Play Real Poker Online

The opportunity to play real poker online is one of the greatest advancements of this century. More and more players of the most popular poker game - Texas Hold'em - are choosing to play online now instead of in a real life casino or poker room.

But online poker can be really different for players that are used to playing in real world card games.

We have some poker tips that will guide you through how to play online poker games, as well as help with finding poker tutorial sites. We plan to add a FAQ section in the near future too.

Our site is focused on poker and casino games. We do not provide any info or tips about pay-to-play bingo or free bingo. Wink Bingo is one of the biggest bingo sites out there and seems to have a good reputation. Read reviews and site ratings before choosing your bingo site though, you don’t want to miss out on big jackpots or bonuses offered by other sites.

The world of online gaming has been a driving force behind the explosion of net based gambling revenues. The array of games on offer to the modern gambler is evermore enticing as design and technology become slicker and more user-friendly. Casino games on websites such as Gala Casinos have soared in popularity but the effect of less traditional cash prize games must not be understated.

Recent forecasts have predicted that online gaming revenues will rocket by just over 9% a year, peaking in 2015 at $182.8 billion. This is a phenomenal figure from a non-traditional industry, highlighting the public thirst for online gaming with cash stakes.

In the past, gambling was much more limited in scope. The average man may enjoy a trip to the bookmakers, or, a once in a blue moon trip to the horses. Now online gambling markets are available in our homes, and the range of products on offer is enticing. No longer are we confined to an uneducated wager on a horse or a punt at the football scores – the world of online gambling has brought us sites dedicated to some of our favourite social games.

Poker is prevalent on all online gaming sites. It’s a game that has come a long way since its early Wild West origins. Poker enjoyed popularity throughout America right through the last century. Towards the end of the 20th century it really began to take hold in the UK as a popular social pastime, and now it has reached a pinnacle, with easy internet access for rookies and pros alike.

The stakes you wager are down to you, and most sites will try to encourage responsible gambling. The onus is on the punter to curtail what they can afford to lose and most responsible sites like Jackpot City will place an emphasis on the fun intentions of the games available.

The online poker scene underwent a massive change in mid April when the largest online poker sites stopped accepting players from America. This was on foot of the US Government action against their websites and payment processors, which is an ongoing case.

The end result was a large number of US players no longer being able to play online poker. And the fallout from that is a much changed poker landscape. While there were probably a higher percentage of professional grinders in the American segment of the market, the loss of the entire US poker playing population has had a big impact on the online economy.

Even so, this event was not as disastrous as it might once have been. Following the UIGEA in 2006 many top poker sites made a big effort to target European players and that effort paid off. As we see in 2011, the removal of the Americans from the poker market had a net effect of reducing the population by about 18%.

While bad, this was nowhere near as bad as it might have been. It remains to be seen what will happen next.

Free Bingo and Friendly Faces for Poker Players

Poker sites are always offering players promotions, offers and bonuses in an attempt to encourage players to try out their site. In terms of these kinds of promotional offers, poker sites are similar to casino sites and bingo sites. Indeed, welcome bonuses are everywhere and they can make a huge difference to the bank roll of a player. One of the very best kinds of site for bonuses is bingo sites – especially the extra value added by the dawn of free bingo.

Free bingo is something that has hit the online sites over recent years. These games offer players great value, as the cards cost nothing but the games usually still have real cash jackpots on offer. In fact many of the free bingo games around today offer jackpots of £50 as a day to day normality. This means that players can join up at the site and get playing straight away with the chance to really win something for nothing! (more…)

When you look at how a certain type of poker player treats their pocket pairs in full-ring poker games then this is a very good indication of their mindset and overall attitude to risk. This can be especially the case in full-ring games. If you see a player win a pot with a set in ten handed full-ring no-limit play and you trace the action back and they open limped with a small pocket pair then this is indicative of something. You usually see low variance mentality with these types of strategies with players looking to flop sets on the cheap and then stack other players. (more…)

