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CelebPoker Package Winner Achieves Ambition

admin — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 04:54:34 +0000

CelebPoker Package Winner Achieves Ambition
CelebPoker Package Winner UK CelebPoker player Matthew Tranter took the next step in his poker career by winning a package to the Irish Winter Festival that took place from October 29th 31st, 2011. As a loyal player of CelebPoker, Matt will be aiming for more package wins in our online satellites for land based poker tournaments. We caught up with himto find out a bit more. What do you do (occupation, studies, hobbies etc?)I have been making a living by playing poker for the last couple of years. Prior to this I studied software development. I greatly enjoy skiing, socializing, reading and a wide variety of music; primarily drum & bass and dubstep which I find very helpful as a driving force during long poker sessions. How long have you been playing poker and how did you start?I have been playing poker for 5 years. Poker first caught my attention when some of the better players started to move over from the real time strategy game “Starcraft” that I was playing competitively at the time, they all showed great results and this opened my mind to the advantage of investing my time and dedication into a more profitable venture. Televised poker also added to the appeal to get involved in this exciting game; seeing the pros at the time playing high stakes tournaments for millions of dollars helped fuel my desire to learn and hopefully one day compete with and defeat these great players. Did you use any special strategy to win the tournament?I vary my play style based on the players on my tables at the time. On some tables it is advantageous to play tight (only the best hands) and some loose (many hands), however either way I will try to play those hands aggressively making my opponents make tough decisions whilst giving me information about the strength of their hands. In this tournament I was able to play a loose aggressive style (this means i was playing a lot of hands whilst betting/raising/re-raising rather than calling) and had a very large stack going into the final table.A tight player will make it into the money positions in a tournament more than a loose player, however a loose player will go on the win much bigger prizes more often when they do make the money. Any key moments you remember from tournament?The final table is the most important part of the tournament, with the pay increasing steeply with each extra position gained; here outplaying the other players really matters.I was lucky to have a 2 – 1 chip lead on 2nd place going in to the FT and couldn’t really ask for a better start. The other players were all playing tight against me; trying to avoid me at all costs unless they had a monster hand. This is always a good thing as with nobody trying to contest pots with me I was effectively being given permission to constantly steal chips from the other players allowing me to extend my chip lead significantly… a lot of the pots i won on the FT could have gone to the other player had they tried to play back at me. What do you plan to do with the prize money?I plan to use a lot of the prize money to work my way into a number of large live events. I will be playing the Irish Winter Festival tournament in October and hope that this will be the first of many over the next couple of years. It has been an ambition of mine to expand in to the live poker scene for quite some time now and huge prizes are ready for the taking.I will also re-invest a lot of the money on the Celeb Poker cash/tournament tables in order to continue progressing up through the stakes striving to improve by playing better players and to earn bigger pay days. Advice to other players?You might have to play countless tournaments in order to take a big finish or it could happen on your first one. The important thing is to not let this high level variance affect your play, if you’re not happy with your results so far it does not necessarily mean you’re a bad player as luck is certainly a large factor in poker. Keep a clear head, always be trying to improve your game (there are many resources out there for an aspiring poker player to learn from), put in the hands and the results will follow. Publish Date : 03/11/2011 Print Article Send To Friend

