Texas Holdem Poker

The term bad beat in poker is reserved for the occasions when a player loses a hand despite being a strong favourite when the majority of the money went into the pot.

For example, you may get into a raising war with another player pre-flop and manage to get all your money in with a pair of aces against your opponent’s kings, making you an 82 per cent favourite, only for a third king to hit on the flop to stack you. Another example would be if you had a strong hand such as a set and then lost to someone after cards on the turn and river gave them a better hand.

The most common reaction when a bad beat is put on you is that of anger. This is because we know we had the best hand and as a result see the pot as our property. When a bad beat occurs it feels like someone stole that money from us so we become angry.

Becoming angry can then lead you to go on tilt, and a tilting player cannot play optimal poker and will therefore risk of losing even more chips.

One way to deal with a bad beat, whether it occurs in Texas Hold’em or Omaha poker, is to take some time away from the table. Simply choose to sit out the next hand, or maybe even the next entire orbit of the table, until you have calmed down and are not playing with your emotions in a raw state. This will minimise the risk of losing more money or tournament chips.

Some players cope with bad beats by venting their anger at the dealer or at the player who put the bad beat on them. Two people who are infamous for this are Phil “The Poker Brat” Hellmuth and Tony G. Both men are superb players in their own right but are almost as famous for their trash-talking and berating of players as they are their poker skills.

Probably the best way to get over a bad beat would be to firstly accept that they are part of poker and secondly realise that they only happen to good players. This may sound ridiculous but with a little thought it becomes obvious.

As a good player you will be attempting to commit your chips with a mathematical advantage, also known as getting your money in good. If you are doing this on a regular basis, as you should be, the only way you will lose is when your opponent outdraws you or sucks out on you. Take this last point on board as the next time you suffer a bad beat, smile in the knowledge you made the correct play and, in the long run, it will all come good.

	Basic Details
	Country of Origin	:	Gibraltar
	License	:	Gibraltar
	Year of Foundation	:	2002
	Software	:	888
	Size	:
	Audited By	:	PWC
	Language	:	English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Polish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Czech, Lithuanian, Latvian, Russian, Estonian
	Accepts USA Players	:	No
	Bonus	:	$400

Pacific Poker Review

Creators of the well known Casino-on-Net, the 888.com gaming network are also the initiators of Pacific Poker, the poker gaming website of this large online gaming provider. It is immensely popular because of the loose games that are played here and the traffic comprises mainly of players switching over from the 888.com casino website to play at the poker tables.

Pacific Poker runs some interesting events that draws huge amounts of traffic to the website with peak hour traffic exceeding 2000 players playing at the various tables. During the weekends the traffic is far greater than that during weekdays. There is loads of action and a lot of juicy games to choose from, making Pacific Poker a popular gaming website.

Software:

The upgraded edition of the software has some new features added to it that have greatly enhanced the overall performance of the software, which had earlier been a cause of disappointment for the players. The lobby has a new look with straightforward menus that are easily navigable while the filter search allows quick access to the games.

A multi table function allows players to play at four tables simultaneously without one screen overcrowding the other. The tables are neatly laid out and the cards are large and colorful enabling a clearer view of the hands being played. The game play has becomes faster and smoother while the graphics have shown a remarkable improvement with the introduction of 3-D avatars.

You can see the hand histories through a graphical replay of the played hands, which is a handy tool for those who prefer to maintain a record of their played games. Also available is basic information on flop percentages and the average pot size. The software now also offers a no-download version, which is compatible with Mac and Linux, a brilliant feature only available at Pacific Poker.

Poker Games:

Pacific Poker provides its players with the standard poker games available at all the other poker websites. These include the widely played Texas Holdem, Omaha, Omaha Hi, Omaha Lo, Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Stud Hi and Seven Card Stud Lo. There is a lot of action to be seen at the Holdem Fixed Limit and Pot Limit games and players looking to earn profits can make a good amount of money here. There are games for all kinds of players starting from micro limits of $0.05/$0.10 to high limits of $75/$150 for players who like to play for larger stakes.

There are various tournaments available on Pacific Poker that include single-table and multi-table tournaments and sit-and-go tournaments apart from which there are guaranteed tournaments with huge pot sizes. Multi table tournament pools also run into five figure amounts. Tournaments are the most sought after and have peak traffic exceeding 8000 players playing at the same time.

Bonus and Promotional Offers:

New players get a 100% welcome bonus of up to $400 when they sign up for an account, but they must wager for this bonus amount to be credited to their account. A minimum wager of 20 times the amount, which is $2000 for each $100 of free credits, must be made so as to get the bonus sum.

