Tournaments

The poker games that you see on your TV screen are all big and famous tournaments. Tournaments are poker format that require every contestant to pay a certain buy-in + tournament fee. For example one of the biggest tournaments is The World Series of Poker Main Event, which has a buy-in of 10 000$ + 500$ - that means 10 000$ from each player go towards the huge prize pool and 500$ go to the sponsors.

Each player starts with certain amount of chips and usually they cannot re-buy (unless the tournament allows re-buys) and plays until he loses all of his chips or wins the tournament, collecting the chips of everyone else. The blinds grow steadily, and the stacks become shallower and shallower as time goes by so the strategy is very complex and difficult. It requires different approach in the early, middle and late stages. In my next post I will discuss further how I play the different stages of the tournament and will probably give away some tricks that I use.

Although the tournaments are very exciting and offer a chance to win huge prizes, they have a lot of disadvantages. First of all, most of the times you will not cash so you will lose your buy-in and be left empty handed. Secondly, tournaments take very long time and it is very disappointing and annoying to you play 4-5 hours straight without even cashing. Thirdly, bad beats have usually significant and crucial impact on your performance so if you are very emotional and these things disturb your psyche, better stay away from tournaments.

However I recommend to everyone interested in poker to try playing tournaments. It's a really exciting experience which will help you develop your own style and improve your game significantly. I wish you good luck and I'll see you at the tournament tables!

Poker Games (part 2)

As I mentioned in my previous post, I would like to make you familiar with poker games that most of you might not have heard of. If someone tells you "I know how to play Texas Hold'em, and I don't need to know about other games", he is probably a narrow-minded fool. Everyone needs to know how to play different games in order to improve his skills. That helps you look at the game from different perspective which is always an eye-opening experience.

In my last post I didn't talk about the oldest version of poker - 5 Card Draw. That is the first poker game I learned about 12-13 years ago. It is actually very simple - every player is dealt 5 hole cards, visible only for him, and after that there is a betting round. Then the players that continue in the hand (that haven't folded) can choose how many and which of their hole cards they want to throw away and replace them with new cards from the dealer. There is a final betting round after that and the best hand wins. This game becomes less and less popular as time goes by maybe because there are only 2 betting rounds and only 1 draw when you can exchange cards - that makes it a perfect game for a beginner player but is not as exciting as Omaha for example.

Another poker game that I really like (but unfortunately I'm not very good at) has some variations and is called Stud in some places and Razz in others. I won't go into further detail how are they different because I want to focus on the main rules of the game. Every player is dealt three cards, two hidden and one face up. After a betting round, the remaining players receive 1 more face up card. That procedure repeats until every player has a total of 2 face down and 4 face up cards. Then there is a betting round after which players receive one final face down card. From these 3 "dowcards" and  4 "upcards" every player makes his best 5 card hand and the best hand wins. Razz is unique because the winning player is the one, who has the lowest hand - for example the best hand is "A 2 3 4 5" because ace is counted as low, and the straights or flushes doesn't matter.

I hope you will enjoy playing these exciting poker games. It will help you develop a more complex view of the poker as a variety of games, all of which offer you a unique and unforgettable experience. I wish you good luck and I will see you at the tables!

Poker Games

"Poker games? Isn't poker a game itself?" - that's what most of you would say. Actually poker is a family of games and in this post I will try to make you familiar with some of them. Then you can choose which one appeals to you the most and start having fun playing it.

The most popular among the poker games is Texas Hold'em. It is actually very easy to understand. Each player is dealt two face-down cards - they are called "hole" cards. After this a total of five cards are dealt face-up on the table; first three cards, then two more one by one. These are called "community" cards, because everybody can use them in conjunction with their own two cards to form a hand. In between the dealing of these cards, there are four rounds of betting in which you can either bet chips, or fold your hand. You can choose between "Fixed Limit", in which all bets are with fixed amount, and "No Limit", in which you can choose how much you want to bet and you can put all of your chips in the middle at any time if you want to.

Another really exciting (at least for me) poker game is Omaha.  It is similar to Texas Hold'em with two key differences. You are dealt four "hole" cards instead of two. There's still Flop (first three face-up cards), Turn (the fourth face-up card) and River (the last fifth face-up card), but to make a five card hand you need to use exactly two of your hole cards and three from the board. The most popular version of Omaha is PLO (Pot Limit Omaha), where the betting is limited - the most you can bet or raise is the size of the pot.

In the next post I will probably make you familiar with some not so popular poker games, which are also very interesting and exciting. Hope you learned something new and will enjoy playing one of these great poker games.I wish you good luck and I will see you at the tables!