Pot Control
The size of the pot does not materialise by magic, instead it is created by actions taken by all of the opponents involved in the hand. With that in mind there are times when certain opponents will want the pot be a certain size: not too big and not too small. This theory is known as pot control.
It goes without saying that it is much easier to control a pot when you are heads up, this applies to whether you are playing with your mates at home or with the pros at the WSOP Poker.
Add more opponents into the mix and controlling the pot becomes notoriously difficult. The first thing you need to consider when decided on pot controlling methods is the strength of your hand in relation to the texture of the board. If you have a very strong hand then you want to make the pot as big as you can, if you have a weak-mid strength hand then you want to keep the pot as small as you can.
Imagine, that you have a medium strength hand, such as middle pair, and you decide to fire two barrels and are then check-raised on the turn. This is such a horrible position to be in. You have bloated the pot by going for thin value on the turn and now you could be facing a decision for the rest of your stack.
If you think there is a good chance that you can be bluffed or raised off your hand, then your best approach is to check. Go for two streets of value on the flop and river, instead of flop and turn. Keep the pot small when you are not strong and bloat it when you have sufficient strength not too care.
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If Everyone is Interested Then Don’t Be
What’s going on? You look left and there is a bet and a confident one at that. You look down at your hand and lick your lips – you have a set after all. But wait, you look to your right and there is another raise. Hang on…he looks confident as well. Your lips are now dry. The spittle has dried up and your throat feels like a desert. You look back at your cards and your set looks about as appealing as a date with Frankenstein.
When this happens it’s time to redefine your hand. It’s time to slow down time, take a deep breath and remain rational. It’s situations like this where the best players shine and the average players shave off sections of their stack.
A set is one of the most powerful hands you can hold in poker. Not only does it have strength in rank, but also it is one of the most deceiving hands in the game. This is why it is often called set mining. You don’t see it coming and then…BANG! But the hand is only strong if the hands your opponents are holding are weaker.
If the board is looking draw-heavy and players are happily involving themselves in a raising war, then it may be time to fold. In a situation like this your set is no longer a strong hand. The only time you could even contemplate going with your hand is if you know the other players, and believe they will go to war with less than your set. In that case knock yourself out, but in general, if everyone is showing interest then you shouldn’t be.
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Roulette: A Step-by-Step Guide
Roulette is one of the most absorbing, interesting, and joyful games that one can play on Intercasino. At first glance, new players can often become a little intimidated, and, with that in mind, here is a systematic guide on the way the roulette wheel works.
As soon as the croupier has paid out the last bet and cleared the roulette table, betting can begin.
Players have two ways of betting. They can either place the bet themselves or hand the chips to the dealer and ask him or her to place the bet for them. This generally happens if you are in a rush or cannot physically reach the area of the table needed to place the bet.
During this phase of the play, the Croupier will spin the roulette wheel and drop the silver ball. When the ball looks like it’s ready to drop, the Croupier will announce no more bets and wave a hand over the board to signify the end of betting.
The end of betting phase is generally quite hectic, with players trying to plough as many bets on as they can. In order to help the dealer manage the game more efficiently it helps to place your bets early.
Meanwhile the silver ball will have settled in the roulette wheel and the croupier will place a marker on the winning number, pay off everyone’s bets and then clear the table to recommence the next spin.
When the croupier is paying out the bets it is respectful to let them complete their task with a minimum of fuss. Calculating some of the odds are quite difficult and in order to avoid mistakes it’s better to give them room and a clear head to think.
Managing the Swings
When you are planning to visit your local casino, it is important to have a financial plan of some sort.
If you are an amateur player who just wants to have a few drinks and some fun, it is advisable to take a small bankroll for playing and keep the rest aside for entertainment of the liquid variety.
If you are a more serious gambler, then you need to plan ahead. Understand what types of games you are going to play and what bankroll rules you have for them.
You also need to anticipate for the unknown. For example, what are you going to do if you plan to play a game on intercasino that you haven’t tried before?