Despite our effort to hide all aspects of tells and information from our opponents we are unable to mask the story that is told through the pattern of our bets. Fortunately our opponents also cannot mask their bets either which gives us a ready made stream of information. We therefore have numerous things to think about when we bet. We must firstly ensure that if we are betting a strong or weak hand we are telling a consistent story with our betting and do not fall into the trap of indicating the strength of our hand by making a bad play. (more…)

Sitting down to some action in one of the world’s most popular games can be a wonderful, stressful and exhilarating experience, and it can all happen in a single hand. We’re talking hold’em, Texas Hold’em and all the betting varieties associated with this great game of poker. Many beginners, as well as novice players, can easily grasp the concept of how to build a winning hand, but all too often, the eagerness to play trumps the ignorance of knowing when NOT to play. In hold’em poker, to win big, it’s all about understanding your starting hand.

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Normally poker is consider to be a game of skill and other forms of online gambling are considered to be pure gambling. I’m not going to dispute that here, other than to say that I do know of some very successful professional casino gamblers, but like a lot of online poker players I often find myself sitting down to a casino table game occasionally just for fun.

It can be quite stress releasing to get away from the wild variety of poker playing styles that you come up against when you play a lot of online poker, and you can solely concentrate on beating the ‘house’ for a while. (more…)

Let it be known from the start that the Nguyen’s, although not all related, are some of the most formidable poker players on the planet. Scotty Nguyen is one of the most charismatic, devil-may-care, call-you-down-with-seven-deuce, dangerous players on the circuit, and Men Nguyen is equally fearsome on the felt. (more…)

I wrote a post earlier about collusion in poker and now I want to share a strange, almost surreal, experience of attempted collusion that I had many years ago at 888 poker.

It was abut 2005, and the internet poker boom was in full swing, but poker was by no means in it’s infancy even then. I was playing mainly two and three table sng’s at 888 and I was doing very well and cashing out nice and regularly.

But sometimes, like most players, I would switch to a cash game just for the heck of it. (I like cash, it’s where I came from).

So one night I was sat at a half empty 10 seat low stakes cash games and not doing so good. It was a mid week night and so you would expect that it would be a bit slow. Slow nights at slow tables tend to make the regular players a bit chatty, so there was a nice feeling at the table, with a bit of friendly chat and banter.

The players hadn’t changed much in a few hours, one dropping in or out every now and again, when suddenly two new players sat down within seconds of each other. It was habit back then, not so much now, to say hi to new players at a certain type of table, to keep the friendliness alive. So one of the seated players said ‘hi’ but got no answer.

Fair enough, not every one want s to chat, or even speaks English, so nothing unusual there.

After a few minutes, and a hand or two had passed, one of the players said ‘You ready?’ – just like that, didn’t make too much sense in the context of no conversation at the table. It does happen that a player that was multi-tabling would type into the wrong chat box by mistake. So nothing too unusual really, just a bit odd.

The the other new player said ‘OK’. That was it, nothing else. No one had spoken, so that too was out of context.

After the next few hands it became clear what was going on. These two geniuses had figured that by selecting the ‘ignore chat’ option on all the players that we wouldn’t be able to see what they were typing to each other.

And so they proceeded to tell each other what cards they were holding. In every hand.

That was some of the easiest money that I ever made at the poker table.

Staying in a hand when they should fold will cost most players a lot of money in the course of their poker playing life.

Having put your money in the pot, it can be very very difficult to throw your cards in, even when you know you probably should.

The ability to lay down cards that have lost their value will be one of the biggest earning traits of a good poker player. More so than most other advice, the advice to stop chasing will save you more cash than any of the other poker tips you will ever get.

Like I said in an earlier post about paying attention, when you have a premium hand like pocket aces, and you bet it out properly and are up against one or two remaining players, and the flop comes all wrong, with they suited cards or the bones of a high end straight, or trip kings, or any of a number of horrible set ups, the lay down here will save you – and saving is earning – the most money. And of course if you can not lay your hand down, simply because “I’m in now so I have to stay in”, then it will cost you the most money.

You do have to be careful of being bluffed off of a good hand because of a horrible flop, but if you have bet your hand correctly and read the table properly from the beginning then you should know when you are beat, and act accordingly.