When holding medium suited connectors, most novice players are either frightened or overconfident. Both attitudes lead to weakness in their game. How to play these cards correctly? Approach them with a balance of caution and confidence.

The first thing you want to consider is position. Try playing suited connectors as often as possible (this applies if your opponent isn’t severely short-stacked and looking to get all-in versus anything) but it’s a much better play in position. You won’t make many enormous hands with these cards – expect to make second or third pair often – so position gives you more data, enabling you to make better choices.

You want to see a cheap flop with as many players involved as possible – the more the jollier. This is a key function in your decision to play or fold. 8-7s doesn’t hold up in a battle against K-K – you’re a roughly 4 to 1 underdog and you won’t take the pot down often enough to justify calling. Although, when there are more people in the hand, there is more cash in the pot. If you can cheaply view a flop in a multi-way hand, your potential payback is an avantage of your odds of not winning the hand.

In addition, the possibility of tapping the veins or what is “hitting the nuts” and getting a huge payout from a weaker hand increases with more players in the hand. You’ll also increase the chances of facing a novice (weak) player. This is an benefit you should always look for, especially when you’re holding medium suited connectors. Weak or novice players often find it hard to lay down their cards when they make a hand. So, when you tap the right vein or hit the nuts, they will pay you off big time.

Sophistication is properly required when playing medium suited connectors and the ability to make good reads. When you’re confident putting your opponent on a narrow range of hands, and understand enough to be right most of the time, then you’re ready to start playing these cards more aggressively and more often. You can play suited connectors a lot, especially against opponents who put in too much money with hands like top pair or over-pairs.

As mentioned before: play with a variety of caution and confidence. If you have position, use the information to determine whether or not you have a strong hand. The worst case scenario is hitting a small to medium flush and losing to a bigger flush. A lot of people maybe losing value because they’re scared of this. Don’t shy away from the fact – if you’re just playing medium suited connectors in the hope of flopping the nuts, never making plays or making light call-downs, you’re not going to be too profitable.

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The skill to bluff big pots effectively is something that’s required that separate good players from great players. It is no accident that the games played at the highest stakes feature some of the most daring bluffs: big bluffs are a central part of the game.

For small bets the majority of players mix up their play very well – they’ll bet out or raise with nothing on the flop with about the right frequency – but a lot of players don’t mix up their play well on big bets. Some players never fool around when they put in really big money on the turn or river. Your opponents can never resist the big bluff when they see a lot of money/chips in the middle. Timing to strike the right balance between value bets and bluffs when you raising the ante in the pot is crucial to playing top-level poker.

When you are playing against world-class pros, bluffing too often is a bigger mistake than not bluffing enough. You will get called very often and you will look to everyone like you are carelessly spewing chips. You’ll question yourself why they are calling you so often, but it’s easy to see why: your opponents will be getting 2:1 odds on a call (if you are betting the size of the pot) and they will infer based on your betting habit that you’re bluffing more often than that.

How can they determine that you are bluffing too often? In a rough manner of speaking, if you are balancing your big bluffs properly, you will be betting for value about two-thirds of the time and you will be betting as a bluff about one-third of the time. Hands that you will bet big for value on the turn or river come up quite rarely. It’s not often that you make a straight, a flush, a set, or some other huge hand that earns a big bet on the river for value. If you’re betting big on the river and turn very often, your opponents will figure out that you’re bluffing too often.

Bluffing too often can be a huge misjudgment, but not bluffing often enough in the truly big spots is one thing that prevents great players from becoming world-class. You’ll probably never hear someone say of Johnny Chan, Phil Ivey or Doyle Brunson “he’s never messing around in that spot.” They can be bluffing in any spot. As the pot gets very huge, their bluffs will be less frequent, as they will be trying to represent very thin ranges, but their bluffing frequency will never be zero in any spot (other than some trivial ones where it’s only appropriate to raise with the unorthodox).

Most of the time your big bluffs will occur when you have edge on an opponent. This is most true for big moves on the river. If an player checks to you on the river, it’s likely not a check of strength. With one pair hands, people will often call on the flop and turn, but not always on the river. Their “check-call, check-call, check” line often tells you that they have a big pair but no better. Some novice players will fold to a pot-sized bluff way too often in this spot, and will not adjust oneself behavior even when they begin to suspect that you are bluffing them often. Against these players, you are obligated to keep pilfering (stealing) until they adjust.

