Poker bankroll management, building and strategy – online poker guide

POKERBETTER – why are your bet sizes so important

Friday, August 13th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Tools | No Comments

POKERBETTER™ is a specialized cutting edge tool for Texas No-limit tournaments which aids you in sizing your bets correctly in every possible situation to maximize your chances of taking down tournaments. Check out the POKERBETTER™ review below to learn more.

When you purchase POKERBETTER through The Poker Bankroll Blog you receive a 50% discount (country restrictions apply, see end of review) on your purchase (and support my work on the blog at the same time). Remember to use the following coupon code during sign-up:

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There are countless amounts of poker players who never take into consideration how important it is to correctly size their bets based on the situation they are in.  Since you can bet any amount of chips in no limit Texas hold-em tournaments, it is easy to understand how deciding how much to bet might get a little tricky. The most important piece of advice I can give you is to think about is “When you bet, bet or a reason”.  In other words, what are you intending to do by potentially risking your chips when you throw them in the pot? For instance, if you have the “nuts” you don’t want to scare your opponent away by betting too high do you? Or perhaps you have nothing and want to scare him away. How much would you bet in this situation? With poker being such a dynamic game, this analogy is all but a small fraction of what can happen at the table.

Furthermore, what if your opponents notice that your bets are changing. They may be able to get reads on you if you if you alter your bet amounts when you are in the same situations. Maybe you c-bet high when you miss and low when you hit. These reads can and will be picked up by good players. But how do you know exactly what you are betting all the time? You can’t possibly remember each percentage you decided to raise in each particular hand! This is the first variable of the game which increases the chance for players to make mistakes.

This is where POKERBETTER™ comes in. POKERBETTER™ is a guide to make sure that your bets are being placed correctly no matter what situation you are in.  If you have a hand and want to bluff, but are not sure how much you should make the bet then just plug the information into POKERBETTER™ and it will calculate this bet for you. What if you want to make sure your c-bets are all the same percentage to prevent giving away reads to your opponents? No problem. POKERBETTER™ calculates these bets for you just like you would if you were plugging it in a calculator. In fact, that is exactly what POKERBETTER™ is. POKERBETTER™ is the first online a bet sizing calculator designed specifically for no limit Texas holdem tournaments.

Here is a list of what POKERBETTER™ can do for you at the tables:

• POKERBETTER™ bet sizing calculator will assist you in calculating the amount that you should bet by simply plugging in the big blind, the pot, or your opponent’s raise amount.

• POKERBETTER™ bet sizing calculator will calculate how much to bet when there is 1 limper, 2 limpers, 3 limpers or more.

• POKERBETTER™ bet sizing calculator will help to determine how much to Continuation bet, set a trap bet, re-raise your opponent’s bet, and even check-raise someone’s bet.

• Once the turn card drops, POKERBETTER™ bet sizing calculator will help size your bet if you think you have the best hand.  Do you want to bluff and steal it right there or have you picked up a draw? No problem. POKERBETTER™ takes care of that too (check out our demo videos to see PokerBetter in action). Sometimes if you bet when you are unsure if you have the best hand,  you can take down the pot right there. POKERBETTER™ will help you size those bets!

• Now the river card drops and you have the nuts. What do you do? POKERBETTER™ will help you extract maximum value out of your strong hands by helping you size a value bet. If you have nothing and want to bluff or if you are unsure and want to throw a block bet out there, just type the pot and POKERBETTER™ bet sizing calculator will do the calculating for you!

This is a great tool for any poker player.  Every pot counts! The way you stay alive in a poker tournament is by winning chips.

The following countries are eligible for the 50% discount:

Australia
Canada
France
Germany
Italy
New Zealand
Switzerland
UK
United States
United States Minor Outlying Islands
Virgin Islands, U.S.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Tools

Online poker cheats

Thursday, July 15th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Tools | No Comments

Submitted by Loui Levino, this article belongs to the Poker Tools series.

Loui Levino wrote the article below on various online poker cheats which will potentially rob you of your bankroll. Read it through and if you have experienced a different online cheat let us know about it in a comment.

There is a million ways to make a million bucks; but there is also a million ways to lose your $100 poker deposit if you are not careful. The online poker rooms use some of the safest and most secure encryption methods that you’ll  find anywhere on the planet. As part of their random number generator; Pokerstars uses thermal radiation inputs. This is essentially the same encryption method that the CIA uses now to code data. This type of data encryption is so secure that the CIA will even tell you that this is what they use… because it can’t be hacked, the pattern can’t be anticipated, and it is unlikely that the pattern that is used to generate outputs will ever replicate itself.

