The Online Casino Gambling Blog

1. Don’t play with money you can’t afford to lose. This applies to all gambling games really. Afterall if you lose your rent money there’s no certainty anyone else in the homeless shelter will know how to play Texas Hold ‘Em.

2. Don’t even sit down at the table if you don’t feel like a winner. To win a game of poker you need your confidence.

3. If you’re distracted or upset, don’t play. To win a game of poker you need to concentrate on the game.

3. Keep a record of your game play - wins, losses and hours played so that you have an idea of  your strengths and weaknesses.

4. If you’re approaching full tilt, stop. Don’t ever go for tilt.

5. If you find yourself losing badly start making smaller bets, there’s no need to throw your money away to save face.

6. If you feel you’re having a bad game quit, even if you’re winning still quit, don’t risk your entire pot when you don’t feel the confidence or have the concentration or the luck to win the game.

7. If you’re losing but your gut tells you you can turn the game around then stay in it, keep playing you never know luck might be right around the corner or in the next hand rather.

Five Card Stud is easier than most forms of poker because your opponents only have one face down card. It’s won not by straights or flushes but mostly by high cards and pairs so keep an eye out for those. You should definitely fold if you don’t have a pair in your first three cards or at least a live card that beats everyone else’s hands. Here are some more strategy tips for playing this game both at online casinos and physical gambling arenas.

•    Pay attention to the players hands that have folded so you know which cards are out of the deck.

•    Pay attention to the players themselves, study their hands, try to predict their moves.

•    Don’t get overconfident if you’ve got a high card, it won’t mean anything if put against someone with a stronger pair of cards than you.

•    Bluff badly every now and then so you get called on it, people won’t be able to predict when you’re actually bluffing for real and it will make you a harder opponent to beat.

•    If your hand (including the facedown card) is beaten by someone else’s face up cards you should fold.

•    Trust your instincts.

•    And above all don’t play with money you can’t afford to lose.

The last two are good advice to follow both in poker and in real life!

Kenny Rogers says you gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away but he forgot the most important part of poker - knowing when to bluff!  Now bluffing may not be the most universal skill as it’s not useful in a lot of gambling games besides poker and brag and a lot of people are actually horrible at it because they’re just unable to tell a believable lie. However most people can be taught to be reasonably good at bluffing, especially when playing with people who don’t know them well.

The first step to bluffing then is actually to develop a poker face, the idea is to keep your fellow players always guessing as to what kind of hand you might have. If you’re always fake frowning when you have a good hand and smiling when you have a bad hand they’re going to pick up on that. So you want to remain as neutral as possible regardless of the type of hand you have. Once you’ve developed your ‘poker’ or neutral face you want to become aware of any ‘tells’ you may have, like one gambler I know habitually scratched the left side of his nose when he had a good hand, tapping your fingers on the table when you have a bad hand etcetera. These are all ‘tells’ that you need to get rid of before you can bluff successfully.

Bluffing is tantamount in situations where you may have a hand that most likely isn’t a winning hand but you need the other players at the table to believe it is. You want them to think your hand is so great they have no choice but to fold. However if you do this every round and keep showing average or even bad hands then someone’s going to call your bluff for sure. You need to bluff sparingly so that people don’t pick up on the fact that you’re bluffing. You want to bluff subtly so people don’t realize you’re faking them out. So don’t all of a sudden start smiling over how great your cards are, you want to maybe grin a little and then stop, say something really positive unrelated to your hand like you’re all of a sudden in a good mood. But remember whatever you do has to be something you might normally do otherwise people will get suspicious and think you’re bluffing.

Of course the ideal time to bluff is when you’ve read your fellow players body language and know that they have bad hands so be sure to pay attention to their tells also. Knowing when to bluff and how to decipher body language is useful both in real time poker and poker via webcam.

Push the lever or spin the button?   It doesn’t make a difference which you prefer, at least not to the slot machine anyways, it will spin either way. 