You can be calmer than the lull before a storm and still get affected by a sharp downswing in fortunes. In poker this is known as tilt. Your behavioral patterns will change, as a result in your losses, and the cumulative effect is usually more losses.
A visit to the casino should be fun, and so you need to be aware that exceptional episodes of good or bad luck can happen to anyone.
Prepare for the worst and you should be fine. Go into your session with a positive mental attitude but also a plan in case things do not run as well as you intend.
A good way of handling your emotional swings is to create bankroll systems with the move up or down mentality. If you are on an upswing then start to press a little more, and if you are on a downswing regress a little.
Have fun, keep a positive mental attitude, but more importantly have a plan.
Continuation Betting Versus Good Players – Out of Position
The continuation bet is one of the most popular moves in poker. With this in mind, we have some tips on how to utilize this play, paying particular attention to the crop of good players in the game. This article focuses on being out of position.
The boards you are primarily searching for are the ace or king high rainbow and unconnected flops – the driest of the dry.
On these types of flops you are going to want to c-bet around 75% of the time. Good players are going to be floating a lot, and so you also need a plan for the turn. If you double barrel about 50% of the time, check-raise 25% of the time, and check fold 25% of the time, then you will have a good balanced strategy.
On paired boards, we would advocate check-calling 65% of the time and mixing up the other 35% with some check-raises and check-folds.
On coordinated flops, you want to be controlling the size of the pot with your value hands. These types of flops make it too easy for your opponents to bluff you off the best hand, so a more cautious approach is recommended.
When you whiff the flop completely, it is still a profitable play to c-bet around 65% of the time.
Just make sure that you pay close attention to each opponent and react accordingly. The last thing you want to do is trying to beat the same player time and time again. In the end, it will become translucent, especially if they are a good player.
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Blind Stealing
Most forms of poker include a small and a big blind. These are forced antes that are put into the pot before any form of card action takes place.
In Betfair Poker Cash Games, the blinds are pre-set and never increase during game play, but in tournaments, the blind structure does increase at a pre-determined time frame.
Blind Stealing is the term given when a player raises with a weak hand with the intention of winning the small and big blind.
Obviously, in order to achieve this feat, everybody in the game must fold, including the two players who have forcibly entered the small and big blinds.
In a cash game, stealing the blinds can add quite a lot to your hourly rate, but in a tournament you need to take due cognisance of the early and later stages of the tournament.
In the early stages of the tournament, the blinds are going to be very small and so the risk-reward ratio is not that great.
In the latter stages of the tournament everyone is forced to enter an ante and this multiplies the dead money than can be won with a timely pre flop raise.
You don’t have to be Albert Einstein to work out that the best time to steal the blinds is in the latter stages of the tournament.
Sometimes, in the early stages of Sit and Go Tournaments, it pays to try to steal the blinds because you receive another unexpected benefit.
A good example would be a player who defends his blinds far too wide, and then folds a high percentage of the time to the c-bet. This is an ideal scenario for a blind steal because you have two profitable routes into his stack.
Impressive Back-to-Back WSOP Performances
In 2010, Sam Holden entered the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event, along with 6,865 other hopefuls, and finished in 9th place for a $782,115 payday.
Fast-forward twelve months, and Sam Holden decided to have another punt. It was still $10,000 to play, and this time he had the slightly easier task of trying to navigate his way through 6,598 players.
Amazingly, Holden finished in 55th place, earning himself $128,384. Although Holden didn’t make it back-to-back November Nine appearances, it was still a truly remarkable achievement.
Here are some more gems from the WSOP archives.
The WSOP Main Event was created in 1970, and it only consisted of seven players. Johnny Moss won that sit n go, and went on to successfully defend his title, one year later, when he defeated six people.
Not impressed? What about Doyle ‘Texas Dolly’ Brunson? In the 1976 WSOP Main Event, Brunson defeated 22 players to win the title, before following it up with a successful defence the following year, when he crushed the dreams of 34 players.
