They are in video form, and many times they are by professional players, but they lack the advanced strategy tactics that will take a players game to a high-limit level.

Recently a community has opened that is very unique in it’s approach to poker training.  It doesn’t just consist of the traditional over-the-shoulder videos that bore you to tears.

The approach is that of a Mastermind.  Where the whole community works to better the individual skills of each player.  And along with videos of online pros crushing the likes of Phil Gordon among others, it’s entertaining as well as educational.

For a limited time they are offering complete access to the Mastermind at the unheard of price of $7

Click Here To Join The Mastermind And Take Your Bankroll To The Net Level - Starting Right Now! 

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Duplicate came on the scene with a different spin on the game of Texas Hold ‘em that never seemed to catch on. The same seat at each table would receive the same hand, which somehow dubbed it a “skill game”

But real Poker players seemed to want nothing to do with the new way of playing the game that Duplicate Poker offered. Even though Duplicate could advertise it’s games as 100% US Legal, players still opted to play at “semi-legal” US rooms such as Full Tilt and Pokerstars.

This happens after Chan Poker closed down a little over one month ago, and it begs the question: Where is online Poker really headed? Is it dying?

There’s no doubt the games are much tougher than they were back in the old days of US-Legal Party Poker. Does that mean the sharks have gone elsewhere? Are the players in general leaving online rooms?

Perhaps if the US Government could just legalize online gambling, and tax it, maybe we could bail ourselves out of this crisis.

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The laws pertaining to online poker in the US make it next to impossible to compete against larger rooms who are just barreling through, and allowing US Players to deposit and play.

A room like Party was able to weather the storm while still pulling out of the US market, but you have to remember, they were the biggest, most popular online poker rooms before the US anti-gaming laws were passed.

Smaller rooms, though they are a part of larger networks, will inevitably fail in today’s market.  Even with celebrities like Johnny Chan endorsing them.

You just can’t compete with the big boys like Full Tilt and PokerStars

” We are actively seeking a partner to provide poker software and honor all Chan Poker player point balances for those that wish to continue playing online poker. We will keep you informed of developments on this front.”

Yea, I MIGHT want that job….

You can see the whole story here: Chan Poker Closing 

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It’s incredible that people are even associating with these companies after the recent scandals plastered all over industry news sites and publications. From players to sponsors, no one seems to care. And it’s the ultimate slap in the face to everyone, that the two companies (part of one umbrella company) would have the balls to merge their two alleged cheating entities into one large one.

Anyone that plays on these sites must have a wish to go broke. For years on poker forums there has been the “online poker is rigged” debate, and everyone who posed the question was flamed mercilessly. Now after finding out it’s true in a sense, people are still playing at the rooms that are under investigation.

Not only that, when these two companies merge, they will be one of the largest online poker rooms, which means more money to pull in unsuspecting and naive players with advertising. New players come online to play every day, and many of them don’t do any research before they do, so they are usually going to pick the biggest rooms with the most exposure.

Cereus will give them that. And with big name players like Hellmuth, Duke, Deeb and others touting it, it will be all the more appealing. The online players of the future may not even know about Absolute or UB after the dust settles.

And they may just be the ones ripe for the picking when the new “superuser” accounts show their ugly faces.

If you have the stomach for it, you can read the whole thing here on 2 + 2

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Well to tell you the truth, most of them are a bunch of boring videos of some guy you have never heard of, playing online and explaining what he is doing.

Well Curtis E Williams, owner of Black-Hat-Poker.com was sick of seeing these low-value courses released to the masses, and took matters into his own hands. His first product sold out 50 spots at over $798 a pop, in 1 day.

He gives value, and his subscribers know that. So now a couple of years later, he has decided to come out from the shadows, and is set to release a totally new version of Black Hat Poker.

It is going to be mostly geared toward live poker, but there is so much value he provides in this new one, and it really is the Total Package. Any average player could take this information and use it to make way more money than any regular day job–

I know how good it is, because I was able to get a review copy of all the materials in the course that are finished so far.

Everyone is in for a treat when Williams decides to release this stuff. The question now is…

WHEN CURTIS….WHEN???