Definitively, the ability to pull off a big bluff is a crucial element in poker. Highly do so with the correct frequency, and you’ll raise your game to the next level.

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Eastern Asia is were you’ll find The People’s Republic of China. It’s one the third largest country in the world in the vicinity of Russia and Canada. Near 65 percent of the total area is comprised of mountains and hills. It has an field of 9.6 million square kilometers or one-fifteenth of the world’s land mass

The country has a wide spread of rich heritage and numerous religions, of which Buddhism, Taoism and Islam. Family name precedes the given name in China. For instance Chan Lee would mean that Chan is the family name and Lee is his given name. China is comprised of 56 nationalities with the Han people making up 92% of the population. Mandarin is considered the national language and Beijing is the country’s majestic capital city. Paper, gunpowder, the compass and printing press was invented was invented in the country.

China my be superstitious in nature, which has given increase to the betting and gambling instincts of the People’s Republic. If you visit the gambling capital of the world, Las Vegas, you will see that the vast majority of the patrons are Asian Americans or Chinese.

Playing or gambling at casinos in relatives’ or friends’ homes is an accepted form of social activity. Chinese casinos flourish because of the deep-rooted love for wealth among the Chinese. Casinos are view upon as a plateau to build business ties and sign deals, contracts, etc. The people have forced to endure under the perils of a suffocated economy, longing for economic independence akin to the Americans. Chinese casinos, in turn, form one of the most common mediums to get rich fast.

You’ll probably see middle-aged women frequenting casinos and playing gambling games. Due to the highly work-conscious culture, the majority of the men, who have given their time and hearts out to the progress of Modern China, are always busy with their professional careers. Their spouses (housewives) perhaps have a lot of time on their hands and subsequently get bored staying at home alone. In order to socialize, women may visit casinos. Most Chinese or some, may even the vastly successful ones, view gambling as a stress-free and a fun relaxing activity. For others, the Chinese casinos are a place that brings the best out of them in terms of excitement and mental awareness.

Now the trend has shifted to the Chinese poker games online. One can play with real money or just play with a simulated version of real money to their hearts’ content.

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Calvin Ayre has gotten very rich by taking illegal bets over the Internet.

On a warm, bright morning just outside San José, Costa Rica, Calvin Ayre, slightly hungover, was lounging in his bathrobe at a poolside office in his new $3.5 million, 10,000-square-foot compound. Sipping coffee poured by one of his five servants, the entrepreneur declared, paraphrasing Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, “I’m going to win this war without fighting battles. I’ve put a lot of energy into finding ways not to fight my enemies.”

From this tropical oasis, Ayre has dodged and taunted those enemies, the main one being the U.S. Department of Justice. His Bodog Entertainment Group is in the not very kosher business of Web gambling. It takes bets from 16 million customers, most of them in the U.S. And that appears to violate the law–Title 18, Section 1084 of the U.S. Code–which forbids using telephones or other communication devices “in interstate or foreign commerce” in order to take bets. “Online gambling, whether it is located offshore or not, is illegal when it comes to the United States and its citizens,” says a Justice Department official who works on Internet gambling crimes.

Video Update: Ayre Gets Raided

But Bodog has no physical presence in the U.S., Ayre is not an American citizen, and the extraterritorial reach of U.S. law is not clear. Ayre, at any rate, has no assets in the U.S. for the G-men to seize.

Last year the privately held Bodog handled $7.3 billion in online wagers, triple the volume of 2004. Ayre says all this betting gave him sales of $210 million, and that he took 26% of the revenue to the bottom line. What’s his business worth? Two similar ventures that are publicly traded (in Europe) go for well over 18 times trailing earnings. At that multiple, Bodog, along with other assets, gives Ayre a net worth of at least $1 billion.

Ayre presumably has not just the vice squad but the tax collectors in a huff. While 95% of his sales come from the U.S., the 44-year-old doesn’t pay a nickel in corporate or personal income tax here. Is that legit? Foreigners are supposed to pay federal tax on income derived from U.S. business activities. The suckers are stateside, the electronic roulette wheels and digitized sports pools in Costa Rica. Where’s the action? It remains to be seen whether irs agents could make Ayre pay, assuming they could get their mitts on either him or his money.

