Why play poker at PokerStars?

Pokerstars has one of the worst software in the industry, although it has improved quite a bit in 2005. Should be very secure, as the mother company is a well-established player. Top score. Support is today much better at Pokerstars. The response time for most emails are under 10 minutes. The staff is nice and knowledgable overall. However, they still only have email support. Pokerstars traffic at the tournaments is very good at peak hours, where the traffic will reach somewhere between 3000 and 4000. In order to get this bonus the player just needs to deposit $90 or more and then play 450 raked hands that very same calendar month. This package gives our players about $1,400 bonus the first year, with very low raked hands requirement. This is probably the world's best overall online poker deal right now!

What we offer:

• A player is only allowed to play at one table at the time (which probably even more drive the high action at the tables, as people cannot wait to play hands).
• Pokerstars has quite a bit of other promotions as well.
• Most notably are the "Relay Races" with great payouts for anyone who deposits $50 during the promo day and plays a certain number of hands. The site was also first to introduce crazy pineapple. There are also certain "kill games" in which a consecutive winner of two big qualifying pots has to post a forced blind, twice the big blind. Pokerstars has a good game selection, with Holdem, Omaha Hi and Hi-Lo, 7-Card-Stud Hi and Hi-Lo, Crazy Pineapple and Lowball. There are no-limit and pot-limit in Holdem and pot-limit in both Omaha variants.
• There are 1-on-1 tables in both Holdem, Omaha and 7-Card-Stud. Both new and existing Pokerstars players will get the chance to participate in this amazing promotion! See promotion page for all details.

There are typically 2200-2600 players at peak hours, out of which at least 85-95% is in the Holdem section. Pokerstars has reasonably good promotions, with a great refer-a-friend program. There are quite a few free rolls and frequent player free rolls. Maybe once per quarter there is a re-deposit bonus of about 20% up to $100. A Windows emulator is needed for Mac and Linux users to make the pokerstars software compatible. Overall, Pokerstars has top-notch software! The $90 bonus will be released after the first 450 hands and the $300 bonus will be released after another 1,375 hands. Note that the $300 bonus will not appear in the pending bonus field in the cashier as this is an extra special bonus.

Understanding how to apply odds is critical to your success in Texas Hold'em. Be sure that you are not drawing to outs that won't help you win. We'll look at an extension of this concept in our next article which is another common mistake when determining odds and one that I have received many questions about. How do you calculate and apply odds on the flop when there are two cards to come?

Pokerstars is a game of luck and skill and a few hundred hours of play is not nearly enough to know how much you could expect to earn. Even a player who should normally lose one big bet an hour could win up to 250 big bets over a 100 hour period simply by getting a lucky run of cards. Be sure that you have enough experience and bankroll before you even consider making the plunge to online poker stars.

Check/Raise

• Bluffing
• Slow Playing
• Splashing the pot
• Slow Rolling
• Betting out of Turn
• Table Etiquette

For example, I might play a game where I am familiar with almost all the players, and then play another game at another site. I'll concentrate more on the action and players at the second site to learn their styles. Your earning rate per table will inevitably decrease since you are unable to fully concentrate on every hand at each table. For example, you may not notice that a player has gone on tilt and is betting and raising every hand.

One critical step to improving to an advanced level of play is creating an environment where you can focus on the action and your Pokerstars opponents. Identifying your opponent's tendencies and playing accordingly is not an easy skill to learn and constantly requires your full attention. A very common online mistake is not paying attention. This mistake can lead to numerable mistakes in important strategic decisions.

Let's look at a common example. You raise in early position with AK and a middle position player calls. The flop is all rags such as 642. You bet and are called. The turn is another rag such as an 8. You bet and your opponent raises. What do you do? Against most opponents you should almost always fold; however, you sometimes need to call in some of the tight aggressive high-limit games where some opponents will raise with Ax.

Most Pokerstars players complain about their bad luck when they improve on the turn only to lose on the river. Good tournament players recognize that these types of situations occur a lot and include this possibility in their decision-making process. Borderline draws on the flop which on the surface appear to be close to break-even should often be folded for the possibility that you will lose on the river.

To play professionally, you need to be the type of person that can handle these fluctuations. Although they shouldn't happen too frequently, they will occur, and believe me they are not much fun. Finally, many players who ask me about playing online are still rather limited in their playing experience. They make a lot of money over a few hundred hours and think about how great this would translate into a full-time job.

More importantly, because you are playing two tables, it is more difficult to evaluate your opponents. You will not be able to follow all of the betting sequences and see all of the showdowns. It takes a great deal of concentration to try to learn the playing styles of 18 players at the same time. I only try playing two tables when I am fresh and alert, and am already familiar with many of the players I am playing with.

Most Poker stars players who bet or raise instantaneously using the "act in turn" buttons on the turn or river generally have strong hands. An opponent who waits a longer time than normal and then bets usually has a strong hand. In this case, he is trying to indicate weakness by "thinking" a long time to lure you into calling.

In the later stages the blinds are often quite high in relation to everyone's stacks. In these situations most hands are decided before the flop so drawing hands go way down in value. When analyzing play, always be aware of how stack sizes impact decisions. The same hand can be played in many different ways depending on how the stack sizes and blinds impact the odds.