Texas Hold’em is one of the most fun and most exciting online multiplayer poker games available on the internet. Experienced players can win quite a bit of money playing poker online, usually at the expense of inexperienced players that don’t fully understand the game. When I played at partypoker.com and pokerroom.com, I frequently witnessed people win hundreds of dollars within minutes. Even beginners win money at the beginner tables — all you need to know are a few basic tips.

Casino Sage wants to help you learn the basics of Texas Hold’em to make it easier for you to open a new online poker account and begin winning money right away. To get you started on the right track, this website has been dedicated to making your online gambling experience a profitable one. Here are some introductory tips for beginner players, to get you started on your way to becoming a great Hold’em player.

Basic Gameplay
When playing Texas Hold’em, each player is first dealt two cards and is allowed one round of betting. Once the first round of betting is finished, three more cards are dealt face up. This is known as the flop. The cards dealt face up are community cards, or cards that can be used by anyone to make their five card hand. Another round of betting occurs once the flop is dealt. Then a fourth community card is dealt face up, otherwise known as the turn card. Another round of betting occurs and then a fifth community card, also known as the river card is dealt face up. The last round of betting occurs and then you show your two cards. Whoever can make the best five card poker hand with their two cards and the community cards wins.

Choosing the right table limit
Limit Hold’em doesn’t require as much skill and experience than no limit Hold’em. I recommend that if you are a beginner, play limit Hold’em first before moving on to the higher stakes no-limit games. In No-Limit Holdem, people can bet as much as they want every round of betting. Therefore, if someone has $100, they can bet all of it even before they see the flop. In limit Hold’em, the stakes are limited by only allowing a set maximum bet when each set of community cards are turned over. A limit table is usually shown as $10/$20 meaning you can only bet or raise $10 before the turn card, and you can only bet or raise $20 after the turn card is shown. Also, don’t forget that one bet and three raises are allowed for each betting round. This is very important in advanced Hold’em strategy.

For beginners, the most important tip is to start playing at tables with lower bets. Tables with a lower limit will generally attract the less skilled players, and you will have a chance to learn how the game works. If you’re a beginner, start at a $.50/$1 and move up from there as you become more comfortable with the game. If you find that you’re easily winning money at that level, then move up to $1/$2 and so on, until you’re able to compete at the higher levels. There is no better way to learn Texas Hold’em strategy than through experience. Playing Hold’em frequently will not only improve your skills, but also improve your chances of making money.

More tips for Hold’em beginners
Knowing when to stay in and knowing when to fold is the most important aspect of Hold’em. You must have patience when playing Texas Hold’em. If you try to bluff and bet high on every hand, you will most likely lose quickly. Only bluff rarely, and wait for your cards to come. No matter what type of Hold’em player you are, whether experienced or inexperienced, there are a few basic rules to follow. Always fold your hand before the flop unless you have two cards that are suited connectors (for example, 6 of clubs and 7 of clubs), if they are both above 9, or if you have what is known as a pocket pair (2 of the same card). If your hand does not match one of the three scenarios, I suggest that you fold.

Most people who are inexperienced at Hold’em will stay in with a King or Queen, no matter what their other card is. If you stay in the hand with two cards above 10, and you match your high pair, you will often out kick the other players with your high card, and win. Staying in with suited connectors leaves you the opportunity for both a flush draw and a straight draw. Pocket pairs speak for themselves.

Don’t forget that you don’t need to be an expert to win money. If you can master even a few of the strategies described here, you will be on your way to making money in no time. Good luck

A favorite on cruise ships and beachfront casinos, Caribbean Stud Poker (also called Spice Island Poker) is an easy game to learn and fun to play online.

Game Play

Introduction: Caribbean Stud Poker (also called Spice Island Poker) is a variation of the classic five card poker game, but it’s played on a blackjack-sized table and you play against the dealer, not other players. Caribbean Stud, depending on the rule variations and payouts, generally has a house edge of about 5.2% and can be played effectively by using a simple three-step strategy.

