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Month: September 2009

Poker, a game of force

Posted in Poker skills

Is force necessary to succeed?

In this firs post we will take an overview of how Texas Holdem tournament is played to facilitate your experience.

So, Texas Holdem tournaments are among the world’s greatest gaming events. While Texas Holdem has been played for decades, online poker tournaments are rather new. In around 1972 the largest poker pot for world’s tournament was $10.000. In 2002-2003 tournaments the first prize has surpassed $4,000,000.

That’s because of modern technologies, which allow multitude of users to enter the online tournament sitting at home. The tournament is the aim of both novice and professional players, because it is the only place and time, when you can convert your skills in some good money. You can even become a millionaire, if luck will cast the light upon you.

Don’t pay attention at that TV shows which features skills as the main point of the victory promoting Texas Holdem tournament schools, books and other media. Skills are pointless if luck will pass you by. Almost all tournament winners were not top players, but just ordinary folks, who entered the tournament with a lucky clover upon their fortune. When over a thousand players enter the tournament with a $5,000 entry fee, your chances to win those $5,000,000 are zero if you trust only skills and pay no attention on strategy, knowledge, etc.

In case you have entered the tournament for fun – skills are quite sufficient, but otherwise you should need to possess much more then just the capability to count the right hand. Intuition, cleverness and prediction – these are just the basic things to learn. I play online poker tournaments mostly for the fun and who knows, I could also make good money from them one day if I run deep. But prevailing at one of these online poker tournaments necessitates a solid poker strategy, which is different from cash games.

Beyond the luck value, you must know the features called “the must” for any Texas Holdem tournament player. These are the basic rules and strategy, some tricks and bluffing abilities, excellent knowledge of all hands and combinations, and at least basic how-to’s of the game. In this article we shall overview a couple of things you must know playing at a poker tournament.

At the tournament, your chips have a relative value that differs from the regular poker cash game, where you consider each dollar as an equal amount. The first thousand chips at the tournament are worth much more than the next thousand you win. Since you cannot buy back in, you should always keep a certain amount of chips in order to survive. You should be tighter at the beginning of the Texas Holdem tournament to keep your bankroll, but risk more at the later stages to reach the final table.

Otherwise you can be simply blinded out. At the later stages of the tournament, necessary force plays a great factor, because the blinds are so high that the majority of the players in contested hands will be all-in preflop. You must use a lot of force, in other words aggression, as you want hands dominating all other hands for this reason.

You should know the hands well in order to collect the best ones, or predict your hand proceeding from your pocket cards value. The common mistake is betting hard with a weak hand, usually a low pocket pair. Such pairs are good only when trying to steal the blinds. So these are the basic differences between Texas Holdem tournament and ring games.