Field sizes grew, as we entered the 1980s, and, in 1980 & 1981, Stu Ungar raised the bar even higher, when he defeated 73 players and 75 players in consecutive years. Still not impressed?
Okay; maybe the greatest WSOP back-to-back achievement belongs to ten-time WSOP bracelet owner, Johnny Chan, who defeated 152 players and 167 players to win the 1987 & 1988 WSOP Main Events.
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6 Lucky Casino Players Becomes Millionaires
Caesars Entertainment’s Las Vegas resorts debuted the exclusive $1 Million 6 Card Bonus(TM) side bet for Three Card Poker in May 2011. Only four months later, after a popular start, the side bet was introduced at Caesars Entertainment’s Atlantic City resorts. six guests have become instant millionaires with a total initial wager as small as $15 by hitting a Super Royal Flush in Diamonds: 9, 10, J, Q, K, A in just over a year.
On Oct. 23, 2011, the first millionaire was crowned at Harrah’s Atlantic City. Shortly after midnight on Dec. 18, Harrah’s Atlantic City was also home to the second million-dollar prize. Both winners chose to remain anonymous.
Johnita Ejercito, a practicing attorney and nurse from Woodland Hills, Calif., hit the 6 Card Bonus $1 Million Jackpot at Paris Las Vegas in the early morning hours of Feb. 19. Courtesy of Flamingo Las Vegas, arrived Las Vegas’ second winner, and Caesars Entertainment’s fourth winner, Dennis Hart, a retired Ford factory worker visiting from Palm Coast, Fla. $1 million grand prize was won by Hart late in the evening on May 11. Caesars Atlantic City witnessed the fifth and sixth wins occurred less than a week apart. On June 11, the first of the set was awarded and the sixth on June 17. Kathy Wayda, the sixth winner won million dollars.
Casino players enjoy Three Card Poker because of its relatively high payouts, low table minimums and simplicity. The 6 Card Bonus side bet gives guests the opportunity to turn a good hand into an even better one or a bad hand into a winning hand. Three Card Poker, licensed by Shuffle Master, Inc., is the most popular specialty game of all time with nearly 1,600 tables worldwide. Las Vegas and Atlantic City are the only cities currently offering the opportunity to win this life-changing jackpot and Caesars Entertainment holds the exclusive rights to the $1 million payout for Three Card Poker 6 Card Bonus. Without an escalating progressive jackpot in a traditional brick-and-mortar casino, the game offers the first table-game payout of this size.
The opportunity to win mega-jackpots was enjoyed by slot casino players for years, and now, any player can win, on any day, at any time, in just one hand at Caesars Entertainment that offers the same opportunity to table game casino players.
Allyn Jaffrey-Shulman Wins Big at Rio-All Suite Hotel & Casino
Allyn Jaffrey Shulman has defeated Dennis Phillips heads-up to capture her first gold bracelet and the $603,713 first-place prize. She has won the 2012 World Series of Poker $1,000 senior’s no-limit hold’em championship at the WSOP at the Rio-All Suite Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas. Since 2008, we caught up with the first woman to win a mixed-gender event at the WSOP in this edition of ‘Battle for the Bracelets’.
Taking down the $1,000 buy-in Seniors No-Limit Hold’em event #29, the former criminal defense lawyer picked up $603,713 for the first female victory in an open event since Vanessa Selbst secured the $1,500 buy-in Pot-Limit Omaha event #19 back in 2008. A long-running streak of 249 straight male winners of gold bracelet events was broken by the victory by a female in an event open to both genders. Previously, Vanessa Selbst had been the last female winner of a gold bracelet (aside from the annual Ladies World Championship).
This year’s seniors event drew a whopping 4,128 entrants. It was the largest such event in poker history. The event was open to players age 50 and over. The turnout eclipsed last year’s number by more than 400 players. In poker history, the tournament was the largest single-day start.
