Full Tilt Poker, already being prosecuted for letting Americans gamble in violation of a 2006 law, is indicted by the feds for allegedly bilking its customers by skimming more than 0 million off the top.

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Every week, it seems there is more evidence that the balance of power in the book industry continues to tilt towards the author and away from the all-powerful publisher. One of the latest examples is John Green, who writes fiction for young adults from his home in Indianapolis, and whose latest novel has hit number one before it has even been published. Green gives credit for this phenomenon to his Twitter and YouTube followers, but the real credit should go to him for being willing to not just use social media as a promotional tool the way some do, but to actually reach out and engage with his readers and fans.

As the Wall Street Journal  describes it, Green simply posted the title of his new book — a story about two young cancer patients called “The Fault In Our Stars” on his Twitter account — where he has built up a following of more than a million fans — and on his Tumblr blog, as well as a community forum based around Green’s work called YourPants.org. He then offered to sign the entire first print run of the book, and later followed that up with a live YouTube show, in which he discussed his plans for the book and read from a chapter of the uncompleted novel.

The whole process started on Tuesday afternoon, and by that evening, the book had apparently hit the number one spot on both the Amazon list of bestsellers and the Barnes & Noble list. Not surprisingly, this kind of word-of-mouth marketing multiplied by the force of social media has caused a lot of raised eyebrows in the industry. As one senior editor at publisher Harper Collins told the Journal:

Everyone is now focused on it, because when it works, it can be a runaway train

Obviously, not everyone is going to have the million-plus followers that Green has, or the devoted following on YouTube that he and his brother Hank have built up over years of doing what used to be called “vlogging” or video-blogging. The two have also created a couple of thriving communities of online fans such as Nerdfighters and YourPants, which are very similar in some ways to the communities that other artists such as Ze Frank have been able to create around their work (PDF link). The point is that no publisher or agent or industry had to create those things; the author did it himself with help from his fans.

Green is just one of the new authors changing the rules in the book business in unpredictable ways. Although he is still represented by a traditional publisher (a unit of Penguin Group), the kind of following he has been able to gather through social media gives him enough clout that he could easily decide to publish on his own, as author Barry Eisler recently decided to do, turning down a 0,000 advance after years of publishing through a traditional agency relationship. JA Konrath is another author who has argued that more writers should pursue the self-publishing route because it gives them more control.

Amanda Hocking is another example that many point to of how authors can become powerful entities in their own right, while controlling their own fate: Although she recently signed a -million publishing contract, her ability to negotiate that kind of deal was a direct result of the incredible success she had self-publishing her own young-adult fiction through the Kindle publishing platform, with many of her books selling for as little as 99 cents. In less than a year, Hocking was able to rack up more than million in sales, without any help from the traditional publishing industry at all.

And Amazon’s Kindle isn’t the only non-traditional outlet for authors. Startups such as Byliner are also carving out new niches in the space between the novel and the magazine-length feature, as are sites such as Long Reads and another startup called The Atavist that focuses on publishing long-form nonfiction.

Some feel that authors like Green are “outliers,” or exceptions to the rule, and that just because they can marshal an army of millions of Twitter followers doesn’t mean others can. The publishing industry, these critics say, is becoming more and more like the pop-music business, which focuses its attention on a few million-selling mega-stars — the book equivalent of Brittany Spears or Justin Bieber — while ignoring the bulk of writing that occurs outside the spotlight, where authors don’t get access to the publicity machine.

That may be true, and it may be that not every author can become John Green or Amanda Hocking. But that doesn’t change the fact that the same tools that these authors have used, whether it’s Twitter or YouTube or the Kindle Singles publishing platform and 99-cent books, are available to anyone who wants to use them. In a lot of ways, this takes more effort than simply signing with an agent and then complaining when the publisher doesn’t promote your novel properly and your sales tank — but at the same time, it gives authors more power to affect their own future, and create their own success.

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr users Jeremy Mates and marya

Related content from GigaOM Pro (subscription req’d):

• Cracks in the Spine of the Book Business
• How Speech Technologies Will Transform Mobile Use
• Exploring the new frontiers of social reading

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There’s one big, table-shaped obstacle to developing apps for Microsoft’s Surface: you kind of have to own one. A new Surface 2 SDK, landing this summer, will sidestep that problem with an input simulator so devs can test their code on any Windows 7 PC. You can tap fingers, place tags, or paint “blobs” for your virtual SUR 40 to interact with, and even fake multitouch gestures by “stamping” a finger in one spot then moving a second one. If the Surface you’re programming for happens to be movable (though we’re not sure who would put a ,600 computer on hinges) you can also alter the tilt of the display to trigger UI changes. You’ll still need access to one of these behemoths to make sure your wares work in the really real world, but at least the preliminary work can be done on any old laptop or desktop. Frankly, this is something we’d have thought would be included from day one — as they say, better late than never.

Surface SDK gets input simulator, opens doors to indie devs originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 May 2011 22:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In this free poker tournaments article I’m covering winning strategy ideas for knock out poker tournaments. Knock out tourneys are similar to normal regular poker tournaments but with the twist of money for knocking opponents out.

