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A bonus fee of $50 for both you, and your friend, when you refer a new player to the site, is another good offer to help bankroll growth. In terms of the look and feel of the site, I think this poker room looks very good, but in terms of avatars, there are the same small selection of characters you will find on most sites.
There are bounty tournaments ongoing here, which offer great prizes for the most prolific player eliminators, along with satellites to large tournaments such as the ‘Aussie Millions’.

Help and support is good here, being available 24/7 by phone, lobby chat, and live chat. These are excellent opportunities to solve any problems quickly with one to one chat, and generally I like the idea of lobbies in poker rooms too.

www.pockeroom.co.uk list their pocker games as Texas Holdem, Omaha, 7 Card Stud, 5 Card Draw, and Blackjack. Blackjack of course is not a poker variant, but the games they have on offer are nicely varied I feel. All the usual great freerolls, and real money tournaments can be found here too, and all in all, this poker room has a lot to offer to it’s poker players.

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Currently on offer are 2 for 1 tournaments, these give any player buying into a tournament, a free seat in another tournament, which provides excellent value for money. 25 seats are also being given away to the $2 million gauranteed tournament coming up at www.partypocker.com. $10,000 is also being given away to a lucky player every day of this month in the ongoing ‘Big Deal’ promotion. PartyPoker have also put together some special features to help their new players get started too which is certainly a good idea considering the influx of new players taking an interest in poker these days.

The first time deposit bonus offered at www.partypocker.com is very respectable with 100% extra offered up to an amount of $500. New players will also have the chance to expand their preliminary finances onsite with a number of new player freerolls on offer too, which give away thousands of dollars each month.
Sundays at PartyPoker include a $300,000 gauranteed tournament for those who can win their seat or afford to buy in. Bad beat jackpots are also paid at this site, and there are several other opportunities to boost your bankroll through promotions onsite, the details of which can be found on the PartyPoker homepage.

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The formats of tournaments you might find include, Rebuy tournaments which give players the chance to buy more chips in the earlier stages of a tournament, and freezeouts where players are eliminated once all their chips are gone. More recently there have been special promotional pocker tournaments online such as bounty tournaments, along with guarantees, and satellites to major tournaments all over the world.

Obviously some tournaments you will find have less interest shown in them, with H.O.R.S.E events perhaps getting less players than most due to the diversity of games involved and the fact that not everyone knows how to play them. Personally, I think Holdem, Omaha, Razz, Stud events (to give them their full title) are a great test of the all round game of players, and it would be great to see them rise in popularity.

As most players will know, there are two main categories of tournament in the form of MTT’s and STT’s. These stand for Multi Table Tournament and Single Table Tournament. STT’s generally have 9 or 10 players on one table, although sometimes there are 6 instead. MTT’s can have any number of players and tables involved, although there is usually an upper limit on the amount of entrants. Whichever types of tournaments you usually play in, I always think it is good to experiment, because you might find something new that really suits your style of play.

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The large blinds which damage your stack in these latter stages of a tournament are important here, because if you are the aggressor, you should pick up a few of these blinds early on, giving yourself room to breathe, and creating the opposite situation for your opponent.

The knock on effect of this can often be that your opponent is fearful of limping in and trying to see a flop because they know an aggressive move is coming which will force them to invest more chips. Opponents can then find themselves on the backfoot, and waiting for a good hand to challenge you with. The fact that such hands are not picked up all that often can only be good for you as you will be the one collecting most of the blinds in the meantime.

What happens five hands later when they find a reasonable hand to take you on with, you might ask. By that stage you will have picked up enough in blinds, for you to go in as a 40-60 underdog without being too concerned. Because the point is, it makes it cheaper for you to call when you take into account the chips your aggression has already earned you thus far.

If you are the bigger chipstack, it is of course true you do not wish to double up your opponent, but personally, I feel the dividends that heads up aggression pays, outweighs the possibility you will go in behind and lose the hand.

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In terms of graphics and table layout, Pacific aren’t quite to my own personal tastes, but most of what they offer is to a good standard. The site offers in depth instructions on how to download and get started at Pacific, and there is a troubleshooting section too in case you lose your way. pacificpocker.com also offer a number of promotions and have their own open tournament running too, along with bonuses, freerolls, and most other things you would expect from an online poker room these days.

Overall, I wouldn’t rate Pacific amongst my personal favourite sites, but they have some good offers going on, and a very enjoyable session of poker can be had at this site.

