You might play poker online for free or cash poker but do you really understand what the letters of the word P-O-K-E-R mean? While the truth is that it most likely comes from an old German or French word I’ve thought of a new interpretation based on the letters that is perhaps more suited to modern times and relates to how you should approach poker game play be it a fun free online poker game or WSOP final table stuff! Check it out and maybe add this way of thinking to your poker playing mindset, hopefully you’ll win more if you do.

P – Positive attitude
Having a positive attitude helps a lot in poker. You need to play with the hope that you can win and make things happen. Believe that you have a good hand and bet accordingly.
Just waiting and hoping to get a nice pair of aces hardly helps in poker, and when you do get them you might be defeated by a pair of twos. If you play with the wrong attitude, then other players will know that soon and force you to fold by raising the bet.

O – Opportunity
So you are positive and you have a decent hand, now you must take every opportunity that presents itself. Once all the cards have been dealt and you know that you have a winning hand, bet in a way to maximise your profit.
It’s no good if you win a hand and get pennies. So keep raising the stakes and win big. Strike when the iron is hot.

K – Knowledge
Real knowledge about poker and being able to figure all the different hand combinations that you can make. Truly this can be hard to master and you also need to be able to predict as best as possible what cards other players might have based on what you have and what is on the board and how they are acting.
It’s all about experience and the more you play the more you learn. Once you have played enough hands you will be better at judging your opponents. Not only that, you will also be able to bluff and win (sometimes) even if you have a weak hand.

E – Eliminate
Once in a while you will get a pair of aces and what you need to do is make sure that you win. Your aim is to eliminate other players with weaker cards by raising the bet significantly, and forcing them to fold.
If there are too many players on the table then one of them is sure to have some luck with the cards that open at later stages. If not taken out initially that player could end up with a straight or flush and your aces are no match for that.

R – Realize
The final step is to realize what the other person might have and bail out early. It happens a lot of times that you bet hoping that a card you need to complete your straight or flush will come on the flop, turn or river but it never does. You keep on betting and lose money or lost of chips in free poker games. In these situations only continue if the amounts are small, once the bet is raised its better to fold.

Conclusion – Poker is not like other cards games where the best cards win, as you will know after you’ve played just a short time you can easily lose even with the best possible hand. Another way to describe this, in a sort of math way is: cards + timing + your player skill + opponents skill diced with a large dollop of probability (luck for the uninitiated) mixed in = result.

Poker can be really cruel at times so the best thing to do is to play and remember that it is just a game that you cannot always win. As with any sort of gambling do not spend money that you can’t afford to lose and, if you have no money to lose or are new and want need to learn how to play poker for beginners start off by only playing free online poker in order to improve with no risk of loss and also at free sites you can often win bonuses that you can cash in on cash poker sites and use in micro and then mini stakes money games.

Here are some pay poker and free poker stories I hope you will enjoy.

A few years back while playing the free online poker sites I stumbled across a site with a minimal (twelve dollars) sign up fee and tables and games at a penny or two a go. It took me a while to build up some petty cash and eventually I had enough to probably afford a 6 pack of beer and take away- needless to say I got bored of counting the money I could have won on the bigger tables. I decided to move up to the twenty five / fifty cent table- again I won a tidy little profit.

My strategy was to buy in at the nominal amount at each play and consequently get the chance for decent pot odds when I was drawing. I found my opposition felt inclined to call my all in when I had strong cards due to it not being a lot more to them so my wallet climbed to one hundred and fifty dollars by middle of February.

I cashed out $100 and built the $50 up. When I lost at the .25/.50 table, I went to the .50/1.00 and later to the 1.00/2.00 and even the 2.00/4.00 to make up losses quickly. Fast forward to the end of early March, I cashed out another $150, leaving $125 in my account. Already having $250 without spending a dime, I felt like burning the $125 at the 5.00/10.00 table so I could brag to my friends that I at least made it there.

Of course it was stupid to only bring $125 to a table with people stacked with 10-30X my amount, but I was lucky to succeed. Down to $80 quickly, I all-in with A 10 overcards on a raggity flop. I take a $230 pot on Ace high since someone called with A 5 and another folded the winning hand. I cashed out another $100 and played the $130. Not to mention, I also earned about $250 from clearing their 25% up to $100 deposit bonus and winning the afore mentioned $300 50+raked hands freerolls.