The Ante: Before every hand, each player must ante (usually minimum $5) to be dealt in that round.

The Deal: Once all players have anted, the dealer will deal each player five cards face down, and will deal himself four cards down and one card face up, for the whole table to see. The cards that you have in your hand after the initial deal are yours for the whole round — you don’t get to draw. That’s why it’s called Caribbean STUD!

Betting: The goal in Caribbean Stud is to beat the dealer’s hand. If you think your hand can beat what the dealer has, you bet or raiseby placing exactly twice your ante on the table. For example, if your ante was $5, you would bet $10, and you would then have a total of $15 on the table.

Folding: If you’re not so confident about your hand, it’s best to fold. The dealer then takes your cards and your ante.

Winning: Once all bets are placed, the dealer will reveal his cards. Don’t get excited yet — the dealer’s hand must then qualify before any winnings are paid. To qualify, the dealer must have at least an Ace and King combo or better poker hand.

If the dealer does not qualify, meaning he does not have any poker hand, the dealer will pay every ante even money and push on every bet. Even if you had a royal flush in your hand, you win nothing on your raise if the dealer does not qualify.

If the dealer does qualify, meaning he has at least an Ace and a King, or any higher poker hand, then the fun begins. The dealer will compare his hand to each player’s hand. If you beat the dealer, you win! The ante pays even money, and your raise will pay according to this table:

If the dealer’s hand beats yours, you lose both your bet and your ante. Better luck next hand!

Caribbean Stud Poker Strategy

There is a general strategy that most good players follow to maximize their winnings and minimize the house edge. It’s simple to learn, and easy to remember:

1. Raise on a pair or better
2. Fold if you have less than an Ace & King
3. If you have an Ace & King:

A. Raise if the dealer is showing a 2 through Queen, and it matches one of your cards.
B. Raise if the dealer is showing an Ace or King, and you have a Queen or Jack in your hand
C. Otherwise fold.

Progressive Jackpot Side Bet

In most casinos you have the option of a $1 side bet for the progressive jackpot that’s paid out to the next player to be dealt a Royal Flush. Some progressive jackpots can get to hundreds of thousands of dollars! Usually, the casino will also pay 10% of the jackpot to players dealt a Straight Flush. You lose the side bet every time you don’t get one of these hands.

A player recently asked me, “When playing low limit hold’em like $2-$4 or $3-$6 I usually play tight, aggressive poker, but that approach seems to backfire sometimes when I’m at a table where four and five players see the flop each hand.  It seems that big pocket pairs or top pair is often not enough to take it down. So I’ve loosened up a bit on starting hands that can turn into straights or flushes.   I’m playing high connectors and suited cards that I would usually throw away … and I play them from pretty much any position.”

I explained that unless you’re at a fairly passive table you shouldn’t play connectors from early position because you have no idea how many opponents you have, nor do you know how much it will cost you to see the flop.  Connectors need help from the flop, and even flopping a pair is usually not enough to take the pot, unless your connectors are big ones, such as A-K, K-Q, and Q-J.  Even then, if an ace flops when you have K-Q, or an ace or king appears when you have Q-J, you may be looking up at a bigger pair.

Fixed-limit hold’em is a game of big cards, and those are the kinds of hands most reasonable opponents play.  But connectors have value, although it’s determined more by the community cards that are dealt than from any inherent value associated with the cards you’re holding.  The flop has to help your connectors in order for them to gain sufficient value to contend for a pot, particularly when three or more opponents are active.

It’s best to see the flop at the lowest possible cost.  It also helps to know just how many opponents will take the flop with you. While a hand like Q-J can win by making top pair. Lower connectors gain their value by making straights or flushes, and because those are long-shot hands, it pays to play them against a large field so you have throngs of players willing to pay you off if you get lucky.

