Play Online Poker

The WBCOOP returns for 2010!

It’s time for all poker-playing bloggers to put down the keyboard and mouse and get ready for action, because the annual PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker (WBCOOP) is back once again. This time round the seven-day event includes six preliminary tournaments, running January 25-30, 2010. The action culminates with the Main Event on January 31, and you can register for all of the events now. What’s more, the WBCOOP is completely free-to-enter for all verified bloggers.

Every year the WBCOOP gives bloggers from all over the world the chance to play tournament poker for great prizes. It’s the perfect way to challenge other poker writers, and compete to prove that you are the best in the business. This year you can win seats to the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP)*, plus SCOOP Steps satellite tickets. We’ll also be awarding spot prizes during the event for the best live blogs and Twitter posts.

So if you have a blog that’s older than 2 months and regulary updated, you can join th eaction and try to win your seat. I’m alreasy registered, hope to see you there!

What hands should you play
When playing poker, your starting hands are very important, but when to play them is even more important.
In the last year, I’ve read a small amount of poker books and pokersites to get my game better.
Especially the sections with starting hands interested me. After trying different methods from different players or sites, some successful, some not.
But by time I started out using a combination of a few charts, matching my playing style.

Hands I play in every position
Pocket pair: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 1010, 99
Suited cards: AK, AQ, AJ, A10, KQ, KJ, K10, QJ, Q10, J10
Unsuited: AK, AQ, AJ, KQ
With these hands, you should raise whenever you’re n middle or late position. If on the blinds, only raise whenever you’ll have a pocket pair or suited AK or AQ. Remember, you’re first to bet in the next draw so a weak hand isn’t good to bet on the blind.

Middle position
Pocket pairs: 88, 77, 66
Suited: A9 to A6, K9, Q9, J9, J8
Unsuited: A10, K10, QJ, Q10, J10

When you’re holding these cards, you have gained a little info about your opponents in front of you and depending on what they’re doing, you could call or raise. Remember there are still people behind you on the table and most of the times you still need to hit a card to win the hand. So don’t bet to much unless you have a good feeling about the table.

Late postion

Pocket pairs: 55 to 22
Suited: A5 to A2, K8 to K2, J7, 107, 98, 97, 87, 86, 76, 75, 65, 54
Unsuited: A9, A8, A3, A2, K9, Q9, J9, J8, 109, 108, 98, 97, 87

These hands aren’t hands to raise, just call to get to see the flop for as cheap as possible. Maybe you’ll hit a monster.
Also if a player in front of you raises big before the flop, throw your hands away, only call small raises.

Other hands
The hands I didn’t mentioned are practically unplayable, you should only play them on the blinds and hope you’ll flop a monster that will turn the tables in your favor.

For US and Canada players only!
You have a chance to win $1.000.000 on PokerStars for free. Register in one of the tournaments that are running to win an entry to the big pot.
Tournaments can be found under ‘Tourney’, ‘Regional’ button. Look for “FOX-PS Million Dollar Challenge”.
Top 10 finishers will be asked to submit an audition movie where 21 auditions will be selected to compete in the next stage.

A series of heads-up matches to win $25.000 against team PokerStars pro’s and celebrity poker players. Daniel Negreanu will be there to coach you and help you beating them all.
After this you can take home the $25k or go for a guaranteed $100.000 and a shot to the $1.000.000 main prize if you beat Daniel Negreanu.

Don’t have the PokerStars software installed? No problem, you can download it right here.

Good luck!!!

Yesterday I played a $1000 freeroll tournament on PokerStars. In the beginning I managed to play lots of hands as my cards where pretty good. This made me climb up to a spot around the first 300 players in a 3000+ tournament.
A play I liked very much was the one where I received pocket kings. Being seated just after the big blind, I didn’t want to make a big raise to let everyone know I had a high hand. So I slow played my kings with just a call and waited to see what everyone else was doing. The next 5 players all folded their hand. Another player called together with the SB and the BB made a small raise. This made me think, should I re-raise him know, or just call him? If he had an Ace and the flop paired him, I had to fold. But I took the risk and just called. The other 2 players in the pot also made the call and the flop showed 5 8 10. SB checked and the BB raised. I decided it was time to stop slow playing my KK and re-raised him. This made everyone fold except the BB, he re-raised me instead. Now the my head was saying me, be careful, maybe he has 2 pairs or a open ended straight draw with 67 or 9J. I called him to see what his next move will be. On the Turn we got a 3 and he checked after taking some time. I on the other hand made a big raise, pushing him almost all-in, what I actually expected him to do, but he just made the call. The river gave us a 7 and sealed my win. I knew after his call on the turn he had nothing that would beat my pair of kings. So I went all-in hoping him to call me, but as predictable, he folded.

But then my luck started to change, I was losing hand by hand, pushing me back in the rankings deeper and deeper. With a flush after the turn, I made a big raise to let everyone know I had a big hand. 2 players called instead. But I knew another spade will make my hand lose as my highest spade was a 7. And of course the river was against me with another spade, so I had to fold my hand after a big raise from the player next to me. I could have called him and take the risk, but another player in front of me called also, so it was pretty clear I lost the hand. At this time I had only 480 chips left from a stack well over 10000. I was pretty frustrated about how the table worked against me and almost went all-in the next hand with 3 7 off-suit, knowing I can’t win with that hand.