No matter how many coins you play it will not alter the results of your spin, but it can however influence your overall payout. Set a limit to how much money you can afford to spend before you start playing at the slot machine. Once you reach your limit and exhausted all your funds, it is time to quit.   If you have been playing a slot machine and have not received a single hit after the first half dozen spins or so, now would be a good time to try a different machine. Chances are you might end up losing all your cash back to the machine. Loose machines keep you winning steadily.  The loosest slot machines are easily identified, usually in plain sight for all to see; casino foyers, near payout booths, places where there is plenty activity, etc.  Contrary to popular belief casino owners want players to easily identify loose paying machines; this is imperative for their business as a happy winner will keep coming back for more. 
 
 Need a break, no problem simply ask a casino worker to hold your machine.   Many casinos offer this service, referred to as a “cap” in the casino world.  Don’t forget to take your cash with you.  Use your player’s card whenever possible. There’s lots of free stuff to be had with a player’s card.  Haven’t got one no fret it only takes a few minutes. Player’s card can easily be replaced, including correct balance and all.  Make it a habit of ensuring your player’s card is in your possession, when you check out. 

Most people don’t realize the most important thing about slots - each spin of the slot machine is unique, because the results depends solely on how fast the machine generates randomly selected numbers and not by the number of spins. Even if you played for hours at a machine and not receive any hits, then soon after quitting, someone else played on that same machine and won, does not guarantee you would have gotten a hit, had you continued playing.
No one can tell for sure when a machine is going to hit a jackpot.   Some machines have been know to hit the jackpot twice in succession, while others have gone for days without generating a single hit.   Anyone has a chance at hitting the jackpot once they have a spin at the reel.
If you seriously want to get ahead of the game, try the three-reel slot machines with the single payline, they offer the best payouts.
Steer away from multiple payline slot machines. Athough there are more paylines to increase your chances of winning, the payouts are much less than the single payline machines.

Picking up from yesterday here are a few more tips for the intermediate player.

A good player is an unpredictable player
A player you can predict is a player you can beat, don’t be that player. Shake up your betting style or act like you’re bluffing when you’re not, keep the other players on their toes so they can’t tell what you’re going to do.

Use your position.
The best position to hold in a poker game is the button – as the last player to bet you have the most advantage as you can observe everyone else’s actions and consider them carefully before making your own.

Practice makes perfect
And online poker is perfect for practice as it tests your basic skills and gives you a chance to practice your strategy. Use it as the advantage it can be for when you play at real casinos.

Greed is the greatest hindrance a player can have.
Don’t try and win every single hand at the highest profit you can, be realistic both in your bets and your expectations.

A Good Player never stops learning
In addition to these tips there are dozens of good books out there than can teach you different types of poker strategy. Learn from your opponents as to what works in a bluff and what doesn’t. Learn your own preferences, learn your bad habits and cut them out of your game, learn what you like to do as a player and make that work for you.

Most importantly if you’re not having fun you’re not playing the game right.

  
Today I will be dispensing tips for intermediate players who already have an idea of strategy but may be lacking in the area of experience. These poker tips are some I’ve learned myself and others that have been handed down to me from players whose mastery of the game is on a near professional level.
   
Don’t play with the big dogs unless you have the chops to bite back.
This means play with others who are at or below your level of skill. Don’t jump into a tournament with experienced players armed only with the knowledge of the rules of the game. The same way you wouldn’t fight a guy twice your size and height you don’t want to take on poker players who know twice as much as you. You will lose.

Play at your limit
Don’t go making bets that are beyond what you can afford thinking you’ll win it all back. Set yourself a betting limit before sitting down. Most poker players set themselves a budget of fifty times the minimum bet at a table, this leaves them lots of money for playing a long night of poker but still gives them a limit they must not exceed.

Fold when you have to.
There is no shame in folding, poker is about both skill and luck and sometimes luck is against you. The most experienced gamblers play out maybe thirty percent of their starting hands and fold on all the rest.

If you’re not willing to raise don’t call.
The only time you should call is when you think you have the best hand at the table. If you wouldn’t increase your bet based on this certainty then you might think about folding.

Bluffing is important but it can backfire.
Learning to bluff is important and sure you may think you’re the best bluffer at the table but who knows if that’s true. Only bluff if you think it’s unlikely someone will call. If you’re on a run of bad luck bluffing is more likely to lose you money than to win you any.

