Playing Position

Just like anything in the game of online poker, you’ll find that playing when you are in position is crucial. It is even more important when playing heads up poker because you should be raising from the button with a large range of hands, mainly because you have control throughout the entire hand, and are likely to take down at least the blinds, and even potentially taking down the pot with a continuation bet after the flop. The most important thing here is that while you should be playing quite a bit in position, you should also extend your range MUCH more than you would in a standard poker game, mainly because of the fact that you are only up against one opponent, so you have to put them on a larger range as well!

Three Betting

Three betting is a great part of poker that is often overlooked in standard poker games. In heads up poker though it is almost never overlooked though, as it is a great way to take down your opponents original raise, or even take down a nice sized pot if you are three betting after the flop. There two main times that you will be three betting, with one being when you have a big draw or a strong hand that you are looking to get it all in with, and the other being when you are simply bluffing and attempting to take down the pot from the opponent if you feel that they are weak or bluffing. If you pick the correct times to three bet and get good reads on your opponent then you’ll find that three betting is a great spot to be able to build your chip stack quickly.

In general, cash game poker and heads up cash game poker is quite a bit different. You should be playing a good bit more, and you’ll find that you also get to see quite a few hands over a shorter period of time, which is why many players enjoy this style of poker. If you’ve never played heads up cash game poker before then just make sure that you are playing in position and being aggressive at the right points!

Every site or skin under the Revolution Gaming Network is going to be offering players 36% rakeback starting on June 1st, a number that is definitely impressive. The deal with be offered to all new players who sign up, and this is something that most players are pretty happy about, especially because they had to deal with the issue of cutting their rakeback program when they were on the Merge Gaming Network after Black Friday hit. It’s definitely worth noting that the 36% that they will be offering is the highest percent of rakeback out of any online poker site, and players are going to be paid daily, which is something that most players prefer.

This won’t be the only new promotion that Lock Poker and the Revolution Gaming Network is going to offer either, as they are also set to offer up a new VIP Loyalty Rewards Program as well, which they will be releasing more information on in the upcoming weeks. The Ronin Rake Race gives players the chance to win as much as $42,500 in just the month of June as well, so if you were interested in joining up with the new network then looking into doing it early on would definitely be a good decision! There is also a plan to set up a brand new online poker tournament schedule as well, which will include a Superstack tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $100k that will kick off on the 3rd of June. This tournament will feature two of the biggest pros on the site and in the game today in Annette Obrestad and Chris Moorman as well. There will also be another big tournament hosted by Matt Stout and Melanie Weisner as well.

Last but not least is the bonus that players will be offered on the new Revolution Gaming Network. Both new and existing players are going to get the same, solid 200% match of up to $2,000 on their deposit, which is a good way to start building your bankroll from the word go. Lock Poker and the Revolution Gaming Network seem to be heading in the right direction, and if things pan out they could potentially become a top five poker room in no time.

This promotion is excellent for quite a few reasons, but one of the largest is the fact that the newest version of it is going to offer the p layers over $1 million total in prizes that will be awarded. There is a potential for players to actually win up to $45k in cash straight into your online poker account through this promotion, which is obviously a huge selling point for the players.

This promotion will kick off to start June and is going to run all the way through the month. The Ronin Rake Race will give players different cash prizes, with numbers being based off of the amount of VPP points that they end up earning during the month. Players will get prizes starting with as few as 100 VPP’s over the length of the month, which is definitely not a tough number to hit. If players hit that number then they will earn $1.50 in a bonus, and these numbers will go all the way up to players having the chance to earn 80,000 VPP’s throughout the month, which will get them $7,500. This would give the player a cumulative total throughout the entire race of $45,142, which is a massive pay day for playing consistently throughout one month.

This promotion was eliminated after the Merge Gaming Network decided to stop offering rakeback on any site that fell under their network, and they also decided to crack down on the promotions that were ran by their different sites as well. The reason why the Ronin Rack Race will run again is because they are now able to make up their own promotions and really make their own decisions since they have decided to create the Revolution Gaming Network. That is obviously great news for players as the rake race is officially back on Lock Poker and should be a great one for players. Lock has also stated that they plan on offering rakeback once again to the players once they are fully moved over to the Revolution Gaming Network next month.

Keep an eye on further promotions from Lock Poker in the coming months as well!

The idea behind Zoom Poker is that players buy-in to play against a large group of players at a specific limit, and the game type and stakes are both set throughout the length of your play. As soon as you fold your hand though, you will automatically be moved to another table with a new group of players, and you have the option to fold your hand at any time during the play as well. There is the “fast fold” option which allows you to even fold your hand before the action even gets to you, leading to you being dealt into a new hand possibly before it would even be on you to act.

