FatPokerBonus.Com

When you play low-stakes poker games then one of best strategies that you can employ is to basically reduce your bluffing down to an absolute minimum. Games where the buy-in is between $1 and $10 are quite loose and passive and the hand values tend to reflect what players have on the whole. You should really play these poker games in principle like you would play a limit game to some degree.

I am not referring to limit type bets and raises here but more to do with playing big cards and betting for value. The mistakes that the players make in these games tend to be that they play too many hands and that they go too far with them. Another factor behind these novice type players and how they play is that they tend to make big post flop errors. So basically bluffing should be kept to an absolute minimum and this is what I meant earlier when I said about having a limit hold’em mentality in these games.

The amount of bluffing that you can do in a game like limit is much less than it is in no-limit. This is based on the fact that the bets are structured and any bet or raise is only confronting your opponent with having to call one extra bet. This is obviously not the case in no-limit where pot sized raises and bets mean that the pot can escalate very quickly to an all-in situation.

But in low-stakes play then the play can be so bad that often the players do not have the experience or knowledge base to fold when they should. This means that bluffing them can become very expensive and often a losing play. Also the amounts of money that are on the table in these games is so low that they players themselves would not miss the money even if they lost it.

At the micro levels then players basically want to play poker and this means that if they limp in then raising may not be a great idea if all you have is a speculative hand yourself. You need to punish the failings of these players by value betting your strong hands properly and reducing bluffs to a minimum.

If the game has a $6 buy-in with blinds at $0.03-$0.06 then if you get all in for $6 then you have got all-in for 100 big blinds. To do this in a normal game would mean that to win this pot you would need to have a very strong hand indeed. But yet novice players would be more prone to getting all-in for 100 big blinds in $6 games simply because it is only $6 or because they cannot respect the money or because they cannot link hand values with pot sizes.

If you have a hand like A-Q and get all in on a flop of A-10-3 rainbow for 100 big blinds then in a normal game against solid players, the A-Q will not be the best hand. You will be faced with A-K as an absolute minimum but more likely A-10 or a set of tens or threes.

Poker room hopping

Though it’s good for a player to stick to one poker room, many players will occasionally have other poker rooms on the side which may help them in accessing their bonuses of choice because it’s not always or for that matter ever that a poker room will offer all the good bonuses being offered out there. A poker room may have an outstanding bonus but from poker room to poker room, the bonuses differ and may suite different people and serve them in different ways.

Match your bonus to playing habits

A poker player’s level of action and expertise could be used as a benchmark on the best bonuses to target. Full Tilt poker recently offered a bonus to a group of people who won in different small tournaments they held in the month of January. This poker site is known for having pros and as such, new players would in no way be able to make it to the final stage. This type of bonus was only suitable for established players.

Clearing your bonus

As for newer players, though a bonus may be a sign-up bonus or a no deposit bonus, the means of clearing this bonus may be different. Most poker sites will not automatically deposit the bonus to the player’s account. Some will require that a player attain a certain number of FPPs before the money is deposited. Others may require one to play a certain number of raked hands before being able to access the deposit. Players who are new to poker and pick up slow should look for a no deposit bonus from a poker room which will be immediately deposited to the account. Though it may be ‘locked’ for withdrawal until a certain numbers of raked hands is attained, this type of bonus to be released as a whole is better for the new players because it helps them access the real money and play real cash games. If new players to poker who are slow learners were to pick a no deposit bonus with strict requirements, it would be hard to access the real money. For example, take a player registers with a new poker room and gets a no deposit bonus requiring them to attain a minimum number of points. Such points require one to play constantly and commit a lot of time in the poker room. If this new player is only an occasional visitor playing for recreational purposes, it would take an extremely long time for him/her to have the bonus deposited into their account. One the other hand, a sign-up bonus should be carefully assessed from room to room. Take for example one poker room offering a 100% match up to $200 and another offering 110% match up to $50. If a player were to sign up with $100, which poker room would best suite the player? The one with the higher percentage or the one with the lower one? In the room with 100%, the player would bag $100, while in the other, the player would get a maximum of $55 and thus in this case, it would be better to go for the room with the lower sign-up bonus as it has a higher match up.

Celeb Poker offers a bonus of 100% up to $800. The requirement to access this bonus is that one must first register with them. After registration, one is supposed to deposit some money in order to get the bonus. For any amount deposited up to $800, Celeb Poker offers a match of 100% as a bonus.

About Celeb Poker

Celeb Poker was started in 2003 and is registered at Gibraltar under the Playtech i-Poker platform. This poker site does not allow registration from US citizens. Celeb Poker offers a variety of card games to its players which range from high stake games to low stake games. Players can therefore choose a table of their choice but be careful to enter those of the same level than they are or those of a lower level. There’s a lot of weak competition on the I-Poker Network and thus players are bound to make a lot of profits in this poker site.

