out an initial bet. Some poker games like Omaha Hold ‘Em and Texas Hold ‘Em incorporates two forced bets, using a small and a big blind bet. Most Stud poker games use both the bring-in and ante bets.

2) Check – Any player who wishes not to bet, but choose to stay in the round would check. Considered a bet of zero, players usually make a check bet by simply tapping on the poker table. If you made a check bet and your opponent makes a bet, you have the choice to raise the bet or call.

3) Call – If you wish to match the amount of a bet made by another player, you can use this bet.

4) Check-raise – Most of the time, this type of bet is used in deceiving other players. This is done when a player checks aiming to bring more players into the hand and the same player raises his bet once other players have placed a bet after him.

5) Raise – When you make a raise, you increase your original bet. Any player that wishes to continue in the round should match the raised bet.

6) Re-raise – When you raised the bet and another player wants to re-raise the bet, he has the option to do so.

7) Straddle – You can place a straddle bet before getting any cards. Although this is not mandatory, straddle bets are placed in poker games with blind bets. The amount placed should be more than the previous bet.

Fold is not a type of bet, but it is used instead of betting. When you no longer want to continue with the hand, you can fold and surrender your cards. All variations of poker games have a limit on how many raises are allowed