High Pocket Pairs – AA/JJ

Being dealt a high pocket pair in Holdem at Full Tilt is a great starting hand and you should definitely raise the pot preflop. Some players will recommend slow playing with high pocket pairs, but the problem with that is any two cards can limp in and you could be losing after the flop depending on what comes. There is also no reason to limp into the pot and let people see the flop for cheap because you want be increasing the size of the pot. I would suggest raising the pot 3-4X the big blind which is a typical raise and should have a couple callers. Depending on what the flop brings you’ll need to decide whether you can afford to slow play or whether you need to take the pot down now. If you hit a set or there are no draws after the flop then often your high pair will still be good, but when there are draws present you should think about taking the pot down right away before the draw hits.

Middle Pocket Pairs – 1010/88

Any pocket pair of 8’s, 9’s or 10’s is a good starting hand and you could raise the pot, but the problem is if you get called chances are your opponent will have two over cards at least. With two over cards they could easily hit a higher pair then you have on Titan Poker after the flop so be careful about committing to many chips with this hand. I would suggest checking out the flop to see if the cards are lower then your pocket pair. If the flop is 2-3-7 with 3 different suits then chances are you still will have the best hand because it would be hard to believe anyone calling a raise with a 2/3 or something like that.

Low Pocket Pairs – 77/22

Low pocket pairs aren’t really that powerful in a Holdem poker online game and you shouldn’t raise the pot preflop with any low pocket pair. Your chances of winning the pot are fairly slim unless you just steal the pot with a big bet which isn’t going to make you any money. The only way you’re going to make money with low pocket pairs is if you hit a set and your opponent is sitting with a big pair or two pairs. The chances of hitting a set aren’t that great, but you should still try and see the flop if you can limp into the pot just in case you do hit the set because then you can usually get paid off in a big hand.

This is why you also need to be able to get a read on your opponents and be able to observe how they play hands when you’ve already folded. You need to classify your opponents based on there playing style so that you can use the right strategy to beat them when you’re playing against them in a hand. You’re going to make some bad reads on occasion, but if you limit the mistakes you make then you’re still going to be a profitable poker player.

* If a poker player on Full Tilt Poker is aggressive then this means they like to push the action into there opponents. To counter this strategy you need to play tight poker and wait until you get a good hand against the aggressive player. You’ll generally be able to slow play you hand and let the aggressive player bet the pot to the river which is when you can come over the top with a raise. Beating aggressive players on PokerStars is really simple and the only time it becomes difficult is when you try to force yourself to make hands that aren’t going to hit. You just need to wait for a good hand and you’ll easily be able to take a decent amount of money off of most aggressive players.

* If your opponent is tight then it can be more difficult to win a lot of money off of these players because of the fact they won’t be putting much into the pot unless they have a monster hand. To beat tight poker players you need to play aggressively and win more pots then they do against you. You also need to limit how much you allow them to win off of you. You should lead out betting after the flop when playing against a tight opponent because if they have nothing they will fold. If they call or raise then they probably have an excellent draw or decent hand already so you should begin slowing down and stop betting unless you have a good hand as well.

* Conservative players at PokerStars are hard to read because you never really know if they have a hand or are just buying the pot from you. You shouldn’t look to really try and catch a conservative player bluffing because they might not be and you’d only be guessing. If you have a hand then play it against them and if you don’t then don’t play the hand and it’s pretty much that simple. You won’t be able to scare a conservative player off of a pot and you won’t be able to suck them into betting often so they are the hardest player to make money off of.

The most common type of online poker tournament is the sit and go tournament which can vary in the amount of players who play as well as the blind structure. You can find sit and go tournaments starting with only six players and going all the way up to 180 players. Some of the tournaments will have the blinds going up every 15 minutes whereas other tournaments will have blinds going up every 5 minutes.

Over the years satellite tournaments have become really popular with most online poker players because they allow the average poker player a chance at poker glory. Many poker rooms, like Full Tilt Poker, offer satellite tournaments to the biggest tournaments in the world over the year including WSOP events, WPT events, Aussie Millions events, APPT events, EPT events plus many others as well. A satellite tournament is where you pay a small buy-in in order to have the chance at winning a much bigger seat into a much bigger tournament.

Freeroll tournaments are designed for new poker players who don’t want to deposit money right away. A freeroll tournament is a tournament where any player can join for free and you have the chance at winning money. The prize pool is donated by the poker room who is running the tournament and it’s a great way for new players to try and build a free bankroll.