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However, if you are not careful there are still plenty of ways to lose your money to online poker cheats.  Here is a few of them…

Collusion – Unfortunately, some players choose to work together to gain an advantage over their opponents. Sometimes this is done casually, sometimes it is done in a very predatory fashion. Collusion is most common is short-handed limit cash games. If you see any signs of collusion, keep your eyes open and send an email to the security team if necessary.

Phishing Scams – These are rare in the poker world, but they do show up in a few different forms. The poker room staff will never ask you for your password at a poker table and you should never give this information to anyone. Always protect the sensitive details of your account; just as you would for a bank account.

Insider Cheating – This is basically impossible at the large online poker rooms, but there have been cases of insider cheating in the past. This has only occurred when the owners of a poker site have decided that they wanted to cheat their players using security/integrity audit player accounts; these player accounts enabled the owners of the site to see the hole cards of other players. These types of accounts do not exist anymore at any of the poker rooms.

Funds Seizures – This has happened on a few occasions over the last 5 years.  Funds are hardly ever seized from online poker accounts. In most cases, the funds are confiscated from third party money transfer service like Neteller.

Bankrupt Poker Rooms - There have been plenty of bankrupt poker rooms in the last several years. Most players are able to get their funds back from the poker room without any issues. In some cases, the poker rooms shut down and the management team is never heard from again. To avoid something like this happening to you, just stick to the largest and most reputable poker rooms. In most cases where a poker room has gone bankrupt or funds have been seized from a third party payment processor, the funds are returned to players quickly, so this is not a major concern among online poker players.

Money Trading – There are many online forums where you can trade money between poker sites through other players. Money trading between players on different poker sites is a common method that small-time scammers will use to try and get your money. Always be careful when trading with someone who you met through an online poker forum or chat room.

What happens when players are caught cheating? The consequences will depend upon the type of cheating that occurred. When it is possible; the poker rooms will return the funds to players who were cheated at the table.
There are some cases in which the poker room support staff will not be able to help you. If you fail to protect your personal information or you try to trade money with another poker player and the deal goes sour… the poker site will usually not step in to help you deal with your situation.

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What else should you look out for? It’s the real world and it’s a big world. If you are smart and you use your head in the online poker environment, your money should be safe while you are playing poker. Protect your information,  report suspicious activity and only play on the largest and most reputable online poker rooms. You can use this site to find more information about making a safe online poker deposit.

Written by Loui Levino author of Poker sites by Lou.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Tools

Poker as a business

Monday, June 7th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Strategy, Poker Tools | 1 Comment

Submitted by Cameron, this article belongs to the Poker Strategy series.

This is a guest post written by AceUnchecked, read the blog here.

Let’s face it. We play poker to make money. We play because we want to turn a small amount of money into a larger part of money. Now, I understand that there are many reasons that we play poker, but I believe that pretty much every player can agree with the fact that we play poker because we, at least in part, want to make money.

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This basic assumption means that poker is business, and we need to start treating it as such.If you don’t look at poker as business, let’s look at some of the jargon used in both worlds of poker and business. The first and most obvious is profit. When we walk away from the poker table, we look at our net profit. Sometimes we have gains and other times we count our losses. Another common term in poker is pot equity (which is the relative value the pot has to your chances of winning.) Often times we look at our poker winnings as ROI or Return on Investment, which is obviously from the business side of things.

So, if poker is business, what does that mean to our playing? What is the practical application here? Well, if we treat our playing like business we can do a few things.

First, limit your liabilities. As we have discussed in this blog at length, bankroll management is the key to minimizing risk. When you minimize your risk and regularly perform above 50% of the time, your bankroll will grow.

Second, we can analyze our strengths and identify niches. Playing online poker is all about finding the table that you play the best at. With so many options you have to find the game that suits your style. I cannot tell you how many sessions I have fouled up by moving from 9 handed tables to heads-up. If you are in a rhythm that is going well at a certain table, changing the game you play will only hurt you.

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Finally, if all goes well, we can treat poker as an hourly job (or profession). I’ll admit it, even though I have been up at the tables lately, I am not to this level yet. But rest assured, I am analyzing and re-analyzing my game so that I can become a more disciplined player so that I can rely on poker as a source of income. We all start at the hobby level but moving to that intermediate level of profitability is a long and arduous road.

Go get ‘em!

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Strategy, Poker Tools

Magicholdem review – online poker odds calculator

Thursday, March 25th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Tools | No Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Tools series

Usually I write my own reviews of poker related products, but the people behind the MagicHoldem online poker odds calculator were kind enough to put together a well written and more or less objective review of their product, which I have chosen to post here. If you like the review below and want to support the Poker Bankroll Blog I would really appreciate it if you sign up through my affiliation link above.

