You don’t need off-site software. I know that many players are in love with these programs, but I would strictly advise students of the game to ignore them. The most popular of these is Poker Tracker. And it is one heck of a piece of software. But don’t use it. Why? Because it is a great distraction and can easily be the cause of losing your focus on what really matters.

In No Limit Hold’em, the game currently offering the best opportunity to make steady profits in by far, there are only two things that are really important. They are: 1. Playing against somebody who is willing to put all their chips in with only one pair after the flop, and 2. Not playing a losing game the remainder of the time. This is assuming that you are a good player (and therefore would never put all your chips in with just one pair after the flop) – and it is further assuming that ‘all your chips’ constitutes a large stack, much bigger than the size of the pot.

The most effective tool to help stay focused on these two objectives is the buddy list. When you run across someone who is willing to put their large stack of chips in the pot with one pair after the flop you should buddy-list that player immediately (before they disappear). Your primary goal in this game is to find these players and play against them. If you are in a game where nobody would do that, you are just spinning your wheels because that is where the profits come from, and there are always other tables going with an opponent or two who are willing to do that. So every single time you see someone put all their chips in the middle with one pair, buddy list them! Make it a habit, so you don’t even have to remind yourself to do it.

Now, it does absolutely no good to accumulate a good-sized buddy list if you are not willing to use it! Every time you log in, go to your buddy list first thing and try to get in a game with one of those players. This is the most critical thing you can do to start your session.

Let’s talk about number the second element now, which is not playing a losing game the rest of the time. To help in this quest, you should use the other terrific tool provided by the poker room: Player notes. Always take good player notes that will actually help you make quality, information-based decisions in the future. Do not waste your time making player notes that won’t help. For example, just writing ‘fish’ or ‘maniac’ or ‘call this idiot’ are not going to do much for you two weeks from now when that person may be in a completely different mood. Contrast that kind of note with something like ‘called a large preflop raise with AJ’ or ‘called a large all-in bet on the turn with a flush draw.’ Do you see how those types of notes are much more likely to help you down the road? You need to be detailed about the situation your observation occurred in, because with a more general note you probably won’t be able to recall the context in which you were writing it.

All Poker Tracker software really does for you is to help you categorize the different types of opponents you encounter, plus give you good data by which to study your own game. Yes, those can be good things. But if you get caught up in that instead of taking notes that are actually useful and concentrating on building a list of easy-to-find customers, your efforts will likely become derailed. And your results will suffer accordingly.

Author: Andrew Kasch

Get 5 free hot online poker strategy tips right now at http://www.onlinepokerincome.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Andrew_Kasch

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It is common for a poker player to directly accuse or insinuate that online poker is rigged. This is usually a result of a player receiving a “bad beat”. Phrases are jokingly made such as “jokerstars” referring to the popular poker network, PokerStars. However, a lot people share the common theory that the poker sites rig their software as to encourage action; increasing their profit. The theories and conspiracies cannot be proven, and many an investigation has been made into the credibility of these accusations.

Logic and reason

Rigging a poker site would be like cheating at your final exams – the costs outweigh the gain. If a poker site is caught rigging their software then it is likely that the said site will lose all the credibility and loyalty of its customers; customers that it has taken many years to gain the trust of. Rigging a poker site, according to Game Theory, would be irrational and illogical.

Human Behavior

Human nature is a strange thing; psychologists Jean-Paul Sartre and Soren Kierkegaard were a couple of the first to look into human behaviour and more recent psychologists have studied the minds of poker players. One thing that has been discovered about online poker is that humans are naturally very suspicious. Reasons for this natural suspicion lie in the fact that the mechanism controlling the outcome of an event cannot physically be seen. Unlike in a live game, you are unable to see the cards being shuffled and cut.

Preventing Rigging

According to Poker Stars, there are 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different ways to shuffle a deck of cards.

Amazingly, the site uses the players to choose the order of the cards using “user input, including summary of mouse movements and events timing, collected from client software”. In the event that there are problems with this as a RNG (random number generator), they have a backup: “true hardware random number generator developed by Intel, which uses thermal noise as an entropy source”. Furthermore, the RNG is certified by 2 independent organizations: Cigital and BMM International.

Cigital: An independent software risk management organization working with such companies as Qualcomm, Visa International, Texas Instruments, AOL, MasterCard, General Electric, Motorola, Pfizer Health Solutions, and Ericsson.

BMM International: A global organization that provides independent computer systems assurance and compliance certification testing services, the Australia-based company is a client of the Australian government among other organizations.

Possible Rigging

The poker industry is an incredibly tough market and one that is definately not easily entered. The large businesses such as PokerStars, Full Tilt and Party Poker have swallowed their competitors and taken a huge majority of the market between them.

Smaller poker sites may have an incentive to rig their software as profits might be low and security standards/regulations may be of poor quality or even non-existent. These companies may get a slight edge over their competitors as they have very little to lose and a lot to gain by rigging their software.

