Sep 11
2
Arbitrage Your Winnings
Many people approach penny auctions with the purpose of reselling the items that they win. This opportunity for arbitrage can be extremely lucrative, if you know what you are doing and have a solid penny auction strategy. If you win items like gold bullion, the arbitrage value can be very high as this is at a high price right now, but other items require a good deal of caution. Items like electronics can have negative expected value after you take into account the price per bid that you must pay.
If you win a gold bar worth $200 in the real world marketplace, you will want to make sure that you spend far less than $200 on obtaining it. While gold is probably going to increase over the long term, if you are looking for arbitrage opportunities, you will want to resell it immediately. If you spend $250 on the bids to win it for $10.00, you have lost money over the short term—defeating the purpose of arbitrage.
As you can see, quick profits can be difficult to come by in penny auctions simply because of the fact that the valuable items are so hotly contested. If you have a winning penny auction strategy, however, you stand a good chance of making a lot of money by reselling items. Just make sure that you are going to be a winner long term before you attempt moving to the arbitrage stage. Wait at least a few auctions prior to stepping up your game to the next level.
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May 11
23
The Downfall of Online Blackjack
The major downfall of playing online blackjack is the fact that you cannot beat a continuously shuffled random number generator. With proper basic strategy, the house still has a considerable long term advantage of about 1 to 2 percent. So for every $100 you invest in online blackjack, you lose about $1 to $2. Additionally, counting cards is pointless if there is a continuous shuffle.
There are some systems and blackjack tips out there that involve varying your bet sizes in order to secure a profit. This is also not successful over the long run. To prove this theory, we can borrow a concept from the financial world. The theory of dollar cost averaging says that if you invest a little bit at a time over a long period of time, the daily fluctuations of the stock market are neutralized and you become privy to the long term increase that the stock market has experienced. On average, this increase in the stock market has occurred at a rate of about 3 percent per year. This has been the case over a period of time beginning back in the Depression Era. Regardless of how well individual years have done, the increase has occurred because of the average rate of growth. If you invest consistently for long enough, the rate of growth for each year will be different, yet you will see a consistent 3 percent rise over a long period of time.
If the same concept is applied to online blackjack, you are again experiencing dollar cost averaging, only in reverse. If you are at a consistent 2 percent disadvantage, you might have winning and losing sessions, but you will, over a long term, lose 2 percent of everything wagered.
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Mar 11
17
Poker Goals
Having set goals can increase your poker skills. This might sound odd, but by establishing something in writing, you can advance your skill level. For example, setting a goal of making $1,000 in a year might sound like a difficult task. But if you break it down into smaller goals, it then becomes much easier. Perhaps, you want to increase your talent level in sit and go tournaments. Simply saying that you want to be better is not going to make you a better player. But if you decide that you will read three books on poker strategy, will concentrate on playing with less emotion, and will not play at a stake level you are uncomfortable with, you have thus made achieving your goal of making $1,000 in sit and go tourneys much more accessible. Maybe you will purchase some poker software to help your game.
Short term and long term goals are a necessary part of any poker player’s game. These allow you to set a metric for gauging your progress. By setting goals and establishing how you will reach those goals, you are taking an important first step. Monitoring your poker play is the only way to get better. This is what separates the fish from the professionals. The pros all know that they need to be students of the game if they are to succeed. If you want to revitalize your poker game, consider keeping a detailed hand history log so that you can see exactly how you play certain hands. This will expose any weaknesses in your game and allow you to grow as a poker player.
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Jan 11
24
The Poker Gap
The concept of the gap revolves around the requirements for playing a hand. A hand’s starting requirements are not just dependent on the cards dealt; it is also based upon where you are position-wise. The combination of these two factors is what experts refer to as the gap.
Another way to visualize this concept is to picture a rift between the hand that is raising before you and your hand. If the player doesn’t play a lot of hands, but waits for the very best hands before they raise, the gap between the quality of their hand and yours is going to be large. But if the player is loose, and they will raise with just about anything, the gap is going to be considerably less, if it is even there at all.
The gap concept is a difficult one because it is extremely tough to apply. If you are in second position with a medium pair in your pocket and the person in first position raises, it is sometimes correct to fold your mid-pair.
Why wouldn’t you raise this hand? Well, if the person who acts before you is a tight player like players at PartyPoker.net, who will only play premium hands, they probably already have you beat, either with a higher pair or an ace and a king.
The most important concept to remember when applying the gap is that you need to be observant of your opponents and then adjust your play according to what the gap tells you to do.
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Jan 11
5
Post Flop Perceptions
When it comes to playing hands after the flop, a lot of your decisions will be made depending on your perception of the other players active in the hand. Sometimes, you will want to win the hand right away after the flop, especially if you have a premium hand that does hit. A prime example of this would be a pair of pocket kings when three lower cards are on the board and it is possible that your opponent can draw to a better hand.