Online poker is a challenging game, but it need not be so hard to learn with the help of an online poker odds calculator. This review takes one of the more popular calculators, MagicHoldem, out for a test drive to see if it’s good. Read the review to see if the benefits are worth the money.

So how much will MagicHoldem set you back? There are two ways of acquiring a one year license:

• Pay $89.90 per year, or 119,9$ for a two year license.
• Register and make a small deposit (from 20$-30$) with one of the 4 different poker room affiliates available through the MagicHoldem website.

To go the license route is expensive, but even casual players will find that they can recoup that cost pretty quickly with the extra wins. Thankfully, you don’t have to go into this purchase uninformed. The developers of MagicHoldem allow the software to be demoed for 100 hands. If this still isn’t enough to convince you, their support team can give you an additional 200 hands.

What is it all about? Well, professional online poker players know that the key to playing poker is knowing the odds. Bluffing is a necessary talent, sure, but mastering the art of bluffing won’t guarantee that you win games. Consistent winners in poker know about playing the odds to their advantage. Strong players knew concepts like pot odds, where even with a weak hand, the recommendation is to bet as the pot is so large relative to the cost to try for it.

The advantage with playing online poker is that you can have calculators that do this for you and provide this information in real-time. MagicHoldem is one such tool and for the most part, does a very good job of displaying all the vital information needed during a game.

Installing MagicHoldem is straightforward. Download the odds calculator, let it install, and then run it.

Once installed, MagicHoldem automatically detects your online poker room as long as it’s one of the 100+ supported. For the most part this detection works like a charm, although there are times when resizing the window or doing other stuff can cause some problems, but for the most part, such occurrences are very rare. Contacting support is easy and so far, their replies have been both quick and knowledgeable.

However, ease of installation and hand detection are completely useless if the data displayed isn’t worth anything. Fortunately, MagicHoldem includes virtually every necessary statistic to help any player make an informed decision. In a single glance to the left side of the table, at any time of the game, you can determine all important probabilities. For example, in the screen shot provided, before the rookie all-in decision was made that there was a 44.7% of making a pair. With the 0.1% probability under the straight flush column, there was also the confirmation that it was possible to not only make the flush, but that the cards were close enough for a straight flush to also be possible. Below those stats are the pot odds calculations and the potential outs. One benefit to MagicHoldem over other odds calculators is that it graphically displays the outs which makes it easier to visualize the possibilities. It also helps confirm that the calculations are being made correctly.

All in all, the MagicHoldem online poker odds calculator provides any poker player with a wealth of information. It’s unobtrusive and blends in nicely with virtually any table. In the screen shot, the player made a newbie decision – they went all in with a hand that looks strong, but isn’t really. Here, MagicHoldem’s advice to wait and be cautiously optimistic was sensible. There are a lot of potential winning combinations with A-6 suited, but none of them are particularly likely to appear. That’s not to say that MagicHoldem’s advice is to be relied upon exclusively. Behaving in such a robotic manner is very easy to see through in the long run. However, it does make a good guide and allows the player to develop a good intrinsic sense of the cards and situation (for example, when to bet due to pot odds). Combined with solid poker strategy reading and a lot of practice, MagicHoldem definitely does make a good companion and will help most players develop winning instincts.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Tools

Poker analysis software – how to get an edge in online poker

Friday, February 26th, 2010 | Poker Articles, Poker Tools | No Comments

Submitted by Steve, this article belongs to the Poker Tools series.

Many online poker players use specially designed software to analyze their opponents’ and their own game. This makes perfect sense. Software like PokerTracker, Holdem Manager or SNGWiz will help you gain an insight into what goes on at your table, as well as into exactly how you’re coping with the challenge. Rest assured, using PokerTracker or SNGWiz does not make you guilty of data mining. You’ll only make use of data which is available to everyone anyway. What the software does is that it keeps track of things and compiles statistics the average human brain would be incapable to do.

As I said, many people use such software aid while playing, but few people use these programs to their full potential.
Here’s a rundown of the various statistics such programs generate, together with an explanation and pointers towards interpreting the data.

There are two basic types of statistics poker tracking programs such as PokerTracker, Holdem Manager or SNGWiz generate, namely preflop statistics and post-flop ones.

Let’s start with the preflop stats.

The VPIP% (Voluntarily Put Into Pot) expresses the number of times your opponent put money into the pot of his own will (blinds do not count here) in a percentage-based manner. The higher this stat is, the looser your opponent is. The lower the stat, the tighter the opponent. In a 6-max NL Holdem game, a VPIP% should normally be around 19-24%.