Your basic strategy should be to play big hands very aggressively to try and knock out as many players as you can as fast as possible. That’s good if you get a big hand but if you don’t what should you do?

Here are 2 examples form my own play of how to play and not to play! One was a 90 player and the other a 9 player game.

The 9 player game started very well. I played safely at the start. I had A,6s and got a flush at the flop, the other 8 all raised so I decided to go all-in. A pretty simple strategy and knocked out 3 players at once.

I thought I was unbeatable and played a weak hand against a short stack player who went all-in – I lost. That woke me up and I revaluated my situation. I knocked out another player when I played safe a 4,4 and went all-in when the flop had another 4. The opponent showed AA but the river got me another 4 so off he went.

After that we were into heads up play. My big stack against a short one. I have to admit as I had knocked the other 7 players and I was pretty confident. All I had to do was wait for a good hand. We played a while but the good hand did not appear so, becoming impatient, I played some less good hands and, maybe due to some luck as well as a much bigger stack, eventually got the win.

In the 90 players tournament I knew that I had to be more patient, to wait for the big hand and double up. I got it and hit a straight flush and from there I started building my stack. After playing for 3 hours I became chip leader with only 13 players left (12 getting in the money).

The 13th player left after another couple of hours yet I felt tired and bored and after hitting the final table with 7 players left my patience ended. I got beat by a 2,2 and went on the tilt, I went all-in with QQ an got smashed by a KK plus 1 K in the flop.

So analysing my game what worked for me was the short game not the long. In the long game I played well through to the most important stage and made bad mistakes on the final table. I went tilt and lost with good hands because I was tired, took some small hits and felt that as I had been the big stack most of the time I was somehow owed.

In conclusion, endurance in long poker tournaments is vital. It’s important in the short ones too but you don’t need quite the same level of endurance for time on the table. Overall in any game be safe yet aggressive when you get good hands keep calm all the time. If you don’t have the patience endurance for big player number long games stay with shorter ones.

If you are new to poker then learn first and play poker online free at one of the best free online poker games sites. Here it is possible to learn to play poker for beginners for nothing with no risk to your own money and start building a bankroll to cash in for real money when you are ready to go bigtime and play poker online to win money.

Going Tilt on or the Tilt is a poker term describing a mental state that can happen as much to expert high stakes cash players as to free online poker games players, it is where the players focus is lost and they become upset, play with unfocused aggression, or both, often resulting in losses and errors. Most of the time it occurs after a bad beat or when the player realizes that he’s just been fooled by a bluff.

Usually the Tilt doesn’t last a long time; but it can last longer in bad cases, for example after losing repeatedly or when your full house is beaten by a quad.

Players you don’t like can put you on tilt a lot easier than someone you like and respect. Even top players suffer from this, the high levels of the game are populated by some very strong personalities and some of them do not like each other very much, check out some of the poker TV shows and forums for numerous examples.

Some players are good at detecting the tilt, if you’re able to develop this type of feeling then it comes in very handy at times since there are potential advantages to be had in profiting from players that are on the tilt. Care is advised when doing so, not for any physical reason hopefully but you do not want to get a reputation as a player who attempts to wind others up, it can backfire against you and also result in online poker game and chat bans..

Tilt questions to consider

Would you try to detect the tilt and take advantage?

If you do and can what are the best ways of making use?

Are some players more susceptible to the tilt than others and can you engineer it? For instance, in online poker games if someone types things like “zzzzzzz” then they might be tilted by continual slow play and made to over-bet in their frustrated state.

Might it be a tactic to bluff tilt in a critical moment?

Some players are naturally impatient, when they lose a big hand they bet bigger in order to try and make back their previously large chip stack. And in doing so they adopt a type of play that could be called kamikaze on their next hand though unlike a kamikaze there is some chance of success though it will be down to pure luck for them.

However, before you decide to rush off and try to take advantage of tilted players keep in mind that a player ‘on tilt’ may not necessarily be vulnerable; after all, as is generally accepted agreed in poker, aggression often wins the day and tilt is aggression.

With that said unfocused unthinking aggression is less likely to lead to success than the focused non angry type. Rarely we find players who can tilt and be focused at the same time – Look at McEnroe in tennis – he made a career from being on tilt.

Even in free poker you’ll find plenty of tilters. It’s the time spent by players to amass their free chips as opposed to cash value that can send them tilt

If its real cash involved, then on some other sites (not to be named) players only ever chat to call their competitors names like ‘donk’ to try and goad them into tilt.

I must admit, if I lose a hand and then get strong hole cards the next hand, I’ll sometimes type in the chat box that I’m on tilt – over time, however, I fear that I’ll become predictable, so don’t do it too much.

In summary, you have to make your own mind up about how to handle tilt in yourself and others. You will find no shortage of it as you play so why not test out some tilt tactics when you play poker online for free and see how it goes. On a note of caution, and it’s your call of course, don’t make a habit of trying to goad others to the tilt, you can pick up a bad image that way and some site mods might even ban you. So as with all things in life, balance is best and be nice…most of the time! And if all this is new to you then you should learn to play poker for beginners at a poker online free site first, no risk of loss but as I say you will bet to experience plenty of tilted players even so!

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