His taunting analysis of the law: “We run a business that can’t actually be described as gambling in each country we operate in. But when you add it all together, it’s Internet gambling.”

There are 2,400 Internet gaming sites, estimates tracker Casino City, a few hundred of them operating in Costa Rica’s tax and regulatory haven. According to research company Christiansen Capital Advisors, they pulled in revenue (vigorish, that is) of $12 billion last year, double the volume on the Las Vegas Strip. Ayre gets his share with a smorgasbord of offerings (sports, poker and casino games), a heavy dose of marketing and a lot of repeat business. Bodog.com claims 145,000 regulars who bet at least once a week. Their average wager: $60 for sports, $13 for casino games.

Bodog is spending $80 million this year to nudge beyond gaming into a kind of MySpace for adults. Most of it is pretty cheesy entertainment, like his recent hosting of the Lingerie Bowl, a raunchy pay-per-view cable alternative to the Super Bowl halftime show. Ayre is also supporting the careers of a dozen lesser-known rock and hip-hop acts (Bif Naked and Syndicated Villain among them) and producing a poker show on cable TV with a slew of C-list celebrities like Rob Mariano (a contestant on CBS’ Survivor) and card shark David Williams. Hardly any of these ventures makes money, though Ayre insists they will one day. But it probably lures customers to try their luck on Bodog.com. Its 1.5 million unique visitors per month, according to Internet tracker Hitwise, rivals that of Sportsbook.com, which is owned by London Stock Exchange-traded Sportingbet Group, the world’s largest sports betting company.

Ayre likes to be seen–especially with attractive women. He is unmarried and has no steady girlfriend (“It would be unfair to the girl,” he says). He has himself driven around in a black Hummer by a chauffeur who was trained as a sniper in the Canadian military and practiced in Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Why the heavy metal? Ayre says he and three friends were robbed at gunpoint on the streets of San José a few years ago. His rivals say there’s about as much need for a bodyguard in Costa Rica as in Boca Raton.

Raised in Lloydminster, Sask., Calvin Edward Ayre (pronounced “air”) is the son of grain and pig farmers. He placed his first bet during his teens, playing blackjack for pennies with his mates on long hockey trips across the Canadian tundra. By the time he attended the University of Waterloo, Ayre was betting on sports (for beers, he says), and developing a taste for business. Over the summer he bought a five-ton truck, loaded it with cherries and peaches he’d picked and sold the fruit to motorists on the side of the road. He also organized trips to Florida and Cuba for his party-going classmates.

It didn’t take him long to land in trouble. With an M.B.A. from City University in Seattle, Ayre took a job in June 1990 as president of Bicer Medical Systems, a Vancouver, B.C. heart-valve maker. The company was underfinanced, he says. According to British Columbia Securities Commission documents, Ayre sold 300,000 Bicer shares without releasing a prospectus. He also moved millions of shares between several accounts, including his own, without filing insider trading reports. “I knew that I wasn’t following all the rules,” he says. “But I also knew I had to do it to keep the budget alive.” Though he was never charged, Ayre settled in 1996 for a $10,000 fine and a 20-year prohibition from running a company listed on the Vancouver Exchange.

Meantime Ayre borrowed Cisco (nasdaq: CSCO - news - people ) training manuals and taught himself network design, then tried launching several Web-based ventures, including a voice-over-IP company. All of them flopped. Then he read a newspaper story about Ronald (the Cigar) Sacco, a U.S. bookie who had set up an offshore phone-in betting operation in the Dominican Republic to elude felony charges in the States. “There was a loud bang in my head and the whole universe came together,” Ayre recalls. (Sacco pleaded guilty in 1994 to money-laundering charges and went to prison a year later. His operation later moved to Costa Rica.) Ayre invested $10,000 to build a Web-based system for betting online, providing software to offshore bookmakers.

By 1996 he was in Costa Rica, helping to launch some of the first online casinos, like WinSports and GrandPrix, for other bookmakers. Internet gambling was basically unheard-of, and there was a strong disconnect between the kid and the old coots taking the bets. Ayre not only wanted to encourage smaller bets to generate more predictable revenue and profits, he also wanted to settle accounts with online checks, instead of suitcases of cash. “I was pioneering a new industry,” he says. That’s half true. Sportsbook.com was championing a similar model, taking bets from customers using credit cards issued by European banks.

