A facet of Texas Holdem strategy that many new players don’t consider is money management. Your first experience with Texas hold’em was probably to deposit $100 or so online or to plunk it down at your local casino and start playing, letting the chips fall where they may. If you play poker as a rare vacation activity when you happen to be in somewhere like Las Vegas or Atlantic City, you probably don’t have to worry as much about money management. If you plan to make poker a regular hobby or are even considering it as a profession, you definitely need to think about this aspect of the game.

Texas Hold’em Poker Money Management: Total Bankroll vs. Game Bankroll

One of the most important Texas Holdem tips is to have a sufficient bankroll. If possible, it’s a good idea to play at a limit such that you only put ten percent of your bankroll at risk at any given time. This means you have enough money to play the limit of your choice comfortably with only a tenth of your bankroll. To be able to comfortably handle the swings of a limit game it is optimal to have 100x the big blind in chips, although many players do fine with only 25x or 50x. Remember, this means your total bankroll will have to be 250-100x the big blind of the limit you choose. If you’re playing no-limit, you’ll want an even bigger bankroll, perhaps even twice as big, as the swings are bigger. If you play sit-and-go tournaments, the ten percent of your bankroll figure may work, but with the variance in multi-table tournaments, you may not want to dedicate more than one to five percent of your bankroll to any one tournament.

The Danger of Being Under-Bankrolled in Texas Hold’em Poker

The simple fact is that Texas Holdem
is a game of short term luck, and as someone famously once said, the short term can be an awfully long time. If you don’t have enough money to cover the times when the cards fall on the wrong side of the odds, you won’t be around when the odds fall right, which will be disastrous. You could be a tremendous player, but if you don’t have the money to stick around until the odds even out, no one will ever know.

The Danger of Being Over-Bankrolled in Texas Hold’em Poker

Of course, you don’t need to worry about having too much money. However, if the limit you are playing represents an infinitesimal portion of your bankroll, it may be difficult to play well. If you could lose 100 straight sessions at your current limit and not make a dent in your bankroll, it’s hard to see how you can stay focused enough to win at that level.

Final Money Management Notes

Remember that if you are a losing player, no size bankroll will make you a winner over the long term. However, if you are adequately funded, you give yourself the best chance to prove your skills and come out ahead.

Party Poker started off as the strongest global online poker operator. Sites such as Pokerstars and Full Tilt Poker were reviewing their strategies and tactics against the former online poker giant.

Party Poker was 800 pound giant in the online poker world. There was a number of reasons for such success. Party Poker was one of the first to fully appreciate poker affiliate opportunities. The other sites did not the benefits affiliate marketers were offering them and they did not want to share their profits with anyone else.

Pert Poker engages themselves in extremely aggressive marketing strategies and created deals with most affiliate managers online, which meant there were Party Poker reviews everywhere on the site.

This has brought them an early leadership position, which at the peak of their success looked like a potential for monopolistic position.

Nevertheless, as online poker industry evolved and expanded, the mass appeal was created, meaning that online poker was no longer considered a game for professional poker players, now it was the game for everyone and anyone interested in the game, the number of which has been growing steadily offline as well as online.

The first mistake Party Poker did, was become public, which forced them to pull out of US market after UIGEA was introduced according to the SAFE Port Act. This caused an instant loss of number 1 position in the world. Since then the site wasn’t able to create any big steps towards becoming Number one in the remaining market.

Despite the fact that Party Gaming, which includes Party Poker, Party Casino and Party Bets, is still growing; unfortunately for them their competitors seem to be quickly catching up or even taking over mo-re shares in this very profitable market.

For instance iPoker Network, which has passed Party crew not so far ago, as reported by the Piokerscout. This was measured by the number of real cash players active at the same time on both sites. Ipoker Network has 9827 real cash poker players, whilst Party Poker has 9365. The 24 hour peak is higher on iPoker compared to Party also.

To summarize the results published by Ipoker Network, Party Poker is third busiest online poker site worldwide according to the 7 day average, with Pokerstars being number one, which is twice as much as Full Tilt Poker, which is number two on the list. It looks like fairly shortly Party Poker will give up the third position to IPoker Network and pull out of the leadership 3 altogether. This is significant change after being number 1 for that many years.