Absolute Poker Scandal

Sept. 13th. Potripper won a $1000 buy-in tourney, Absolute Pokers largest tournament. The player CrazyMarco, who finished second, insisted that there had to be cheating involved in Potrippers win. One of the most obvious signs was when Potripper bet around 20k with T-high, got pushed all-in by CrazyMarco, and called the sick 180k to beat CrazyMarcos 9-high bluff.

CrazyMarco demanded the hand history released, and to his surprise, Absolute Poker was more than willing to help him with this matter. Feb. 21st, APs support send him a file, but this was far from the ordinary hand history he had requested. The file he recieved was huge, and after a short peak he turned of his computer and went to bed as he was unable to gain any information from the data file himself.

Two weeks later rumors are heating up at PocketFives, and Marco posts in the forum that he has this enormous file from the Potripper tournament. The moderator of the site, adanthar, offers his help, and Marco sends him the file. It turns out the file covers the entire tournament, all of the players’ hole cards, and other normally highly confidential information.

- Potripper folded the first two, then saw all flops, unless the times where an opponent had two queens or better.

- Potripper won all showdowns in the tournament.

- Potripper folded on the river every time he was behind – and raised every time he wasn’t.

- Potripper only bluffed when the opponent(s) had weak hands.

Conclusion

The online poker (and casino) industry is a multi-billion dollar industry. Credibility, respect and loyalty are at the top of the agenda for any of these businesses and therefore rigging would most likely have detrimental affects on the business.

Rigging of a poker site may be rare and unheard of, however there is the possibility that a freak incident such as the Absolute Poker Scandal may occur.

Author: Nick Pateman

Poker Forums at pokerisrigged.com offers unique and quality reviews, strategies, advice and hand analysis. By signing up you give yourself a leading edge in improving your poker ability.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nick_Pateman

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Even though they are well worth their modest cost (roughly $70), it is possible to get these online poker tools for free ! All you have to do is to sign up to a new poker room, deposit some money, possibly play a few hands, and the poker tool is yours for free!

Do not make the mistake of getting the wrong poker tools. I have paid hundreds of dollars trying out every poker tool available. Read my reviews to make the best decision.

My Recommendations:

I recommend running at least three tools when you play poker. I run Poker Edge and Poker Office always in the background, they provide immensely useful information on your play and your opponent’s play. I always have a poker calculator working, Holdem Indicator is my favorite for general use, but when I can I also use Holdem Hawk (when the poker room allows me!

Poker Office is a sophisticated online poker tool that I use instead of Poker Tracker. Used in conjunction with Poker Edge, I have a very powerful online poker statistics set up. It allows you to view the other player’s betting patterns and their statistics, as well as analyze your own play (like in Poker Tracker) so you can find weaknesses in your game. There are win rates, statistics reports and graphs and the ability to replay any hand, tournament or session. As far as I am concerned it is absolutely essential for online poker playing.

Poker Edge: There are a number of different tools which do a broadly similar job, but this is my favorite. The others are too difficult to set up and not reliable enough. Poker Edge tracks the play of a huge number of players so you can see statistics of everyone on their enormous database. This can tell you which players you want to avoid and who you want to play against – very important factors in making money at the table. I run this software every time I play poker and it has been very very helpful. Almost every poker professional has software like this set up! You are giving away a huge advantage if you do not have it. Like the others its free if you sign up for a new poker room!

Holdem Indicator: This is one of the very best tools out there. I recommend this completely. The free license is available when you sign up to many poker rooms listed below. The HUGE benefit of this program is that it enables you to see your opponent’s mucked cards at showdown! This is not illegal and you are entitled to see you opponents mucked cards at showdown, but some rooms choose not to allow this. This is very useful information as it can tell you what your opponents are willing to call you down with. It has made me a lot of money! Holdem Indicator also has a basic players tracking guide for classifying player that you are playing with. All in all this is probably the best poker odds calculator on the market.

At the very least I recommend that you get Poker Edge, Poker Office and Holdem Indicator. When I can, instead of running Holdem Genius, I run Holdem Hawk which is a more powerful tool, but unfortunately it is so good that Poker Stars ban people from using it. It works with many other rooms though! If you play at rooms which allow it

Remember these are all free so you obviously have nothing to lose in getting them all.

A Word on Other "Tools":

You may have heard about many other tools that you can buy. Be warned that most of these are scams.

Poker Bots: As well as being illegal in poker rooms, these are very easily detected. Once the poker rooms find out that you have been using a poker bot, they will ban you for life!

Hole Card Predictors: These are just plain scams. They do not work. Whatever the makers claim, there is no way to beat the random number generators that the poker rooms set up as the billion pound poker rooms hire the best mathematicians in the world to set them up and they are constantly changing!