The PFR% (Preflop Raise percentage) is an expression of how often your opponent raises preflop. This one will help you asses your opponent’s preflop aggression level. When compared to the VPIP, the PFR can tell you how often an opponent cold-calls, which is an extremely efficient indication of his fish status. You can use all these stats on yourself too, in order to determine how optimal your play is.

3b% (three-bet percentage) is a measure of how often someone re-raises preflop. The lower this stat is, the tighter your opponent is on his three bets. If his 3b% is around 3%, he doesn’t really light three bet, and you can feel safe putting him on AA-10,10, AQs, AKs, whenever he does.

The F3 (fold to 3-bet) is an extremely useful stat. This will tell you how often you can light three bet against an opponent to force him to give up the pot.

Moving on to the post flop stats
The post flop stats are equally interesting, and potentially useful. The AG (a measure of the aggression factor of your opponent) will let you know when you can run roughshod over someone. For the AG, a value of 1-3 is normal. If your guy has an AG of 0.5, put pressure on him and get out of his way when he strikes back. An aggression factor of about 4 means you should take it easy with this guy, pick up a monster and let him tie the noose around his own neck.

WTSD% tells you how often your guy goes all the way after he takes a look at the flop. The normal values are between 20-30% here. Use this stat together with the AG one and find out whether your opponent is weak-tight or tight aggressive.

The CB is the continuation betting %. This stat is only useful when used in conjunction with the PFR%. The lower the PFR% is, the higher the CB should be.

The 2B is a stat describing how often your opponent fires the second barrel on a post-flop bet.

The FC is an extremely valuable stat: it tells you how often your opponent folds his continuation bets. The F2 is how often the guy folds to a second barrel bet.

When you use these stats, please take the sample size into account. The larger the sample size (the more hands you track your target-opponent through) the more relevant these stats will be. Small sample sizes have a tendency to mislead.

These stats can even be used to approximate the rakeback amount that you’ll generate through your real money play. If you’re signed up to a poker prop deal or to a rake rebate deal, you’ll be able to estimate your rake contribution and thus your due rakeback as well.

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An Introduction to Poker Tracker

Saturday, December 12th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Tools | 4 Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Tools series

Since amateur poker players started showing up to live tournaments and winning millions of dollars by taking down the so-called professionals of the sport, the online poker industry has literally exploded. Millions of people from across the globe are looking to hone their craft and win some big bucks by playing games like Texas Hold’em and Omaha. And they’re all looking for that proverbial edge to make winning easier.
Enter Poker Tracker.

Poker Tracker Software, LLC is the company behind its namesake Poker Tracker software line. In short, Poker Tracker is a software tool that performs a series of statistical analyses during the course of your poker game. By compiling data and quantifying results, Poker Tracker acts as an external brain, so to speak, giving poker players a crucial edge by upgrading the one tool every player needs: Memory.

In poker, many will concede that luck is a factor. Hot streaks and cold streaks are real. The power of that blank stare and the coldblooded bluff – these are all essential traits to have. But without a good memory, especially in the online world, a player’s game will suffer. Poker Tracker records and stores all essential details of the game.

The software feature has a large database library, keeping track of hand histories, profits and losses, number of hands played, time at the table, the table style (as in limit), and it breaks it all down to a sweet science, calculating graphs of statistics that a player can check to figure out how much they’re winning and losing per hand, per hour and per game.

Poker Tracker doesn’t work on every brand of poker. If you like to play best video poker online, then you won’t be benefiting from the software. But for every other poker game, like Hold’em, Stud and Omaha, the software keeps track of your entire game.

The real benefit here is that it helps an individual player to understand his or her strengths and weaknesses. By looking at these thorough records that are simplified into easy-to-understand graphics, a player can better know when to bet and when to get out, as well as knowing how much to stake and where to play.

Poker is all about percentages, when you really get down to the heart of the matter. A tool like Poker Tracker is basically an odds calculator for every conceivable aspect of the online game.

The software is 100% legal. In fact, most of the largest and most legitimate poker sites on the web endorse the use of the tool. So, basically, Poker Tracker isn’t a tool that gives you the edge over other players, per se; it just helps your game to be all it can be. And this is why poker sites have no problem allowing the add-on software to be used in conjunction with their sites.

PokerTracker3 is available from their website for $89.99 for the full version, $49.99 for micro stakes, and you can also receive a free trial version to see if you like it.

Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Tools

GrinderSchool.com review

Sunday, December 6th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Tools | 5 Comments

This article belongs to the Poker Tools series

Introduction to the GrinderSchool low stakes poker school

GrinderSchool is an online poker school focused on helping low stakes players to win money consistently. They do this by offering members access to SNG, cash game and multi-table tournament instruction videos, as well as access to an active and well moderated poker forum.
The GrinderSchool team includes 15 skilled poker enthusiasts / professionals who are the main source of videos and forum threads.
GrinderSchool’s focus on low stakes poker strategy, combined with low membership costs, makes them a great resource site for poker players on a budget who are looking to improve their game.
Currently, the GrinderSchool poker school has more than 650 poker videos on file and with 5 new poker videos added each week there’s plenty to choose from.

Membership costs

The GrinderSchool low stakes poker school has two membership options, namely Micro stakes subscription and Full site subscription. Micro stakes subscribers have access to the GrinderSchool forum and all cash games videos with a buyin below 10$ and any tournament videos with 1$ buyins. Full site subscribers have access to the full GrinderSchool site (no surprises here)

• A Micro stakes subscription will set you back 10$ a month

• A Full site subscription costs 19,99$, if you pay one month a time. If you pay for more months in advance, the monthly fee drops. In fact, if you pay for 12 months in advance the monthly fee for the full site subscription drops to 10$ a month.

Payment can be made both through PayPal and via Full Tilt Poker.

If you ask me, there’s no reason not to choose the full site subscription, if you’re considering joining GrinderSchool. I believe the added value of having full access to all videos clearly outweighs the added monthly subscription cost.

In the following, I have chosen some of the features I like the best on the GrinderSchool site, as well as some of the annoyances I have experienced while navigating the site.

GrinderSchool poker school features – poker videos

Together with the GrinderSchool forum, the GrinderSchool poker video section is the heart of the low stakes poker strategy content on the site. You can find poker videos covering close to all of the aspects you need to take into consideration to beat low stakes games. I exclusively play multi-table tournaments, so obviously I checked out some of the poker videos in the multi-table tournament section. I liked the fact that each poker video has its own introductory page where it is possible to comment on the video, as well as read other user’s comments. In addition most videos are offered in both .FLV and .WMV formats with 0 DRM (Digital rights management) which means that members can download the GrinderSchool videos and use them however they please so long as they remain personal use only.

I looked through a series of 5 poker videos by a guy named AAPoker who walks us through the different stages of an 11$ rebuy multi-table tournament win on Full Tilt Poker. I really appreciated the way AAPokerexplained his thought-process behind each hand he played, and I was also pleased to have confirmed that you need a fair bit of luck to take down a big MTT tournament (the 3 2 hearts vs KK was especially amusing). It also made me realize, that I have to focus more on putting my opponents on a hand range when I play tournaments.

Here’s a list of pointers I wrote down after watching all the poker videos in the series:

• During the rebuy period, be prepared to push all in with small to medium pocket pairs and high card combinations.
• It is better to lose playing aggressive than lose playing passively
• Min raises do not mean anything on FTP
• Poker Tracker is a great tool to get stats on your opponents. Having a database of player info will give you an edge in some situations where tough decisions are to be made. Especially in tournaments where you get moved around a lot, and don’t often  have time to get a read on players, it is great to stumble into players you already have data on from previous tournaments
• Sometimes it’s good to smooth call when you hit good hands; it builds the pot and gives your opponent a chance to put all his chips in
• If you’re raising short stacked players, just push all in instead and put the decision on them. You are going to call a re-push anyway.

GrinderSchool poker school features – coaching

If you are truly dedicated to poker, the GrinderSchool low stakes poker school offers private coaching as the fastest way to improve your game. I will go so far so say that all serious professional competitors – be it athletes, racing drivers or chess players – have had a private coach at some point in their careers.

GrinderSchool poker school features – forum

The bulk of the GrinderSchool forum is closed to outsiders to avoid the usual spam that these kinds of forums usually tend to accumulate. This means that almost all the content on the GrinderSchool low stakes poker school forum has poker relevance. You can actually think of it as a poker article database. Once you learn how to navigate it you will literally be able to spend days soaking up poker knowledge.

GrinderSchool poker school features – store

How cool is this? GrinderSchool has an online shop where you can purchase GrinderSchool low stakes poker school merchandise such as t-shirts, caps and mugs with the GrinderSchool logo. Payment can be made with Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover and Gift Certificates.

GrinderSchool poker school annoyances

First of all, the front page header is messed up in Firefox (3.5.5) on my Mac (Mac OS X Version 10.5.8) and run the latest. I have taken a screen shot of the header and included it below. The header looks fine in Internet Explorer and will therefore most likely also look fine on PCs.