Pacific Poker has various promotional offers for its players among which are the freerolls that are offered to new players, players who make re-deposits and players who attempt games for the loyalty program. Apart from this there are guaranteed tournaments such as the one held every Saturday with a pool prize of $100,000.

Players can also accumulate comp points for every raked hand that they play with $10 earning them 1 point. Every 100 points gets them a credit of $1 into their account.

Payment Options:

Deposits can be made via Neteller, Credit Cards, Debit Cards, FirePay, Bank Wire, Prepaid ATM, Bank transfer and Citadel. Withdrawals take a little longer and can be made via Credit/Debit Cards, Prepaid ATM, Neteller, Bank Wire, FirePay and Bank Transfer.

Security:

As Pacific Poker is a part of the renowned 888 Holdings Group, the transactions carried out here are safe and secure. It uses RSA encryption and is declared a safe site by eCogra and eCommerce and Online Gambling Regulation and Assurance, for secure online transactions. This ensures customers that they can make deposits or withdrawals at Pacific Poker without any fear of their personal information being divulged to a third party.

Customer Service:

The Pacific Poker customer service staff can be contacted via telephone, email and live chat systems. Support is available around the clock and the team is available to answer your queries as soon as possible.

If you have any time at all on the tables, be it online or live, you have had to deal with bad players that we lovingly refer to as calling stations. If you don’t think that you have, you are probably one of them. A calling station is someone that will not make a raise pre-flop unless they are sitting on a monster, will probably rarely raise post flop and will call you down if they hit any portion of the flop, including bottom pair with a weak kicker.

You can make a lot of money off of these players, but you can also cost yourself a lot if you don’t know how to react to them. Online is easy as you can take notes and when you sit down at a table you will already know their style. If you are playing live, you are going to have to pay attention to every hand and make sure you pick up on their play. Once you have them identified, you can adjust your play accordingly when they are in a hand.

Calling stations are notorious for passive play. They will usually only raise pre-flop with hands like AA, KK, QQ, AK, JJ, 1010. Anything else, they will tend to call down any raise prior to the flop and pray to the poker gods that they hit something. If they did raise pre-flop with a hand and do not hit, they will more than likely check. However, keep in mind that if they raised with a hand like 1010 and the flop comes out K72, they are going to check, but if you bet, they are going to call you all the way down to the river in the hopes that somehow their 1010 will hold up.

A perfect example of a calling station hand would be you are dealt AQ and the station has A3. You pre-flop raise and are called. Flop comes out K-10-3. You fire and the station calls. Turn card comes out as a 7. You bet and the station calls. River card is an 8. You now have 4 over cards and a possible straight on board. You fire a river bet and are called and lose the hand because the station made one of his cards and cannot let it go. Does it make sense? Absolutely not, but it happens time and again.

How you change your play is going to be dictated after the flop and what happens on that first bet. If a calling station makes a pre-flop raise and then fires again on the flop, you can be pretty certain that they have either hit their hand or are sitting on a pocket over pair. They do not comprehend continuation bet so you are all but guaranteed that they are alive and well in the hand. If you haven’t hit, just dump the hand and wait to catch them later.

If you pre-flop raise and then fire a continuation bet on a missed flop, they will call you if they have anything working off of that flop. You have to fire that continuation bet, but from that point you are going to have to play very cautiously. You can still fire on the turn just in case they are on a draw, but if you miss the river, you are going to want to show them a hand. The amount of money you will save by doing this on the river will more than justify the play.

The bottom line is that you cannot bluff a calling station out of a hand. If they are in after the flop, they have more than likely hit the flop in some way or have some type of draw working. Your river bet is the biggest bet you are going to make in the hand and when you miss and fire, you are dumping chips. If you have a hand, you can absolutely bet as they may be sitting there with bottom pair. However, firing on the river with nothing is just going to decrease your stack against this type of player. Adjust your play and you crush this type of player and avoid losing unnecessary money.

Have you ever signed into an online poker room and seen the same name on table after table and wondered how they could do that?  A single individual may have 8 or more tables going at the same time!  How can they keep track of each table and how can they possibly make money?  Well, there are several reasons that this is possible and you will soon find that regardless of the levels you are playing, you can take advantage of the same things that the online pros do to make money by playing online poker.

