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Archive for March, 2009

Building A Bankroll from $10: Part 2

March 31, 2009 By: tuckonline Category: Bankroll Building & MGMT

If you missed Building A Bankroll from $10 on PokerStars (Part 1), I will catch you up real quick, or you can Click Here to read it. In part one of this series, I discussed the easiest way to build a bankroll from $10 on PokerStars. The reason I started with $10 is because $10 is the minimum deposit allowed on PokerStars, and I have found that the minimum is usually the maximum people tend to deposit. So, at the end of my long spiel about grinding the $1.10 45 man sngs, and how easy they were to beat, I said that I would try to build a bankroll off of $10 playing only those sit and goes. So I tried…and to be honest, I had a lot of fun doing it.

Now, playing micro sit and goes for hours at a time can be pretty extreme at times, so I just took it easy and grinded four at a time, and once I finished all four, I took a break for a little while. Luckily for me, I was both running fairly well and getting decent cards. After three rounds of this, which was 12 sngs, I was up to around $40 in my account. I had 2 first place finishes, and a couple 4-6th finishes. This is where  I stopped for the day, and this is where I sit as of now. So now that we’ve established that following my ever so simple (and often ridiculus sounding) guide to crushing the $1.10 45 man sngs actually works, where do we go from here? Do we continue crushing these sngs with a $40 bankroll, or do we jump up?

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Now I absolutely believe in following good bankroll management, and I believe that it is the key to success for any serious poker player; but, right now our main focus shouldnt be on whether we lose the initial $10 deposit or not, it should be on building our bankroll as efficiently as possible. So this is what I am going to recommend starting with a $40 bankroll – For your first round of betting, play four $1.10 45 man sngs and now throw in two $1.10 90 man sngs. In total, you should be playing 6 sit and goes, risking a total of $6.60. After this round, evaluate your bankroll and your play. If you made a positive gain to your bank roll, use this guide as your second round of betting – One $3.25 45 man sit and go, and three $1.10 45 man sngs. If you made a negative gain to your bankroll, go back to the original plan of playing four $1.10 45 man sngs. This is a fairy simple concept of jumping up levels when you are winning, and going back down when you are losing.

If you have not begun this challenge of building a bankroll from $10 on PokerStars, join us by clicking here and start your poker career today! just download the PokeStars software, make your first deposit (it can be more that $10!), and start hitting the tables while using strategies and tactics discussed here! I guarantee you will be a winning player in no time. Also, keep watch on this series of Building a Bankroll from $10 on PokerStars, and find out how far we can actually take it!

Good luck and see you at the tables!

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GrinderSchool.com Review Coming Shortly!

March 31, 2009 By: tuckonline Category: Announcements

I have been in contact with GrinderSchool.com and they have offered us a three month membership in order to complete a full review of their site. For those of you who have never heard of Grinder School, they are a poker training site which offers video training and personal coaching to improve your game. I will personally be reviewing the site, and will do as thorough a job as possible. Check back often so you don’t miss this review!

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Building A Bankroll from $10 on PokerStars

March 30, 2009 By: tuckonline Category: Bankroll Building & MGMT

$10 is the minimum deposit on PokerStars, and often times, this is the maximum people tend to deposit at a time. So with that said, I am going to go over a strategy guide which will outline the quickest and most effective way building of a bankroll from just $10.

Playing cash games can be the quickest way to build a bankroll, but, if you’re anything like me, one bad beat and you are liable to tilt your entire life away…including your $10 deposit. So, for this article I am going to stay as far away from cash games as possible. Instead, we are going to focus on PokerStars most profitable games (in my opinion), $1.10 45 man turbo sit and goes. These games are very quick to fill up, and an advanced beginner player should be able to 4 table these with ease. These games are filled with the worst of the worst. No regulars would dare inhabit these waters because they all move up stakes to the $6 45 mans, and occasionaly you can find some at the $3.30 45 mans. The payouts for the $1.10 45 mans are as follows:

