Lucky Streak Poker

Full Tilt are held in very high regard within the poker community, as they have been offering one of the best online poker playing experiences around for quite some time.

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They are also the site which is hosting Tom Dwans challenge to the poker world, which is good for raising their profile I feel. The unique avatar styles found on Full Tilt may not be a key point for many players, but personally I feel this is a nice touch, as too many sites have very limited choice in this regard.

Some of the greatest poker players on the planet spend their time on Full Tilt, which shows you not only how trustworthy Full Tilt is as a poker room, but that they can keep the biggest players in the world happy.
You can definately say that Full Tilt are one of the leading sites in terms of big guaranteed tournaments and satellites to major events. This, as well as good player traffic on higher stakes tables, tends to keep the more serious players happy, but I also feel the lesser bankrolled players are taken good care of too.

Their loyalty bonuses are very good too, and promotions show a lot of ingenuity. These are regularly updated to keep players coming back, and this task is one which Full Tilt seems to achieve with ease. If you do encounter any problems whilst playing, you can feel safe in the knowledge that Full Tilts helpful staff are there 24/7 to help you in any way they can. Overall, Full Tilt is a top quality poker room in my opinion.

Playing online poker at PKR and remembering the golden rule:

Setting Yourself Guidelines in Poker:

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In many ways I feel that putting a few rules in place before you play can be quite productive. you can perhaps sit down with a clear idea of what hands you will play in approximate positions, and this can help prevent you getting caught up in the moment and doing anything too risky. It can also hinder you from making creative plays based on a feel for the players at your table and their tendancies, and so it isn’t something that I would personally adhere to strictly.

There is certainly a place in poker for self set guidelines in my opinion however, with care needing to be taken that you do not play in particular circumstances. The most obvious one is when you have been drinking or are overly annoyed. Your judgement must not be clouded in the slightest if you are to read well and and play good poker in my opinion, with taking breaks after losing a big pot perhaps helping you to lose less money in the long run.

If you are like myself and love to play poker as often as possible, I feel you should also be careful you do not play too many tournaments in a row. Tiredness can start to affect your play sometimes in poker, but when that happens to me, I tend to find myself playing on, simply because I enjoy playing so much. The simple fact is though, that I probably do not play as well in the third MTT I play in a row, as I did when I sat down to the first one, and you can apply similar rules to cash games too.

The hand rankings for Five Card Draw are the same as in other well known games such as Omaha and Holdem, but the different nature of the game calls for differing ways to play these hands. If you are going to be dealt a very strong hand, it is probably better to be dealt Four of a Kind than a Royal Flush. This is because the fact that you will be drawing one card disguises your strength and makes it appear you have a two pair or drawing hand.

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If you are dealt a ‘pat hand’ such as a Flush or Straight, you should be raising strongly preflop, because once you choose not to draw any cards, your opponents will know that they are almost certainly up against a very strong hand.

If you have got some chips into the pot before the draw in this situation you have done all you can, but be aware of the possibility that another plyer may be dealt a pat hand too. I recently had to fold a low Straight against a Flush in this scenario, but that is a rare occurence.

You do not find yourself being dealt strong poker hands all that often in Five Card Draw, so I generally like to play pairs of Jacks and upwards strongly. Of course if you are reraised with Jacks you might want to consider folding it, but generally I will call a raise with Kings or Aces and examine how many my opponent draws. This will usually show what hand they have, and ideally they would draw one with a Two Pair, and you would make a strong two pair or better after the draw. The most important aspect of this game I feel, is always reading what your opponent has by how many they are drawing and their raising previous to the draw.

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Pokerstars.com – Shane Warne has been the face of 888.com for quite some time now, and is used to being a star in his own right. After years spent being renowned as the best spin bowler ever, he has turned his attentions to achieving something similar in poker.

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Other poker stars would probably not class him in the same category as the best names in the game, but we all have to start somewhere, and Warnes performance in last years main event, shows that this is a man who is learning poker fast. I suppose it is open to interpretation what makes a poker player a poker star, but if it is being recognised wherever you go, then Warne already qualifies. If poker stardom means being among the best in the world, then I think Shane warne still has a way to go yet.

In many ways, I think it is good for poker when well known names from other walks of life start playing the game seriously. For one, it raises the profile of poker in general and attracts more followers. On the negative side though, I have to say that personally, I would not want to see a star from another sport or the film industry turn up after a few months playing poker and win a major event.

I don’t begrudge them success, but you have to say that it adds weight to any arguments that poker is more luck than anything else. I always prefer to see those who have put at least 5 years work into the game winning big poker tournaments, for this reason.

This is a hand which has played it’s part in my last two PokerStars.com tournaments, with a mixture of fortune. In my weekend live game, I picked up (Ad,Kd) very early on and could only extract a few hundred chips due to the size of the blinds, despite flopping an Ace and a Flush draw, completing my Flush on the turn.

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Later on I doubled up the shortstack whilst holding (Ah,Kh) against his (Ac,Qs) and then picked up the blinds later on when I found (Ad,Kd) again. I finished an online tournament a moment ago in which an interesting hand took place with me holding (Ac,Kc) in the big blind. I had been thinking about this hand recently and how I almost always play it very fast preflop to prevent having to play it on the flop if I miss. I had decided though to try playing it differently next time, taking a flop. As the player under the gun raised to three times the big blind preflop, it was folded around to me, and I decided against a reraise.

The flop fell (3,6,J) with no clubs and I decided to try something creative. Having checked to my opponent, I felt certain he would raise, and he did, betting 300. I then reraised it to 750 and after some thought, my opponent called. I could now eliminate overpairs to a Jack and (A,J) from his potential starting hands as I would have almost certainly been reraised had this been the case.

I checked the Turn of a (Q) as did my poker opponent, and I felt he was weak enough that an (A),(K), or (10) would win me the pot. Unfortunately, I missed the river and we both checked. He showed (10,10) but it’s important to see how my reraise on the flop changed the way the hand played out. It gave me a great deal of information about my opponents hand, and gave me a chance to hit one of several outs on the Turn or River. My opponent had me outchipped 2 to 1 at the start of the hand and if I had pushed preflop, I probably would have lost it all. As it turned out I lost around 1,300 from my 6,500 stack.

For some poker players at FullTiltPoker different hands will hold memories for them whether they are fond ones or otherwise. Personally I only really had one hand that brought back memories, and that is (As,10s).

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I once ended up caught up in a three way preflop raising battle in a cash game, and just had enough time to wonder why I had ended up putting in so much preflop with this hand, when the flop came down with three spades. There is a player who occasionally turns up at our live game who is said to always play any hand containing an (8). Needless to say, he is usually out quite early on and so I haven’t had the chance to play against him enough to verify this.

The (A,10) hand aside, I do not attach much sentiment to poker hands, although recently I have had strange things happen in this regard. Since flopping a Straight on Saturday with (J,9) I was strangely hitting every flop in my online tournament today with any hands including a Jack, including a flopped Straight after I had folded, with… you guessed it,(J,9). There is no logic to these happenings though, and it is probably mere coincidence.

There have been others too which spring to mind, including a all in shove preflop when I was very shortstacked with (3,3). I won that hand and everything turned around, as I made it all the way to heads up at the final table. After gaining control of the chip lead, I picked up (3,3) again and my raise was reraised all in preflop. After some thought I eventually put it down feeling there was too much danger of being up against a stronger pair. My opponent had (A,Q) and after hunting through what the board cards would have been, my Threes would have held up. The hand that began my turnaround had returned to give me my only shot at victory that night, but I didn’t take it, eventually finishing 2nd place.