So, where will Americans play poker now that the big online sites are no longer accepting players from the USA?
With Poker Stars, Full Tilt, Absolute Poker and UltimateBet closed to American players, there are still some rooms that are welcoming players from America. Bodog Poker has not made a statement about their intentions regarding the US market just yet, but so far they have continued to welcome players from America.
If that continues then Bodog could become the biggest online poker site – there are thousands of US players that are now without an online poker home. Once the initial scare dies down those regular players that have not been able to play in a while will overcome their doubts and pile into any online poker room that will accept them.
With proper bankroll management most players should be able to limit their risk in case a crackdown like the one that just happened happens again to the remaining US friendly poker rooms.
Bodog Poker is not the only room to remain open to Americans though. Both Carbon Poker and Aced Poker are advertising that they are accepting US players. Both those rooms are on the Merge Poker Network, and traffic has been growing steadily for the last week, so their advertising is paying off.
But will the DOJ come after these new market leaders?
No one can say for certain. If one or more rooms grow to the size of the likes of Poker Stars or FullTilt then I would think it would be a certainty that they will be the target of a Government investigation. That is not to say that it will unfold in the same way as the one that we have just seen.
Don’t forget that the DOJ had a witness, an insider, Daniel Tzvetkoff, who had been instrumental in setting up the various payment channels that were used by those poker sites that were seized. The other sites did not use these processing channels and so the DOJ would not have the same evidence against them.
However, having done it once there is no reason to believe that they would not be able to get their hands on another whistle-blower with access to the insider details.
But getting a case together against the next lot of poker sites would take time. And that time could be profitably used by poker players willing to take a chance.
If you are looking for a new place to play check out Bodog Poker by clicking here now
Ever wondered about those sites that say they will give you money to play poker with? Does that seem a little bit fishy to you? I mean, c’mon, why would anyone just give you money, right?
Well, it turns out that some of these sites actually do give out free money to their player to play poker with. There are some strings attached though. Like, you have to play poker with the money. You can’t just get the money and withdraw it straight away and buy some other stuff with it.
That makes sense when you think about it. There are other terms too. Like, you can’t already have an account at the poker room where they are giving the money. You must be a new player. This is a method to get new players at some particular poker room, so players that already have an account are not what they want. It’s for new players to try out the poker room and maybe like it.
There aren’t that many places that do this, but even so if you add up all the offers that are available it can come to a few hundred dollars. And all without having to make a deposit.
You can get a good list of these bonuses form FBNPoker.com on their No Deposit Poker page or try the dedicated site at no deposit poker bonuses.
If you are smart and take your time you could build up a nice poker bankroll of a couple hundred dollars and all without having to deposit your own money.
A lot has been written about the art of bankroll management. Even the best poker player can go broke with bad or inadequate management of their roll. This is of course especially important for professional poker players who would be effectively out of a job if they lost their entire cash reserves.
The number put forward for proper use of your bankroll and usually aimed at the more professional player or the player that aspires to be professional. And while the advice is usually good and sound for every player the numbers involved can be very off-putting for the more casual player.
Being told that you should have a bankroll of between two hundred dollars and five hundred dollars in order to sit into a ten dollar cash game can seem quite out of proportion.
And again, while those numbers are technically accurate, for the more casual player that has a source of income other than from online gambling, and can count on some of that income for funding their online poker game, then there is a different approach that should work just as well.
For this example we will assume that you have $50 set aside from your wage every week to play poker with, and that the world will not end nor your kids go hungry if you lose it all.
Next thing you need to do is work out how many sessions of poker you will play in the week, or in the period until you will next have some spendable money in the bank. Say you will play five sessions of poker in any given week. Simply take your bankroll amount of $50 and divide it by the number of sessions, in this case 5, and you have your nightly allowance figure of ten dollars.
Split that in two, and you can buy into a cash game for a maximum of $5. If you bust out of that game, you still have $5 to find a more suitable table and finish the night out. If you lose that second $5 amount then you quit for the night.
It will take some control to leave the tables when you still have $40 in your account but that is what bankroll management for the casual poker player involves. If you do lose your first nights stake, you can come back the second night and play at the same stakes again, because you will still have a $40 bankroll for the remaining 4 session of the week. If on the other hand you double up your first night stake, then you will have a bankroll of $60 for the remaining 4 sessions, so you can start the next night with $15.