Poker Hand Rankings

admin — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 06:36:29 +0000

If you want to become a serious poker player online or offline, you need to know the poker, hand rankings or you not know if you have a good hand or a bad hand. Of course, if you are use to playing with friends at home, you are more than likely not playing by the rules that are seen at casinos. All casinos, poker rooms online, and offline play by the same rules. The first thing you must know is that all 52 cards are used to play poker in most cases; however, the joker may or may not be used. The joker is often only seen in Draw Poker games and is not used in Texas Holdem, other holdem games, and stud poker.Cards are ranked from highest to lowest with the Ace at the top. The King, Queen, and Jack come next in that order and then 10 all the way down to the 2 often referred to as the deuce. The Ace can be used at the top or the bottom as a one for straights or even for the lowest card. In practically all poker games, only the five best cards are counted even if you are playing a seven-card game. Here is the breakdown so you will know if you have a good hand.If a joker is in play, the best hand a person can have is a five of a kind with five Aces at the top of the list. If no joker is in play, the best hand is the straight flush. A straight flush is five cards of the same suit such as all spades, all hearts, all clubs, or all diamonds. Of course, the cards must be in order to be a straight such as five diamonds from 5 to 10. A Royal Flush is the best hand, which includes the Ace, King, Queen, Jack, and Ten. Four of a kind comes next. All four cards must be the same card, such as all tens, kings, etc with the higher the card ranking the better. The best of course would be four Aces.Next is the Full House. A full house is three cards that have the same rank and then a pair. The higher the three cards the better such as 3 Kings and 2 5s. Of course, the person with the higher three cards will beat other players.The flush is next. A flush is cards of the same suit, but not in order. This means you can have five hearts of any rank. The person with the highest rank card will win if everyone has a flush. The straight is next with five cards in order from various suits. This means you can have 1 ace space, 1 diamond king, 1 heart queen, 1 club jack, and 1 spade 10. The suit does not matter.Three of a kind means the same card such as all three kings. The next is a two pair of the same such as 2 Aces and 2 fives. The last one is one pair such as 2 tens. Of course if no one has any of the above, the person with the highest card will win the hand.

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No Limit betting…

admin — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 18:27:10 +0000

No Limit betting
No Limit (NL) Holdem is positively the most popular poker variant, coupled with the most widely used betting structure in the world. Texas Holdem is wonderfully suited to NL play and therefore NL has basically become synonymous with Texas Holdem. The biggest live poker events feature NL Holdem and while there are always numerous side-events with different betting structures, you can basically count on it that the Main Event will always be a NL Holdem MTT, regardless of whether its the WSOP, the WPT, the EPT or the APT youre talking about. Is NL that different from FL and PL? Definitely. NL Poker is based on pot odds and mathematics rather than more subtle, psychology related aspects. NL Poker is based on implied odds, reads and tells. You may heave heard that a good poker player plays his opponents rather than his hand. This saying was probably invented with NL poker in mind. The fact that you are a successful FL player and that you take down your 1-2 big bets per hour regularly, doesnt mean youll become a good NL player too. You need an entirely new set of skills and you need to take your game through several different levels of thought until you too will be able to play your opponents rather than your hand and pot odds. Lets now take a look at some of the most important strategy aspects concerning NL Poker. Pot control is the first NL issue you should tackle. Keeping the pot small when youre teetering on the edge of a fold with a marginal hand, and building it up when youre fairly certain yours is the best hand at the table is what successful implied odds play comes down to. Minimize your losses when you miss your draw and maximize your winnings when you hit it: thats one of the most important aspects of good NL Play, and the definition of successful implied odds exploitation. The NL betting structure allows you to bet as much as you want to, you can shove your entire stack right into the middle any time you want to. These are all theoretical possibilities though (which many a beginner decides to turn into practical ones). In practice, NL betting pretty much follows the size of the pot, and therefore carries many similarities with the PL betting structure. The bets players make on the flop, turn and river are usually percentages of the pot. How big a percentage they represent is to be determined by the player who makes the bet. I bet youve read about how important it was to pot commit your opponent on the turn, in order to get him all-in on the river. Well, this dramatic increase in bet size from the flop to the river, offers a perfect explanation for that. One more thing you need to consider when it comes to pot control: late position gives you all the tools you need to assert and maintain control over the pot, while early position leaves you without any such tools. That also explains why position is so important in NL Holdem and why the money often seems to follow around in the wake of the blinds. The implied odds: whenever youre deep-stacked in NL Holdem, you play a game based on implied odds. In order to become a successful NL Holdem player, you need to understand implied odds to the same degree you understand pot odds in FL. While the pot odds depict the relation between how much money there is in the pot and how much you need to put in there to continue in the hand, implied odds are the reflection of a relation between the money you need to put into the pot to stay in the hand and the money youre likely to get into the pot from your opponents, in case your hand fills up. Through the possibility it gives players to go all-in, NL poker offers a few outstanding advantages to players: they can protect their hands by actively ruining the pot odds for their opponents, they can make their bluffs more potent and they can become immune to bluffs themselves by exercising this option. NL hands tend to hit the maximum rake cap more often than FL hands although past certain limits one cannot talk of such a difference in generated rake between the two betting structures anymore. Anyway, regardless of whether you play NL or FL, you should sign up for a rakeback deal or a poker prop one. Poker propping offers you outstanding rake back percentages and often gives you the possibility to play completely rake free.

