In this online poker free article we’ll look at why knowing why and when to play different hands is a fundamental part of winning at poker. Paying attention to other players position is also just as important. When a player just flat calls the blind in an early position this is a sign of one of two things. A flat call, incidentally happens when you just call a bet same amount where a raise seems appropriate or expected.

Either the player has no clue what he’s doing or he is slow playing a somewhat major hand. Why you can make this wager is, in most cases, because the correct move with a strong hand in early position is a 3-4x bet of the blind in the hope that others will raise so he can re-raise.

In late positions players can often call with hands like 3-4 suited, 5-7 suited, 8-10 suited, just about any hand that’s better then complete junk. The reason behind this is because with less players after you there’s a far lower chance that you will be raised out of the hand.

This is the same reason why you don’t want to call with mediocre hands in an early position. Sometimes you will just be throwing your cash away. If your table is aggressive don’t even give a second thought to laying down that J-10 off suit.

In middle positions you need to use your personal discretion as this is the middle ground as it were. For those who don’t know at a 9 person table early will be the first 3 players, middle will be the next 3 and late is last 3 players. Also having the button means that you will be last to act so if your style is aggressive with a decent amount of well thought out bluffs or if you have a read on a weak player that’s easy to push over you’ll want to have the button as it is simpler to bluff last to act.

To learn how to play poker free and practice your position play it’s a good idea to play free poker to try and discover how playing or folding certain cards and hands affects your game and results. Only once you’re happy with it should you adventure into real money poker and risk your hard earned green!

I have seen it said that in order to win cash and poker online free tournaments you need to try and chip up early.

Others insist that to win poker tourneys it’s essential to play passive early in order to let the donks play their crazy games and knock themselves out during the first few blinds.

I am not sure that either of these strategies are correct or incorrect but neither works well for me. So what I am going to do here it tell you what works for me, hopefully this will help you win more money and free poker tournaments.

Where both the fast chip out and passive strategies are 100% correct is that the early hands in a poker tournament are critical to the overall result. Where I disagree is that neither of these strategies will work all of the time.

Table conditions change, players will react differently to your chosen style an from time to time the cards will just fall badly for you. I Instead I adopt a more measured strategy that sits at a mid point between the two extremes.

My experience is that early on it’s best to play fairly tight, only play the best 10-15 hands and pocket pairs, but when you have them play them aggressively. Build the pot early and take it down when you know you have the edge.

All other hands should be thrown away pre-flop and forgotten. Yes, forget them, that’s because say you fold a marginal hand like 6h 7h that you’d normally play in a tournament and the flop gives 345 rainbow you’ll go tilt really quickly and be in danger of losing chips badly.

Later in a tournament you’ll want to play these hands as over the course of a long tournament suited connectors will probably be your biggest money makers. For now, however, you want to play safe and stay in the game while others are throwing chips away and being eliminated.

You should also try and maintain a decent size stack compared to the other players and not get too far behind or our final table hopes will be dashed ahead of the bubble.

How you maintain this optimum stack size is actually relatively easy, particularly in online play. We will play tight-aggressive-aggressive and monitor the biggest stack, smallest stack, number of players in the tournament and the average stack size.

What we want to do before the first bubble is merely stay alive to make it into the cash. The way to do this is to watch these things rather closely and, by playing your hands properly, maintain your stack at or a little above the average.

I’ve had people tell me that this will not work because you can’t make the final table this way. Untrue! If you’re stack is consistently at the average you are forever in the top 50% of the remaining player in the tournament, this means that when the final table begins you are sitting in 4th or 5th place and poised to take the larger stacks. I play this strategy in both live and online play and it works rather well for me.

Play after the bubble is slightly different as you still want to maintain that average+ stack but by now the average class of players you’re up against will have gone up too.

Now you must to open up your hand selection a little bit. If you can get in cheap, say 1-2 BBs, you now need to play any top 20-25 hands in addition to any suited connectors from any position, off suit connectors can now be played from late position as well.