Know your opponents tells.
In a lot of players their body language will tell you as much about the hands they hold as x ray glasses that let you see the card faces would. Study them as the game goes on, learn the way they act when they hold a good combination of cards, when they’re bluffing how do they bet? Try and predict their moves and arrange your own to suit.

Summarizing the basic rules of poker is nearly impossible given the sheer number of different types of poker there are out there. Most poker games use the standard 52 card deck while others dependent on the type of poker being played can contain more or less for instance in the case of wild card variations the players may add in the two jokers. In poker all the card suits are of the same value and the player with the highest ranking hand wins. The cards are valued in typical numerical order from 2 being the lowest right on up through King but most typically the Aces are viewed as being higher ranked than the King although there are variations where the Ace serves as the lowest card.

In a game with wild cards the wild cards are viewed as blank in that they can take on the rank or suit of whatever the player desires. Mostly wild cards are signified by adding the jokers back into the pack but players can also specify a certain card is wild for example you could declare a poker rule that deuces (twos) are wild in a game and they would then be able to be manipulated to be any card.

Typically there are five cards in a hand of poker but there are some types of the game where the hands hold seven cards for example Seven Card Stud. In typical poker games like 5 Card Draw the hand is dealt all face down to the players while in others like Texas Hold ‘Em some cards called “hole cards” are dealt face up leading to a more exciting game.
 

Obviously betting on this classic gambling game is quite complicated given the sheer variation in hands, players, settings and experience with bluffing you have.

The card ranking is really where it gets complicated. In poker five of a kind or five cards with the same value is the highest ranking hand you can produce, the problem is you can only have five of a kind in a game that contains wild cards so this only happens in those sorts of games. In a game without wild cards the highest ranked hand is the straight flush. After the straight flush, four of a kind is the next highest ranked hand followed by a full house then a flush then three of a kind and finally two pair, one pair and the high card. By the time you get to the last three you’re really scraping the barrel if everyone is having a bad hand and you should give up on playing for the night as it’s obvious lady luck is not with you.

Here’s the skinny on tie breaks –

If you have two players with straight flushes, flushes or straights then the hand that holds the highest valued card wins so K-Q-J-10-9 would be a straight which would beat the straight Q-J-10-9-8. If you’re tied on the high cards then the deciding card would be next highest and so on until one card is higher. If your hands are exactly equal then this is a true tie and the winners split the pot.

The highest matched three wins in full houses, and if the matching three are of the same rank the lower pair loses. In pair and two pair the hand with the highest hand wins.

For three and four of a kind hands then the hand with the higher matching set wins so 8-8-8-8-1 would trump a hand of 7-7-7-7-3. In one pair hands the numbers only matter if the pairs are equal so a Q-Q-9-5-2 hand would be trumped by a Q-Q-10-6-2 pair as the 10 is obviously higher than a 9.

So you want to learn to play Poker like a pro? Well there are two main parts this blog will cover. The first part is the basics of the game, the second - how to bet will be covered in the next.

Poker is one of the classic gambling games found at almost all casinos, played with a standard deck with all cards minus the two jokers. It’s almost impossible to discuss all the variations you can find of this simple game but I’ll try and keep my info on the general tenets of poker and you can find out the fancy stuff later.

In poker the object of the game is to arrange ‘hands’ of cards into winning variations. If you can’t do this, the next best thing is to ‘bluff’ your companions into thinking you have a straight flush (a winning hand). The player with the highest ranking hand at the end of the betting wins the game.

In most versions of the game and in the original “Straight” poker, each player is dealt five cards mostly face up, the players then wager on their own hand of cards being better than anyone else’s at the table and after everyone has bet players can then raise their bets. After this second round of betting players generally will show their hands and the winner is declared.  Sounds fairly simple right?

Not so when there are dozens of different games all under the single heading Poker – There’s Wild Card Poker, Stud Poker, Draw, Texas Hold-Em (this one is very popular in casinos) and dozens of others each with their own rules and customs to be followed strictly.