The names behind are also getting stronger, with Ongame Network in the fifth place with 7846 cash game players, which is 1599 less than Party Poker. The Network is expected to grow rapidly in the next three to six month, which would squeeze the Party site onto the fifth place with no hesitation.

Do you think there is a hope for PArty Poker??? Is there anything you feel they can do to reincornate and push the competitors back in their place?

Betfair Pokerroom is now asking the money back, which was given to the punters even if they lost, as the software appeared to have an error.

Betfair Poker doubled punters’ cash, disregarding who won and who lost and the sum ended up being £1.7 million in total.

As soon as Betfair users spotted the fault, they started raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds.

It took Betfair three hours to spot the error, by then everyone who lost were given prizes as well as the top two winners of the poker .

Betfair tried to get the cash back from the punters, but most of them claimed to have spent it already.

Betfair Poker spokesman said this: “We are aware of the allegations but are not commenting”.

I recently found the following site; Football Winners. It is a pretty basic idea where you pay £2 per ticket for a chance to win their weekly jackpot. You just select 10 winners out of the 25 weekend fixtures they give you, and if the pot isn’t won, it rolls over to the next week.

They had 17 winners last week netting a decent sum each, I’ll be having a go this week.

This week the fixtures to choose from are:

Aston Villa v Blackburn Rovers
Arsenal v Newcastle United
Coventry City v Millwall
Oldham Athletic v Huddersfield Town
Peterborough United v West Bromwich Albion
Portsmouth v Plymouth Argyle
Southampton v Bury
Watford v Wolverhampton Wanderers
Bristol City v Blackpool
Burnley v Scunthorpe United
Crewe Alexandra v Swindon Town
Huddersfield Town v Millwall
Luton Town v Leeds United
Grimsby Town v Shrewsbury Town
Port Vale v Bournemouth
Tranmere Rovers v Yeovil Town
Walsall v Gillingham
Bradford City v Barnet
Nottingham Forest v Bristol Rovers
Chester City v Rotherham United
Darlington v Macclesfield Town
Lincoln City v Dagenham & Redbridge
Milton Keynes Dons v Rochdale
Morecambe v Notts County
Wycombe Wanderers v Chesterfield

Let me know who your 10 winners be!

Click here to have a go at Football Winners.

Wow saw that Foxy Bingo are now giving users £10 Free no deposit to try out their site - play their quite a bit and got my fiver free but seems that they’re now taking it one step further to compete with the big guys (Gala, Sun etc) and giving away a whopping tenner completely free - gutted wished I waited til now to get all that free money. Seems that they are all doing it, could play bingo for money nearly every day and never need to deposit -thats my sort of game he he. Apparently they are ditching Jordan too as the face of Foxy and just replacing her with good old Foxy - what are your thoughts on this? Like Jordan or prefer foxy - personally don;t give a damn just like the good promos and sign up offers

Catch you later.. I am off for a dabble

Not sure what you all think about it and I am sure that you’ve all the heard the rumours…. Scrabble makers Hasbro and Mattel have launched an attack on Facejizz saying that thier ‘Scrabulous‘ Game is a ‘gross copyright and trademark infringement’.   Well I have to say that I quite agree with them- not sure if I had created the game Scrabble that I’d be happy about a direct rip off on some social networking site.  So its no suprise that the toy makes are a bit pissed off , BUT the problem is that over half a million facebook users (including most of my mates) are racking up games of Scrabulous on a daily basis, and becoming thoroughly addicted.  The ‘Save Scrabulous’ campaign on Facebook already has over 13,000 members, many of whom have also been badgering (in every way possible) the Toy makers Hasbro and Mattel and petitioning for it to be kept.

I know that work is dull, and that all these extra applications make Facebook the place to whilst away the time at work and make it a bit more bearable… I’m not so fussed though - we’re banned from using anything that looks vaguely like a social networking site (or ‘dating site’ as it comes up when you try and logon!).  so I say why don;t we go back to the good old archaic scrabble - like they played in the old days.  I love it and love playing with my granny (she’s amazing).. mind you just realised something… the beauty of the the tinternet and scrabulous is that I could actually play with her (even though she lives 3 hours away).  Surely this is the beauty of online gaming, you can play poker, online bingo or online casino from wherever you are in the world and you don’t have to leave your home and brace this wintery weather to pop down the bingo club or round to your mates house to play poker.. Think that I’ll fight with the others to keep Scrabulous alive!