While playing the $130, I dropped to $70, but miraculously quadrupled to win a $310 pot with AQ high (I still can’t believe nobody had hit a pair). Cashed out about $200. My streak came to an end in mid-March when I lost $200 with KQ to AK pairing the kings.

To be honest I can’t see me having another run as good as that again- at the moment I’m having great joy with the free online poker competitions.

I opened an account at one of the free online poker sites and enjoyed playing the freerolls building around fifteen dollars. I had thought long and hard and believed to have had a methodical plan which was working for me. I was playing some quality poker and put five dollars into a sit and go game and won. A few decent plays later I had managed to put about one hundred and ninety dollars together all form free online poker games.

Feeling quite smug with myself I bought a fine whisky and a vision of turning my one hundred and ninety dollars into my future play wallet.

The next morning I woke up with a headache like I had been hit by a bat and a dry mouth like the Sahara desert. Right, I thought, its time to start piecing the night before back together. I then heard my partner giggling at the sound of me waking up and went on to tell me about my marriage proposal (fortunately we both have a good sense of humour!) and how I pledged to make millions by selling tractor parts before falling over my own feet (might help explain why my head was so sore). To be honest at this point it all comes flooding back to me the suicidal plays I tried, and as I turned my computer on remembering this reality finally hit home: balance available $0.36.

All that hard work down the drain…. but at least I’m not married and pushing tractors! Don’t play poker drunk… you aren’t any tougher when you’re juiced, and you damn sure ain’t any better at reading people or calculating pot odds. A lesson learned, hope you find enjoyment in my self inflicted punishment, because I’m finally able to. If you must play after a few stick to the very lowest stakes or free online poker sites, you’ll thank yourself later that you did!

The thought of poker being an easy game, is very far from the truth. Its a very complex game, that even at the basic free poker level pits player against player. To be a great player you will need math and people skills. You will need these attributes when playing advanced level poker if you want to stand a chance of winning.

If you are new to poker then there are some basic skills you can start with to get some wins behind you. Read my poker terms glossary to find out what the terms used below mean.

Start by playing only decent cards.
Pocket pairs, Aces with high kickers, and suited connectors are a good start.

As you become more comfortable, then you can expand the hands you play to suit different circumstances and opposing players

Next, learning how to bet is essential.
Generally limping into a hand, this is where there is no raise when you bet, is a good start.

This can help you in a couple ways. It does not allow other players a “tell” (meaning you give away an indication of what your hand might be) and it also allows you to play, and not put too much of your chip stack in play.

Now, there are times you need to call a raise, or make one yourself.
If you have a killer hand like a pocket pair, learn how to raise and call. Don’t limp in!.

This will greatly reduce your chances of a winning hand. The more cards out, the greater the chances of straights, flushes, or even higher winning hands become.

Now when you make a raise, the general rule is too bet the pot amount, this is the total amount on the table when the betting comes to you.

Of course this all changes based on the number of players at a table, and the chip stack in front of you. If you have a very good hand, and a pot bet would put more then 50% of your total stack in play, then it is better to go All-In. This will also help in keeping weaker hands from calling.

It is important for new players to pay attention at the table too.
One of the biggest and most important part of playing poker is watching and paying attention to the other players. Poker tournaments are great for this as you can sit and observe for the first couple of table rounds without it costing you too many chips.

A great tip for leaning how to be a great poker player is by reading. Many great players are happy to offer their tips and advice on their poker play, so its worth reading as many articles as you can to keep your knowledge polished. Its also worth playing on free poker sites which will help you study other players techniques at no cost to yourself.

Many people have wondered and often asked if poker is the perfect card game. It could probably be said that many will say it is. Why? What makes poker so different from other card games? Just about every card game is based on random chance. With 52 cards in a deck there are millions of combinations you could receive as a hand in any card game. However, poker is a little bit different. In poker you are not only at the mercy of chance. There is some skill to poker. How to play is a matter of spending time with someone who knows and learning from them.

You can go online and find several tutorials and even learn from several free online gaming sites. These sites give you a wide variety of poker games to download so you not only learn one poker game, but any game of your choice. There are several online casino sites that have amazing technology at work in the games they have available. Online poker is no exception. Video poker machines are very popular in the real world casinos, so you are just being able to enjoy the game of poker from you own home with an online version.