Celeb Poker Satellites

An interesting feature of Celeb Poker is that they offer satellites which are a favourite for many poker lovers. Their satellite tournaments grant entry into major Sunday poker events which end up securing large amounts of money in winnings for the top players. These satellites have low buy-ins and thus reduce the risk of losing a lot of money and provide access to many players. Virtually any player can be able to participate in the satellite tournaments. Their huge jackpot of $50,000 for Sit and Go tournaments attracts a lot of attention. Many people love participating in their Sit and Go tournaments for this jackpot. One must however win 6 in a row to bag the $50,000. They hold guaranteed tournaments each Sunday of $100,000 and $250,000 attracting many players on this day. Their software is also very much loved. It’s arguably very easy to use and highly fast. For frequent players who play recreationally, freerolls of $20 in prizes are available several times each hour and can be played by anyone. Join Celeb Poker and enjoy their benefits.

Sportsbook Poker has a lot to offer to its members. With a bonus of 100% up to $850, it is undoubtedly one of the best bonus-offering poker sites out there.

About Sportsbook

This site was started recently in 2006 but their brand has as many as 13 years of experience in the poker industry. It is a more savvy poker site with a lot of fancy features. Sportsbook Poker accepts registration from US citizens as well as from Canada. The disadvantage is that they don’t accept any other people to register apart from these two countries. This poker site operates under the Cake Network and is licensed in Antigua.

Bonus requirements

The requirement for claiming the bonus is that one must be registered with Sportsbook Poker and deposit some money into their account. For any amount deposit up to $850, Sportsbook Poker will match the figure with a 100% deposit into the player’s account.

Software & Tournaments

Their software is known for being very fast with no hitches and it’s very easy to use. It’s also colourful with a lot of extra features for players to use. Tournaments are very common at Sportsbook Poker and especially $100,000 freerolls are played very frequently. Their freeroll tournaments are used to elevate players to other world poker events and also award them with cash prizes. New players can play at Sportsbook Poker without incurring any financial risk. In other words, they can participate in the freeroll tournaments without paying anything and end up winning real cash. Apart from the cash, they may play in other promotional tournaments which could see those winning spots in world events and ultimately winning very high amounts of money.

Room & Playing Stats

Sportsbook Poker has another very interesting concept: they offer quite a lot of statistics to players as compared to other poker rooms. Sportsbook Poker will keep well documented history of past games and statistics of players and produce them upon demand by the players. Perhaps an interesting concept about Sportsbook Poker is their 13 year history in the field. Their poker site hosts a casino, sportsbook, racebook as well as a card room. They also boast a capacity of more than 1 million members. They try to recruit members to Sportsbook Poker from their other departments and thus most of the players come in as ‘newbies’. This means that the games are relatively soft and thus very attractive to the more experienced players to make easy money. Their poker rooms will hold up to 6,000 players at peak hours. Guaranteed weekly tournaments of $100,000 and $50,000 are available as well as a $250,000 guaranteed monthly tournament.

Ultimate Bet Poker offers an impressive bonus of 111% up to $1,100. For one to get this bonus, registration into the website is paramount. After registration, one must deposit any amount of money they desire. For any amount up to $1,100, the player is eligible to receive a 111% match amount.

UB: Accepting US Players

This poker site allows for registration of US citizens and is registered under the Cereus Network. At a time when most poker sites are not accepting US citizens to register with them, poker sites such as Ultimate Bet Poker are providing some hope for the upholding of poker in America. Ultimate Bet Poker was started in 2001 in Canada and has gained a lot of popularity and directed a lot of traffic to itself over the past 9 years. They offer free poker pro lessons to their member to give them a chance at improving their game. These lessons detail the best way of playing the different games they offer in order to make profits and beat other players. Another feature of this poker site which is not found in most other poker sites is mobile accessibility to their software. This means that a player can down load their software using their mobile phone and play the game from any place as long as the software is available.

Pro line-ups

Pros are also lucky in this poker site as they sponsor their best players to participate in many big tournaments around the world. They offer smaller tournaments in their poker rooms which help them determine the best players and go on to sponsor them to represent them in greater tournaments. Due to the large traffic, players are also able to choose the best tables to play from. There are plenty of weak tables and thus players are bound to make handsome profits in this website. A player needs only to search for the weakest table and join it. For greater challenges and higher limit games, tables with pros are also available. Their software is also very good. In addition to offering it as a downloadable feature from mobile phones, it is very clear and detailed with many features. They also attract traffic due to their wide choice of deposit options. They however don’t have many withdrawal options and this coupled with the fact that they have no telephone support has gone a long way in pulling them backwards.