Ayre launched his own site in April 2000, starting with sports betting. There were options to pay with credit cards and online checks (wired from U.S. accounts to Bodog’s London accounts), a $5,000 maximum and plenty of pictures of pretty girls. Later he added online poker and casino games. In the event that you are a winner, you collect via wire transfer. Presumably, you declare your winnings on your 1040, but Ayre does not file reports with the IRS.

Read the entire article at Forbes.com

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Now the lowest amount you should have when playing in more games than one, is about three hundred dollars and this is after you have built up your bankroll by winning enough hands. Now keep in mind $300 is a not the amount you maintain in your wallet. This is a separate account for your poker playing, and you’ll only be using a small portion of that each session.

We all learn in distinct ways and normally find one of the 4 types of games whether it be sit and go tournaments, multi-table tournaments, fixed limit ring games, or no limit cash games, one will in the end become a favourite for your discovering the game and bankroll building. Since there are numerous personalities in poker, it is altogether standard to favor one over the other that you are most productive at. In fact, it’s advisable to stick with the game that is working for you the best, because that strategy can enrich your knowledge in other poker games. You should in reality keep track of all of your games, and win/loss, so that you do know which game, time, and level are most effectual for you at this stage of your hold’em experience.

Because luck is such a significant part of poker, your bankroll is also effected by it. The reason why a poker bankroll might seem unreasonably high compared to the amount you are allowed to play with is because of variance, luck, or education. You can’t expect to begin with a low bankroll and be a superb player, nor can you avoid the sometimes brutally long streaks of weak cards and awful beats. If you play consistently within your bankroll, these performance dips are much easier to get through, allowing you to come back the next day, planning your same profitable game.

Building bankroll management a precedence is an absolutely indispensable skill that all of the best players in the world realize and exercise. What genuinely matters in the mental process of building a bankroll is how relentless you can become at making good decisions. This takes practice and you can expect to play upwards of a hundred thousand hands before you altogether realize how good and bad things can get, and a greater understanding of your own style of play and restrictions.

Your goal is to keep learning more and more, as you will learn that the players who do know their profit goals, maintain a solid bankroll and stick to good principles are ALWAYS the ones who seem to have good records on shark scope and tournament database sites. The logic is simple, but not playing within your poker bankroll will cost you a lot of reloads.

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This is also a major question that you should also consider whilst you play, yet it is something that is often passed. Knowing how your opponents view you as a player is just as important as having an notion of how they are playing themselves. This is a fact in the game of no limit Texas Holdem where psychology plays an important role. But why is this important? And what effect should this have on your game?

Depending upon the way you play, your opponents will be considering how to categorize you just like you do to them according to different playing styles. If you find yourself getting involved in numerous pots and regularly making continuation bets and bluffing, they may well be categorizing you as a aggressive and loose player in their minds. Likewise, if you are only getting involved with a minimal number of pots and only calling and betting when you have the best of it, your opponents will be noting down that you are a tight player that they should probably avoid having too many confrontations with.

If you feel that it is quite obvious that your opponents consider you to be a certain type of player, you can use it to your advantage by playing differently in future hands. For example, if your opponents think you are tight and only get involved when you have the best of it, you will find that you will have a better success rate when it comes to bluffing because they will have a good reason to believe that you have a strong hand because of the way you have been playing earlier in the session. Conversely, if you have been playing loosely and have been entering a number of pots, your ability to pull off successful bluffs will be reduced because your opponents are less inclined to think you have a strong hand when you bet.

As a general rule, you should try and play the reverse to the way that your opponents think you are playing. So if they see you as a loose player, you should play tight, and if they see you as a tight player, it will be profitable to loosen up your starting hand requirements. It is never a good idea to fall into patterns when you play poker, so you should always try and change gears from time to time to keep your opponents guessing. If your opponents are unsure of the way you play, you will find that you can make more profit from them than if they know how you play and you continue to play the same way throughout each session.

So the next time you’re seated at the poker table, make sure that you are always aware of the way you play and how your opponents will vision you as a poker player. Having a good understanding of your table image at all times is a valuable piece of Holdem strategy that can save you a lot of cash as well as help you to win money.

Be aware that these kinds of characteristic are built up over time, and so you should not expect players to have a solid opinion on your style of play after only a few hands. Whenever you reach a showdown, try and consider the implications of your cards being shown to the poker table, whether you win or lose. This could help excite players to form opinions of your style of play that you can later exploit later on in the session.