In my opinion the GrinderSchool site faces similar challenges to many other online knowledge based sites. How to give users an overview of a lot of information while maintaining a clean and streamlined user interface? GrinderSchool have approached this problem by including a TAG cloud on both the forum and video sub-pages. I’m not sure how fond I am of this solution. The problem with organization of information through tags, is that if you do not have some kind of system on how to apply them to information, you run the risk of losing overview.

As a first time user, my impression of the GrinderSchool forum and video sections was that it would take me a very long time to get an overview of all the information present. What I’m missing is some kind of underlying information structuring that will allow me to faster navigate the site. On the forum there’s currently a lot of scrolling and clicking on multiple sub-pages, which I do not like.

Finally, I have to say that in my opinion, the overall appearance of the site is not up to 2009 standards. It is basically a large collection of interlinked static pages with a boring design. There are no dynamic elements which is a crime given the fact that nowadays there are so many possibilities of including dynamic elements to a web page. In fact, when I first saw the GrinderSchool site, I’m sorry to say that I did not get the impression they were a serious poker school. Their product is great, but it definitely deserves better wrapping.

Conclusion

Although I do have a few personal problems with the overall design of the site, I have to stress that this is a minor issue. It does not in any way take away from the fact that the GrinderSchool webpage is packed with quality poker strategy material. Additionally, the evaluation of design is always subjective. What doesn’t look good to me will most likely look very good to others.

In conclusion, I would recommend anyone who wants to learn poker and improve their game to sign up to the GrinderSchool poker school. The sheer amount of poker strategy material available on the site makes the low monthly subscription costs a steal. If you are new to the game, this could easily be one of the best investments you make in your entire poker career.

If you enjoyed this review and want to support the Poker Bankroll Blog, please use the referral code “pokerbrb” together with the sign up link above.

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What is Videopoker and is it something you should spend time on?

Saturday, December 5th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Tools | 2 Comments

Video poker is usually played on slot machines and since its introduction in the 1970′s, videopoker has become the most popular form of slot machine worldwide.

Videopoker is basically man against machine. You start by choosing the game you want to play and then choose the size of your bet. Usually videopoker machines are coin operated with an allowed bet size of one to five coins.

After you have put your money in the videopoker machine it will deal you 5 cards and give you the option of keeping your good cards and exchanging your bad cards. After you have exchanged your cards, the videopoker machine will automatically credit your bank in case of a win. Whether you win or not, depends on the particular details of the game you chose. The minimum requirement for a winning hand is usually a pair of Jacks. The smaller the probability is of hitting a certain hand, the higher the payouts are. A Royal Flush pays the most, then comes a straight flush, four of a kind and so on.

So, is videopoker something you should spend time on? Well, some sites claim that videopoker will challenge your poker skills and eliminate the competition you usually face on real poker tables.

I really cannot agree with these statements. Without the competition from other players and the possibility of outplaying your opponents, the game of poker is reduced to pure chance and the ability to recognize poker hands.

In my opinion, if you want to improve your poker skills, you would be much better of depositing a small amount on a poker site offering micro limit games such as Full Tilt Poker. Start at the smallest tables and move up when your poker skills improve. There are plenty of online resources where you can read more on how to improve your game. The Poker Bankroll Blog is one of those sites.

Nevertheless, if you’re looking for a fast gambling fix where a small amount of skill is need, then videopoker is just as good as any other slot machine on the market.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

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What are the best poker sunglasses?

Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Tools | 6 Comments

Submitted by James, this article belongs to the Poker Tools series.

Wearing sunglasses at the poker table continues to be the fastest growing trend in the game.  Walk into any casino poker room in Las Vegas, or any local bar with a free poker game, and you will see 30-40% of the players wearing their favorite sunglasses while playing.  Some players wear them to hide their own eyes.  Others wear them to have that “intimidation factor” when they are staring down their opponent.  WSOP Main Event champion Greg Raymer wears his trademark “dinosaur eyes” glasses because it simply is distracting to have those ugly things looking right at you.

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I know from my regular play that most amateur players will immediately glance at their chip stack after seeing a big hand when they look at their cards, so hiding their eyes can immediately solve this habit.  Besides that simple tell, glasses can also hide blinking patterns, the wide-eyed look of surprise when you see A-A, and numerous other things other players can see by watching you.
With this in mind, I decided to test out several different brands of glasses to see which actually help my game, and which ones hurt it.  The differences were incredible.