But just in time I calmed down to not play that hand and wait for a big one. The one thing I was lucky about is that I was on the dealer button. So I had some time to think about which hand to play.
4 Hands later in middle position I got KQ off-suit and went all-in the first time pre-flop. 2 players called, but on the flop I already made 2 pair. Luck started to change again.
Back with around 1300 chips, I still had to be careful about what hand to play, so playing very tight was the only option. With AK suited (spades) I went all-in a second time. Now everyone at the table seemed to know that I was playing very tight so everyone folded.
Hey I could use this into my advantage. But first I had to play a big hand against another player to really let them know I was playing very tight. And 2 hands after everyone folded on me, I got AA, went all-in again the 3rd time and was up against 2 other players. AA against KQ and QQ. I had a big advantage. After the flop I got trips and nothing seems to be in my way to seal another big win. The river proved me right.

Now I could take advantage of my status on the table. On the button, I made a big raise against 3 players in the pot, making them fold.
After the turn, with the lowest pair possible, I bluffed my way to victory once again. In no time I was back into the top 100.
With only 400 players left, I also was pretty sure, nothing could stop me from finishing into the money. 70 cents, was the lowest tournament price you could win. Only 32 players had to be knocked out of the tournament.
Just after the first break, it was a won deal. I made it to the money. Who would ever thought off that after my losing streak? It made me very happy, that I didn’t went all-in with that 3 7 earlier on.

I managed to play for another 20 minutes or so, finishing me on a 122nd place, earning me $1,30.
As I recall, one of my highest finishes in PokerStars weekly $1000 freerol.

And with this I also broke the $90 barrier in my quest. I’m just $9,01 away from my next $100 goal.

So a few tips from me for not playing on tilt:
• Keep your calm
• Clean out your head
• Don’t look back at lost plays
• Don’t focus on the players you lost against! If they’re any good, they’ll know you’re on tilt and will knock you out for sure!
• And keep the fun in the game.

I’m pretty sure one of you experienced a similar case once or twice. You have any tips on beating going on tilt?

The final table is what every poker player that enters a tournament wants to reach.
It’s hard work to get there, so whenever you do, you definitely don’t want to go out first. Especially if you know that the real money is in the top 3 places.

So whenever you’re at that precious final table, make sure you play your best poker of the whole tournament.

Depending on what stack you’re having, you’ll have to change your strategy, because you can’t just play anything with a low stack and high blinds. So when your low stacked, it’s probably best to go all in preflop whenever you have cards like AA, KK, QQ, JJ, 1010 and even 99. Also suited AK, AQ, AJ or non suited AK can be played like this. If you get called, you probably have the highest chance to win the pot. And if you do lose, well to bad, cards are unpredictable. But if you do win, you’ll double up and you’ll have another chance to play some more cards and finish higher. So key play here is very tight!

If you’re mid stacked, you can play a bit more hands than if your stack is low, but you’ll have to be careful whenever you play a hand. Especially against a player with a high stack. They tend to try and scare other players with making big bets, even if they don’t hold anything. So only call those bets if you’re more than 80% sure you can win it. Otherwise it isn’t worth the risk, you can start to play the low stack strategy again before you knew it.
On the other hand, if you’re playing a low stack, you can make some small bets to see how far he’ll follows. Mostly they fold after the flop if they don’t have the highest or 2nd pair. If they didn’t fold on the flop, try again on the turn, but make your bet a bit higher, make sure he won’t get the river card for free. If he still call’s this bet, he’ll probably have a better hand than you, so check on the river if you can as it could cost you more if you don’t.  Only make a bet here if you’re pretty sure you’re holding the best hand.

If you’re high stacked, I feel it’s probably best to first observe how your opponents are playing. Only play top hands at first and let them think you’re playing very tight. An advantage of observing is that some impatience players will go all in after a few hands and hopefully loose, making sure you’ll end up higher than the 9th place. Another strategy is to play against the low stacks. Make big bets, almost pushing them all in preflop. They only call with big hands. And if they don’t call, the blinds will shrink their stack play by play.
After you observed your opponents, you probably recognized their playing style and you can adjust yours to beat them. What I try to do is always stay in the top 3 stacks at the table. Don’t take too much risk, but do call a hand sometimes (if it doesn’t cost too much) even if you know you’re losing, just to know what they’re playing. You can use this info later in the game.
If you came to the river against a low stack, always go all in if you think you’ll have a 60% of winning. If they call and you win, it’s a player less to worry about. If they win, too bad, but it didn’t cost you much. If they don’t call, congratulations, you won another pot.
Playing against mid stack players after the river can be played like this also, but here you’ll probably be 90 to 95% sure you’ll win. This will cost you half your stack if you lose, and we don’t want that.

Before you’ll know it you’ll be playing heads up.

What about you, do you change your strategy once you’re at the final table?