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A common squeeze play works like this: an active and aggressive player raises in late position, and he’s called by another player on the button. You’re in the blinds and you have to make a desicion of what to do.

There’s no real sign yet that anyone has a particularly strong hand. The aggressive player could be raising with a broad range of hands, and the call from the button could mean a lot of things. He may have a medium strong hand, or he may be really weak and just looking to play post-flop with favorable position.

At this point, a big re-raise from the blinds virtually squeezes the original raiser who is between you and the player on the button. Your aggressive re-raise gives you a great chance of taking down the pot right there.

In the past good players used the squeeze play occasionally. It was just one of the many tools they used from time to time. But recently, the squeeze play has become highly popular. Sometimes it seems that pretty much any time there’s a raise and a call, there’s a player in the blinds looking to squeeze.

You can prefer to be a little more selective when initiating a squeeze. Get a hand that can hit a flop if you run into a decent hand and get called. From experience, suited connectors are good hands to squeeze with.

Probably the squeeze is most effective when you have a tight table image. When you’ve been playing actively and aggressively the other players at the table are less likely to give you recognition for a big hand and will call you down.

Try the squeeze play in ring games, but it’s really most effective in tournaments. When players have to fear for their tournament lives, they’re far more likely to fold in marginal situations.

If you haven’t been using the squeeze play, you should try working it into your tournament game. Start out by squeezing selectively and wait for opportunities where the players, cards and your table image give you the best chance of winning the pot.

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Nickname:  Texas Dolly
Hometown:  Las Vegas, Nevada

Doyle Frank Brunson (born August 10, 1933) is an iconic American professional poker player who has played professionally for over 50 years. He is the first two-time World Series of Poker main event champion to win consecutively, a Poker Hall of Fame inductee, and the author of several highly influential books on poker.

Brunson is the first player to earn $1 million in poker tournaments and has won ten World Series of Poker bracelets throughout his career, tied with Johnny Chan for second all-time, one behind Phil Hellmuth’s eleven. He is also one of only four players to have won the Main Event at the World Series of Poker multiple times, which he did in 1976 and 1977. In addition, he is the first of five players to win both the WSOP Main Event and a World Poker Tour title. In January 2006, Bluff Magazine voted Brunson the #1 most influential force in the world of poker.

Early life
Brunson was born in Longworth, Fisher County, Texas, a town with a population of approximately 100, the eldest of three children. Because of Longworth’s small size, Brunson frequently ran long distances to other towns, and became a promising athlete. He was part of the All-State Texas basketball team, and practiced the one-mile run to keep in shape in the off-season. Although he was more interested in basketball than running, he entered the 1950 Texas Interscholastic Track Meet and won the one-mile event with a time of 4:43. Despite receiving offers from many colleges, he attended Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas, because it was close to his home.

The Minneapolis Lakers were interested in Brunson, but a knee injury ended his playing days. He had taken a summer job and was unloading some sheetrock; when the ton of weight shifted, Brunson instinctively tried to stop it, but it landed on his leg, breaking it in two places. He was in a cast for two years, and the injury ended his hopes of becoming a professional basketball player. He still occasionally requires a crutch to get around because of the injury. Brunson changed his focus from athletics to education and obtained a master’s degree in administrative education.

Brunson had begun playing poker before his injury, playing five-card draw and finding it “easy”. He played more often after being injured and his winnings paid for his expenses. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in 1954 and a master’s the following year. After graduating, he took a job as a business machines salesman but, on his first day, he was invited to play in a seven-card stud game and earned over a month’s salary in under three hours. He soon left the company and became a professional poker player.

Credit source and image: wikipedia.com | wildnatureimages.com

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Contents

1. Steps
2. Video: Poker Made Simple
3. Variations
4. Tips & Poker Lingo
5. Poker Hands: Cheat Sheet
6. Poker Hands: In Depth
7. Drinks for your palate
8. How To Play Texas Hold’em - with video

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OutstandingPoker.com is a poker training website that is run by Tim (also known as “Atta22″) and Errol (also known as “killer_be_99″). Outstanding Poker was founded in an effort to educate and improve the poker ability of any prospective students. Outstanding Poker offers assistance and guidance at every possible angle: videos, articles, and podcasts all at one site from pro poker players.

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