Acting late in the betting order also allows you to toss these hands away if the pot is raised.  Because a raise is likely to restrict the number of opponents you’ll play against even if you do get lucky this time, you probably won’t win enough in the long run to offset your cost of playing the hand.  Play connectors from late position, play them on the cheap, and make sure you have enough customers already committed to taking the flop so you can get paid off handsomely whenever you make your hand.

That same player also said, “I’m trying to get in cheaply and see the flop. If I hit it, great. If I don’t, then I’m done with the hand. The only problem is this: If I catch a piece of the flop, say middle or bottom pair. I don’t know what to do. I seem to be loosing a lot of money when that happens.”

This is a common conundrum faced by many players, and I suggested that if he plays smallish pairs against a large field, he really has to hit his set to have a playable hand.  The odds against flopping a set are 7.5-to-1.  Failing to make a set generally means tossing that hand away, particularly when the board contains two overcards and there’s a bet into a field of three-or-more players.

Many players can’t seem to release hands, especially hands like small or medium sized pairs that may have been in the lead before the flop but are now staring up at an overcard or two along with a bet and a call from some opponents.  As long as this player can get away from smallish pairs that are not helped by the flop, and can see the flop with connectors on the cheap against at least three or more opponents, his strategy should work.

But he, like all of us, needs to avoid the all-too-common affliction of self deceit and be prepared to toss away his small pairs and connectors in the face of an unhelpful flop much of the time.

If a dollar won is twice as sweet as a dollar earned than a hand you win with a bluff is twice as sweet as a hand you won with good cards.

There’s nothing quite like bluffing someone out of a big pot and stacking their chips while you muck your ten high. Yet, few people seem to bluff well and it seems one of the hardest skills to master for women.  At least most men seem to think so.

Some players bluff too much, and some never bluff, while others only bluff occasionally but don’t seem successful when they do. I found it difficult to master bluff strategy when I first started learning to play, and it was frustrating at times. Like anything else you need to start somewhere, and everyone can always learn new ways to improve their poker strategy.

There’s a saying where I come from (a place where I make up all the sayings): “The second liar never has a chance.” In this article, we’re going to examine how we can use this truth about lying to our advantage when defending our blinds.

Conventional wisdom has it that position is critically important in no-limit hold’em, and that the later your position is, the better off you are. While I always say that conventional wisdom is for conventional thinkers, for the most part this insight is right on. There are times, however, when position is irrelevant — times, in fact, that early position can come to your aid in stealing pots that would not otherwise be yours.

Consider this example: In a typical low buy-in, capped buy-in ($100 or $200 maximum, say) no-limit hold’em game, you find yourself in the big blind holding… well, for this play it really doesn’t matter what you hold. For the sake of conversation, we’ll give you the Numpty, 6-2 suited (yes it’s a hand – it was named in the same place where my sayings come from), if only to demonstrate that sometimes the cards you hold matter as little as the position you’re in.

It’s folded around to the button, a fairly good, fairly tight-aggressive player. You’d expect her to raise, wouldn’t you? And she does. Why not? She’s only got to get through the small blind and you, and you’re both on random hands. From her point of view if you fold that’s fine, but then again she wouldn’t mind inducing action from your random hands, because she thinks she can take the pot away from you on most flops, thanks to her position and her tight-aggressive style. She’s right on the first point, but wrong on the second, as she’s about to find out.

The small blind, a conventional thinker if ever there was one, folds, leaving it up to you to decide how to play your Numpty. Remember, your foe puts you on a random hand. In other words, she doesn’t have a clue what you’ve got! What do you think she has? She raised from the button, the precious button, where any half-a-hand is good for a raise if no one has already entered the pot. So let’s put her on exactly that: half a hand. Maybe K-T. Maybe 6-6. Maybe some real egregious cheese like 9-6 suited, but probably something a little more coordinated than that. She wants to have at least a little something-something to go to war with on the flop, should you happen to call. Which you do.

