Friday, March 20th, 2009
If you’ve ever seen the old Hong Kong flick, the Legend of the Drunken Master you know something that a lot of fighters don’t know, some people are better when drunk.
There are some of us that play better poker when drinking as well, I would not promote this as a strategy but for some reason it is true. Maybe it’s the old relaxing theory, maybe it’s something else but I have a totally different idea. Alcohol makes you really, really smart. This might seem weird to you becaue you’ve been told by really smart people all your life that alcohol is bad for you. They wouldn’t say that if it actually makes you a genius?The truth is that they would. If you have an edge on your opponent, there is a tell or you he tilts badly after every lost hand, would you try to keep that edge? I think you would because the world is a competitive place. If you would happen to be one of the really smart people, getting the best grades, having the highest salary around, would you go around telling people how you became so smart?
The truth is that if you did you wouldn’t be all that amazing anymore, your grades would be averege and sooner or later som young punk would steal your job because you would be mediocre. Really smart people understands this.
There is all the reason in the world for really smart people to keep the rest of the people in the world dumb. They will protect their domain as best they can and being really smart they would probably come up with an amazing scheme. We are very close to the truth now because this is exactly what is going on in our world today, alcohol makes you smart and the evidence is flawless, smart people tell us the opposite.
The next time you sit down at a table and there’s one of those guys that always keeps a glass of free alcohol in his hands, he might be a card counting brainiac so watch out.
Thursday, March 19th, 2009
You have of course spent a lot of time wondering what poker tools are best. To get your mind at ease we decided to list the best poker tools of all kinds.
- Poker Office, when it comes to keeping track of your opponents and your own game you need a statistics tool. Poker Office is the absolute number one in this business and will give you all the information you can possibly think of on direct overlay in your poker client. They have just launched their latest version and you can read our article about it in Poker Office 5.
- Pokerscout, Pokerscout is the leading tool for keeping track of the poker rooms and the different networks. You can see what pros are playing at the moment and how many real money players there are in a specific network.
- SharkScope, have you ever dreamt of the possibility to look up your opponents, maybe there is someone that keeps beating you in the sit’n’go every single time and you want to see what he really is. On SharkScope you can get statistics on every single player in SnG’s on a lot of networks.
- Poker Manager, Poker Manager is a really neat little poker tool. What it does is that it handles your game with all the biggest networks. It keeps track of all the games and you can chose whatever you want instead of having to log in and search one room at the time. Poker Manager even comes with a built in instant messenger so you can keep in touch with your poker buddies.
- Poker Academy Pro, with Poker Academy Pro you can improve your poker playing skills in a simulated enviroment. Play with highly complex bots and learn how to improve your game.
Here are the Poker Office Poker Tools if you are interested in trying. You can get a free trial or download the full version for free if you use one of their partner deals.
Monday, March 16th, 2009
We don’t usually write about online casinos on Pokeriot.com but as I ran in to something that was completely new to me I really wanted to share it. I’m talking about Buzzluck.com, an online casino offering a lot more than just the green black jack table or the spinning auto slots. Buzzluck is really more of an experience.
Buzzluck is a brand new online casino and from how it looks poker rooms could learn a lot from the guys behind the site. One thing that is a bit strange is that the whole site is built in Flash 10 which forces you to download the last update from Adobe if you haven’t already installed it on your computer. I guess the reason for this is that they actually need a lot of functionality as the site aspires to be much more than just an online casino.
One of the things that is fantastic with Buzzluck is the Live Lounge, they actually send live TV in your casino client and it’s not some random stuff they picked up but their own TV-channel called Live Lounge. The content is not all casino related but it’s all interesting, they do gadget reviews, top ten youtube clips and so on. Instead of just staring at the spinning autoslots you can actually look at interesting TV and just let them spin by themselves.
What about the games then? Buzzluck offers most of the common games that you expect a casino to have; Roulette, Video Poker, Craps, Black Jack and Slots. There are a lot of different variants of them as well so you will find what you are looking for.
And how about bonuses? Buzzluck are offering a range of different bonuses for the different kinds of players. My favorite is of course the 350 Euro first deposit bonus, to be honest I’m not much of a casino player so a first deposit is where i draw the line.
www.buzzluck.com
Friday, March 13th, 2009
Are you one of those players that have a constant bad luck? Is your hand always the better when you go all in and does your opponent always aout draw you? There is a very simple explanation to this and it has nothing to do with luck.
We have all seen them throw a tantrum at the table, the players that actually are good but their temper makes them go on tilt every time they lose a hand on the river. We have them at the home games and we have them on tv when we watch the pros play. They complain that everyone else is lucky and they never get to win a hand on luck. Maybe you’re even one yourself and let me tell you, it can cripple your game.
If you on the other hand understand why it’s actually true, good players are lucky less than the beginners, maybe you can stay calm and prevent that raging tilt. It’s all about simple statistics, if you are the better player you will not get lucky, the worse player you are the more room there is for luck. This is quite the opposite of sports where good players can opt to have more luck (or more random events being in their favor) First of all we need to remember that poker is a game of odds. If you go all in when you have the better hand you might have 70% chance of winning or with an even better hand 80%.
If you have your opponent pinned with a flush draw after turn and you already hit the straight he has about 25% chance to hit that missing card. You have a massive advantage of 75% chance of winning. You did everything right, this was a good play from you, 75% is about as good as it gets but remember he still has 25% chance to win. He will win 1 out of 4 showdowns like this and he will be lucky every time he wins.
You on the other hand will win 3 out of 4 and none of your wins will be lucky because you had the best hand. If this is constant, you are the better player and you will never win a hand on luck. Your opponent will though, he will win 25% of all hands on pure luck and that is due to the very simple reason that statistics demand him to win some hands.