To help play the online version of video poker, or poker games to download, there is a handy little tool called a poker indicator. This handy odds calculator sits on your computer’s desktop while you are playing an online game. In fact, it attaches itself to the virtual game table. The power of this poker indicator is that it can give you loads of information and stats, which can help you even the odds for a winning hand.

Having information in a poker game is very valuable. When you are playing in the offline world, in a poker tournament or even a friendly game in your living room, staying aware of how your opponents take care of their hands, the styles they use to play, what they do when they are bluffing, and how they react to hole cards, and other things can give you an almost unfair advantage.

The poker indicator will do the same thing with an online video poker game. It displays information on your screen so you don’t have to go looking for it. It also displays information on your hand, the initial strength of it, so you can confidently play on, or throw the hand away.

Is poker the perfect card game? If not, then it has to be very close. With offline play, online video poker, and amazing tools like a poker indicator, you can enjoy this card game like no other.

Of all the hands dealt in video poker only 21% are winning hands. The remainder, which is 79%, are losers. The smart video poker player knows what he must do with about 70% of the hands dealt so that it can become a winning hand.

There are some effective video poker tips in this article. When building your own video poker strategy be sure to follow these tips. A good strategy will increases your odds of winning in online video poker or offline video poker. Find a machine that pays out nine for a full house win and six for a flush win. It’s very important! Find and play on a video poker machine with the lowest wager possible if you are new to video poker.

Before playing on the higher wager machines wait until you have more experience. A good trick is to verbalize every hand you get. Remember you’re not playing against another person, the machine doesn’t care if you are “playing too slow.” Take your time, be sure about your next move before you take it. Many new players fall to recognize that the Jack is the most important hand in the deck. Unlike traditional poker where the Ace is king (so to speak) A Jack provides you with many more hands than an Ace does.

The varieties of video poker you can play are almost endless, but they all have their own pay tables that require specific strategies. The best way to start is to limit your choices to two. The best way to improve your game is by playing on your computer or at online casino using play money. If you train this way, you get to practice your skills risk free. Here are some basic video poker strategy tips:

1. Don’t ever hold a joker with your pair. This reduces your payout by 5%

2. If you can get a Royal Flush by drawing 3 cards do not Draw 4.

3. Always stay on a winning five-card hand except in a case where you can get a royal flush with one card.

4. Never break a flush to draw a straight flush even with one draw.

5. Always break a flush to draw a royal flush.

6. Don’t break a straight to draw for a straight flush.

7. Don’t draw five, if you’re holding a 5 or better.

8. Never leave a ten on a four card draw. And the main tip: control you bankroll. Video poker and every other gambling games should be considered entertainment. I know that Lady Luck comes to players who enjoy video poker.

Secure your free video poker game downloads from sites like Jacks or Better Video Poker, Online Strip Video Poker or Play Free Video Poker.

            Video poker is pretty much the same as the game of poker played at a table. The first difference though is that the player is seated at a video machine or online at their computer. Five cards are dealt on the screen and cards that make a certain hand (flush, full house, etc.) are usually chosen by the player to keep, while the remaining cards are given up and replaced with new cards. Video poker how to usually comes pretty easily to the player. It is just a matter of matching up cards that make a certain winning hand. One can hold certain cards in the hopes of getting dealt other cards that will match up for a winning hand, or one can let the cards go and start from scratch if he or she deems it necessary. If the player ends up with a winning hand, then he or she will win money or points for the specific hand. For example, a full house will come with a certain price tag, while a flush will have another price tag.

            Video poker gambling is a great way to make some extra cash. If you have the basics of the game down, then you can easily begin the game and start raking in the cash. Supplementing your current income in this economic downturn is a great idea. Take the chance with video poker gambling, and you’ll see what the world of online video poker has to offer. When you become a professional at the game, then you might even be able to make a living wage at it. Some people can completely quit their day jobs to simply make their income through video poker gambling. And, don’t forget, video poker gambling can be a lot of great fun as well.

            Video poker full pay is a bit more complicated. It refers to the amount that is returned. It can also be referred to as 9/6 video poker. This means that for a full house the return is nine coins, while the return for a flush is six coins. Playing a video poker full gives better odds to the player, no matter his or her talent at the game.

            In general, video poker can be learned quickly and the payoff can be even quicker. Once a person becomes competent at the game, the possibilities are endless. Video poker full is the best way to play, as the game will provide the highest return, which means more money for the player.