Tunica Poker Games

Tunica Poker games represent the largest concentration of Poker gaming in the South.

Tunica County, Mississippi is one of the country's largest gaming centers, right behind Las Vegas and Atlantic City. You'll find Tunica Count just south of Memphis, Tennessee. In fact, Harrah's Casino, once the Grand Casino Tunica, is the largest gambling resort anywhere in the country outside of Vegas or Atlantic City. Tunica is an easy drive from lots of Southern cities, so gamers in the South can get to Tunica's poker scene without booking a flight.

There are nine casinos in Tunica - Bally's, Fitz, Gold Strike, Harrah's, Hollywood, Horseshoe, Resorts, Sam's Town, and Roadhouse. Of these nine, only Horseshoe, Bally's, Fitz, Gold Strike, Harrah's,Hollywood, and Sam's Town have legitimate poker rooms. The other casinos appear to attract pit game or slot players, many of them boasting about recent slot renovations.

The Horseshoe Casino and Resort has Tunica's most famous room. Founded by Jack Binion soon after the legalization of gaming in Mississippi, this is the poker room that Hosts the World Poker Open. The WPO has been at the Horseshoe since The Flood, and the room draws poker players from all over the world. The room has been expanded twice in the last six years -- there's lots of room for poker. Expect a lot of traffic at their weekly tournaments which offer some of the biggest cash takes in the region.

Another big poker draw in Tunica is at the Gold Strike, where there are daily tournaments featuring buy-ins from $25 to $500. The Gold Strike poker room is non-smoking and has sixteen tables -- the room won the 2007 "Best Live Poker" award in the region.

Harrah's Casino is huge and has been renovated in the past five years to include the largest poker room in the area. Harrah's poker room has weekly tournaments in Hold'em and Omaha, and there's always plenty of cash action running in the giant poker room.

Hollywood Casino and Sam's Town's poker rooms are the "newest" rooms in Tunica County, but the games there are more for amateurs and low limit players. There's only six tables at each poker room, making the rooms seem really small. Look for lots of cash games at both rooms.

There's plenty of poker to be played in Tunica,Mississippi. Be sure to stay in the area to take advantage of local restaurant and bar promotions for Tunica poker players and gamblers.

How Are Online Poker Tournaments Rigged?

Arguments, discussions, and much controversy have existed for several years on whether online Poker is rigged or not. Both sides claim the other side is wrong, and ultimately neither side has prevailed in presenting a credible enough or concrete proof that their theories are correct.

Is Online Poker Rigged?

However, there are simple ways to answer the question, are online poker tournaments rigged? That answer lies in the detectable patterns used by the poker sites, of which are known as poker algorithms. Several scandals broke in recent years where cheating and collusion was discovered by players that ultimately led the poker sites to add in special poker algorithms to prevent cheating and collusion by players.

Some of these algorithms will significantly alter the percentages, the winners, and the outcome of play in online poker. The reason is simple, internet poker is a computer-generated series of codes that is not truly random by any definition of the word. What that means is that by adding in code to the software, the poker sites are essentially changing the possible outcome and make the game less random and more predictable to a player that is AWARE of the patterns occurring in the program.

For example, have you ever noticed in the late stages of a tournament, a shortstack has not played a hand for maybe 20 or 30 hands, then all of a sudden he moves all in and gets called by one or more players. The shortstack will showdown a marginal hand while the callers will have a dominating hand and inevitably the shortstack doubles or triples up by winning with his marginal hand.

Secret Poker Algorithms

This is an obvious pattern often referred to as an equitable percentage algorithm used by the poker sites. The purpose of this algorithm is simply to ensure that a single player does not hold an unfair advantage over other players by constantly winning pots. Furthermore, it also prevents a player from dominating a table or tournament by limiting the number of wins a player may have.

In essence, if the poker site is using additional poker algorithms, regardless of their reasons, they effectively are promoting online poker tournaments that are rigged, because of their interference in the natural and statistical outcome of hands.

Several patterns and poker algorithms are used by the online poker sites to detect cheating and collusion as well as control other aspects of the game. It is important that if you wish to become successful in playing online poker and winning that you learn what these algorithms are and how you can simply defeat them. Otherwise, you will continue to fight a losing battle against a computer-generated program that is purposely designed to minimize your wins.