It’s still standard poker with standard games and limits, but the biggest difference is that you are able to see a ton more hands in a much shorter period of time, which means that there is no time in between hands when you fold that you have to sit and watch the play unfold in front of you. You still have the option to be able to see how a hand plays out if you’d like to by pressing the “CTRL” button on your keyboard while pressing fold, and this will let you see what happens in the hand. But in general, you are going to not only get to play more hands, but also earn more rakeback and be able to stay involved in the action rather than having to play hands out of position or play hands that you typically wouldn’t want to play in order to remain involved.

With the new games opening up they have made it so that instead of just offering No Limit Hold’em at the lower stakes, you can instead play in Omaha and Draw games as well, with limits that range quite a bit more as well. There are still the low limits offered such as the $0.01/$0.02, but it will also go all the way up to the $2.50/$5.00 blind levels as well. As far as multi-tabling goes, you also have the option to play up to four tables at one time as well.

All of the different Football Players that you can win are awarded at random times for every time that a player earns 10 points while playing at the cash game tables on the site. Each player will receive their first player after only five points though, so you can start off the promotion in the right way. The players are divided among 16 different teams, and each team is split four different groups of even numbers. The prizes are split and awarded after you earn all the players on one specific team, and also when you get the players from every single team in a specific group as well. If you are able to take down every single one of the 64 Football Players available then you will when a nice grand prize of $100,000 for your efforts. On top of all of this, some of the players will come with freeroll entries and some additional cash prizes as well.

The different groups are broken down into Group A, which features Poland, Greece, Russia, and the Czech Republic, and will pay out a prize of $7k for getting all of the teams. Group B features Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, and Portugal with a prize of $1k for getting all four teams. Group C features Spain, Italy, Croatia, and the Republic of Ireland with a prize of $3k. Last but not least is Group D that features Sweden, the Ukraine, England, and France with a prize of $2k.

As far as picking up the prizes for getting each player from full teams, you’ll find that these prizes will range between $50 for England, up to $1,200 for Poland with multiple additional prizes in between. There are also the individual Football Player prizes that you can win instantly that range from $1 all the way up to $20 (for the Poland Goalkeeper), and you can also win your way into freerolls as large as $10k for getting the Germany Midfielder.

Players will be able to win as many as 100 Football Players each day during this challenge, and you have to login to your account in order to see which Football Players that you’ve actually won. The players are going to be given through the end of June or until each of the players have been given out, whichever comes first. In total, there were 3.4 million left to give away, so you’ll have some time to earn them.

While the first event was considered to be a “mid level” buy-in at $215, it was still fairly large when taking all things into account on the online poker site. The event was a No Limit Hold’em event that featured a massive 8,240 players. When Day 1 came to an end Blom found himself sitting in a pretty good spot, but it was Day 2 that he took over the action and found himself with the chip lead going into the final table. When the final table kicked off he made an incredible run leading the way and taking down his first major online poker tournament win of his career.

After that tournament came to an end it was only one day later that he found himself in another Day 2 of the Event #3, which was a larger tournament with a $530 buy-in and optional re-buy as well. It was the same story once again on a different Day 2 with Blom being dominant when it mattered most getting to the final table as the chip leader once again. It wasn’t quite as easy for Blom to take down this title though as his opponents were hitting hands and putting pressure back on him much more than in the event from the day before. When he finally got down to heads up play he was behind in chips 3.1 million to 2.3 million, and his opponent, “Ruxandescu” actually built the stack up to 4.2 million to 1.3 before Blom started to run incredibly good. He doubled up twice in a row to get the chip lead, and then sent the knockout punch soon after that.

For the first event he took down a nice pay day of $247,200 for his efforts, and went on to win another $160,000 for his win in the $530 event, which featured quite a few fewer players. It was a nice four day run for Blom who brought home some big profits for these two SCOOP events. Blom has been active in many of the different poker games around the world, not only in high stakes online cash games, but he has also been playing in some of the live poker tournaments in the big series’ as well. It will be interesting to see if Blom is spotted at the 2012 World Series of Poker this year in Las Vegas, but there is a chance that he could make some serious noise if he ends up playing in the events!

Playing Tight but Playing Position

When you are playing fast poker you have the option to see so many different hands, so you should definitely be sticking with playing prime hands pretty often. With that being said though, you should also look to play position and steal the blinds if there is not a raise before you act. If the action folds to you and you have the chance to take down the blinds, then by all means feel free to take advantage of this. Remember, since you can see so many hands so often, it means that your opponents are most likely playing a similar way, and there is actually a good chance that many of them may have already fast folded their hands, leaving you a chance to take the free blinds down and continue to build up your stack.