Do not forget that when I say connectors I mean cards that actually connect, i.e., 6h,7c are connectors while 6h,8c would not be, lots of people get confused by this proclaiming that these cards do connect and while they are able to connect to make a straight you’re now drawing inside and hurting your chances. You’ve far better odds of making that straight with 6,7 than you do of making it with 6,8.

I really hope this helps you with your poker tourney play, if you’re a new comer to poker tournaments then I advise you to learn to play poker online for free with no risk of cash loss at a poker online free tournaments games site first before moving onto cash play.

I found out that there is a tournament variant called All-in or Fold. The rules are this: There is only one blind (called big blind). Each player starts with just one chip; it doesn’t matter how many, anyway, for these reasons: Your only options are: All-in, and Fold. All in or Fold poker tournaments are increasingly popular in both cash and free poker why not have a play if you come across one, they can be good fun. But be sure to read this first!

If you are on the big blind you are automatically all-in. You receive change, though, if, for example, you have 5 chips and another player goes all in with 2 chips and you call them (which is also an all in). He will not win five chips from you; you will get a change of three chips.

If you’re on big blind you can simply ignore everything else that follows. (This only happens about 10% of the time though on a 10-player table. If you somehow want to become hooked.) So it’s really a math game, and a position game too.

Why math game?
Because you are relying totally on preflop all-ins you must commit to memory the probability of your winning, or at least have a good feel for them. I can give some examples (You can generalize; the probability’s pretty much the same in a similar situation; for instance the first example will be: Two Overcards vs. a Small Pair, or say, A-10 over 5-5 and approximate the probabilities:

A-K vs 8-8
55%-45% in favor of 8-8

A-K vs A-Q
75%-25% in favor of A-K

A-10 vs K-K
75%-25% in favor of K-K

A-K vs 7-6
65%-35% in favor of 7-6

A-10 vs K-Q; A-Q vs K-J
63%-37% in favor of A-10 and A-Q

A-A vs 8-8
80%-20% in favor of A-A

A-A vs A-K
93%-7% in favor of A-A

A-A vs K-Q
85%-15% in favor of A-A

But these do not imply that you should wait for A-A or K-K or A-K before you move all-in, of course. Do it with two face cards, a pair, or A-x. Just make sure the big blind doesn’t reach you, for if that happens your decision’s beyond your will.

All-In or Fold is also a game of position. Oftentimes players in these tournaments play hands similar to the above, and throw away the rest.

Consider these two examples:

(1) You are in late position with 4-4 and there are two all-ins in front of you. You might be facing three or four overcards, or an overpair. Fold.

After all, if you are in late position, there will be many hands before you reach the big blind.

(2) You have A-8 in early position. You are two hands away from being the big blind, so you move all-in, and players after you will interpret an early-position all-in as a sign of strength.

What you consider, then, is the strength of your hand and the surrounding action.

With one-on-one, which happens mostly, the above probabilities still apply. But with three or more, hand strength matters more. Big pairs are still big; medium pairs shrink in power (because you can’t see the Flop yet; usually we see the Flop with a medium pair to hit a Set). A-x becomes weaker; A-K and A-Q weaken down a little bit. However, make sure you play a hand while you’re still in control of your decision. When you get yourself blinded out, it’s for your tournament life, mostly.

To read more articles like this and learn to play online poker check out the NoPayPOKER.com blog which is full of free poker tips and lessons as well as offering a no risk play free poker online site where you can put theory into practice.

Bluffing is one part of poker that many players struggle to master. It can even be difficult when playing free poker tournaments online and any unusual play, such as hesitating or speed change can be interpreted by a more experienced player as a bad bluffer wiped out. When moving away from online games to a live casino game everything gets harder.

So, if you are not the best bluffer, what can you do to help your game?

Basically change tactics and play to your strengths. In many cases the reason for being bad at bluffing is a lack of nerve – or to be brutal about it, being a coward. But never fear this is not the end of the world, you can actually use this to your advantage in what we shall call the “Coward Method”. In essence you back away from a dangerous situations and live to fight another day.

How it works – An Example Game

For starters, when playing in a free poker tournament, wait for the right hand before starting.