The stellar final table was topped by Jaffrey-Shulman that included some notable players, including Hoyt Corkins, the two-time gold bracelet winner. Dennis Phillips was the runner up this time to Jaffrey-Shulman. He is the best known for his third-place in the 2008 Main Event Championship.
Jaffrey-Shulman has spent much of her life in Los Angeles. She is originally from Brooklyn, N.Y. She worked as a criminal defense attorney for 25 years and now resides in Las Vegas. Shulman has not only served as legal counsel, she also has worked tirelessly as an advocate for the legalization of online poker in the United States, since joining the staff of Card Player magazine. Allyn-Jaffrey is one of the cause’s most vocal and articulate voices and she has written extensively about this important issue to the poker community.
Following several previous deep runs, cashes, and final table appearances, this was Jaffrey-Shulman’s first WSOP gold bracelet victory. Over the course of the past week, her husband, Barry Shulman, and stepson, Jeff Shulman, both made final tables – a WSOP first. Following Claire Miller’s win in 2006, Jaffrey Shulman became the second female to win this event.
WSOP 2012 Event #29 Top 10 Payouts: Allyn Jaffrey Shulman (USA) – $603,713; Dennis Phillips (USA) – $372,895; Bob Phelps (USA) – $270,727; Hoyt Corkins (USA) – $199,023; Bill Stabler (USA) – $147,605; Stuart Spear (USA) – $110,416; William Thomson (Canada) – $83,332; Martin Fitzmaurice (USA) – $63,418; Harold Lilie (USA) – $48,669; Carolyn Tulloch (Canada) – $37,672.
Justin Truesdell Bags WSOPC New Orleans
Justin “truesyalose” Truesdell defeated a field of 694 players over four days to win the 2012 World Series of Poker Circuit (WSOPC) New Orleans and collect the $204,747 first place prize.
The 30 year-old local man has also been doing rather well in the live arena and picked-up his first gold ring in 2009 at the $1k WSOPC Harrah’s Tunica for $77,836, as well as having had a successful career online pre-Black Friday. Justin Truesdell has now taken his live tournament earnings past the half a million dollars mark with his latest win in New Orleans.
With a final table of nine players and five players fell during the first three hours of play, began the final day of the tournament. The fifth player out was Dominic Gabaldon, who qualified for the WSOP National Championship and claimed the title of Casino Champ with his finish. Gabaldon earned a total of $56,619 and made three final tables during the tournament series.
To avoid elimination against Daniel Lowery, Truesdell then doubled up with pocket aces. Lowery was followed to the rail by third-place finisher Anthony Vidmer and this big hand led to his exit in fourth place a few hands later. Andrew Nguyen held a slight edge over Truesdell, although the chip counts were close to even when heads-up play began.
The final two players traded blows for two hours before they took a dinner break. After sitting back down, both players hit a flush just 20 minutes and Truesdell took a 12-1 chip lead with the higher flush. All Truesdell needed to eliminate Nguyen in second place was ace-high as the final hand came just a few minutes later.
The eighth WSOPC season hosted 17 stops in 11 states. In the WSOP National Championship, it also awarded over 200 gold rings and 100 seats. at the 43rd annual WSOP in Las Vegas, the Championship will take place from July 6-8. 100 pre-paid qualifiers from the 2011-12 WSOPC season will feature in the televised event and an additional 100 players (top ranked players from each of the past two WSOPs in Las Vegas) will be invited to buy-in for $10,000. The champion will win a gold bracelet and the National Championship will be televised on ESPN.
The final table results for the WSOPC New Orleans Main Event – 1st: Justin Truesdell — $204,747; 2nd: Andrew Nguyen — $126,693; 3rd: Anthony Vidmer — $92,926; 4th: Daniel Lowery — $69,105; 5th: Dominic Gabaldon — $52,086; 6th: Michael Hallen — $39,781; 7th: Shane Smith — $30,782; 8th: George Miro — $24,130; 9th: Ramon Martinez — $19,156.