How to Keep Your Facebook Poker Chips Safe From Hackers and Phishers

With the rise in popularity of Facebook texas holdem Poker games for social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Tagged and Hi5 also came the unfortunate accompanying rise in reports of players accounts being broken into and having their Facebook Poker chips stolen. The forums on these social networking gaming sites are littered with hundreds if not thousands of such reports. As Facebook Poker chips become more and more valuable these reports are set to continue to rise. There are, however, some steps you can take to avoid letting these hackers and phishers get their hands on your hard earned poker chips.

Never give out your password: This seems like common sense but you would be surprised at how many people lose their chips because they gave their passwords to a friend or family member or girlfriend/boyfriend. Are you 100% sure that you wont ever get in a fight with this person in the future and to get back at you they won't log into your account and empty every last Facebook poker chip? Or maybe one day they ask you for some free chips as a loan and you turn them down, and so they decide they're going to log into your account and help themselves. Just make it a habit to never give out your login information to anyone, his way if something ever does happen and your account is hacked into, you won't have to suspect any of your friends or family of doing it and cause any hard feelings.

Don't fall for the phishing scams: A popular method of stealing player's Facebook poker chips recently has been to send them a seemingly official message to their Facebook inboxes pretending to be from Facebook security or an "official" Facebook representative, or even from the game creaters themselves. These fake messages usually accuse the player of violating the games terms of service or Facebook's own rules and then instruct them to click on a link and login in order to save their accounts from deletion or suspension. In reality these links open websites designed to look like Facebook or MySpace's login pages in order to trick users into entering their emails and passwords. Then while the fake website redirects or distracts them, hackers are busy logging into their texas holdem poker account and transferring out their Facebook poker chips into other accounts.

Official representatives for these games or from social networking sites will never contact you via your inbox. These messages should be deleted and reported to the appropriate people so that they can be shut down immediately.

You didn't win any lottery or special promotion for chips: Another method that hackers use to steal your poker chips is the old "lottery" method where they claim you have won a million Facebook poker chips or some other special gift and to claim it you must log in to the link they provide. Just like the phishing scam previously mentioned, these sites only steal your passwords and login information. There is no lottery.

Don't download Facebook poker cheat programs or trainers: Many of these so called cheats for Facebook poker are nothing more than trojan horse virus programs with keyloggers embedded into them. The hackers display them on sites like YouTube or advertise them on Facebook's forums with the promise of doubling or tripling your Facebook poker chips in a matter of minutes. But as soon as you download and run the program and log into your account, a copy of your password is already being sent to the hacker waiting patiently across the internet to use it and break into your account.

Keeping your Facebook chips safe is mostly a matter of common sense, but phishers and hackers are constantly changing their method and coming up with new tricks to confuse and fool players. It's important to educate yourself about security so you know what kind of things to expect and how to avoid them. Above all, never log into any website that isn't the main URL, for example "http://www.Facebook.com" and if something sounds too good to be true or seems fishy, then it probably is.

Psychology of Poker - Book Review

I just finished reading the "Psychology of Poker," by Alan Schoonmaker. As an avid online and offline Poker player and poker blogger, I read as many books as I can on the topic of poker. In my opinion, this is one of the greatest books ever written. This book really focuses on the psychology of the game and why players play like they do and why you play like you do. This book does not cover or basic skills.

The greatest thing about this book is that it skips the basics and focuses on the finer more subtle parts of the game. In my opinion, these are the things you need to know to be a champion. The book is full of original content and is written in a clear and concise fashion. The book is easy to understand and even though the author dives into some complex issues. I also like the chapter that discusses how to make strategic adjustments based on the types of players you are playing. The author has a Ph.D. in psychology and this is great because he is not like every other poker strategy expert, he gives you advice based on quantifiable scientific evidence.

The one drawback of the book is that it basically ignores the topic of online play. As online poker continues to become more popular, I am afraid this book will become less relevant.

In closing, I highly recommend this book for the intermediate to expert level poker player. What you learn will definitely improve your game.

How To Deposit Money for Online Poker

When the United States government put a ban on playing for real money with online gambling sites it hurt a lot of people who used the services to make money. One of the reasons people think that this ban on online Poker betting was put into place was that the gambling industry was making so much money and the United States government wasn't able to tax it and get a cut. Whatever the reasons, those looking to still bet online for real money can sleep easy knowing that there are ways to still do this.

The most popular and convenient way to deposit money onto these online gambling websites is to buy a prepaid Visa card from your local convenience store. These cards come in the increments of $25, $50, $100 and you can pay in cash to buy the cards and have them activated. What these cards allow you to do is that they are looked at as a credit card but are not reloadable.

