Category: English

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DOUBLE YOUR MONEY
Some video-poker machines have an option that allows you to risk the winnings on a hand for a chance at doubling your money. While many players believe that this is simply another ploy by the casino to take your remaining stake, it’s actually one of the best bets in the casino. It’s exactly 50–50 that you will be able to double your money. No house edge; no tricks. So what’s the catch?

You may double as many times as you wish, and because the odds are even, you’ll eventually lose. It’s a risk the casino is willing to take, but by examining the law of diminishing returns, it’s one that will be risky for the player.

While each decision is exactly 50–50, the odds of winning more than one in a row decrease sharply. After the first hand, you’re not gambling on the individual hands, you’re gambling on the sequence, and that is stacked heavily in the casino’s favour.

DOUBLE YOUR RISKS
From the Double Your Risk chart, above, you can see that the chances of winning your double diminish the more times you attempt to buck the odds against the sequential wins. The odds against winning ten in a row before you begin to double is less than one tenth of one per cent. Not very good odds, although the odds against winning any individual double down is 50–50.

Some players will try to suggest that the machine “”knows”” when you are doubling a high win. That’s nonsense. You can see that the casino wants you to try to double as many times as possible, but there is no need to rig the machines. You’re already bucking some pretty big odds for more than two in a row. The casino is very happy to offer you 50–50 odds on each bet. Try it at your own risk.

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The other popular wild-card video-poker game is Deuces Wild. Because it has four wild cards, it complicates the strategy that is necessary to succeed at the machines. Just as in other varieties of video poker, it’s important to note the pay table on Deuces Wild. But it’s not as easy as with Jacks-or-better. Casino executives have discovered several different ways to alter the pay tables that will alter the payout percentages.

DEUCES WILD PAYOUT PERCENTAGES
The pay tables above are just three examples of Deuces Wild games available today. The small variations in the pay table are the reason for the variation in payout percentage for expert play.

WORKING THE DEUCES
The object of Deuces Wild, obviously, is to obtain the wild cards to get those valuable hands. But what does it mean when you start off the hand with Deuces? Even in the highest paying version of Deuces Wild – at 100.6 per cent you will receive No Deuce hands 66 per cent of the time, which means that 80 per cent of your hands will be losers. Another 14 per cent will be the minimum three-of-a-kind winner, which is actually just a tie. So if you don’t get a Deuce before the draw, you will actually win only six per cent of the time.

When you get one Deuce in the initial hand – only 30 per cent of the time – 45 per cent of your hands will be losers, and another 38 per cent will get the three-of-a-kind push, leaving only 17 per cent that will actually win. Another nine per cent will be near-minimum winners as straights and flushes. Two Deuces in the initial hand – dealt only four per cent of the time – means that you must take every advantage of this hand, despite the fact that 70 per cent of these hands will wind up being flushes or lower. About one in four will end up as four-of-a-kind, and one in 98 will wind up as five-of-a-kind.

DEUCES STRATEGY
The following strategy is a little more complicated than the other two versions covered in this article. Some basic rules are not to play any machine that does not pay 5-1 for four-of-a-kind. And most important of all, even if you’ve got a shot at a natural royal, do not discard any Deuce!

1 Stand with any natural winning hand, except for a natural straight flush starting with Nine. Discard the Nine and go for the royal.
2 Draw one card to a straight flush.
3 Draw one card to a royal flush.
4 Draw two cards to a royal flush.
5 With two pair, discard one pair and draw three cards.
6 Draw one card to a flush.
7 Draw one card to a straight.
8 Draw two cards to a straight flush.
9 Draw three cards to a Queen-Jack, Ten-Jack, or Jack-Ten suited.
10 Draw two cards to a suited Six-Seven and a Deuce.
11 Draw one card to a three-card royal and one Deuce.
12 Draw one card to a four-card straight with one Deuce.
13 Stand on any winning hand with one Deuce. Break up a flush, straight or three-of-a-kind for any four-card royal flush, or four-card straight flush.
14 Draw one card to a suited Six-Seven or better with two Deuces.
15 Draw one card to a four-card royal with two Deuces.
16 Draw one card to four-of-a-killd with two Deuces.
17 Stand on five 10s or better with three Deuces.
18 Stand on royal flush with three Deuces.
19 Stand on five-of-a-killd with four Deuces.
20 All other hands discard everything but Deuces.

