Intro to Poker Tournaments

Poker tournaments are so popular because they give any one player the chance to turn a small entry fee into big winnings. It’s the one place in life where it doesn’t take a lot of money to make a lot of money. If you play your cards right, you can bring home a six figure win online after just a few hours of work. It’s not easy but it is possible.

In a poker tournament, each player buys in for a specific amount of money and in return receives a certain number of chips. After all the players have bought in, the money is divided up into a prize pool for the top finishers.

The tournament begins with small blinds but the size of the blinds increases steadily as the tournament progresses. Unlike cash games, your original chips are the only stack you have. If you go bust, you’re out of the tournament. As the blinds go up and pressure increases on the players to stay afloat, more and more players are knocked out of the tournament until only one player is left standing with all the chips.

Basic Tournament Strategy

Basic tournament strategy can be broken up into three main sections. There are the early stages, middle stages and late stages. The object is always to get chips but the proper poker tournament strategy used to achieve this goal changes over the course of the tournament.

Early Stages

Many poker players erroneously think that the early stages are the best times to play a lot of hands and try to get lucky. The blinds are small and the stacks are large, so why not? Well, the problem with playing loose early in a tournament is that it leads to losing chips, not gaining them.

Playing weak hands doesn’t win in poker. The only thing that wins is showing down the best hand or stealing the pot with a bluff. Bluffs rarely work in the early stages because everyone is playing so loose. If you try to play loose as well, you won’t have an advantage over the competition.

Stick to strong hands in the early stages of a tournament and play them in a straightforward manner. There’s no need for tricky play here. Just sit tight, wait for strong hands and bet them. Your loose opponents will donate all the chips you need.

Middle Stages

After the blinds have gone up a few times and about 1/3rd to 1/2 the competition has been eliminated, the proper strategy changes a little. Most of the loose, weak players have been eliminated already so you’re going to have to start amping up the aggression on your tighter opponents.

The blinds are becoming big enough now to where they’re worth stealing. You’ll have to start stealing more blinds now to stay alive against the increasing blind levels. Try to identify the tightest players and steal from them. Avoid stealing from short stacks and huge stacks because both will be more willing to call you.

Late Stages

When it gets down to the bubble and eventually the final table, the players will become even more desperate as the blinds are now bigger than ever before. You’ll see a lot of desperate moves from players trying to stay ahead of the blinds.

During this stage, you still need to steal any chance you get but you’ll also have to avoid the desperate players trying to stay alive. It’s always better to be the one going all-in than it is to be the one calling. Don’t call anyone’s push unless you have a very strong hand.

Stay alert, look for opportunities and get out of the way if you don’t have a powerful hand. If you work hard and maybe even get a little lucky, you can take first place. Good luck.

Lock Poker Signs 15 Poker Professionals

In a move reminiscent of the great poker professional signings of the Full Tilt Poker era, it appears as though Lock Poker is aiming to replace them as the hub of poker professionals. In an era where the sheer number of poker pros that a site has behind it is one of the most important considerations for the usefulness of said poker pros, Lock Poker has made a move that will ensure their excellence for some time to come.

Lock Poker is a member of the Cake Poker Network. Cake Poker is one of the more popular networks around for online poker and has been steadily growing its average player base ever since its inception. It has a lot going for it and the move by Lock Poker will certainly bring more fresh players to the Cake Poker Network.

Another thing that is interesting to note about these signings is that only three of them are players from the United States. Brett Jungblut, Vinny Pahuja and David Zeitlin are the three American players that have agreed to become professional players for the Lock Poker brand.

Out of the other players, Stephen Devlin, Dan Smyth and Joe Connolly are from the United Kingdom. Bjorn Andre Hovden and Maximilian Bassil are from Norway. Bolivar Palacious and Jose Raul Severino are from Latin America. Vincent Gabel is from Belgium. Elmar Masson is from Iceland. Francisco Costa is from Portugal. Robert Jan Hoogendoorn is from Holland. Last but certainly not least, Brendon Rubie is from Australia.

In total, that means that exactly 12 of the 15 players that Lock Poker signed deals with are outside of the United States. Three of those players are outside of both the United States and Europe, showing just how international the field of professionals working for Lock Poker really is.

Another thing that is worth mentioning about Lock Poker is that they have more online professionals than offline ones. Other sites have focused on signing big names within the poker community, but Lock Poker seems to have made it a point to go after the big names within the online community.

Sports Legends Challenge to be postponed until 2010

Atlantis Resort and Casino was supposed to be the proving ground this year from September 14th to 17th as some of the best names in the world battled it out for glory in poker, gambling and general sporting fun.

However, the organizers of the event came to a point where they felt the best thing to do would be to postpone the event until 2010 and run it at that point. The organizers of the event are Bruce Bibbero and Larry Lubin, both of whom were looking forward to seeing people rub shoulders with the best in the poker and sporting business. According to the organizers, they were disappointed at having to reach the decision they reached. However, the difficulty for domestic US citizens to travel abroad at this point combined with the poor weather the Bahamas has been experiencing forced the decision on them.

A lot of the people that had won Absolute Poker satellite tournaments or even shelled out the $10,000 that was the running cost for a single seat at the tournament were also disappointed with the decision. They were looking forward to meeting some of the best poker players in the world such as Johnny Chan, Mike Sexton, Gavin Smith, Antonio Esfandiari and Annie Duke. They were also looking forward to meeting legendary sports personalities like Herschel Walker, Randy Couture, Sugar Ray Leonard, Tony Hawk and Troy Aikman.

Even though many people were disappointed at the decision, most of those same people understood the need for making it. The fact of the matter is that most people would rather play in 2010 in good conditions than play in 2009 under conditions that could make them feel really miserable really quickly.

Part of the reason that many people were placated after the announcement was that Bibbero and Lubin promised to take things to the next level with the postponement. It is now expected that they will add multiple new elements to the challenge during the downtime, making it an even more exciting event in the end as a result. That is something that everyone can certainly get behind.

Poker Cup Australia at Titan Poker

The Titan Poker machine has long been one of the most impressive when it comes to putting together promotions leading to bigger events. This is why despite being a non-US acceptance site, they have managed to have a great deal of brand recognition throughout the world at many major events.

An example of such an event that is coming up is the Poker Cup Australia event of 2009. Poker Cup Australia is actually a series of different poker events running from September 27 through to October 5. All of these events are poker-related, but the Titan Poker promotion can potentially allow you to get into three of them.

You can win a package worth $7,500 through Titan Poker satellites. The satellites have already started and will continue through to September 14th. Each prize package includes buy-ins to three of the events. There is a buy-in of $2,200 Australian for the main event as well as AUD 550 buy-ins for events 5 and 6 on the docket. Furthermore, an additional $55 is kicked in for registration fees throughout your stay.

The rest of the package goes to making your time in Melbourne as good as it can be. The Crown Casino is already great, but $2,000 for accommodations over six nights can really make your stay even better. Another $2,550 is available for flights and spending money in the city while $200 will be fronted on your behalf to allow you to attend a welcome party.

In addition to the poker side of things, there are also other things that are given to you as part of the Melbourne Poker Cup Australia 2009 package. The first of these is a river cruise along the Yaara River that includes meals and entertainment. The second is a guided tour of a sanctuary containing some of the most precious Australian wildlife. The third is a tour and a meal at a winery in Melbourne that produces some of the best Australian wine that the world has ever seen.

When all of these elements are combined, the end result is an absolutely fantastic experience that people can enjoy by playing good super satellite poker.