Let’s first talk about poker at the low limits. Since many poker players limp to see the flop, bluffing is almost meaningless. You must raise with your strong cards, otherwise it is like slowly seeing your bankroll evaporate. The important poker skills at this level are a good understanding of odds and knowing when it is best to fold.

If you know how to play good poker, you should only sometimes bluff, but you must bet and raise with premium hands, augmenting the pot size when you are leading. Don’t be afraid to throw a bullet to increase the pot is also important because you need to be cautious not to provide cheap cards to the other players.

Next is poker at the mid levels. Almost all the players at these stakes can beat the low limits, but you will also meet here and there players who are only slightly knowledgeable about the game, but have enough money to afford to play regularly. Most pots are played with 3 or less players.

Your opponents will be playing aggressively. Make bets to increase the pots when you are the favorite to win the hand, especially against opponents who love to call or raise with decent strength hands, but not the really good hands. If you have achieved good results in low-limit poker, the transition to mid-stakes can be very profitable for you.

Now it is time for the high stakes. These games always are tight and aggressive. You will often encounter opponents who are stronger than you. Do not play with them but seek juicy tables where money can be won because of a whale or two. If you search well, you will find such tables waiting for you.

The average player knows how to play poker well, probably having put a lot of time and effort learning the game. Bluff, semi-bluff, deception and marginal plays to control the pots are very important skills against these players. Aggressive poker game with strong premium cards is always the best way to play. But you can win bluffing. If you focus on the selection of tables and hands, you may make money in these high stakes games.

There may be some variations, but basically the way your opponents play will be well understood and it will be hard to find a way to control the table. The players are very aggressive in fighting for the blinds, and use creative techniques to the game of poker. This is the difficulty of seating at these tables. Bluffs all in, post flop 3-bets, stealing and restealing occur more than anywhere else. The variance in these games is out of this world, and the average poker player here can easily loose it all.

I played against two maniacs recently. Manics are bad players, and for the most part they behave in rather basic ways, so they are rather easier to read compared to other players, as (1) they get involved in hands all the time (2) they do not play too witty.

In this particular online poker session, what stood out were the timing tells these two maniac players exhibited.

In the first case he raised pre flop and I called with Kx (he had A8o). The flop came K8x, he bet and I called. The turn was a brick and he almost used up all his time before making a 30BB bet. I called. The river was another blank and he made a smaller bet this time. I called with top pair and he showed second pair. Here the tell is that it took him a long time to make his decision at the turn; meaning he wanted to determine what bet size was big enough to make me fold.

In the second case the timing tell was opposite, i.e. I played with another maniac but this time he played very fast. I raised pre flop with Ako and got called by A8o. The flop came A8x. I made a standard pot bet at the flop and he instantly min-raised me. The turn was a blank, so I checked but he instantly bet. As he had flopped two pairs, he wanted to bet and he did not try to disguise the strength of his hand with his timing.

The point is that there are a lot of these maniacs at the low or mid stakes online poker tables. As they seem to consistently make bets, it may seem difficult to have a clue about the real strength of their hands. The clues are in their betting sizes and in the timing of their actions. For the most part, they are not very subtle about the timing of their bets, so an instantaneous bets usually indicates an easy decision, while if they stay in the tank for a while, they are really thinking about what to do next.

Maniacs are predictable with their timing tells, more so than other players.

The Old West and Poker – The Rifleman

The Rifleman with his trusty big loop 44-40 at his side was sipping a cool beer at the bar on a hot summer’s day at the local saloon (B & M). Suddenly the saloon doors swung open and some drunk noisy cowboy burst in with gun in hand pointing it at the Rifleman…yelling at him, “i’ve heard about you! You’re not so good…let’s see what you’ve got!” (been drinking, had a A Q suited).

The Rifleman looks in the bar mirror at the drunk (his hand was not on his rifle, which was laying down 2 feet away) and in a strong confident voice (he had 66) said “lay it down cowboy, you’re not good enough for me today” (reraised to find out where he was). The cowboy didn’t back down, continued walking up and shouted another insult (reraised all-in).

The Rifleman softened, smiled and said “you’re good cowboy, too good for me today! Come on over and i’ll buy ya a beer” (swallowed his pride, laid his hand down, backed off until conditions would be better to put him on an all in decision… play good poker, it can teach you how to be a better man).

Few days later, cowboy gets drunk again (has KJ off) and challenges the Rifleman again…The Rifleman not sitting at the bar with his back to the door, but leaning back in a chair with his back to the wall and his hand on his rifle… (has AA) “Bring it on cowboy!!” (goes all-in) Cowboy calls…

… another fresh grave the next day in boothill… written on the tombstone… “pick your spots on your terms, not theirs…plus don’t drink and play”.

Modern online poker is getting a very sophisticated game, almost an arbitraged game.

Arbitrage is a term borrowed from finance, which is not normally used in poker yet, but maybe the time will come. Arbitrage means that the players in a market think purely on a mathematical basis and attempt to seek and extract value wherever it can be found.

This is what is happening nowadays in online poker with the extensive proliferation of poker software, online poker tools and poker trackers. These programs are designed to perform in-depth analysis of historical hands in order to detect patterns. To profile your opponents, even the ones you have never met, and to detect and help you improve your leaks.

The standard three statistics at the core of such analysis are the so-called VPIP/PFR/AF, which represents in the same order (1) tightness pre flop, (2) aggression pre flop and (3) aggression post flop. Every online poker player can be cataloged first with only these three stats and this provides already a very idea about his playing style.