Now here’s the cool part: No matter how the flop comes, she‘s an odds-on favorite to miss it. Do you know this? Are you aware of it? Any time a player holds two unpaired cards, she’ll pair the board only roughly one-third of the time. Fully two-thirds of the time, then, any given player will whiff the flop, completely swing and miss it. This is crucial to our understanding of what comes next, because while it’s true that you’re every bit as likely as she is to miss the flop, your position gives you first crack at this one! You get to speak first; the second liar never has a chance.

What you’re specifically looking for here is a certain variety of orphan flop, the sort of flop that’s unlikely for your foe to have hit, and one that doesn’t offer much in the way of attractive draws. 8-8-3 is an orphan flop; so is T-6-2 rainbow. T?-9?-8c? is not an orphan flop. That’s a super-textured flop, just dripping with straight draws, flush draws, and weak made hands like A-8 or A-9. If you bet into that scary flop, or one like it, you’re just asking to get played with, and you don’t want that.

So don’t make this play on just any flop. Save it for orphan flops, very dry, very non-threatening boards. Lead into them. Bet them like you own them. Be the first liar. Remember, your foe puts you on a random hand. And what kind of flops do random hands hit? Why, random ones, of course. You, meanwhile, can put her on a slightly less random hand. You can give her credit for having some sort of coordinated holding, and coordinated holdings hate uncoordinated flops, especially when they miss them completely — as your foe will two times out of three!

So go ahead and bet. Bet about two-thirds the size of the pot. This is a large enough bet to be taken seriously, and not look like a weak steal attempt. It’s also big enough to preclude deny the right price to any draw she might be on. Yet it’s a small enough bet that if she comes over the top with a big bet, you can get away from your hand fairly cheaply. Go to school on this two-thirds pot bet. It’s a real workhorse, and should be a standard weapon in your arsenal.

Could you check-raise bluff here? Sure, you could. In one sense, the situation seems to call for it, since many players (especially aggressive ones) are strong believers in the continuation bet, and feel a moral obligation to bet at any pot they’ve raised preflop. Generally, this is sound thinking – never surrender the lead! The way you’d like it to go is this: You check, she bets, you raise, she folds, next case. And yeah, that could work. A lot of times it will work. But I’d still rather take the lead away from her, for four reasons that I can think of. First, you minimize your financial risk, getting the most bluff-bang for your buck. Second, she might not oblige you by betting, and if she checks behind, you’ve given her a free chance to hit whatever draw she might be on. It might even be a real slim draw, like a two-outer to trips, but she’s paid exactly nothing for it, which means that even a slim draw just got a great price. Third, if the action goes check-check, and you then bet the turn, she can more reliably read your bet for the bluff it is.

Fourth, most important, your goal here is to win the money that’s already in the pot. Be satisfied to do that. Go ahead and make your move now, when the time is right. Bet into that ragged flop, knowing that most of the time your conventionally-minded foe won’t be able to call, and that the times she does call, you can confidently put her on a hand and back off your steal attempt. Plus, if you show a player on the button that not only will you call from the big blind but also seize control on the flop, it won’t take her too long to conclude that she’d be better off attacking other players, less frisky ones than you. This means she’ll stop molesting your big blind when she has the button, and what’s not to like about that?

One last thing: Though you might be tempted to show her how you stole a pot with the Numpty, please resist that urge. Don’t show your cards! You might want to use the trick again sometime (maybe even next time). Let your foes think you’re always lucky enough to pick up a big hand in the big blind and their precious button will become useless to them, at least against someone who knows how to put in the first lie.

In poker, just like Like Monty Python’s memorable sketches, “Spot the Loony”, maniacs are almost too easy to identify. They stand out from the crowd so much because they want to stand out. Maniacs need to be the center of attention. Woefully lacking in any kind of self-discipline or control, they have a childish need for instant gratification. That gratification comes from provoking and upsetting their opponents, from making themselves in the center of the poker universe, and most of all from the action they create with their relentless bets and raises.

