For a limited time they are offering new players $50 for free and also 50% rake back.  Click here to visit the site and sign up today

With the help of MyPokerLabs, you can analyse your poker and find out how to improve and become a better player.  This is what every poker site should offer their players.  Truly a unique way to play poker online.

Be sure to also sign up to our newsletter to be included in our exclusive freeroll in the coming weeks. 

The history of some of the variants of Poker played nowadays is slightly easier to trace, Texas hold 'em (also known as hold'em or holdem) dates back to the early 1900's but really caught on when it was introduced to Las Vegas in 1967 by a group of Texan gamblers. In Texas Holdem two cards are dealt face down to each player and then five community cards are placed face up by the dealer, a series of three cards is then introduced(referred to as"the flop", "the turn" and "the river"), players have the option to check, bet, raise or fold after each deal. This meant that Holdem had four betting opportunities (as opposed to the two in draw poker), players bet prior to "the flop", "on the flop", "on the turn", and "on the river". Many professional gamblers believe Holdem is a more strategic variant of Poker, the "thinking man's game". Today Texas Holdem is a contender for the most popular Poker game out there, but there are plenty of others.

Probably the second most popular of the modern Poker variants is Omaha (aka Omaha holdem or Omaha hold'em) is a community card (game where players share cards) poker game similar to Texas hold 'em, where each player is dealt four cards and must use two of them, plus three of the five community cards make his best hand. Seven-card stud is another popular poker variant (in fact seven card stud was he most popular poker game in the USA before the relatively recent increase in popularity of Texas hold 'em). Five-card draw is a poker variant that is generally regarded as the simplest variant and is common in home poker games but less so in casino and tournament games. Razz is an unusual form of stud poker where the aim of the game is to achieve the "lowball" hand, normally ace-to-five low. Players try to make the lowest possible five card hand from the seven cards dealt. Straights and flushes do not matter and the best possible Razz hand is 5-4-3-2-A (aka "5 high", "the wheel" or "the Bicycle"). Other examples of lowball poker include "Triple Draw" -essentially Draw Poker with three drawing rounds, played limit with either A-5 or 2-7 ranking (known as 2-7 triple draw).

There is also a popular new brand of Poker called H.O.R.S.E. which commonly played at the high stakes tables of casinos. Basically consisting of alternating rounds of play of Texas Hold 'em, Omaha eight or better, Razz, Seven card Stud, and Seven card stud Eight or better.

An iPad not enough for you? Want more cash for Christmas? How about $40,000 worth of prizes in the Christmas run up! Operating from the 11th to the 29th of December – the $40,000 Christmas Raked Hands Frenzy!!!  Anyone can win regardless of table stakes and the players that play the highest number of raked hands will be rewarded with prizes totaling $40,000 such as the $5,000 GSOP Live Seville Package.

Check out the great Christmas promotions at Betfair and don't forget to take advantage of their new player sign up bonus of up to $2500!!!

Sign up to Blackbelt Poker and use referral code zartog for an extra boost.  Don't forget to link you player account to your profile account for extra boosts.  Plenty of advice from the poker community and seasoned poker professionals. 

Poker Room Poker Schools

Everest Poker School – Well dispite their mass publication of their school it is nowhere to be found on its site and therefore we have to assume you have to sign up to Everest Poker to gain access. To be honest if you know anything about cash game poker you should sign up to Everest Poker anyway as it has some of the weakest play on small to medium tables that has ever been seen. – Visit Everest Poker >

Full Tilt Training Academy – Fulltilt's Poker academy is quite simply great. FullTilt along with PokerStars are aquiring pros faster than rake and fulltilt are definately adding something other than just a smiley face in a cowboy hat. There are hundreds of videos, interviews and articles on the site offering advice from basic play to more complicated strategy. Alot of the videos have commentary and help through the hands being played which is often helpful. I would personally say that the FullTilt poker academy is worth more than a quick look. Visit FullTilt Poker >

VC Poker School – VC Poker has alot of basic information for Texas Holdem, Omaha and stud. Nothing that you wouldn't find on any poker resource site including this one. It does offer some advice on starting hands, tips and some tournament strategies all of which are helpful for the beginner but won't really help the more experienced player. Visit VC Poker >

Poker Training Sites are very different and will be covered in a seperate article!

 

 

Now for poker in particular most sites that offer this are third parties acting for the poker room on a special arrangement. Now if we look at one example from PokerSource of why these bonuses aren't really worth the paper they are written on:

To actually claim the the $75 Fulltilt are offering through this service you need to rake 2100 points.

