MISTAKE #1: Not Bluffing Enough

Poker is a game of ODDS and SKILL… but it’s also a game of PSYCHOLOGY and LUCK.

If you listen to the advice of an odds calculator 100% of the time, yes, you’ll come out ahead. But you don’t want to become a predictable “robot” who only plays favorable odds
and never bluffs.

Get my drift?

There are times in every poker game when you’ll want to buy the blinds because you sense weakness, over bet the pot to give off a certain table image, or “bully” the table with your huge chip stack.

Odds calculators don’t bluff.

And they don’t tell you when to bluff.

That’s why you’ve got to stay alert and make these types of decisions based on your own intuition…

MISTAKE #2: Not Paying Enough Attention To Your Opponents

The right odds calculator can quickly become addictive. It’s easy to get in a bad habit of just listening to its “advice” without paying attention to the game.

This allows you to save time, save energy, and play multiple games at once.

BUT…

Just like bluffing, blindly listening to an odds calculator can be detrimental. It can prevent you from catching important TELLS at the table.

Pay close attention to your opponents so that you spot someone on “tilt”, identify an amateur, and pick up betting patterns.

MISTAKE #3: Not Considering “Likely Odds”

Let’s say you’ve got pocket Queens. You make a pre-flop raise of 3x the big blind and get four callers (at an 8-man table).

The flop hits: A-A-K

What a TERRIBLE flop, right? You figure one of your four opponents MUST have an Ace… or at least a King. And that means all you can hope for on the turn or river is a Queen.

If someone throws out a sizeable bet in this situation, you would fold… because you know you’re beat.

What’s interesting is that a “primitive” odds calculator would tell you that you have a STRONG hand: two pair with a great kicker. And it would probably tell you to call any bets… or even raise.

Crazy, huh?

You see, here’s the thing: Most odds calculators only look at YOUR hand… and don’t try to “deduce” what your opponents might have. They don’t look at what’s “likely”.

You and I both know that the only way someone would call a pre-flop raise of 3x the big blind is if they have something good… like an Ace. But an odds calculator that just pays attention to your cards has no idea.

Calculatem Pro is different. Calculatem Pro DOES look at what’s “likely” and what’s not. It takes a look at those four players who stayed in the pot and calculates the likelihood that one of them is holding an Ace or a King… given all the possible conditions.

Don’t download an odds calculator that doesn’t do “likely odds”, otherwise you’re just asking for trouble.

MISTAKE #4: Relying Too Much On Odds During “All-In” Plays

In no limit Texas Holdem there is no restriction to how much you can bet. This makes the use of an odds calculator more tricky in this game type.

For instance, let’s say there’s $20 in the pot and your opponent decides to go all-in for hi entire stack of $480.

You have to make a decision to call or fold.

The “pot odds” in a situation like this aren’t very good. The reason is because there’s such a small amount in the pot.

In this situation, however, pot odds don’t mean much. Your decision shouldn’t be based on “math”… it should be based on WHETHER YOU THINK YOUR OPPONENT HAS A BETTER HAND.

An all-in situation is so “disproportionate” that odds aren’t really relevant… so don’t get too caught up in them.

MISTAKE #5: Mis-Interpreting Odds Information When Playing
Heads-Up (Or Short-Handed)

With just 2-3 players at the table, chances are NO ONE will get good cards. At this stage in the game, winning is more about bluffs and reading opponents.

Proof of this is the fact that most heads-up hands never get to “show down”. Someone almost always folds BEFORE the river.

Therefore, the odds of “winning by river” aren’t as relevant in this type of situation. Who cares if you have 7-2 offsuit? All that REALLY matters is what your opponent THINKS you have.

When I get heads-up, I don’t pay attention to the “hand strength” percentage or “odds by river” on my odds calculator.

Instead, I pay attention to the “odds on next card” feature, because that’s what is IMMEDIATELY relevant.

MISTAKE #6: Not Adjusting The Odds To Your Personal Style

When you download an odds calculator, make sure it fits your personal “style” of play. If you’re a loose pre-flop player, you don’t want your odds calculator constantly telling you to “play tight and fold”…

Instead, you want your odds calculator to be “loose” and simply show you when you’re deviating in the wrong manner.

Holdem Genius and Calculatem Pro both feature “play settings” that you can customize for your own needs and preference.

(These settings apply both to pre-flop and post-flop play.)

This is also very useful depending on your game type. For instance, I set my pre-flop settings to be extremely tight in large multi-table tournaments… because my strategy is to sit back and be very patient.

But in a shorthanded Sit and Go, I do exactly the opposite, because “loose” hand selection is required to avoid getting blinded out.