The first thing that you have to consider is variance.  By playing so many tables, you actually increase your chances of making a profit.  It may sound a little crazy, but it is true.  Have you ever sat at one table and got killed in a very short period of time?  Then you go the next table and don’t seem to be able to miss a hand and want to know where this luck was earlier when you actually had money.  By playing multiple tables, you are all but guaranteed that these single losses will be offset by the big win tables.

If you are playing on 8 tables, more than likely you will find that you have one table that you are not doing very well, another table that you are absolutely crushing people on and then the rest of them will be floating right around even.  The moment that one table goes bad, you remain in action on the other tables and eliminate the bad table.  You are now tilting the odds back in your favor.  Simply go to another table and start playing there.  Because of something we are about to discuss, you don’t need to make a lot of money on the table to be profitable; you just need to make sure you don’t take any heavy losses.

The next thing to consider is rakeback.  This is percentage of the money that you contribute to the rake that gets returned to you at the end of the month.  This alone is the reason why so many online pros make so much money when they play.  Consider the fact that if you are sitting at 6 man tables where $60,000 in rake has been collected over the course of the month, 1/6th of that would be considered your contribution to the rake, or $10,000.  Most rakeback sites will offer their players anywhere from 25-30% back on their rake.  Worst case scenario here, you would be getting back $2,500 at the end of the month for doing nothing!  This is as much as some people make at real jobs and you are getting it as a refund just for playing poker.

Whether you would consider this a good thing or bad is up to you, but the guesswork of playing is totally eliminated when you are playing this way.  Every decision you makes comes down to pure odds.  If they are there, you make the call.  If they aren’t you fold your hand.  Even with tracking software, you are not going to have the time to evaluate the players or figure out if they are making moves.  You are going to have far too much going on.  However, this is where most amateur poker players make the most mistakes.  They are trying to be the next Doyle Brunson and end up outplaying themselves with foolish moves.  Leave it up to the numbers and you will be surprised at how often it works out in your favor.

Playing this many table is never an easy thing and you are going to have to work your way up to it.  I would also recommend that you do this at much lower levels than you play on playing at permanently.  This is going to allow you to absorb those inevitable mistakes that will happen as you are learning to juggle 8 tables at the same time.

If there is one thing that is certain in poker, it is that television and Online Poker have changed the complexion of the game forever.  Going back as little as ten years ago, ABC poker players were very successful.  As TV started showing horrible river suck-outs time and time again, the younger generation of poker player learned the game thinking that this was the way to go.  If there is a draw, they feel as though they have to chase it down.

One thing that the televisions don’t show is the amount of money or chips that these players lose by not folding when they should.  There are always times to head in for the chase, but you cannot do it every time if you want to end up profitable at the end of the year.  By knowing the odds and the proper way to play them, you will increase your chances tenfold over the average player.

If you are a Limit Hold’em player, you are going to be making a lot of calls based on the odds.  In a multi-player hand, you are pretty much getting priced in on just about every draw that you will be chasing.  There are even times that you are going to call on the river because of the amount of money that is in the pot.  It may sound like you are going against everything you have been told about poker, but I assure you that this decision will pay off in the long run.

Say you are playing in a $10/$20 limit 6 handed game.  You get dealt QQ and pre-flop raise and have two callers with the SB folding.  You now have $65 in the pot.  The flop comes out with a board of 10s-6s-4h.  It gets checked to you and you bet again and both players call you, $95 are now in the pot.  The turn card is dealt and it is a Jh.  You bet out on the hand and are immediately raised; the third player folds and you call so there is now a total of $175 in the pot.  The other player could be on a draw, maybe he had 10J in his hand, or maybe he had AJ and caught on the turn.  Regardless, you still feel as though you are ahead in the hand and your call on the turn means you are absolutely going to call on the river regardless of the card.

Now the river card is dealt and it is a Ks.  You check and your opponent fired out another $20 bet and before you make the call, there is a total of $195 in the pot. If you think the move is to fold because you are afraid of the straight, high card or flush, you need to smack yourself in the head.  You are getting 10:1 odds to see what your opponent has at that point.  This means that all you have to do is catch him bluffing one out of ten times and this move pays you off.  If you can catch them twice, you are up a ton of money.

You cannot always assume that everyone hits their hand when they raise.  In this scenario, your opponent very well may have been chasing the flush, but he also could have just as easily gone it with AJ and hit the turn.  Just because he bet on the river does not mean that he chased down the flush.  Make that call every time and remember that you can lose 90% of your hands like this and you are still even.  Win 20% of them and you are on easy street!