From Fulltilts bonus conditions – "For every dollar paid in tournament or Sit 'N' Go fees, you will receive 7 Full Tilt Points. There is no cap on the number of points you can receive."

So you like your sit and go's..your going to have to:

2100 / 7 = the amount of $$ you have to spend in fees to get your bonus

Thats $300 in fees to get your $75 and in real terms as fees are typically 10% $3000 worth of tournaments you have to make it through..thats 300  x $10 sit and go's without busting and without the bonus expiring all with a $75 bankroll.

Some say you don't get anything in this life for free..true but after several thousand hours of play for $75 is it really worth it? NO..thats why you should join up directly to a select number of poker sites that drop a bonus in stages and offer something around 100% of your inital deposit.

Try Fulltilt with a much better bonus of $600 here >>

Freezeout tournaments are described as a tournament starting at a preset time regardless of how many players. Each player pays the same buy in and play in the tournament until they are knocked out or Frozen out hence the term freezeout tournament. Freezeout tournaments don't have the ability to re buy or have add ons and so action can be slow to build as players strive to stay in until they reach the money, typically the top 10% of the field of players.

Why play Freezeout Tournaments over other poker formats?

Freezeout tournaments have one main advantage over other formats this is a much larger payout for winning. As the field is alot bigger you will a bigger portion of the pot and therefore make a large profit when you win. You also get more entertainment for your money. As most people play for fun over money you will have a longer playing experience (hopefully) and in my experience I have found tournament play to be alot more sociable. Freezeout tournaments are the main choice for satelite tournaments which the online poker sites use to allow cheaper access into bigger tournaments..and so mastering freezeout tournaments is a must.

Freezeout Tournament Basics

As the nature of Freezeout tournaments is a long battle the game can be broken down into early, middle and end play. Initially there are two schools of thought about how to play, one is that the player should play suited connectors and lots of average hands to get cheap flops which if they connect can double or even triple them up. The other school of thought is to play tight and let the "idiots" knock each other out. Although its hard to do well in a Freezeout tournament with a small stack its also hard to win it with no chips at all and so I would suggest playing tight at least until the first break.

When the field has dropped to around half depending on your chip amount you should loosen up but still only play ABC poker. Save making moves and trying to steal more pots until the later stages.

Other Freezeout Poker Tips:

- Don't play if you don't have a good few hours handy
- Only play if you really are in a good state of mind
- Play only strong hands aggressively at the beginning and later loosen slightly
- Make sure you time your toilet breaks as there is nothing worse than needing the loo half way through a key hand

Where to play Freezeout Tournaments?

We suggest either Unibet Poker or BetFred Poker both of these offer satellites in to major tournaments including the WSOP.  Unibet also have their own Unibet Open that is a great tournament that visits Cities throughout Europe. 

Click here to go to Unibet Poker >
Click here to go to Bet Fred >

Cash poker is a little like stocks and shares some people are very good but others try once and never touch again because they lose normally their whole bankroll. Cash poker is simply playing poker with a flexible buy in upto a set limit normally based on the blinds set out by the poker room. Most of the TV poker and main large scale games are based around the tournament format. In cash poker the player can leave the table at any time although there is poker etiquette to follow unless you want some nasty looks when walking away after 1 hand.

Why play cash table poker over say tournaments?

The key advantage is that you can leave when you have had enough. Like sit and go tournaments they are quick or long depending on how you play them and both are ideal if you only have a set amount of time to play. Another advantage of playing with cash is that although the poker site will rake your game you can wait for premium hands and really make a great deal from very little play.

Cash table basics

Cash table poker varies from site to site..some poker sites have betting based customers who like to try poker these are the best type of sites to play on as they attract gamblers not logical, patient players. For this reason we reccommend Betfred Poker.

- The maximum you can normally bring to the table is 100 times the big blind meaning if the big blind is 0.20cents you can only bring $20 to the table
- Play within your means..don't play with a large portion of your bankroll as cash poker can get out of control as the action is about each hand rather than the end game like winning a tournament.
- Bring the max to the table wherever possible. Cash is king a big stack gives leverage over smaller stacks allowing you to control the action

Other tips for cash table play are:

- Don't try to play to win set amounts try to play for a set time instead
- Identify the people who play in an opposite style to you and so make your moves against people who appear to be playing far too many hands or tend to bluff alot
- Build up slowly like you would with a tournament
- If your having a bad session, are tired, drunk, bored or fed up WALK AWAY!