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“Building a poker bankroll
Many people consider that investing serious money into something that is a mere hobby for them doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and they’re probably right. On top of that, recreational poker players never really get around to fully understanding the nature of the game and the way it’s supposed to work, and thus they’ll find it extremely difficult to turn it into a lucrative deal. I’ve heard people say you should never risk more money on poker than you can afford to take to the back of your garden and burn. That is just baloney. Every investment needs an initial push to get rolling, and online poker – for a player who knows how he’s supposed to milk it – works the same way.
Anyway, it would appear that nowadays one can start a lucrative poker career without making any sort of investment at all.
The online poker industry is so competitive nowadays that poker rooms would do just about anything to acquire new, active players. So much so, that some of these poker rooms will give players free real money upfront, with almost no strings attached (I said "almost" because you will have to fulfill the turnover requirements on your free money before cash-out). All you need to do is sign up to the poker room in question, and usually insert some sort of bonus ode which will automatically transfer the money into your real money account. After that, you can hit the real-money tables and start a-playing as if it were your own money. As soon as you’ve fulfilled the play-through requirement(s) you may cash out.
Don’t expect anything resembling a healthy bankroll though. These bonuses are not meant to make you rich, but rather to provide a start in online poker for those who may feel shy and not willing to risk anything. The free bankroll will usually be made up of a few tens of dollars, which will only really represent a potent bankroll in some of the lowest limits/stakes games (remember, you have to have about 300BBs in your bankroll a the limit you play at to be properly bankrolled).
That fact that it is indeed possible to start a real bankroll using a few of these free bucks has been proven by many, the mot notorious such experiment being that if Chris Ferguson who built up a $10,000 bankroll out of nothing on Full Tilt Poker without taking advantage of the Full Tilt rakeback deal either.
Certainly, you’ll need some very healthy skills and almost endless patience to come anywhere near his performance, but it is indeed possible in theory.
Despite that, playing on a free bankroll will present you with a series of drawbacks which will hit you pretty hard, especially if you’re a rookie. Being under-bankrolled can very well curve the efforts of a professional player, let alone a rookie. Also, the deal that you get with your free bankroll will usually deprive you of some of the best bonuses and recurring-edge offers (rakeback) that the poker room features for its paying customers.
Thus the rake will hit you much harder, and your "bankroll" will offer you last protection. As they say, looking a gift horse in the mouth though is not something reasonable to do, so you’ll have to make do with what you get.
When playing on a free bankroll, it makes a lot of sense to start out with STTs (Single Table Tournaments). These offer you much increased odds compared to cash games, and they protect your bankroll by completely eliminating the "being under-bankrolled" issue, and taking some of the bite out of the rake.
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Believe it or not, these days it is possible for a player to start from zero and make his/her way up into the upper echelon of poker aristocracy, or at least reach a level where he/she can make a living playing poker.

In theory, it’s rather easy too. Poker pro Chris Ferguson had a challenge on FullTilt Poker that he could make $10,000 without any starting bankroll, and sure enough he pulled it off, in much less time than people would’ve thought possible. He began by playing freerolls to establish a bankroll he could start with in real money games, then gradually worked his way up, until he hit $10,000. Now, there’s a poll on Full Tilt’s site where people can vote whether they want to see him attempt to reach a million dollars, or consider the challenge fulfilled.

Sure, I’m not about to argue how great an opportunity online poker is for get rich quick schemes with no investment required. After all, saying that not all people possess the qualities that made it possible for Chris Ferguson to pull off something like that, would be a huge understatement. No, you’re not going to find the going that easy, but still the chance to build up a reasonable bankroll and then to generate some extra dough is there for you too. And no, you don’t have to take the money you would’ve taken to the back of your garden and burnt, and invest it. You don’t need to invest anything at all. The competition among the hundreds of online poker rooms now populating cyberspace is for the benefit of everyday players like you and I. It gives birth to bonuses and loyalty offers that would’ve been considered downright foolish not more than 2-3 years ago.