Bounty tournaments at PokerStars.com have been around on some poker rooms for awhile now, but most poker rooms are only starting to implement them. Bounty tournaments can be found in two forms including 50% bounty tournaments and 100% bounty tournaments. In a 50% bounty tournament 50% of the buy-in goes to the prize pool for the winners and the other 50% goes to the bounty for that player. In 100% bounty tournaments the entire buy-in goes towards the bounty of that player.

Most poker rooms will offer guaranteed prize pool tournaments throughout the month which are tournaments where the poker room guarantees a certain amount of money for the prize pool. If the prize pool doesn’t reach the guaranteed amount after the sign-up is done for the tournament then the poker room donates the rest of the money to make sure the tournament has the guaranteed amount. These tournaments are a lot of fun and if you play well only once you could be receiving a nice payday.

The above are quite a few of the different poker events which you’ll find when you play online poker. I would suggest trying them all out to see how well you do at each one. I find it’s also more fun to switch up which structures you play so it doesn’t become as repetitive.

Free Poker tournaments can be heartbreaking because you can play for hours near the leaderboard and then end up losing the tournament on one bad hand. This is why they are so hard to win money in, but they are still fun when you’re learning the game.

In the early stages of freeroll tournaments the action is going to be absolutely crazy and you should stay out of it as much you can unless you have a great hand. There will be plenty of all-ins early on because it’s a free tournament and most players want to get lots of chips or none at all. While players are going at each other you should sit tightly and wait for a good hand where you can double up. You should really only play hands where you have a chance at a big hand where you can go all-in on.

As the full tilt tournaments progresses and your chip stacks become bigger you can begin playing more hands and trying to make some hands. You can start playing suited connectors and such hands in hopes of hitting a straight or flush. During the middle of the tournament you need to make a push for the top twenty positions so that you have a good shot at making the final table of the tournament.

The final table of the tournament is going to take hours to get to so you need to make sure that you are a patient poker player to get there. Once you get to the final table you need to start playing carefully and you shouldn’t be playing many hands. If you find that you’re playing a lot of hands early on at the final table then you need to slow down if you’re not hitting. Let the other players try and knock each other out so that you can make it down to the final three. Often the final three positions will win a bit of money, but sometimes only first place will win money. If you need to win first place then you should be trying to work on building your stack during the final table so you can compete once it’s down to only a few of you.

Freeroll tournaments on PokerStar aren’t ideal for most poker players unless you’re new to the game because only the top few positions are paid and it takes hours to play. If you can pay for your own bankroll then it’s much better and you’ll be able to win more money, but if you can’t then one way to build a free bankroll is by playing in freeroll tournaments in the many online poker rooms.

In case you’re familiar with the term, but not the actual real-world details associated with it, allow me to quickly summarize. Card counting in blackjack is a way of remembering or keeping track of every card that crosses the table, thus giving you the ability to ascertain which cards are still out there that may come up in future hands. It’s all addition, subtraction and having a good memory.

To answer your obvious first question as to whether it’s actually legal – yes, it is, technically. Or more specifically, there’s no law against it. However, since casinos are all private establishments, they can kick you out for picking your nose one too many times, not to mention if they think you’re cheating them with a card-counting system. You’ll probably get a friendly but stern pat on the back the first time it happens, but after that, as DeNiro said, “You can either have the hammer and the money or you can walk out of here.” Great movie.

Anyway, to clarify, it’s not illegal to count cards in blackjack using only your own head on golden casino. Any other type of machines or tactics probably cross the line between getting tossed out on your butt or getting tossed out on your butt into a jail cell.

OK, so you’re going to give it a try…now where do you start? There are multiple systems out there, and here’s one that’s better suited for beginners. It’s not as dead-on accurate as other systems, but what you give up here you gain back in ease of use, which goes a long way for someone trying to focus not only on his chips and the strategy of the game, but a booming, noisy casino and the expected jitters stemming from attempting something you might not feel is completely ethical. That, obviously, is an entirely different article.

Here, quickly, is the gist of what’s called the casino gambling KO system. A normal system assigns a point value to each card, and you add or subtract each value as that card comes up on the table. When the count gets to a certain number, you have a deck with a higher probability of spitting out face cards and winning hands to the player. In a usual counting system, if you go through the entire deck, you end up at zero. In the KO, a 7 is added to the mix. This makes it easier for the player to keep track of the count. You can search online and come up with a full, in-depth look at card values in general and the KO system.