Three Betting From Blinds or in Position

Three betting is a huge part of fast poker, mainly because it gives you the chance to pretty up pretty good sized pots without ever having to see the flop. If a player from later position raises and you are in one of the blinds or on the button/cut-off, making a three-bet over that opponent can be a very smart move that can be profitable pretty often. You have to remember that these players could be playing their position, meaning that if you put the pressure back on them that they are likely to lay down their hand because they can simply fold and see another hand quickly. This will lead to you winning even more than just the blinds as you also get their original raise. If you three-bet and the opponent calls, you then need to see how dry the board is and you could potentially put out a continuation bet to take down the pot from there as well!

Raises Before You

When you want to raise a player’s blind who is tight, the entire idea behind it sort of goes down the drain if you have a raiser before you get to the point of being able to make that raise. While typically you may raise from the button or the cut-off with a pretty weak hand in an attempt to pick up those free chips, if there is a raiser then you need to cut down your range massively and play your standard game. Don’t look to mix it up with other players unless you have a strong hand or have a good read on an opponents range. With this being said, you definitely shouldn’t be raising the players’ blinds every single time that they are in them, because that is the fastest way to get the opponent to pick up on what you are doing and fire back at you.

When Player Calls or Three-Bets

If you make the raise on the players blind and they make a call, then you have to play the hand very carefully from there on. Remember that these players are going to play a very small range typically because they are such tight players, which means that they typically have a pretty strong hand. If you don’t have a strong hand then you should see what happens on the flop, but if you don’t get it, then consider slowing down your betting, and potentially not even fire out a continuation bet unless the board is dry or you have a read. Now, if the opponent makes a three-bet pre-flop, then there are two ways that you can look at it. The first is that they are picking up on your raising on the blinds and could potentially just be putting pressure back on you. If you are trying to go with this angle then you must have a good read on the player, because the most common reason why is because they have a strong hand. Don’t get crazy and attempt to four bet a tight player in these situations as more times than not it could end badly.

While most of the talk has still been shut down at the tables, they have decided to make modifications to this rule in order to give players more room for talking. The new rule is that you are now allowed to say anything about your hand at any time EXCEPT if another player at the table has a decision to make. This is a pretty good change from last year, when we remember seeing Daniel Negreanu get talked to about three or four times for talking and him arguing back that the “no table talk” rule is probably one of the most absurd rules in all of poker (and I agree).

Obviously Negreanu made sure to state how upset he was about the situation of the “no table talk” last year during the live broadcasts, and also through his blog as well, which probably played a role in the decision to change the rule. The officials from the World Series of Poker essentially admitted that they were too tight with the enforcement of these rules last year, and the Executive Director of the WSOP, Ty Stewart, stated that how they change dthings actually made it so that players were “afraid to use verbal strategy to out-man their opponents, which was been integral to poker.”

This was not the only rule change that was implemented though, as they also decided to create a rule change relating to the celebrations that occur at the poker table. If you remember back when Hevad Khan used to get incredibly crazy excited at the table, which resulted in the officials making it so players couldn’t celebrate in the same way after winning big hands. This policy has changed though, allowing players to celebrate more and show emotion, but they do have to keep it within reason to some extent and make sure that it isn’t too over the top.

Overall, it looks like these rule changes will be good for the 2012 World Series of Poker. Not only do they benefit players and allow them to remain involved in the game more, but it also makes it so that players who are watching the broadcasts will get a bit more enjoyment out of things as well. While we all love watching good poker, the table talk and hearing players thoughts is a huge part of the game.

The Big One for ONE DROP is one of the most intriguing tournaments in years, mainly because of the level of player that it will most likely be drawing in with its massive buy-in. The field is capped at 30 players, and $111,111 of each player’s buy-in will be going to the charity ONE DROP, which helps provide clean, drinkable water to different locations all over the world. Currently the prize pool for this event is already up to $26,666,670, and that would send the first place winner home with over $12.2 million. That means that the all time record for a first place pay day would be broken, as the old record went to Jamie Gold, who took down the 2006 WSOP Main Event. This series will run over a three day span and is going to be televised starting on the 3rd, but it will actually begin on the first of the month with ESPN airing the final day of the tournament with just a 15 minute delay.

From there, the next tournament action that we will see will not come until the 31st of July when ESPN will begin showing the edited versions of the shows starting with the Big One for ONE DROP. The other two events that are going to be televised will be the WSOP National Championship, which will take the 100 qualifiers who made it from the Circuit tour, and this will begin on August 7th. After that it will be televised coverage of the WSOP Main Event all the way until October 30th. This will be shown every Tuesday night on ESPN. The final table will be the last televised event, and it will be shown almost live with just a slight delay once again.

It has now been since back in 2008 when ESPN slowed down their coverage of the other events, and instead focused on just showing the big events. They showed seven events back in 2008, then three in 2009, two in 2010 and last year there were three events shown once again, but they have decided to keep the number low once again for this year’s events.

We’re excited for the 2012 World Series of Poker as it should feature some excellent poker, and we’ll keep you updated as the gold bracelets are awarded all throughout the Summer!