poker online…. I sometimes have a hard time folding online poker hands that are pretty clear, albeit difficult, folds. Blinds were 150/300 and I had about 8,000 chips. I raise to 750 UTG+1 with 10s. I get 5 callers and enter a rare huge multiway pot. Flop was [K-J-10]. I hit my set, but and faced with a pretty scary board. If I shove I’m likely to get called by someone who already has me beat or is getting odds with a queen. It is almost guaranteed that one of my 5 opponents must have a queen. But check-folding is not something I am interested in doing. My set isn’t worthless, it’s just vulnerable. I lead for 1600 and the field thins to heads up. The good thing is my bet determined the price, and now I get to see a turn and hopefully pair the board. Unfortunately, the turn brings a 9. I can’t assume that anyone would have been in after the flop without a queen or a better set. There are a few hands I have tied up: KJ, K-10, J-10 and 99. I decide to basically give up and check. My poker online opponent bets 3500 and I stubbornly won’t go away. I put my 5500 in and he calls, with AQ. I’m praying for a board pair. This is a hand I have to get away from 100% of the time, or at least try to play smaller. I probably should have check called on the flop and certainly could have folded on the turn.

This is a four-part online poker strategy article that everyone should know about if you’re looking to take full advantage of playing Texas Hold ‘Em poker online. In this first part we’re going to talk about using your features.

The first feature you’ll notice on most sites is the ability to take notes and add tags to players. Learn to use this feature. Take notes on everything, how they played against certain betting lines, what their bet sizes mean, how they bet when they have the nuts, and on and on and on. This will do two things for you. First it’ll help you if you encounter this player later on down the line, and it’ll help you in the game if you get put into a situation with them. Second it’ll help you get more observant and start watching other online poker players. One wise player once said that you start to move from beginner to intermediate when you can start worrying about what the other player is holding and not just what you’re holding in your hand.

So notes, notes, and more notes. And when you think you’ve written down everything you can about a player, write down some more because I assure you there’s more to every player than just your first impression. Remember just as you’re trying to get better, so are the other players, so they style may change and your notes may become obsolete.

Despite all the advice and theories about which hands to play in online poker, there are times when you can “think outside the box” and make some questionable plays. These are marginal situations that offer some small edge that can pay off. For instance, you are in the big blind holding a small pocket pair. Everyone folds around to the button, who doubles the bet. The small blind folds and it’s up to you to call or let the button steal the blinds. Many would simply fold their small pocket pair believing the button has a more powerful online poker hand. The chances of hitting a set on the flop are one in eight - not very good odds. Calling the bet seems like a losing proposition. However, think about the probability of getting fold equity if you do enter the pot, either with a call or a raise. Can you get your opponent off the hand? A check raise could do the trick. If you deploy a check raise bluff very infrequently based on what you know about your opponent, you may win it enough times to make this marginal poker play profitable in the long run. Think about your opponent. Is raising on the button an established pattern for this player? If you can get your opponent to fold sometimes, you can increase you winning probability with a small pocket pair from 1 in 8 to perhaps 1 in 6. Choose your spots carefully and don’t develop an established pattern in your own play. Make the attempt to get fold equity sometimes when holding marginal cards.

Many of us online poker players instinctively cut the cards without thinking about it. If you pay the way that I grew up learning the dealer is responsible for passing the newly shuffled cards t o the online poker player on his left. The left side player then has to cut the cards into two piles and place the bottom pile on top of the first. When I learned to play cards, I was told that cutting was used to get more players involved with the game. I secretly held a suspicion that my mother instituted it just so she would not have to listen to me whine about not getting to deal. As I grew up, I realized that there was an actual reason for cutting the deck. It is technically implemented so that the poker dealer has checks and balances on their dealing ability. Did you know that it was first used when the dealing was done by hand so that the dealer was not manipulating the deck? It is up to you to decide whether you want to want to keep this old style practice in play. It’s a fun practice that most people recognize as part of the game, but it does imply that you don’t rust your friends.

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of poker players who play very aggressively when a tournament starts out, buying up blinds and trying to make plays for uncontested poker pots. It’s a risky proposition any time that you try to buy a pot, but doing so in the early stages of a tournament seems like a needless risk. I tend to save my risky bluffs for later on in the poker online tournament, when it’s important to accumulate chips to keep up with rising blinds, and when the blinds are big enough to make for some good pots. By the time the blinds are high enough to start knocking people out, it’s worth risking a percentage of your stack to snatch them up, but when a tournament is just starting, the blinds are too small to make up a decent-sized pot. they just aren’t worth the risk. Also, you don’t want to tip your hand too early in the game. Your opponents are going to take notice when you make a play for the blinds, whether you’re successful or not. If they peg you as a blind stealer early on in the game, it’s probably going to hurt your chances of stealing them later on.