Fat Bet Poker has a lot to offer in terms of their rakeback bonus. Though the poker site was started in 2007 and can be termed as relatively new, it has proved to offer one of the best rakeback bonuses in the market.

40% Rakeback Bonus

At 40%, it is much higher than most other rakeback bonuses being offered by other poker sites. Fat Bet Poker recently moved from Poker Nexus and is now a member of the Melita Gaming Network. A good thing about their rakeback bonus is that it is deposited into the player’s account weekly. This means that a player can use the money generated through rakebacks each week. 40% of one’s raked amounts in a pot for a whole week is by far the highest percentage that one can find out there. The dealt rake method is used to track the amount of rakes in this poker site. In addition to the rakeback bonus, Fat Bet Poker offers a hefty 1000% percent sign up bonus to new members up to $1000. Their bonus rewards are simply outstanding.

Fat Bet Poker Software

Their software is not the most complex of the ones out there. It has a simple outlook, much like their own website and the good thing about it is that it works efficiently. It has almost all the features of other basic software necessary to play poker.

Bonus Requirements

Redeeming the bonus requires a player to generate 1,200 FPPs in order to get $20 of the bonus. Unlocking is usually done in $20 batches and the players are required to have redeemed the bonus cash within 30 days. Fees paid to participate in tournaments are also included as part of the rakeback bonuses thus increasing the amount that one gets. Each day, a player can view the real time value of their rakeback bonuses and this determines whether they should play more games to hit their target or relax after reaching their target. The system at Fat Bet Poker is very convenient. Though this poker site does not accept US citizens to register with them, it is by no doubt attracting many people. It has an option of multi-tabling for its players with up to 16 tables which can be resized as the player wishes. Other features of this poker site include their variety of games. They offer Stud Poker, Telesina, Omaha, Amerikana and 32 Card Poker.

Texas Hold’Em Tournaments

The most frequently played game however, is Texas Hold ‘em. Their 2 hour freeroll tournaments and numerous other tournaments with low prizes are very suitable for all types of players. They offer very many tournaments which have limited capacities thus making them convenient for a wide number of poker players. Most of the tournaments are low stake which do not exceed $1,000. They also have occasional promotions and offers to their members and also to members willing to join. Their customer service people can be contacted through telephone, email or fax and are available throughout. Their service is however minimally required due to the super service already in effect.

Place yourself in a large poker tournament. You have made it down to the money, with a large payout available for the top finishers. You are staring a life changing win straight in the face and you are playing fantastic poker. Life is good. Then you take a vicious bad beat with your opponent hitting the only card on the river that can knock you out. You instantly go from potential chip leader to just another bad beat story on the rail. Life is suddenly not so good. The player you lost to is a well known professional who has made millions playing poker. This hurts. This would hardly be the time to tell you that bad beats is actually a positive part of poker in the longer term. Unfortunately this does little to stop you hating lady luck as taking a bad beat never gets easier.

The example above is an extreme bad beat poker story, but one that has been felt many times over by many poker players. If you ever get the opportunity to play Tiger Woods at a round of golf unless you are either very good or very delusional you will probably not expect to win. This is because the skill in golf massively outweighs the luck factor that exists in the game. The better you are at a sport, the less luck will hurt you. In poker, however, the turn of the card means that even the best players can fall foul to a bad beat. Weak players can win and this is why there are so many bad players in each tournament you participate in.

It is considered that over half of the field of any tournament is dead money. This begs the question, why do they play? This is because bad play does sometimes get rewarded in poker because there is usually a chance, albeit small, that players win hands that they should lose. A run of lucky hands can see a terrible player ride the chip lead and even win the tournament if their lucky streak carries on long enough. Fortunately for skilled players luck never lasts forever and good play wins most of the time. But as one tournament progresses, there will be moments of despair where your skill edge is cruelly dashed by a bad beat.

When you are going back through hands it is important that you analyse each play on its merits. A bad player will make terrible plays but get lucky and this validates that for them. I know a player who plays A 2 in any position because once they flopped a full house! This may never happen again but they play A 2 time and again even though it was only luck that won the hand that time. Without bad beats it would only be skill that mattered and unless you had a skill level matching Tiger Woods golf game you would find yourself outgunned by the professional players! Bad players also make bad plays and say they suffered a bad beat, in this instance bad beats (or the perception of a bad beat) keeps the fish playing.

There will be times where you dish out a few beats to other players, it is part of the game and it may contribute to a big win for you. Very few players have ever won a tournament and never got lucky, I would hazard a guess this has never happened in all of pokers history! So the next time lady luck deals you a bad card, smile to yourself that this keeps the weaker players participating and when it requires skill to decide the winner of a hand, there will only be one winner – you.