Remember though unless you have that winner hand A,A or A,K etc it is best not to get involved in the big raises and the All In bets early on.

I like to think these people are the amateur, new or players that are in a rush and quite frankly want to lose. Of course one or two of them could actually have a good hand. Either way the Coward Method will keep you in the game past these mad moments

Now comes the time to bet.
You have a decent hand, half the table have either called the Big Blind or Folded. You decide to call as well. Luckily nobody decides to raise to a stupid amount and the Dealer does the Flop.

Yes, two pairs. Scan the cards and estimate the chances of being beat with the cards as they stand. For example if you have the highest pair and for good measure a second as well you can check whether you are at risk of straight or a Flush.

It’s looking good so you decide to Check. Yes that’s right Check. Your plan now is to convince the others you have a bad hand. If somebody bets pretend to think about it and then Call. This will cause the players to think that you are in doubt of your hand and they will up the betting.

The Turn and still nothing significant to leave you worried. You check again, the same thing happens, small bet, Call and then the River, no reason to be worried, you still have the Highest Pairing and a second pairing.

This time the Opponent does a Higher Bet, this time, you think about it for even longer and then double the amount the Bet.

This approach normally causes either a match bet or an All In. This depends on the player. I have noticed some Players after putting down a large number of Chips during one hand get annoyed at this point and throw everything in.

Success the plan worked and now you have a tidy amount of chips. Sit back and Fold a lot of hands from this point on waiting for that right hand again.

Of course this doesn’t always work, despite how confident you can be you can’t always have the best hand and luck still has a say in the result of a game.

Also it can be a risk Checking when you have a winning hand, by the time of the Turn and River you may have blown it. By not betting you could be keeping in a player who would normally have folded. However I personally have had far more success playing this way.

Normally as the Blinds increase you have to get stuck in a bit more. Those early successes count for nothing in the end if you don’t attempt some of the bigger pots. However you should still be conservative about it and choose carefully the hands to play.

I recently played in a poker tournament where I ranked 2nd of out 102 starters. I actually lost by the player bluffing me. He had gone all in a few times and I finally decided to call him. Typical on this occasion he had a great hand. If I had played to my strengths and waited he may have gone All In against one of my good hands.

Hopefully I have provided another option for players who don’t really have a game plan. Try this out in lower stakes and free online poker tournaments and get comfortable with it, then you can go try some high stake hands and come out ahead.

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.

Some people will wait their entire lives to visit places like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or some other city where they hit the casinos and try their chances at winning. Our lives are full of the same thing day after day, and we dream of things such as visiting a luxurious resort, with a Presidential Suite, and huge winnings. Many people don’t get the opportunity to visit a place like Las Vegas or know what it is like to win slots.

The advancements that have been made in technology are not just happening in the military, space programs, or in medicine. They continually happen within the online world that brings pieces of the world right into our lives without having to leave our homes. Take for instance websites like that at Win Online Casino.

Online gaming sites have come a long way since they first began. Initially, online gaming and casino sites were put in with the same pile as adult sites. And, in the beginning that might not have been a bad idea. However, the ability for companies and casinos to keep better track of the money and provide completely secure websites has taken online gaming to new levels. No longer do you have to plan a trip to another state or country. You can have your dream right at home.

The best online casinos can compete quite nicely with the big offline ones. Offering such amenities such as a wide range of games, payout bonuses, and incentives online video casinos are quickly becoming a very big part of people’s lives. Many online casinos offer several different free games also to show you what the experience is like as well as the interaction. It used to be that you would gather with you friends, or enter into a smoky back room, in order to play a few hands of poker. But, now you can gather with people all over the world at test your wits at winning video poker.

While video poker is very popular it isn’t the only game available. A wide arrange of casino type games can also be played right on your computer desktop. Games like Blackjack, Roulette, Slots, Craps, Baccarat, and even Keno can be played easily and securely.

If you’ve been waiting for that trip to Las Vegas or Atlantic City, but don’t see it happening in the near future, then give online gaming casinos a try and see what video gaming is all about.