For example in a full ring no-limit Texas holdem game, a good VPIP should range between 10 and 18 roughly, possibly 8 for excellent rocks or 20-22 for ultra-aggressive pseudo-maniacs; but generally speaking if your VPIP diverges too much from 15, it means that you are a fish and observant players who are savvy about poker tracking will target you specifically.

It you are too tight with VPIP below 9, it means that you are a rock so most players will avoid confrontations with you. If it is above 25, then you play way to loose and the regulars will attempt to isolate and test you.

Similarly with all stats. Because all these poker tools enable to run zillions of tests and to determine optimal values for all these statistics or group of statistics, anyone found to diverge from such ideal number will be chased without mercy for his exposed leak.

There many other stats, and at higher stakes levels it is necessary to use more subtle ones. For example another favorite is CB = continuation bet, which indeed is a good reflection of the ability to bluff while not getting caught too often. A measure of credibility and guts, so to speak.

So good luck and remember to run your poker tracker when you play online poker.

How to become a good poker player, this is of course the question many amateur poker players and beginners are asking themselves. Clearly there is a wide spectrum of players, from the giant whales, to the small fish, the small shark and the Phil Iveys of this world.

Of course there is no recipe to become good at poker, but here is a list of concepts characterizing good poker players. This is for low to mid-stakes players.

Good poker players play their good hands fast. The new or bad player tends to slow play his good hands, but the good player tends to play them fast. The reason the bad players slow play is that they remember too well when everyone folded to their bets when they had a monster, so they do not want this to happen again. But slow playing too often is bad poker.

Strong players rarely make obvious mistakes. This seems trivial, but the point here is that there are many standard moves that all the good players know. Like how to answer to a resteal from a loose player in the big blind, or how to play your nuts flush draws. So a must in poker is to know and apply the standard moves.

Making good value bets is important as well. Weak players may shy away from making their value bets, in part because they are afraid of a raise. But the masters know how to extract maximum value from their hands.

Good players can play both short-stacked or deep-stacked. But the good players usually like to play deep-stacked in order to make the maximum profits when they play against weaker players, so learn to play deep-stacked, and to buy-in for the maximum at ring games, such as 200BB.

Finally here are two moves that you should practice to become a better player. Have you ever raise fold? Most weak players will not fold once they feel committed so this is a rather difficult move, but you should do it once in a while.

If you are tight, do you ever call a raise pre flop when 2 or 3 players have called? This is a move that can win big pots especially in position even with medium hands.

In conclusion good poker players are hard to predict. So make it a habit not to have habits. Do not always play the same situations the same way, otherwise the sharks will fest on your flesh. Good Luck.

When it took control of the sports betting online business of eurosportbet.com paris which owns a license for the United Kingdom online gaming market, the TF1 group is positioning itself for the upcoming opening up of the French online gambling market.

Among French online poker players, it seems that the media group TF1 is going full throttle. Recently, the media group which has always remained limited to pure media activities has shown its ambitions on the French market for games on the Internet. When this market get officially legalized, and the legislative train expected to arrive on time this June has gathered great speed with support from the highest political echelons.

The other recent announcement from the group FT1 was the exclusive partnership with the French company Francaise des Jeux (FDJ) for a period of three years. This will lead to a gaming space FDJ – lotteries, sports paris, poker – hosted on the site TF1.fr. This is one of the top French website with 16, 9 million unique visitors in December 2009.

It got a licensing agreement to develop online games from scratch in the distribution of the JDF. This promises that once the new law is enacted in the Summer the French online gambling market will explode.

The media chain announcement of the takeover of the site paris eurosportbet.com sports is the latest step in the conquest of French online gambling. The deal includes the subsidiary Eurosport controlled at 50% by buying the other half of the capital held by the investment fund Serendipity, endorsed by the Bouygues group and Artemis, the holding company Pinault family, headed by its former CEO Patrick Le Lay. The amount of the transaction was not made public.

The French market is simply red hot at the moment. So if you are French or if you have a French girlfriend, keep posted for the latest developments as this is one gambling market we are particularly interested in following.

If you are new to online gambling or even if you have some experience, you need to know which online gambling game is best for you.

And the answer will be different for everybody, because first of all it depends on what you are trying to achieve when gambling on the Internet.

If your primary goal is to make money, then you should focus on games of skill. This is because in games of skill such as poker, it is truly possible for anyone with the right skills to make tons of money. In online poker, you play against other players. Even though the house is always profitable as it takes a fee called the rake, you can be profitable as well if you play better than most of your opponents.

Another favorite game of skill is blackjack. Card counting was the original technique to beat the game of blackjack at live casino, but with automatic reshuffling of the deck at online casinos, it is not possible to count cards anymore. Nevertheless by studying strategy which depends on the specific rules used by each casino, it is possible to reduce the house edge to almost nothing.

Baccarat exit in three versions, and the European version called Chemin the Fer involves a degree of skill unlike American Baccarat which is purely based on luck.

Skills can also be used in video poker. If you play optimally you will minimize the house’s edge, and you can target the machines with the largest jackpots or progressive jackpots. This way you have to be patient but with a positive edge in your favor, luck will strike in time and reward you for your patience.

On the other hand if you are mostly gambling on the Web for the fun of it, then find the game where you have the most fun, while avoiding large losses. You should always be aware of how much you spend in online gambling and stay within your predefined limit. Never gamble when drunk or upset, it is strongly advised to only bet real money online when your mind is clear.

Good luck at the online casinos.