But your betting strategy will largely depend upon your perception of the other players in the hand. Do they have cards that will pose as a threat to your hand? If they have a four card flush draw possibility you will want to raise the hand enough to eliminate the proper pot odds that they would need to call the hand. If they are an exceptionally loose player, you might raise only to find that they immediately call or reraise as they have made a good hand such as two low pair or a straight draw. In these instances, you might need to fold against a reraise. Again, the strategy that you adopt is determined primarily by the style of play of your opponents.
This means that you need to be able to have a read on each and every player you are against. The better you know your opponents, the better you will be able to play against them. If your opponents are tight, loosen up your game to exploit the marginal hands that they are throwing away in these situations. If your opponents are loose, tighten up so you are only playing premium hands that have a high probability of winning.
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Dec 10
28
Playing Against Rocks
A “rock” is a player that hardly ever takes action at the poker table unless he or she has an amazing hand. Even then, they will rarely re-raise their hand because of their uncertainty. These players can be easily taken advantage of if you know what to do and how to recognize them.
A player who is both timid and tight with their chips will fold the vast majority of their hands. This in itself is not bad, you actually should fold most of your hands, but the way they fold is their problem. These players rarely bluff or make unnecessary contributions to the pot. Because of this, you can almost always know when they have a good hand. These good hands will be the only ones they play; a clear cut signal that they have you beat. When you are heads up against a rock, you have a couple options. Since they will undoubtedly have a superior hand, you will either want to fold or re-raise them. Folding avoids further damage, but re-raising can sometimes be the superior play if you think it will drive them out of the hand. This changes the hand dramatically since you are elevated from the losing hand all the way to the winning one. Rocks are timid and will sometimes even fold the best hand in this situation because they think that you will have a better hand; why else would you play against them?
Being heads up against these players is the best thing for you since your ideal situation is to have everyone fold and this is most often attained by having as few people as possible in the pot. Remember to get access to all the poker bonus codes before you start playing these Rock Players.
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Dec 10
18
Stealing Blinds
One of the easiest ways to stay afloat during a game of poker is to win several small pots. You will win these far more often than you will the big pots. Although the big pots should be your primary focus, you will not win these often enough to be profitable. This makes the knowledge of how to win small hands essential to your success.
Your biggest leak as an experienced poker player isn’t the hands you play. It is the hands you don’t play that will lose you money. Every time the dealer button gets passed around the table, you are forced to put out a big blind and a small blind. The loss of these chips adds up to quite a large amount if you play long enough. This makes formulating a way to not lose these hands especially important. By stealing blinds a few times, you can staunch some of the bleeding that every player experiences.
The best way to steal the blinds is by betting big with average to decent hands when you are in a late position, especially when there are no other bettors involved. This will accomplish one of two things: the blinds will fold, or they will call. If they fold, you win the blinds right away. If you have a caller, you have created the illusion that you have a strong hand. This is leverage that you can use to bully around players in later rounds of betting.
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Dec 10
11
Tournament Strategy
In a tournament your style of play should change from what it is during a regular cash game. This is for the simple reason that in most cases you will not be able to buy back (and if you can, you will be at a severe disadvantage). For example, you should play hands in live games based upon the odds that you have of winning the hand. If you have a 2 to chance (33.3 percent) of winning the hand, you should play your hand if you have a better than 33.3 percent chance of catching the winning card. In a tournament, your play should be different not because the hand changes, but because the style of play is different. In the above example, you have a 66.7 percent chance of being kicked out of the tournament if you were to go all in and be called on a hand like this.
With a poker tournament structure, you want to stay in the game for as long as possible so you have the best chance of winning the grand prize that is awarded to the last man standing. This necessarily means taking risks so that your stack will get more chips, but the type of risk you take is important. It might be correct to go all in with the above situation, but it is very different when you are playing sudden death such as you would in a tournament. So when you are playing in a tournament, your first concern should be staying alive to fight battles down the road.
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Dec 10
2
Ante Structure
The ante structure should affect the way you play your hands. The ante is a vital part of the game; if there is no ante, there would be no reason to enter a hand unless you had the absolute best hands. So poker draws its importance from the ante structure. The small and big blinds in Texas hold ‘em are a type of ante—they are both forced bets that prompt play. The size of the ante will go a long way to determining how you play a hand. The larger the ante, the more incentive there is to win the hand.
With a large ante, you will want to play a bit looser than you normally would. Although there is a temptation to wait and play only big hands, a large ante pool should encourage you to try and win more pots. Increased play comes from a mathematical standpoint. These big antes create better pot odds for you, so you are correct in chasing more draws than normal. For example, assume you are in a tournament with a $100 ante. With ten people at your table, there is $1,000 in the pot to begin with. If the starting bet is $100 as well, you are starting out with 10:1 pot odds. This makes drawing to a flush or a straight the correct play the vast majority of the time. In smaller pots, these plays are oftentimes incorrect and should be avoided.
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