View Your Opponent’s Hole Cards: In this scam, they send you software (for a large fee!) that you have to install on your opponent’s computer without them knowing, and have running whilst you both play. Then you have to dodge the poker room as they have tracking software and this tool is VERY illegal!

These "systems" are not worth your money. You are much better off getting the tools below for free!

Good luck at the tables!

Andrew

Author: Andrew Holgate

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Here are a few of these free rules for poker to start with:

1.Do not play every hand. It is easy to be overwhelmed in the game of poker. And, beginners are often overeager in their game wanting to bet on every combination. There is just no guarantee that you will win more by playing more. Play only hands good hands. It pays to play strategically. Read up and learn about how you can stay in the game for more winnings on the tables.

2.Choose your bluffs. Another thing beginners are overeager about is bluffing, or the idea of it. But, seasoned poker players are able to easily spot a bad bluff. There are certain "musts" that should be present in order for a bluff to work. There is a certain amount that you can bluff in a given game. In the free rules for pokers, you have to take into consideration the kind of players you are playing with before you start making your bluffs. Bluffing just because will likely leave you without anything.

3.Keep emotions out of it. When you are gambling, it is never a good thing to be emotional. There are bad decisions that come from being too angry or too cocky or even being too drunk. Playing poker is something that should be played with a clear head. Read your cards, read the table and read your competition. Not having a clear head can impede your ability to make good calls given what you are presented with at the tables.

4.Get out when you have to. In the free rules for poker, there is a need to know when to fold and when to stay in any particular hand. This is how poker should be played. It takes both chance and skill to be able to win in any hand and in the entire game. There is no correlation to the amount of money you have put in the pot and winning. Use your gut feel. There are definitely hands you can fold and then there are hands you can play.

5.Stay tuned to what is going on at the tables. Watch any professional poker games and you will notice that the players are practicing one of the most important tricks in the free rules for poker. It could be difficult to mind your cards and everything else going on in the table. But, there is just really no going around this trick. It is not really a trick rather it is how you play the game. It is all about working your strategy based on the cards you are dealt, the cards on the table, and how the other players are playing their hands.

These are just some of the free rules for poker that you can start using in your games. Playing poker is about making money and having fun. But, it is a thinking game. You do not make money simply by putting money on the tables.

By: Sean Moronse

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Is Pokerstars Rigged? No, but we have a legal cheat that will allow you to win $45 an hour or more playing Sit-N-Go’s on Pokerstars. Come get your FREE eCourse packed with tips on free poker rules to beat Pokerstars legally at www.SitNGoGenius.com.

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To give you a more in-depth look on which poker software available in the market does what, here is a rundown of some of the poker software and the features they claim to set them apart from other types of poker software. Spicy reviews for you to consider are also made available for each of these poker softwares.

Turbo Texas Hold’em, Turbo 7 Card Stud, Tournament Texas Hold’em, Turbo Omaha HI/LO
These are Wilson poker software that claim to produce the most realistic simulation of poker nowadays. But users and reviewers say that their interface could be so cranky and is hard to set-up.

DD Tournament Poker
This poker software is said to be perfect for beginners and experienced players alike. 5000 computer opponents are available in this program and one can choose from three skill levels. Poker aficionados also have the choice of playing a pre-define tournament or to customize one that will meet their specifications.

Calulatem Pro
This is a online poker calculator that has this innovative feature of giving the winning chance on both the next street and to the river. Texas Calculatems big brother with pot odds calculation that makes it very suitable for no-limit holdem

sit And Go Shark
This software is the ideal companion for sit ang go’st. I has an very extensive database of playing advice that it cosults for every situation and give you the best possible advice for every situation when playing no-limit holdem single table tournaments. The perfect learning tool for beginners to.

Texas Calculatem
This poker software is really good for fixed limit holdem. The Most popular online poker calculator with about 25000 users.

Holdem Genius
This is a Texas Holdem poker calculator that boasts to fully analyze complex situations much more accuratley than other available tools.

Crazy Pineapple
This poker software claims to have an easy installation feature and a smart computer advisor. It has an internet play and a watch play that for the purpose of learning.

Poker Office
This is said to be one of the most well-developed poker software since their first versions. Its features are its ability to automatically track stats, import old hand histories, and its giving of advice on how to improve the game. Review has it that this poker software is worth one’s money.

Mobile Poker Trainer
This poker software is a good download for the cellphone. This is the mobile version of the Texas Hold’em poker software. It’s good to kick boredom away with this poker software in your mobile phone. The downside of this program is its being limited to five characters that have predictable playing strategies. Reviewers say that it does not live out its name, it’s better off as a video game.

Contributed by:

Rob Force
Bestpokertools.net 2007
Website: http://www.bestpokertools.net

By: Rob Force

Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com

Visit BestPokerTools.net to learn about the best online poker tools to use for winning at online texas holdem poker.

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