A full house in a hand of online poker refers to a hand contains three cards of one rank, and two cards of another rank, such as 4 4 4 5 5 or 8 8 8 K K. A full house loses to four of a kind and a straight flush but beats regular flushes and straights and so on.

The value of a full house in online poker versus another full house is determined first by the rank of the cards that make up the set of three, wherein a hand that has K K K for its three of a kind would beat all other kinds of full houses except for A A A, each time regardless of what the value of the two of a kind cards are. Therefore, 8 8 8 2 2 would beat 7 7 7 A A, even though the aces are clearly higher than the deuces as kickers.

In the event that both full houses have the same rank of cards for their three of a kind, the evaluation then goes to the rank of the 2 paired cards, where K K K 8 8 would beat K K K 7 7, and so on.

The odds of making a full house in a five card poker online hand is 0.144%.

You can usually tell a player who comes to sit down at the poker table is, in his regular role, a dealer, in that he knows most everybody at the table. He’s quick to start a conversation, likes to play fast, and is no joke about his action. Sometimes he’ll like to play around, as usually when he is at the table he has to be all business, and playing off the clock is his chance to throw off some of that time he spent dealing online poker cards to everybody else.

They may be wearing their usual dealer outfit but more often they will not, as this is their relax time.

The thing about professional dealers playing cards is that they’ve seen most every situation you can imagine. They know more than the average Joe about what a guy looks like when’s bluffing, the odds of a hand going down, and etc. Most dealers will tend to play a pretty tight game of poker online, if a little more loose on the way of looking for draws, and won’t get involved in a huge hand without something pretty strong. They don’t make a lot of money at their job, so playing careful is smart.

The old saying, “you should heed your own advice” is never as apt as when applied to poker. How come that everyone, even the best players in the world, occasionally lose complete focus on what they’re doing and play poker online horribly, even when they know in their mind that they are playing stupidly? I was playing online poker recently, and for some reason was in the midst of making stunningly bad plays. I was calling every raise with mediocre hands, betting out of position on the flop with meddle pair, and just generally making poor decisions. The worst part about all of this, however, was that I knew I was playing bad yet couldn’t stop myself! I kept saying in my head, “don’t do this, this is a horrible play” and yet I did it anyway. I was unable to stop my own stupidity. Most good poker players have some sort of a plan going into a poker game, whether they are sitting down at a tournament or a cash game. But sometimes when you get on tilt the hardest thing to do is to is to keep that focus and don’t stray from your plan. But hard as it might be, or as much as you may want to take down one particular player, you must always stay with your gameplan no matter what; or else you will just lose money in the long run.

I bet that when you are playing poker, you pay more attention to the numerical value of the card that the image of the back. While this is a typical trait of players, there are people out there who spend their whole lives studying the back of the cards at the casino.

Let’s start with the standard Bicycle deck of playing cards. Instantly recognizably, always available, and moderately priced, Bicycle cards are the cards that most people have contact with. The name is derived from an American craze in the 1920 and 1930s for cycling in all of its forms. According to this trend, some packs of Bicycle cards still feature a double sided image of an angel on a bicycle. Jokers are also commonly depicted on bicycles.

Another popular back design is from Bee poker cards, which incorporates a bee into their design. Bees in this role function in much the same way as traditional mascots and heraldic imagery meant to scare an opponent into submission. In a poker context a bee represents the idea that a player can sting when provoked.

Custom cards can also be ordered to celebrate significant events of places. Casinos often provide custom souvenir packs that players can use far after they have left the casino floor. In cases like these, the backs have as much meaning as the fronts. Don’t ignore this important part of your gaming experience.

In case you didn’t know our beloved online poker site Everest Poker is a subsidiary of GigaMedia Limited, originally based in Singapore and is now a competitor in the global market in the online gaming world.

Known for more than it’s rapidly expanding Everest Poker online gaming site, GigaMedia has been involved in major projects with SEGA, XLGames, and Electronic Artsall major publishers in the console video game market.

And with a track record like that it’s not hard to believe that Everest Poker would be included among the greats in its poker endeavor as well.

On November 13, in a press release from GigaMedia, it was disclosed that Everest Poker was awarded the title Poker Operation of the Year from eGaming Review, the annual gaming review conference held in London.

Everest has fast been growing as one of the leaders in the industry and was this year’s “felt sponsor” in the WSOP. It currently serves a large percentage of the online gaming population of Europe and has a formidable share in the Asian market as well.

The trend is expected to increase and Everest has been touted as being the first “truly multilingual poker room,” by marketwatch.com and is applauded for its innovative offerings to the international poker community.