Finding Poker Blogs that are interesting to read can be tough, I thought I’d tell you about a few articles that I really have liked so that you get a head start.

The best Poker Player in the World

Some of us have played the game a few times and have managed to win on a couple of occasions. They are those of us that seem to win with all cards that they are dealt. The experience that these people have managed to garner and continue to do so has lead some people to call them the best in the world. Some people call it talent some call it playing everyday but what ever it is these players deserve to be called the best poker players in the world.

Hacking a poker room

Like within all areas where there are money to be made, a selection of people have learned to fool the system. And even if they don’t master the art, they will still try…

Jesus Plays Poker

Chris Ferguson or Jesus as he is fondly called is one of the most successful poker players around.

The Poker Bot articles

This is actually a whole series of articles on how they built a poker bot.

You’ll usually find Johnny Chan playing among the best poker players in the world. He has had his own success in the professional poker circuit with over $5 million in total tournament winnings. This sum does not include the pot he takes home during cash games.

He had to work hard to enjoy the success he has at present. He was born in China in 1957. His family moved to Hong Kong in 1962. Then in 1968, they migrated to Phoenix, Arizona. Finally, in 1973, they settled in Houston, Texas where his family owned several restaurants.

When he first arrived in the United States, Chan didn’t speak any English. But one thing that he liked about America is bowling. If he’s not at the family restaurant helping out, he’ll be found at the bowling alley. This is also where he discovered poker, which became his passion. He started playing small with his friends which became bigger in time. By the time he was always winning, he was not allowed to join anymore.

At 16 he decided to try the poker rooms in Las Vegas. He started with $500 and turned it into $20,000 in just one night of playing. Then what seem to be a pattern in his early poker career, he would lose all his bankroll the next night.

He didn’t pursue a career in poker just yet. He first went into college and took up hotel and restaurant management in the hope that someday he’ll take over the family business. Yet fate took over and at 21 he quit school and moved to Las Vegas to become a full time poker professional.

Those early years were full of ups and downs. There were times that he had to get a temporary job to keep his dream going. Chan has the potential and everyone around him so it. Even the great Doyle Brunson once said that Chan has the talent but didn’t know how to control his temper or doesn’t know when to quit playing.

Besides his talent, his Asian ethnicity gives Chan the edge. During that time, there were few Asian players in Las Vegas. People tend to underestimate Chan. They would assume that he’s not a good player and would call a bet just to see his hand.

In 1982 he began his second life. He quit smoking and began living a much healthier life. His play was improving as well. It was also that year that he entered the America Cup of Poker. He was given the nickname Orient Express by Bob Stupak because he eliminated 13 of 16 players in just 30 minutes of play. He won the said event.

To date, he has already amassed 10 World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelets. Only Phil Hellmuth has more WSOP bracelets with 11. Two of those were back to back Main Event wins, in 1987 and 1988. He could have made it three in a row but was foiled in the heads up by Phil Hellmuth and had to settle for a second place finish.

He met Hellmuth again in 2002 during a WSOP $2,500 No-Limit Hold’em event. It was again down to the two of them in a heads up match. Chan was victorious and earned his 7^th bracelet.

Chan is famous for his trademark orange that he brings to the poker table. During the time smoking was allowed, he would bring an orange to serve as air freshener for the room. These days the orange serve as his personal lucky charm.

He is considered as one the most well rounded poker players around. His wins would not only come from Texas Hold’em Events but also from Omaha and Draw poker. His fame has been brought a notch up when he did a cameo in the movie Rounders. Also the movie showed footage of his winning hand during the 1988 WSOP Main Event against Erik Seidel. He flop a nut straight and slow handed it. This move trapped Seidel to raise all-in in the river.

In 2002 he was inducted to the Poker Hall of Fame because of his achievements in the poker tables. He continues to play up to this day such as competing in the Poker Superstars Invitational Tournament. He has also successfully mentored 2006 WSOP champion Jamie Gold. Proving he has not lost his touch, Chan has reached the final table of a 2006 WSOP event.

To date he has the most wins in NBC’s Poker after Dark with three wins. He only appeared four times on the show. The one match he didn’t win, we placed second. Not bad for an old timer.

Chan would still be seen playing at high stakes cash games and is currently living in Las Vegas with his family. His dream is to open his own casino someday. When not playing poker, he could be swimming, bowling or playing pool.

A good online poker player always takes down notes. The notes on other players will serve him well when he meets the same players in the future. Note down whether a play is tight or loose, passive or aggressive. Another thing that you should observe is whether a player defends their blinds or not. You should also note if a player is either winning or losing. Lastly, note if the player likes to bluff, or plays it straightforward. These are just a few things you could observe about other players.