The convenience of this is that you go to your local convenience store and purchase the amount you want to deposit. The cashier will activate your card at the register and you will then go home and put it to use. Once you deposit all the money on the card it is worthless and you can basically throw it out since there is no money left on it.

The ease of use with these prepaid Visa cards makes this an easy method for deposit real money into your Poker account. Because these prepaid cards are run by Visa they are accepted anywhere Visa is accepted. It would be a bad business move to ban all credit cards around the world so because they will not be doing that anytime soon, I cannot see this deposit method stopping from working.

Stud Poker Rules

Stud Poker is one of the most popular forms of Poker that is played both online and at land-based Casinos. There are several different versions of stud poker, but the most played versions are 7-card stud hi-lo, 7-card stud and 5-card stud. In order to gain a solid understanding of these games you need to first learn the basic stud poker rules. The rules between these versions of poker do not differ too much, but there are enough differences to warrant a few explanations. If you already know one version of poker then this knowledge will help you grasp many other versions of the game.

7-Card Stud Hi-Lo

This game is almost identical to 7-card stud except for a few technicalities. The betting sequence is all the same. However, the highest card on the table starts off the betting round. The biggest difference between the games is that in hi-lo the players with the both the highest and lowest hands will split the pot. This only happens if there is a low enough hand on the table. In order for a hand to qualify for the "lo" it must contain 5 cards of Eight or lower, with no pairs. If there is no hand of this nature then the player with the highest hand wins the whole pot. Having a general grip on stud poker rules will help you develop quickly with this version.

7-Card Stud

This game starts with each player receiving three cards - two face down and one face up. Players can either call, raise or fold. The betting starts from the person who has the lowest card face up. The next round starts when all the bets are over. Three cards are then dealt to each player face up and another betting round ensues. The betting now starts with the person who has the best face up hand. This is followed by another round of betting after the last (seventh) card is dealt face down.
The last play of the game is called the showdown. This is where all the players who are left in the game will show their cards. There will be players who have folded. The player with the best hand is the player who wins the pot. A good tip is to remember the folded cards along the way so that you can eliminate certain cards that you may have wanted.

5-Card Stud Poker

The game starts off with a small bet that is known as an ante. Players are then dealt two cards each - one face up and one face down. The face down card is known as a pocket card. As in 7-card stud poker, the player with the lowest face up card on the table has to start the betting. The betting round then continues with the player to the immediate left of the player who has placed the first bet. Players can choose between folding, calling and betting.

The next round of betting continues with players each being dealt another card face up. This pattern carries until each poker player at the table (those who have not folded their hands) has 4 cards - one face down and 4 face up.

Players should always watch which cards are on the table and which cards have been folded because this will help eliminate the cards that they need. This takes some concentration, but is well worth the effort. The player who wins the pot is the player with the best 5-card poker hand.

One of the great things about poker is that it has clearly evolved over time. One of the best examples of this is the stud poker rules as they have clearly adapted as people have sought to add variation and differnt elements to card games.

Guide to Successful Poker Playing For Beginners

When starting out playing Poker, often players will have a hard time adjusting to the game and find themselves out of pocket on more than one occasion. However, if you follow the three simple tips presented here, you'll be on the road to success in no time. These three core Poker skills are; mathematics, discipline, and psychology. Mastering these skills will mean you'll be able to read game situations and be able to capitalise on those moments that would have otherwise passed you by.

The first skill that needs to be mastered is basic mathematics. A solid Poker player will know the probabilities within the game, and of specific card matchups. Along with all other card games Poker is based largely on statistics and probabilities. Knowing when to fold and call the bet becomes second nature when understanding the probability behind hitting the flush or river card. Poor poker players disregard this aspect of the game, and thus suffer the consequences. Don't be one of these players and make sure you understand the probabilities and thrive under it.

The second skill you should be focusing on is discipline. Poker is a game of great patience and for that patience you need strong discipline. Don't play loose and take unnecessary gambles when the situation does not warrant it. A disciplined player understands when to play or when to fold their cards; they build an understanding of the game and only play when they have the advantage.

Last but most definitely not least is psychology. Reading your opponents and predicting their next moves is arguably the most important of all skills. Understanding what opposing players have in their hands, what they think you have, and what they think you think they have. Accurately predicting these three can give you a massive advantage over the other players. This is even more important in no-limit games to limit games, as bluffing is more prevalent.

Consider these three key poker skills and build upon them to really impress your friends at the next poker night. Start bossing games and building sizeable pot leads, which will in turn give you more experience to improve upon. Hopefully this article has provided you with the necessary information to further your game and most of all enjoy yourself!