We reccommend you try Betfred Poker for Cash Table action as it is part of the Ipoker network and has around 20,000-30,000 players at peak times.

Visit BetFred Poker >

With online poker having so many players wanting to play at once gone have the days where you have to wait until friday for your next poker game. Unlike the conventional cash poker game or tournament poker sit and go tournaments have between 6 and 150 players. Sit and go poker is as it says on the tin. You pay a set fee to play and when all of the seats are full the game started. The prizes are predetermined and are normally weighted to the top 1, 2, 3 in an average 10 person sit and go.

Fulltilt and Pokerstars have increased the size of sit and go tournaments and now you can get upto 150 players these are played more like a freezeout tournament and the sit and go rules don't really apply.

Why play sit and go over other types of tournament?

Sit and go tournaments are fast and can last between 20 minutes and an hour meaning you don't have to give up your whole night just to leave the tournament early. Other advantages are that play can be alot weaker especially in low level tournaments compared to the same £10 freezeout equivalent. Sit and go poker comes in varieties such as turbo, super turbo these terms simply mean that the action speeds up faster. If you see deep stack sit and go this means that each player has more chips and so the action is normally alot better.

Basic sit and go strategy

The key to being a winning sit and go player is well timed aggression. Sit and go tables have a disadvantage in that your table will work out if your constantly bluffing or pot stealing quite quickly as there is only one table and so you need to only play hands in which you have good cards.

What can be considered good cards?

- High pairs, High suited connectors, AJ through to AK

Tips:

- You need to make sure that when you have a hand your defend it by betting, short handed play can be good for trapping however when done too much you will not get paid or even worse you will get robbed by a made hand.

- Don't bluff – when I say this it doesn't mean don't occasionally play over the top with middle connectors it just means don't make bluffing a major aspect of your game. You need patience over agression but in the later stages you should use the fact that you have been a strong player to your advantage.

- You need to win or place most of the time to maintain a profit and to do this you need to be willing to loosen up when your in the money to increase your actual return otherwise settling for 3rd in a 10 person tournament over and over will be a very boring and unprofitable place.

Where to play sit and go tournaments?

We play at fulltilt -  No serious for a second..you have all heard of them, all seen the ads but there is a reason for this, volume and some of the best sit and go action around.

Click here to try Fulltilt >

My number 1 tip to improve your game is to play live. See our making the move in to playing live article. Mixing up between playing live and playing online, will help improve your game, due to the speed of online you will see more flops, but playing live you will learn more about tells and when to move all in against the short stack or when to keep away.

In the early stages of poker playing, very few players know what outs and odds are. If you learn your outs and odd, you will be able to calculate if it is worth calling the flush draw when a player raises you. See our article on calculating odds and outs.
Know how to assess your game and know where you are going wrong. By looking back at your hand you have played and re assessing how the other player made you click that all in button will help you improve and in future you might fold and escape throwing away a large amount of chips or cash at the poker table.

Sign up to a number of poker forums and get involved in talking about poker and learn how other players are playing certain hands. This includes watching any poker on TV or on the internet. There are a number of Poker Videos online you can watch back again and again. This does not mean doing a Gus and moving all in with 7-2 off suite. Also subscribe to publications such as Poker Player and Bluff Magazines.

Also why not try other types of poker. Many sites offer you more than just Hold’em. If you are thinking of playing another type of poker, then play in some freeroll games to get to know how to play them, as other forms of poker will require a totally different approach than that of Hold’em. Read our review on Making the switch to playing Omaha. Sites that offer other forms of poker on top of the popular Hold’em include:

• PKR offer Omaha, but have a wide range of tournaments you can get involved in.
• Fulltilt offer rushpoker which will allow you to learn very quickly how to be aggressive and what premium hands are worth playing.
• Betfair offer Omaha and Black Jack Poker, which can be very interesting to play

Have a bankroll and stick with it. Keep your poker playing money separate from your normal cash flow. This will help you understand if you are winning or losing and also what levels to play at. Have at least 30 times your buy-in for the level you are playing poker at. When you start to increase your bankroll you can move up a level and if you start losing then move down a level and don’t chase your losses.

My final tip is to try and play poker as often as you can afford to. By doing this it will help you learn where you need to improve your game and how other players are playing against you. Yes you will get bad beats, but that is poker and the reason we love to play. Make sure you stick within your limits.