I judged the glasses on seven factors:
-    Price  (and what I would really pay for these)
-    Style
-    Quality
-    Selection
-    Visibility of my eyes
-    Visibility of the hole cards
-    Visibility of the rest of the table

I then selected three of the more popular brands from the internet, along with a couple of pair of average sunglasses that you can buy in any WalMart or Target.  We can call this last category simply “Cheapo’s”.

The three that I compared are:
Royal Poker Eyewear
Poker Armor
Blue Shark Optics

One of the first factors that stand out is price.  I tried glasses ranging from $9.99 from Target to $169 from Blue Shark Optics.  Being a firm believer that price doe’s not always equal quality, I knew I was going to have fun with the comparisons.

To begin with, in the interest of brevity, I am immediately going to throw out the cheapo’s from the discount stores.  They are fine for wearing at the beach, or while driving, but they have absolutely no place at the poker table.  These sunglasses are designed to reduce light, and most poker rooms are already dark.  The average player, wearing the average cheap pair of sunglasses, regularly misreads suits, and mistakes the 4 for an Ace.  A recipe for disaster when there is money on the line.

Now that we’ve established that poker eye wear must be designed for poker play, I began the true comparison.  I had three sun glass wearing friends order a product from each company, and wear them while playing poker for a week.  They then switched glasses for another week, and switched one more time for the final week.  The final reviews and recommendations from each participant were consistent and unanimous.
Royal Eye wear has received some publicity as the eye wear worn and recommended by David “Devilfish” Ulliot.  At $79.00, their glasses came in at the mid range of price.  They make only one model, which is a narrow wrap around frame.  Their lenses are coated with an anti-reflective film, and work well in low light.

Our reviewers all had the same criticism of the Royal Eye wear though.
1.     Lack of choice in frame styles.   Every face is different, and different players prefer different styles.  Royal’s decision to limit their offering to one style certainly reduces costs, but provides no user choices.

2.    Lack of quality in the one frame style they do offer.  The frame is a molded plastic with no enhancements, other than the company logo on the temple.  A simple padding around the nose would have gone a long way to increase the comfort also.

3.    While the lenses do increase the light to the user, this increase comes with one huge setback:  The wearer’s eyes can be clearly seen by the other players.  Royal Eye wear advertises that their lens coating provides 98% shielding of your eyes, but this turned out to be in the amount of the eye the frame covers, and not the actual visibility of the eye itself from across the table.

To be perfectly honest, I do not rate these glasses any higher than the cheap glasses you can get from Target or WalMart, and Royal charges $79.

Poker Armor eye wear received somewhat higher grades, simply because they had more choices, and a cheaper price.  With three frame styles, all at $58.00, their appeal could certainly be understood.  However of the three styles they offer, only one (The Secret Agent) was even deemed wearable by the reviewers.  The other two were rejected by the reviewers before the order was placed.
This being said, the quality simply wasn’t there to support a $58 price tag.
As with Royal Eye wear, the reviewers all had one high mark of praise, and some consistent complaints about the Secret Agent.  The praise was in simple comfort.  The Secret Agent is a lightweight frame that is comfortable to wear for long periods of time.  Beyond that though, our review panel of all three gave a thumbs down to the product based on one resounding reason:  They simply didn’t protect the eyes from view.  The lens was too small, and did not extend to the sides of the eyes.  And quite honestly, you can see right through them from across the table.  The light enhancement was decent enough, but not enough to warrant recommending the glasses.

Lastly, we took a look at Blue Shark Optics.  One of the first things you notice when you visit their website is the choices.  At this time, Blue Shark is offering eight different styles to choose from.  Two of these are being phased out, but the remaining six are in a variety of stylish frames that are sure to satisfy the needs of any customer.

The lens on the Blue Shark glasses all have what the company calls Crystalion-3 coating.  This coating not only increased light to the user, but was virtually impenetrable from the outside.  You simply could not detect eye movement when looking at the wearer.  Our reviewer’s chose the Viper Shark, simply to be somewhat consistent in comparing the glasses, as this was the closest style to match the two from the other companies.  While we based our review off of the Viper Shark, the true poker enthusiast would probably be more interested in the MP3 Tiger Shark.  1GB of storage built into the frame, with ear buds perfect placed to allow any player to sit for up to 5 hours jamming to their favorite tunes without the wires associates with an iPod.
And if you don’t like the frames offered by Blue Shark, you can even send in a frame you do like and they will custom fit a lens (prescription or not) for those frames.