In this respect, there are poker rooms out there that will literally pay you to play, in one form or another. One of the most accessible ways into the ranks of real money online poker is the free bankroll. Quite a few poker rooms offer their players real money, upfront, with no strings attached upon their arrival. Certainly, they won’t be able to cash the money out and be on their way, because that would be the equivalent of robbery, but provided one manages to fulfill the wagering requirements, it’s a great start. The free bankroll will instantly hit your real money account, and you’ll be able to play with it as if it were you own. Once you played it through enough times (you’ve generated enough rake) you’ll be allowed to cash your money out. If you handle things well, you may even end up with more money than the free bankroll you were initially granted.

Cashing out after a successful free bankroll adventure is always a good idea. Chances are, the poker room that provides the free bankroll will not provide the best on and off-table odds for you, but you can’t look a gift horse in the mouth, this will have to do just fine until you get your hands on the funds. Once that’s done, you’ll have a choice of where to invest it. Fist thing’s first: look for a good rakeback deal. Playing with reduced rake will not only make it easier for you to beat the games in the long-run, it’ll also earn you money at the end of each month or week. Playing as a poker prop will land you an exceptional rakeback setup (well above 100%), which can provide a huge push towards the real poker bankroll that you aim for.

Whatever you do, try to avoid cash games as long as you know you’re under bankrolled. Cash games are by far not the ideal choice for bankroll building for several reasons. On one hand, you’ll pay more rake than in a tournament, on the other hand, the nature of play at cash tables will not aid you one bit.
STTs (Single Table Tournaments) are the games for you at this stage. They give you excellent odds, a flimsy opposition (at a 10 handed table, you only need to best 7 players to double up on your buy-in) and they’ll be over in a reasonable amount of time, so they represent a very good return on your time investment too.
Start with lower buy-ins and gradually work your way up into higher-buyin STTs.

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“Sometimes, we just feel this overpowering blind impulse to reassess a big pot. Apart from if we are drunk or tilted, this urge is broadly when we flop a great hand. At other times, we like to comment medium-sized pots, and this is predominantly when we have a ace but not great hand. Sometimes, we want to pore over a small pot and get to showdown cheap, this is when we have a average but probably-best holding.
This is the reason it is so important to try to adjust the pot size to match the quality of your poker hand. If we say that we raised 99 from late position and an opponent called by both blinds. The flop is perfect for us – J93. This is one of those occasions where our highest wish is to just get the money in the middle – and this is why it is so vital to start developing the pot right away!
If the blinds assess to us, we should place a bet – about 2/3 to 3/4 of the pot is a acceptable bet. Occasionally our opponents will have missed the flop completely and fold, but if they have hit a piece of it they will call – or even raise the bet! – And the pot gets nicely bloated already on the flop, increasing our chances of stacking the opponent. By placing a bet, we give ourselves the contingency to win a galactic pot whereas if we look at behind, we will have pains winning a big pot.
Creating pots on early streets with cracking holdings is an essential part of ace regard.
Then what about the medium-sized pots? Well, let’s say that we raised AQ preflop and once again the blinds called. The flop comes QT3. If both investigate to us, we should bet for value, but at the same time a positive measure of care is needed. If we don’t have a acceptable read, we no doubt do not want to remark upon for stacks – the opponent could have two pair or a set. We are wagering to extract money from a straight draw or a top pair with a worse kicker.
The recognized turn check out is to comment behind if the other player checks, with the resolution of calling most rivers if bet into and value-wagering most rivers if checked to.
With bad holdings, our aim is to keep the pot small. If we say that we, in an online poker game, limped A4 suited from late position after a few limpers (to try to flop a straight, flush or bona fide draw). The flop comes AT8, which provides us top pair with a lousy kicker.
In this case, it is in our interests to keep the pot small. If checked to, we should study and see a turn card (if we bet, we are likely only getting called by hands that beat us). If another player bets, we can call on the flop and re-review in retrospect on the turn (or just fold if it is a tight player doing the wagering). If there is a place a bet and a call in front of us, we just throw away this hand. We have no interest to size up a medium-sized or big pot.
Changing the pot size to the strength of your holding is an imperative part of poker. Of course, sometimes it is imperative to mix up our report a bit to not make us too probable, but the above lines are long-term winning recognized plays.
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