Archive for the ‘Cards’ Category

Poker Tips to Make You a Better Player

Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008

How to quickly become a better player? Stick to these 3 tips to improve your poker skills and profits. Although designed for beginner players, these are poker tips that even seasoned pros should remind themselves from time to time.

1. Don’t Play Every Hand

Probably the most common mistake beginning poker players make is that they play far too many hands. When you’re just a rookie playing poker, you want to play poker, and that means staying in hands that aren’t very good just for the sake of the action. However, playing more doesn’t mean more profits, it usually means more losses. If you discover you’re staying in half or more the hands you’ve dealt, you need to rise your starting hand requirements.

2. Don’t Play Drunk

Many nights have I sat across a table from someone and seen them get plastered silly and throw away their entire stack of chips. I’ve been such person as well - and there are nights where you’re just playing with friends for low stakes and it’s more about the fun than the poker - but when you’re in a casino, mind the alcohol. Actually, while you might be more relaxed after two drinks, it may result in playing looser and less sharply, even if you’re not ‘drunk.’

3. Don’t Bluff Just For Bluffing Sake

Many beginners are aware of the fact that bluffing is a part of poker, but they don’t know how it exactly works. There’s is NO rule that one must bluff a given number of times or at all during a poker game, but many players don’t feel like they’ve won unless they’ve applied a poker bluff. Bluffs only work in certain situations and against certain people, and if you know a player always calls to the showdown, it is virtually impossible to bluff that player. It’s better never to bluff than to bluff “just for bluffing sake.”

Learn to count cards and win at blackjack

Sunday, February 24th, 2008

There aren’t many games at the casino where a proper playing strategy can decrease or possibly eliminate the advantage enjoyed by the house, but blackjack is one such game. There are well-known strategies of card counting that enable to eliminate the edge in favor of the house and help the player enjoy a winning day at either the virtual or real work blackjack games.

Obviously the most well known, and most efficient, method for blackjack players to tip the odds to their benefit is to count cards. Card counting, of course is not as simple, or as straightforward, as many tend to believe. In the end, casinos are also aware of card counting, and they are continuously taking countermeasures to limit the effectiveness of this method. From using multiple decks or cards to applying automatic shufflers, casinos are always aiming to defeat card counters, and good players are always discovering new methods and strategies.

The easiest method to count cards is just to keep a current count in your head as every new card is dealt from the deck. This count will help you to determine the chances of the cards they need being the next to appear from the deck. Although this method is relatively simple on single deck blackjack tables, it becomes increasingly complex as the number of decks used in the game rises. Clever blackjack players actively look for single deck tables, as such tables typically give the best chances and the greatest advantage to the skillful card counter.

It is clear that the running count does not tell the whole story, even on single deck blackjack tables. It is essential to know the real count in order to give an efficient betting strategy. Basically, the true count is the running count divided by the number of decks of cards that have not yet been dealt. This true count will allow for a better idea of how favorable the remaining cards will be.