Poker News

Bwin launched thier new client yesterday and it’s not without trouble, a lot of downtime for emergency fixes is one of the things that bother bwin and ongame players but there are other things to complain about as well.

 
One thing that a lot of the players complain about is the time the client waits while showing the winning hand. For a beginner this might be a feature but for a more experienced player there is no doubt that this is annoying. All in all my view on the new bwin poker is that overall it is a big upgrade from the last version though and we have to accept problems getting it up and running because in all big developement projects this happen.

Malta has become a hub for the remote gaming community, in fact, it constitutes the most dynamic and fastest growing sector of Malta’s entire gaming industry. And with good reason. While steeped in heritage, Malta has become a modern country with a good economic track record, open economy, low inflation and stable currency. The climate and lifestyle make it an excellent place to work and live, for a relatively lower cost than other EU countries.

Setting up your gaming company

When considering setting up your remote gaming company in Malta, there are a number of stages you will need to be aware of. The application process can be quite rigorous but is generally fairly efficient – if you are thoroughly prepared you could look to be operating within 6 weeks.

After that you can get started with all the details, such as choosing a platform, creating a poker odds calculator, and so on.

The application process

STEP 1

First and foremost you need to be a company registered in Malta and, to obtain your remote gaming license, you will need to have the core of your business based in Malta. This means that peripheral services such as customer support functions or front end games could be based outside of Malta in any destination of the company’s choice.To obtain your license you will need to submit an application form (available from the LGA) along with your business plan, personal declaration for all shareholders, passport/ID, original birth certificate and original copy of your police conduct report gained on registration in Malta. An LGA Control Officer for Remote Gaming will then thoroughly review your case. This involves investigation into all parties involved in financing and managing the business and the overall financial viability of your operation.Normally this stage will take about 2 weeks.

STEP 2

Having cleared the above checks, you will receive a letter of first stage approval. The LGA will then go on to check your ability to carry out the operation by assessing the following: the games, business process for conducting remote games, the rules and regulations of games offered, terms and conditions, your system architecture of the gaming and control panels, agreements with third parties and so on. You will need to provide all of this information to your LGA Control Officer.If all submitted information is correct and present, this stage should take approximately 3 weeks.

STEP 3

Assuming you pass the above investigation you will be granted a provisional license to operate remote gaming with the intent of obtaining a certification of compliance within three months. In this period you will be expected to establish your business in Malta according to your business plan. Testing of your set-up, processes, systems and completion of third party agreements should all be concluded in order to gain approval from the LGA compliance certification entity. You will then be granted a full license.After the 3 month trial period, compliance approval should take about 1 week.

Fees

The application process will require fees to be paid at varying stages. This will include a non-refundable application fee which will be submitted with the initial application as well as an annual fee which is to be paid within 15 days after your license is granted. This will then be paid annually thereafter. Licenses are generally granted on a 5 year basis and will need to be renewed after this period.Other costs will include the company fee of the company engaged by the applicant plus all set up costs involved in establishing your business in Malta.Corporate tax and gaming tax will also be paid monthly and the gaming tax will be relevant to the licensing class you are in.

Licensing Classes

There are four classifications of remote gaming operators – your license will be granted in the class representing your business make-up.

• Class 1: Risk-taking on repetitive games generated by random events e.g. skill games, online lotteries
• Class 2: Risk-taking by creating a market and backing that market e.g. fixed odds, spread betting
• Class 3: Promoting and/or abetting gaming in Malta e.g. betting exchange
• Class 4: Providing a Remote Gaming System to another Licensee e.g. software vendors

Once you are fully licensed, what you do with your business is up to you as long as it conforms to the LGA’s rules and regulations of responsible gaming practice. Malta provides a highly sociable network of like-minded, entrepreneurial people with an innate passion for the gaming industry. With countless forums and events hosted by many of the companies based there, sharing business knowledge is easy and fun.

Everest Poker (read the Everest Poker Review) has just given us a kick as bonus deal that we can let you in on. This is the deal: Minimum deposit $5, Bonus up to $300!

To get the bonus follow this link and use the bonus code:  EN300

Everest don’t usually hand out any really good bonuses so this is the perfect time to get going. The important part to get the bonus is to follow the steps (if you come from somewhere else or directly to Everest Poker they might not give you the bonus). Follow the link AND use the bonus code to make sure you are tagged for the bonus.

Visit Everest

The Pokeriot editors just came from an exclusive preview of MyPokerBlog.com, a blogging plattform specialized on poker. Ok, there are lots of poker blog platforms but this one is another thing. Instead of just taking an ordinare blog platform and naming it pokerblog the guys and girls behind MyPokerBlog actually made something different. Posting hands for example is super easy, you do it in the hand history section instead of having to glue it in your ordinary blog posts. Functions as bankroll tracking has been added and a lot more poker specific features.Sadly MyPokerBlog is not up and running yet but will be within a month, until then you will have to take our word for it, this will be a kick as poker blog platform.

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.

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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.

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

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.

If you are an old PokerOffice user this is really good news for you. Poker Office 5 has just been released and it is loaded with new functionality. You can as usual get the software from Poker Office for free by signing upp on one of their partner poker sites, play a few hands and get the code.

 A few news in the new PO:

• Custom Statistics
• Custom Plugins and Filters
• Improved Statistics Engine
• Notes Popup Window
• Detailed Statistics Popup Window
• Starting Hands Popup Window
• Overlay Table Image
• Fish Finder

Get Poker Office 5 here.

If you like me have played a lot of poker you know that play money is more or less useless. Betting play money isn’t the same as betting real money.In No limit hold’em this is extra obvious as it is actually a good strategy to go all in with almost anything just to double up. This because you have nothing to fear. Calling an all in with 9, 6 offsuit isn’t as stupid as it sounds as you might double up and the cost is nothing. Play money poker made me think play money is stupid in general but I have actually changed that opinion. Play money Backgammon is actually a real game even though the money is fake, yes play money players tend to double a bit on the wild side but it doesn’t destroy the game as it does in poker. Someone always accepting the double in backgammon does a lot less damage to the game than someone always calling every raise in poker. The doubling is only a minor part of the game in backgammon and more of a traditional bet on who’s going to win. If you feel secure that you will win you double. Betting in poker though is the game, if you take that out of it and go all in all the time poker is one of the most boring games in the world. Just getting 7 cards and trying to get the best hand is more of a kids game than a proper game. 

From my perspective play money backgammon is actually fun (even though I hardly ever win even against play money players). It’s really worth a shot playing.