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LuckyAcePoker.com has the most popular Poker games, including: Texas Hold’em, Omaha Poker and Seven Card stud. You will find a broad variety of table stakes, up to $40, daily$5,000 and $10,000 prize pools at the Texas Hold’em tournaments, single and multi table tournaments, Sit & Go Tournaments, freerolls, and more.

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They are also giving away a free copy of Pokerbility software with any real money deposit. That alone is a $99 value, and it’s free just for signing up.

LuckyAcePoker.com is powered by 888 and part of the 888 network, the most trusted and respected name in the online gambling industry since 1997, with 24/7 Customer Support, and an experienced team aimed at making your gaming experience enjoyable, safe, and secure.

LuckyAcePoker.com – let the games begin! Click Here Now To Claim Your $400 Bonus And Free Copy Of Pokerbility Software

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Playing Too Many Hands

This is a very difficult temptation to resist. There are few other online games where players have to sit around and watch the action. However, for online poker, it is crucial that you are able to wait for a hand.

One way players deal with this is by playing a couple of games at once so that they are in action more often, or playing shorthanded games that allows them to loosen their starting hand requirements.

Overvaluing Your Hands

Partially due to edited television coverage, some players tend to think certain hands are stronger than they really are.

Many players are willing to go all the way with pocket aces or even ace king in Texas holdem. While these hands can be very good to go all-in with pre-flop and even to show down, they are still just one pair or ace high when unimproved. Don’t be afraid to lay down any hand, no matter how good it looks pre-flop.

Playing Too Long

Without any constraints on when you have to leave the casino, many players stay online long after they should have quit. Set a specific time period to play poker, or at least continually check yourself for signs of fatigue, hunger or loss of focus.

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There is no rake paid on individual hands, and the tournament fees that you pay upon registration are covered by rakeback too.

General MTT strategy is pretty simple. Since tournament chips are your life-blood in the game, you have to do whatever it takes to protect them. In this respect, in the early stages of a MTT, you need to play tight, and act only on good starting hands, from late position.

It’s amazing how many people there are who play the exact opposite of this strategy. They launch into all-in coin-flips early on, something they should avoid at all cost. If you play in a freeroll, this modus operandi will grow to epidemical proportions.

Be disciplined, and do not allow yourself to be dragged into the early all-in frenzy. Sometimes, in the very early stages it is a good choice to fold a hand you know is the best starting one, when you’re faced with several all-in calls.

The reason is simple: more calls mean more drawing hands, which suck the odds out of your hand. If you call the all-in and lose to a drawing hand, you lose everything.

If you call and you win, you’ll double or possibly triple your stack up, which may seem like a huge achievement, but if you look at the tournament in its entirety, you’ll see it’s not that big of a boost.

According to Sklansky, play should be tighter when the blinds are very small compared to the size of future bets. In the early stages of a MTT, this is exactly the case.

As the tournament progresses, you need to loosen up a little. A good way to promote a loose table image (which you can then exploit) is to act loosely before the flop. That will also give you the chance to attempt making a good hand every time you take a peek at the flop.

The key to not paying too much for these hands is to act very tight after the flop. After the flop lands, your hand is 75% made. Keep this in mind and do not chase senseless draws.

Near the middle stages of the tournament, you’ll be confronted with a dilemma: the blinds will have escalated, and your stack is starting to show signs of cracking under the increasing pressure.

People around your table keep showing down good hands, and play doesn’t look like it’s loosened up on the whole.

Your primary objective in this situation should be to protect your stack. Acting tight won’t do anymore though, you’ll need to break out of your shell and - like it or not - start stealing some blinds.

Since the blinds are already pretty big, you’ll get nicely rewarded for your efforts.

Your secondary objective should be to catch a good hand you may trap an opponent with, because you need to keep in sight that the blinds will continue to rise, and soon, stealing one every now and then won’t be enough either.

As you’re nearing the bubble, play will tighten up. Nobody wants to be the last out-of-money player, so they’ll try to hunker up and let others bust out to thrust them into the money.

A good player can take advantage of the tight play, by stealing blinds, forcing people to fold better hands and so on. Needless to say, all the while you need to keep an eye on the size of your stack and its relation to Harrington’s M variable, which is a sum of the BB and the SB in a given moment.

The more such Ms your stack contains, the better you can focus on optimal strategy.