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Personally, I would rather sit down at a table full of reasonably skilled players, because I cannot see how beating easy opposition helps your development as a player. it is true that it may be friendly to your bankroll, and that is always nice, but I feel it is more important to further your learning and development as a player.
Whilst it is true that these ‘fish’ generally make bad decisions whilst playing poker, this isn’t a good thing in every case. Take for example an instance where you have put a player on a certain hand, and you attempt to force them out of he pot with their bottom or middle pair.

You know that they do not have a strong enough hand to call you with, but due to their lack of understanding of the game, they call you down to the river anyway. Their lack of knowledge in terms of when to fold a hand then results in your good read, and careful play, costing you money. Having said this, I know that in general an opponent making mistakes is a good thing for you as a player,and I certainly wouldn’t shy away from sitting down at a table full of weak players. But if I do sit down at such a table I think it is better to keep it simple and not try and bluff too often.

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On top of this, customers are given entrance tickets to welcoming tournaments especially designed for new players. I personally like the fact that the minimum deposit on this site is $10, as many sites these days are at least $20. The refer a friend bonus scheme in place here is a good one too with both the referring player and the referred each getting $50 each. There are other interesting new ideas at Pokerroom too currently, with their ‘cannonball’ tournaments being a good idea I feel.

If you ever get fed up of waiting around whilst the miniscule blinds start moving up and the real poker playing can begin, then do not worry, because in cannonball tournaments, the first 6 levels move up every 3 minutes, followed by one level at 6 minutes, and the rest at 12.

This ensures that the action really gets started sooner, and also, that skill doesn’t get blinded out of the game as it usually does in turbo tournaments. There are also large scale bounty tournaments at Pokerroom with extra cash for those who take members of their team out of the tournament. pockeroom also has its own ‘Pocker Island’ promotion where players can qualify to battle it out for a place in the Pokeroom team for a year. All this and much more is going on at Pokerroom, and I personally think the site an enjoyable one to be a part of.

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I have always had a personal liking for the card designs and tables at pockerstars, but I must admit, I think they need to do more to offer a more interactive experience in order to keep up with revolutionary sites such as PKR. Despite these new innovations in technology elsewhere, there doesn’t seem to be too much of a shift in players yet, and this is testimony to the name and reputation that Pokerstars has.

All the usual things you would expect from a top poker site can be found at Pokerstars, with freerolls, satellites to major land based tournaments worldwide, and a player traffic level that means you can find precisely the game you want, when you want it. Another great aspect of Pokerstars is the array of games they have on offer. Razz, 2-7 Triple Draw, Omaha, Holdem, Stud games and others can all be found at Pokerstars.

This means that no matter what your favourite game, or your curiosity about trying a new game, pockerstars.net will have everything you need. Overall Pokerstars is one of my favourite sites around, and thousands of other players would agree with me. I would recommend this site to any player.

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An interesting set of promotional tournaments are currently being run by Party Poker too, called Hellkat tournaments. This involves there being a set time limit and once that time limit has elapsed, the money is awarded by chip counts after the final hand has been completed.

Some might find this a great convenience if they have made other plans, but personally I can see a few flaws with this. Firstly, the whole point of poker is that you patiently await the correct time to strike, and that you are careful not to be reckless. Secondly, surely every player outside the biggest three chipstacks will see the final hand being dealt and know they need to take drastic action to win any prize money. This will result in inevitable multiple all ins at the end, and most likely, one lucky player winning the final hand, and taking first place. But there are many other excellent offers ongoing though, with bad beat jackpots, and $100,000 worth of freerolls going on each month.

Party Poker also has a $300k guaranteed tournament held each Sunday and satellite tournaments to major land based events too. Overall, a good site and one of the most established names in the business.

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Things such as how confident your opponent seems, and their facial expressions can be faked to give out false signals I feel, and it can be helpful being adept at doing this yourself.

I would personally attach much more importance to betting patterns for this reason, because you cannot easily hide the reasonings behind your raising or lack of it. This means that it is easier to unravel the story behind this type of tell, rather than wondering if your opponents confidence is genuine or false.

One great, and famous Five Card Draw player once said, "never call a large bet from a guy who takes a bite out of his sandwich". Crazy as that might seem, there is good theory behind it. If you are making a large bluff against an opponent, you are unlikely to be relaxed enough to worry about the sandwich you were eating before the hand started. You will more likely be sitting there stony faced, desperately trying not to show any sort of tell. Players with a made hand however, know they are going to win the pot, it’s just a case of how much, so they are more likely to be distracted while they wait for their opponents decision. If you do not take any notice of tells in players, then I would feel it is something you should try and add to your game, as it can make a great deal of difference to your success or failure.