Another strong selling point of the Blue Shark brand is the availability of prescription eye wear.  Simply fill out the order form, and provide a copy of your current eye wear prescription, and the company will make a pair of medical quality sunglasses for any user.  I personally wear bifocals, and I have long been relegated to either my normal prescription sunglasses, cheap clip-ons, or having a poker film applied to my glasses.  It is nice to see at least one poker eye wear company understand the needs of their customers and provide this service.

While the Blue Shark Optics prices were higher than the rest, the quality and effectiveness of their product certainly warranted the price difference. Their frames are made of high quality acetate and not cheap plastic.  Starting at $129 ($169 for the MP3 Tiger Shark), the Blue Shark product should be seen as an investment rather than an expense.  These glasses can not only be worn at the poker table, but are perfect for night driving, as well as to reduce eyestrain for computer users.  Sure, you might look silly wearing sunglasses while multi-tabling at Full Tilt, but your eyes will thank you for thinking of them.
Blue Shark even offers free shipping and a money back guarantee.  And professional players like John “The Razor”  Phan, Young Phan and Kathy Liebert are winning while wearing them, which is more than can be said for the other brands.

So in the end, the three reviewers were all unanimous in their choice of Blue Shark Optics as their preference.  The slight increase in cost was more than offset by the comfort, quality, and multi-functionality of the product. The bottom line is that Blue Shark Optics deliver what they promise, with a lens that, unlike the others, completely hides the eyes.  And in the end, as we were comparing them for poker play, the others weren’t even close.  So when you are ready to step up your game, I highly recommend you do so in Blue Shark Optics eye wear.  Professional poker players across the spectrum have made them their personal choice, and I believe that you should too.

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Now I know this is coming across like a commercial for Blue Shark Optics, but I want to make it clear that we conducted a comparison with real players, in real money games.  The players weren’t told which brand they should choose, but they all chose Blue Shark Optics anyway.  Since I have long felt that Blue Shark Optics were the best on the market, I was very happy to see the three players make the same decision while wearing them under real tournament conditions.

You could be posting your articles on the Poker Bankroll Blog. Read all about it here.

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Calculating Bankroll Requirements

Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 | Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Management, Poker Mathematics, Poker Tools | 2 Comments

Submitted by Scott McIntosh, this article belongs to the Poker Bankroll Management series

In gambling games such as poker, blackjack or video poker where the player is trying to make money not only is it important to be playing with a positive expectation but also much care must be taken not to lose all of one’s money. As the saying goes – “It takes money to make money”. This requires winning players to maintain a certain amount of money in reserve to handle losing streaks and is commonly known as the player’s “bankroll”. This article will explore how to estimate the amount of money that is required to be kept as a poker bankroll in order to play so as reduce the probability of going broke to an acceptable level.

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Risk of Ruin Formula (warning serious math content ahead)

The risk of ruin formula is given below. The formula is based on a random walk with upwards drift and has some assumptions that although not exactly correct are good enough that it still gives a good approximation of a poker player’s risk of ruin. These assumptions include: a) normal distribution of results b) constant win rate and standard deviation. If the actual parameters vary too far from these assumptions care must be taken as the formula is likely to underestimate the actual risk of ruin.

Risk of Ruin = e ^ (-2WB / (S ^ 2))

e = Constant (2.718281828)
W = Win Rate, measured in $ pr. hour
S = Variance (has a unit that doesn’t really make any logical sense)
B = Bankroll, measured in $
^ = Power symbol (e.g. 3^2 = 9; 3^4 = 81)
/ = Division Symbol (e.g. 24/6 = 4; 56/7 = 8 )

Reference : D. Schlesinger, Blackjack Attack, RGE publ., Oakland 1997 (2nd ed. 2000)

Note: A player’s win rate and standard deviation is usually obtained from a Poker Database program such as “Poker Tracker”.

Example

Given a winning poker player with win rate of $30/hour, standard deviation of $600 and bankroll of $15000:

Risk of ruin = e ^ (-2*30*15000/(600^2))
Risk of ruin = 8.208500%

Although this is a precise answer given to 6 decimal places it is only an approximation and probably would be rounded up to give a 10% risk of ruin in practice.

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What Risk of Ruin should you accept?

One can never eliminate the risk of going broke, that is reducing the risk of ruin to 0%. Whilst 5% might be acceptable to a part time player, a professional whose only source of income is from poker should use something like a conservative 1% risk of ruin. Also given the error likely in measuring the win rate and standard deviation and also changing table conditions one should maintain a higher bankroll than calculated.

This article was written by Scott McIntosh of ReviewPoker Rooms which has a Bankroll Calculator based on the formula given above.

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Tags: Poker Articles, Poker Bankroll Management, Poker Mathematics, Poker Tools