MISTAKE #7: Using The Wrong Odds Calculator

An odds calculator is only useful if it has the FEATURES YOU NEED and if you USE IT RIGHT.

Avoid the common mistakes we’ve just discussed and you’ll be well on your way to maximizing your online poker profits.

The next step is to simply get the BEST odds calculator possible.

My highest recommendation goes to “Calculatem Pro”. It has all the features we’ve just discussed… and dozens more.

It’s by far the easiest-to-use and most useful odds calculator on the market… and it’s proven to help players like you make more money at online poker.

You can download Calculatem Pro now for FREE (by joining a partner casino).

Just click here to get started

Article Source: Roy Rounder

David Glazen knows what it feels like to loose big playing online poker. The tech guru and poker pro moved his game online over a year ago and took a big hit. He was not the first to discover that the poker skills that can make one a winner in a live game do not necessarily transfer to the online environment. He admits to loosing over $10,000 of his money playing online when he first started out.

Rather then give up on online poker David used his tech skills to come up with a brilliant poker bot. The concept was simple enough - a computer program that could play online poker. One that could beat human opponents consistently however took some work. As he explains at this web site he called on some of his University friends to help him out and was eventually able to produce a money making poker bot. He is now offering for download all the information required for anyone to produce their very own PokerBots. While he will only release the information to a limited number of people those who have downloaded the information are already making big money at the online sites.

He is so confident with the performance of the PokerBot he actually guarantees it will make money for its users. He also gives a brief technical overview and explains how even those with no technical experience can build PokerBots using what he calls ‘The Decision Engine’ and ‘Input Generator’ which he includes in the download. His knowledge and expertise in the online poker domain is indeed impressive as well as his willingness to make this information available to the public.

Article Source: GiveMeArticles.com

“If, after the first twenty minutes, you don’t know who the sucker at the table is, it’s you.” ~Author Unknown.

Poker- a “ cheating game” first mentioned as being a card-game played on the Mississippi riverboats , by Jonathan H. Green in 1834, (however two slightly later publications showed it had well been in use by 1829 ) poker was already recognized as a game in which cardsharps would routinely take advantage of their unsuspecting novice victims and relieve them of their money in a variety of ways.

It appears that Poker sprung up from a certain discontent of people taken by the then popular Three -Card Monte- who figured that the new 20 card game was a more legit one. Poker was then played with 20 cards using the tens, the Jacks , Kings, Queens and aces. Each player was dealt five cards and it could be played by two to four people.

By the time Jonathan H. Green first wrote about it, it had already surpassed the Three-card Monte in popularity . He soon realized that his account was the first ever of this game, and he was the first one who recordedly called it “ Poker”.

The origin of this word is subject to debates to this very day. Some say it comes from the French “ poque” an 18 century game, other debate it is more likely to originate from the German “Pochspiel” - also a game involving an element of bluffing - or even the hindu word “ pukka”.

Yet another - more down-to- earth, or less scientific approach suggests that the word might have been invented by the very cardsharps who used the game to relieve suckers of their poke. The idea was that adding an “ r” at the end of the word would fool even those familiar with the underworld slang. The unsuspecting victim wasn’t supposed to understand what the “ seasoned Vets “ were communicating among each-other.

The game of poker went through a natural evolution process over the years first moving from the original 20 cards to 32, and then to 52, -today’s poker deck. The change was possibly made to accommodate more players, and ultimately, to make sure there were enough cards for the draw. This change also made a significant contribution to poker becoming more of a game of skill than one of chance. During America’s Wild West era, there was hardly a saloon in any town or village that would lack the poker table. It was then that the Draw Poker version appeared, nowadays being the most widely spread video-poker genre. It is first mentioned in 1850 in Bohn’s New Handbook of Games.

You get dealt five cards for starters , then you get to choose a few you want to hold on to and exchange the others in hope of getting a better five -card hand.

Poker came a long way from a back-room “ sucker-trap” game in the past to partly recognized sporting event in the present. The amount of money circulated by poker tournaments yearly rivals that of any leading edge sports.

Nowadays different tournaments are held on an almost weekly basis, and it’s quite safe to say Poker has become a global phenomenon. There’s still a lot of debate surrounding poker on whether it is more of a game of skill, thus eligible for being considered a legitimate sport, or more of a game of luck - which requires no more than blind chance to master.

Having gone through all the above, we must specify that regardless of all the evidence presented, the exact origin of poker, or any other classic game for that matter cannot possibly be pinpointed with accuracy. The reason is that people who first started using it never imagined it would someday be a classic, and the set of rules it is made up of ,probably didn’t originate from one single person.

What this present article is aiming for is to get players better acquainted with the roots of the game of poker by painting an approximate history of it based on available evidence.

Article by James West ( Online Casinos )