Poker industry has been reborn and is becoming stronger than ever, with more players converting into the dedicated fans daily. This rapid growth has brought poker to a new dimension, which has turned the balance of power on its head. Now instead of the house calling the shots, the patrons do. In a casino environment, when a customer speaks, a croupier listens. Now, in places with intense oligopolistic competition between casinos, the house doesn’t always win any more, the customer does.

Poker rooms are trying their hardest to create a competitive advantage through customer satisfaction, using zero tolerance quality control policy and other methods of attracting players. One of the examples of such efforts is the introduction of deep-stack tournaments.

Most poker players always hope to take part in tourneys with a lot of play potential. It has always been the story before that the fairly affordable tournaments came with a fraction of the starting chips and very short blinds levels, in contrast to big tournaments. Now, due to the increased competitiveness of the industry the format has changed and more tournaments are becoming deep-stack in favour of the players rather than the house, which is also good news for those who just learned poker basics, who can now take part in serious tournaments and test their beginners luck without having too much at stake.

The Venetian started the trend in 2007 with the first ever Deep-Stack Extravaganzas (DSEs), a $300-$1000 tourneys with larger than usual starting stacks and an extended blind structure. This has created a great opportunity for poker lovers to win huge prizes for a fairly moderate entry prize.

The manager of the poker room Venetian, Kathy Raymond admitted to the fact that deep-stack tournaments are absolutely vital for any poker company that wants to stay competitive.

“For years, many tournaments have been short-stacked with accelerated blind structures,” she said. “I believe that casinos are spreading more and more deep-stack tournaments to try to remain competitive, and I do not see this trend changing anytime in the near future.”

Other casinos have followed the trend set by Venetian to keep their market share safe. In fact, the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles is hosting a deep-stack event this week, called “Mo’s Deep Stack”, with a number of tourneys with an entrance e from $300 to $500 and a $1,600 championship happening on Saturday.

The Larry Flynt’s Challenge Cup also decided to switch to deep-stack.

Here is how Patee McGuire, the manager of the poker room, explained the move: “This could be the wave of the future,” she said. “Players like these tournaments for obvious reasons — they start with more chips, feel more confident with the deep stack, and have the ability to play comfortably for longer periods.”

Current Big Brother Celebrity Hijack Odds and Betting:

• Anthony   6/4

• Amy       5/1

• John      6/1

• Nathan 9/1

• Jeremy 11/1

• Emilia    12/1

• Latoya   33/1

• Jay          40/1

• Victor    40/1

• Calista   66/1

• Liam       66/1

Tricky one to predict this one!  How about a punt on a male winning…?

Anyone had a go yet?

Kelly Osbourne, daughter of Sharon Osbourne and Ozzy was the latest guest on this years Celeb Hijack BB and had to listen to the moaning and groaning from constestants as they gave her the reasons why they wanted to nominate their ‘fellow’ housemates for eviction. Looks like some of them were nominating out of pure jealousy saying things like she is too fit and good looking so I want her out (about Emilia) whilst her boy brother is the favourite for eviction.

Not sure what Kelly is doing on BB, she has herself become a bit of a celebrity recently whilst her Mum Sharon is better known as one of the judges on Xfactor as well as the face of Gala Bingo whilst her dad, Ozzy is a famous musician

Everyone is complaining about the new series of Big Brother and saying what is the world coming to - watching a house full of clowns and supposed entrepreneurs is what can I say - just dull. Jade, Jeremy and Victor face the public vote but I wonder if any of the public are watching this program, let alone bothering to vote for it- if you ask me its all a load of bollocks - BB1 and 2 were great but as the years wear on you have to be part of a freak show to be admitted on to the program and then the contestants end up airing all their dirty laundy and the skeletons from the cupboard to the general public,. They have now got these so called celebs going in for the day and giving them tasks and stuff.. just rubbish. Well even Paddy Power have not resorted to offering odds on this… so it must be bad! What do you think? new BB any good? or would you prefer to ahve a flutter on something much more interesting like who is going to win the US presidential election (now there is a fun one!)