With a site named like this one, you would expect that the subject of control in poker would come up sooner or later.
Well, here it is. The whole subject of ‘control’ can have many different meanings in the world of poker, but for this post the meaning is ‘controlling your emotions’.
It is very easy to write advice on this subject – advice like ‘don’t go on tilt’ is easy to say but not so easy to put into practice.
The best start to controlling your emotions in poker is to recognize when you should NOT be playing in the first place. Many players that play for fun use poker as method of stress relief. After a bad day at work, or just in general, a game of poker can seem like a relaxing break. But that may be the worst time to sit down at a card table.
If you are not in good form, if you are angry or stressed, then stay away from the game entirely. Find some other form of stress relief – take the dog for a walk, go to the gym, take the dog to the gym, whatever. Just don’t play poker.
That part is easy. The next bit is not so easy. If you have a problem with tilting for whatever reason, then you need to look at the last couple of times that you tilted and look at the result. Did you win or lose? Did you feel good or bad?
If you lost and felt bad, great! You can use that memory to retrain yourself in how you manage your emotions at the tables.
Generally, when you get sucked out on by a poker donkey who had no business being in the pot in the first place, never mind going all the way to the river to hit his runner runner flush, you tilt and start making bad plays, or play too aggressive in order to get your lost money back.
If that works for you then I don’t have much more to say. But if it doesn’t work, and most times it doesn’t, then it leads to even more lost money. So the way to look at it is like this – not tilting is the profitable move here. Perhaps even not playing any more for this session is the right way to go. Only you will know what is best here. If you can change table and shake off the bad feeling then that’s great. maybe you can even stay at the table and not be bothered by it.
Whatever you have to do, remember that suckouts and donkeys are part of the game and you either learn to live with it or find another game.
When internet poker was new, back in the early days of this century, a growing number of online players began to consider the possibility of playing poker for a full time income.
The idea was certainly an attractive one. What could be better than doing what you loved to do all day long, or all night long, and make more money from it than you had been making at your real job.
The idea was so attractive to some players that they actually did chuck their real jobs in and give playing online poker a go as an alternative.
For some it worked out better than they could ever have hoped.
For many others though the dream turned into a nightmare.
Not every one is cut out to be their own boss. This is evidenced by the number of small business ventures that fail within their first few years. Being an online poker play full time is the same as having your own business. And the learning curve can be steep for people who have always been employed by others.
Other big difficulties with both running a business and being a professional online poker player are the lack of paid holidays (who’s going to pay you?). If you are not working, or playing poker, you are not earning. If you are employed and have a bad day you will still get your wages at the end of the week. A bad day in poker could finish you entirely. That’s a lot of pressure.
There is more to it than that. Working online in any capacity can be very difficult if you were used to going to a workplace and interacting with other people. Online work can be very antisocial. You may end up spending time on forums and developing virtual relationships which can help with the loneliness, but those sites can also be a time sink if you are not wary.
Getting over all of that, you still need to play and win consistently.
And the game keeps changing. Just like the real world, the market matures. Players who were dominating their game a couple of years ago and now floundering as the game changed around them but they didn’t, or couldn’t keep up.
But for those that did make it you couldn’t ask for a better lifestyle. But those players are few and far between, regardless of what you might be told on various poker forums.
The world of online poker has come a long way in the last ten years. Following the boom of 2004 we had the bust of 2006 with the passing of the UIGEA.
These days we also have to deal with the current economic climate which has put pressure on all areas of life and not only online poker.
Online poker rooms have to operate as efficient online businesses if they are to survive and prosper. I think that this is a good thing, in the long run. The boom days of online gambling gave rise to a lot of bad habits that the online gaming companies have struggled to overcome ever since.
The crowds of players seemed to be never ending and it was easier to throw money at attracting new players than to provide a solid service to the existing players.
Well that has all changed now and the poker rooms that do not cater to the needs of their players and see them properly as customers will find it difficult to survive in an increasingly competitive market.
Those rooms that do survive should be the best and the strongest of the lot – internet Darwinism. The shake up might be rough but ultimately it should be in the best interests of the player. And that is what really matters.