Team CelebPoker – Poker Masters
Rein Zijda, a member of Team CelebPoker, announced his arrival on the Live European Poker circuit with a sensational third place finish in the 13th Poker Master Main Event in Seefeld, Austria. The 45 year old poker professional, from Gouda in Holland, walked away with a cheque for €19,150 after exciting the crowd throughout the two days with his fast aggressive style and nerves of steel.

The boogey-man of the beginner: the rake
Many online poker players start out by playing at the play money tables that most online poker rooms offer. Play money action might be a good way to get used to the interface and the rules of the game, but it isnt much more than that. Intricate strategy (or basic for that matter) is impossible to learn at the play money tables, and efficiency is truly one of the last things that ever cross a play money players mind. This is one of the reasons why it is much more difficult to make the transition from play money tables to real money ones for beginners. Another reason for it is a much less anticipated one: the presence of the rake and its effects on the players bankroll over the long-run. Real money tables feature rake. The rake is a small percentage raked off each and every real money pot that is won in a poker room. Thats how the poker room generates revenue, and thats how it collects the money it needs to keep up the services it provides. The rake is paid by all players who take an active part in a hand and not just by those who win the pot. The pot is a standalone entity at the table, it doesnt belong to anyone until after its been raked, so do not fall under the false impression that you are not paying rake unless you win. The bad news is, whatever you do at a real money table, you will end up losing money to the rake. In cash games each individual pot is raked in the above described way, in tournaments, youll be required to pay a tournament fee. The good news is though that there are ways to reduce the rake, and even to recover some of it. The most straightforward way is through rakeback. You sign up for a rakeback deal and youll be automatically making extra money on each and every hand you stuff money into the pot in. Rakeback is a very convenient setup, because its a self-sufficient system, that is, you will not be required to exert any sort of effort in order to make it work. Some rakeback deals, called prop deals, offer as much as 100% or even more of your rake returned, but they have special requirements towards players engaging in the scheme. A prop deal can be extremely lucrative for the right kind of players, because it does have the power to make long-term winners out of under-performing players. Game selection offers other more subtle ways to reduce the rake. In order to be able to dodge the effects of the rake through game selection, you need to have a thorough understanding of it. Lets see cash games first. You pay rake on every single hand you play. The more hands you play per hour, the more money you lose on the rake. Consequently, heads-up cash tables are the worst when it comes to the rake you pay, because they feature speedy play. Short handed cash tables are rake guzzlers too, but every cash game will ultimately eat up more money in rake than tournaments. In a tournament, you only pay a one time fee, which is around 10% of the value of your buy-in. You will not pay rake on every hand you play, and you will get a much bigger bang for your buy-in than in cash games. In Multi Table Tournaments your odds of making the money are low because of the high number of opponents youre faced with. In a STT (Single Table Tournament), you get better odds because youre only going up against 5-9 opponents, but your buy-in/potential payout ratio will suffer. Make sure you know where youre taking your hard-earned money and where you can make the most of it.