As you’re nearing the final table, play will get progressively looser. You’ll still be confronted with a full table of opponents, but there’s a different reason for loosening up: the size of the blinds is getting very big compared to that of future bets. This situation alone calls for loose play.

This is the coin-toss stage of the game. People will lower their starting and showdown hand requirements, even though they’ll be confronted with the same mathematical odds.

If you’re lucky enough to make it to the short-handed and heads-up stages of the game, you need to turn into a maniac. The odds are getting better too this time, the blinds keep increasing, so everything calls for aggressive play.

In short handed and heads-up play, the value of your cards gets a whole new significance: in heads-up play, for instance, 7,2o is no longer the worst hand: 2,3o is.

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“We have received notice from ePassporte today that they are unable to continue to provide CakePoker with merchant e-wallet services. We have since confirmed that this situation is not unique to CakePoker and is, in fact, industry wide…”

It goes on to say that they have  installed alternate funding means’ for players, and that this won’t affect anyones account balances.

This begs the question…What the hell are US players going to do?!?!?

I am in the US, and epassporte is my main funding option when I play.  It is fast, efficient, and I have never had a problem with them.  They also fund the 3 main sites that I currently play at.

It’s nothing but an inconvenience, and it’s all because of some ridiculous law that keeps US citizens from doing as they please with their hard-earned money.  In a country that has state Lotto tickets at every counter of every convenience store, we can’t play Poker.

All I have to say is this: “What A Rip Off”

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Every time you succeed in doing this, you gain value, every time you don’t, you give-up value.

Certainly, you won’t be able to play exactly like that unless you cheat (like some guy did a little while ago in one of the top poker rooms), but you can make it your goal to achieve the next best thing.

Playing mostly positive mathematical expectation situations is what you should go for. What is mathematical expectation?

Let’s see an example. Let’s say I bet you $1 on a coin-flip, against your $1. You do agree that if we were to do this for two weeks without stopping, at the end of it we’d both still have our $1, without having gained or lost anything, right?

That’s because the mathematical expectation on the above named bet is 0. The coin-flip itself, (the object of the bet) is a 50-50 event, and so are the sums involved in the bet. If we were to play it differently though, like I would bet $1 on the coin-flip against your $2, the situation would be different.

The bet is still a 50-50 one, but you’d be laying the odds, and that would be reflected in the mathematical expectation. Out of every two bets, (on average, of course) I’d win one and lose one. When I win, I’d take $2 from you, when I lose, I’d give you $1. There’s a difference of $1 there which is my profit on every pair of bets we make.

That makes for a $0.5 mathematical expectation per bet for me. This way, depending on how many flips we play per hour, I’d be able to relieve you of a lot of money in a relatively short period of time.

The more such bets we play per hour, the better my hourly rate (another fundamental poker concept) will be. You’d be playing with negative expected value, which is exactly what happens when you play roulette, slots, blackjack and other casino games.

This is why poker is not gambling, but much more of a skill-game. In the long-run, only the EV+ matters (that’s what casinos make their money on too) and exploiting EV+ is a matter of skill, not luck.

To put it another way: whenever you play negative EV situations, you lose a little. Whenever you play positive EV ones, you win a little, regardless of whether you win or lose on any particular hand. This way, sometimes you lose even when you win and vice-versa.

In order to give yourself the chance to let the EV+ work for you, you need first hand knowledge of another thing:  Poker Bankroll Management.

While this has little to do with how you play your poker hands (rakeback has little to do with it too, yet it’s a giant edge regardless), it has everything to do with your becoming a long term winner.

A proper bankroll will buy enough time for your positive mathematical expectation to produce visible results. There is variance in poker, and sometimes you may bust out even while playing only EV+. The bankroll is your safety cushion against this sort of situations. It will tide you through the variance, and let your edges work for you.
As you can see, some of the most important elements of poker strategy are not even directly related to play. There are countless edges that you can exploit even before you take a seat at the table. Table selection is one such edge, and so is poker rakeback.

They’ll both boost your game, so you simply cannot afford to leave them unexploited. You do understand now that winning poker is not at all as glamorous as you first believed, don’t you?

It’s a lot like a job: putting in the hours, staying disciplined enough to act on EV+ only (or most of the time), and perfecting your edges in order to increase your hourly rate. This is what it all comes down to.

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