This shows in just about everything they do. Right from the start, poker loonies are apt to dress in bright colors, speak in loud voices, use dramatic forceful gestures, and buyin for much more than the normal amount, to arm themselves with a massive stack of chips. And as we all know, that’s only the beginning.

The real fun begins when the maniac starts raising. And raising. Pre-flop, post-flop, early position, late position, with good cards, marginal cards, total rages – it just doesn’t matter. Any time, any place, any circumstance, he’s in there jacking it up.

And let’s just get this out of the way right now: the majority of maniacs are men. More often than not, they are young men. Maybe it’s because of the way men are raised in our society, or maybe the poor guys are just slaves to their testosterone, who knows. Okay, so it’s easy to spot the maniac. But how do you read him? How do you make sense of his betting patterns?

Conventional wisdom says: you don’t. After all, how can you possibly read his cards when he’ll always raise the pot anything? One of the maniacs’ greatest strengths is that he is so impossible to figure out. Well, nearly impossible.

There are a few things you can look for. Not all maniacs are created equal. There are degrees of poker lunacy.

Some maniacs are true rampaging berserkers who seem to care about nothing g but their own overwhelming need to create as much action as possible. Others can exhibit a bit more control now and again. A few “maniacs” are just regular players on tilt. Some maniacs are furiously aggressive per-flop, but back off a little after the flop. Then there are some who stay relentlessly aggressive throughout the hand.

One thing you can watch for is what Jo-Ellan Dimitrius (jury consultant and author of “Reading People”) refers to as “rogue actions.” That is, whenever you see a person do something that is noticeably different form their usual routine – pay extra attention. It’s very significant. All of us, even maniacs are creatures of habit. Perhaps especially maniacs. Their normal routine is really very rigid. So if you see a maniac call a bet instead of raising or check instead of betting, put a flag on that action.

It’s also worth noting that since maniacs as a rule have such poor self-control , they are more likely than usual to telegraph their intentions. If you are sitting to the right of the maniac, it’s always a good idea to glance to you left before acting. Quite often, you can tell what that poker loony is planning to do nest.

But perhaps even more important to watch for is how the madman’s behavior will affect the rest of the players in the game. When a maniac sits down at a poker table, everything changes. Starting hand requirements need to be adjusted and strategy must be altered, but more than that, the presence of a maniac will have a tremendous emotional impact on everybody in the game.

All that hyper-aggression makes for a stormy, contentious atmosphere. It’s a rare poker player indeed who can remain totally cool, calm, and collected in the face of this.

Generally speaking, one of two things will happen. Some players will react by becoming very timid – barely ever entering a pot, never raising, etc. They morph into poker turtles, retreating inside their shells. (Getting back to rogue actions, if you see a player like this entering a pot against a maniac, that should be a huge red flag right there.) Quite a few other players will get fed up with being run over by the poker loony, and will respond by playing more loose and aggressive themselves. The mild version of this would be someone who makes a handful of bad frustration calls against the maniac. The extreme version would be a player who is so fixated on “getting” the maniac that he goes on severe tilt and starts playing like the maniac’s mirror-image.

In this sort of atmosphere, virtually all players at the table will become more emotional. This makes them easier to read. It’s one of the hidden benefits of having a maniac in your game.

Because the maniac is so good at making himself the center of attention, it’s easy to get so caught up in watching him that we forget to keep watching each other. Don’t let his happen. The maniac is providing you with an opportunity. Because of that annoying poker loony, the other players are liable to let their games deteriorate. Their control will slip. They will become more readable. Now is the time to exploit their maniac-induced weakness.

Anytime I see a belligerent maniac at the poker table, buying in for a colossal stack of chips, raising every single round to the max in an effort to run over the whole table, I am reminded of a line from the movie Shrek. When Shrek first views the excessively huge castle belonging to the evil Lord Farquaad, he comments “Do you think he’s maybe compensating for something?”

Yeah maybe. But in the end it doesn’t matter. All that matters I show we can use this overweening aggression – and the effect it has on everyone else – to our own advantage at the poker table.