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A few days back I introduced you into the wonderful world of Pot Limit Omaha.
Today I’ll teach you how to play 7 Card Stud.

Texas Holdem and Omaha are some kind of similar games, with 5 community cards on the table. Only big difference is that instead of 2 cards in your hand, you’ll be holding 4 cards.

In stud, you’ll don’t get any community cards, but you can see 4 cards of your opponents 7 hand cards. Best 5 of these cards win, just like in Texas Holdem.
The game starts with 3 cards dealt to each player. These 2 cards will be dealt, face down, 1 face up, also starts the first betting round.
The next 3 cards will be dealt face up, so every other player can see them and between every face card, there will be a betting round also. The final card will be dealt face down again and includes the last bets.

After all betting rounds are completed, the players can put them into the showdown.

As said before, variation of games is good for the continuous growing process you’ll need to becom a top notch poker player. Maybe 7 Card stud is the game for you to try?

A Royal Flush is the best you can get in poker. With this hand you got the NUTS for sure.
I’m one of those players, that never got a Royal Flush so far, but today I received something far more better than a Royal Flush.

My girlfriend just gave birth to our second child, a son called Tristen. A Royal Flush doesn’t even come near to the value of what I got today.
Everything went allright, son is in good shape, with 3180gr and 48,5cm, starting to eat well. Also my girlfriend is fine also, she did a hell of job getting him out.

You’ll never hear me say that giving birth to a baby is easy, I’m so proud of her and Tristen.

So in the next couple of days, private life is priority nr1 and we’ll see how it goes with playing online again. Hope to be in time for the SCOOP Event, still have a ticket won with the WCOOP that has to be cashed

Goodnight all!

The most played poker game still is Texas Holdem, but it’s fun to play other poker games also. I found out that it will actually improve your regular poker game.

Sometimes you’ll be playing and playing and playing, that you’ll get tired of playing and this will infect your game in the bad sense. So what do I do if I feel this is coming up, I’m switching card games.
One of them is Omaha, limited or not.

How to Play Pot Limit Omaha?
First of all, Omaha is almost the same as Texas Holdem, except you’ll be getting 4 handcards instead of 2 and 2 cards in your hand will be counted into your 5 best cards after the river.

What’s the big difference with Texas Holdem I hear you ask? Well Omaha is more a drawing game. You can have the best startinghands possible, but with the many possibilities of draws that can be made after the flop, this can change in just a draw. I can have the worst hand after the flop and on the Turn I could be in the lead, so fast it can change.

So with Pot Limit Omaha, if you’re holding good starting hands, always raise to the max you can pre-flop. Scare off others as soon as possible.
After the flop, you can take a look what everyone is doing and decide to bet or not. If you made your hand even better, again bet, don’t just call, raise instead. The lesser people on the river the more chance you’ll have to win. Three Aces are losing from a straight if you play against 359K with AJ2Q4 on the table, you don’t want your opponent to hit the nuts at the river.

On the other hand, if you’re having bad starting hands, they could be very profitable for you after the flop. So try to see the flop as much as possible if you can, who knows what shows up.

Just a few months back I finally made my first $100 starting from scratch and now I already have the $200 mark in sight.
Actually if you take into account that I also won a $16,50 PokerStars SCOOP ticket, I’m over $200 right now
But that ticket is to use in the next SCOOP games on PokerStars only so I can’t cash it in for the value of the money. But On the other hand, what if that ticket wins me a lot more cash
At the moment I’m only playing tournaments with a buy-in of maximum $4, so a $16,50 tournament will earn four times as much if I’m in the prizes.

Cash games are going great lately, with winnings 80% of the time I play cash games. And the times I loose I’m still able to minimize the losses for that particular game.
The best session was when I bought myself in into $0,10/$0,05 game for $10 and ended up winning $35 in about an hour later. In that session, I almost immediately read the table and knew when to bet or to fold. And another nice thing was that I also got the cards I needed if necessary.

Besides cash games I also started playing in the Double or nothing 1-Table Sit ‘n Go’s with a $1+$0,15 buy-in. Till now with great success, 10 sit ‘n go’s played, winning in 9 of them.
But the playing experience I don’t like in this particular sit ’n go. As soon as there 6 players left, everybody starts to wait for the one that makes an error. So I start steeling blinds by then, but it almost cost me the victory in a few occasions. Most of the times when at this stage there are only 2 or 3 players who are still actually play poker then and it’s cruel that one of these players have to lose because they’re actually playing. I hate PASSIVE players.
True it’s a tactic to wait for others to make errors, but the one time I didn’t win in the Sit ‘n Go, I was really pissed, not on the player who beat me, but on the wanker that always folded. He got lucky in the round before when he almost lost on the big blind, but hit an Ace on the river, doubling him up for a few extra rounds.

I’ll keep you posted.

If you just started out to play poker, you can think poker is just a game of luck. But when you play more often and start reading some book from well-established poker players like “Ace on the River” from Barry Greenstein or “Power Hold’em Strategy” from Daniel Negreanu, you start to think otherwise.

Just last week I argued about it with a colleague of mine. He said that poker is pure luck.
So I started out giving him example after example to prove him that skill is more important than luck.
No matter what I told him he always came down to: “Yes, but you still where lucky you got the card you wanted, etc…”

So in the next week we played poker, I introduced an extra rule into the game I once saw being used on “High stakes poker” episodes. If you win with Seven Deuce (72) in your hand and show them, you get extra chips from every player at the table. But I didn’t tell him that this rule would prove to him that skill is more important than luck.

So we started playing hand after hand, nobody got the Seven Deuce hand. Then I saw a big raise pre-flop and immediately started thinking could he playing the Seven Deuce or does he have a big pair?
My hand was bas so I folded. The ‘luck’ guy called with a KJ suited. With a rainbow A49 flop, his king wasn’t good anymore. The other guy made a big raise and he folded his KJ. The guy who won the pot laughed and showed his Seven Deuce, cashing in some extra chips from every one of us and making my point clear. But I kept quiet, it wasn’t time yet to prove he’s wrong.

A few hands later another guy again won with Seven Deuce, not against him, but he did manage to bluff his hand.
The next day another 2 guys won with Seven Deuce. I just wanted to beat him myself with that hand and still said nothing.
The last day of the week, I finally got the Seven Deuce hand and faced myself playing him and another guy. So One of them had to go before the Turn-card. With AK2 on the flop and me on the button I raised big to get one of my opponents out of the game and letting them think I have an Ace or a king.
Success, me against the guy who believes poker is just pure luck. With another K on the turn, he made a small raise. I kept my cool, looked at him and didn’t put him on an Ace or a King. So I went All-in to try and bluff him out. He hesitated and started think the hand over, I raised pre-flop, I raised after the flop and I raised again after the turn. He looked at me and folded, showing his pocket jacks.

Before I showed him my hand, I asked him, “Hey, remember our little discussion about poker being luck or skill from last week?” He knotted his head and told me: “yes I sure do, why?”
“Well…” I said, “The hand I’m going to show you right now, proves which is why playing poker is clearly a game of skill!” putting my Seven Deuce on the table.
I also explained that by introducing that Seven Deuce rule, I could prove that no matter what you’re holding in your hand, you could bluff everybody out of the game. It’s just a mind switch you’ll have to make and don’t hope that your card will fall on the river.

You tell me, what do you believe, Skill or Luck?