  1. $14
  2. $10
  3. $7
  4. $5
  5. $4
  6. $3
  7. $2

So, as you can see, 1st place is 14x your buy in. This is a perfect payout structure for any decent player trying to build a bankroll off of these! And with so many awful players, it is an easy task to get into the Top 3 regularly. With $10 in your bankroll, I recommend popping up four of these bad boys and getting to work. The way you want to play these is simple. In fact, it’s so simple, its bad. You have to play bad in order to win these. Now, I don’t mean you start limping with any two, or raising with QJo. I mean that when you get a “Top 10 Hand”, raise heavy! No matter how transparent you think it may be, do it! In fact, I prefer jamming over anything. I GUARANTEE more often than not, if you push AA pre, (and position doesnt matter!!), you are going to get KQ0, A10, QJ, even 46 calling you! Pushing pre is +EV. So the first (and maybe only rule) is to push pre with “Top 10 Hands”. If you get sucked out on, load up another one and smile.

Now you may be thinking theres gotta be more to it than this…but there isn’t. These are the easiest games to play to build a bankroll from $10. These can get pretty mundane after a few hours of playing, so if you are any good at Omaha H/L, I would load up a few $1.20 45 mans. They are not turbos, so they will take quite a while, but its a good mix to throw in your routine to keep you from killing kittens.

So this is my preferred way to build a bankroll on PokerStars from $10! I just deposited $10 on PokerStars, so I will try to put my money where my mouth is and try not to go broke. I will post my results sometime tomorrow and let you all know how much money I am up (or down). If you would like to try this out too, download PokerStars right now and start playing!

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SharkScope: Can It Improve Your SNG Results?

March 29, 2009 By: tuckonline Category: Sit and Go Strategy

Today I am going to talk to you about SharkScope. I think this is one of the most under rated poker tools at your disposal. Poker databases such as SharkScope can provide you with so much information on your opponents, that after doing a quick search of their name, you will already have gained a huge edge. So what exactly is SharkScope, and is it free?

SharkScope is the largest database of online poker sit and go tournament results. It offers a person 5 free searches per day, but with limited search information. Lets say you are playing a 9 man sng, and you find yourself down to the final three. Doing a quick free search of your opponents on SharkScope will tell you:

How many games your opponent has played on that site, their average profit per game, their average stake per game, their average ROI (Return on Investment), total profits for all games played, and whether they are on tilt, or are on fire! You can also pull up their 8 most recent results of sit and goes played (free search), and if you are a subscriber, you can check their last 50 games played and their results. So why is this information beneficial to you?

Well for one, it can let you know whether your opponent is a profitable player, or whether he just donked his way to the top 3, which is often the case at lower stakes. Knowing this will allow you to adjust your game accordingly. Knowing whether your opponent is on tilt or whether he/she has been super hot is also good to know. A player on tilt is often much more likey to make mistakes, such as shoving too light, and trying to pick up too many blinds, etc.

So I get five free searches a day! Why would I need to get a subscription?

Well, for many poker players, who I call “liesure” players, probably do not need to get a subscription to SharkScope. They do not rely on the money made from poker to support themselves or their family, so investing in products or services outside of the game are probably not going to benefit them too much. But, for dedicated poker players, who rely on poker to fund their lives, a subscription to SharkScope is a must in my opinion. For one, its only $11.99 per month and will allow you up to 250 searches per day! That is enough searches for almost any player who puts in that crazy amount of volume needed. Also, in order to predict and control your opponents moves, you must understand your opponents. SharkScope provides extremely valuable information which will enable you to properly understand, predict, and control your opponents on the virtual felt.

If you wish to try SharkScope on you next few sit and goes, head over to PokerStars, Full Tilt, or PartyPoker, and start crushing your opponents!

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$10k Poker Challenge: Boku87

March 29, 2009 By: tuckonline Category: Poker News

The $10,000 Challenge was a Prop Bet set up by Boku87, who took $30,000 in bets, saying he could turn $100 into $10,000 in 15 days playing only Sit and Goes on PokerStars.com. This event sparked massive threads through forums such as TwoPlusTwo and PocketFives. I remember everybody claiming it was either a scam, or that Boku87 was an “idiot” if he actually thought he could accomplish this. Insults were flying every which way throughout the poker communities, and on March 3rd, 2009,  the challenge was on and the rules were set.

Rules for 100$ into 10000$ in 15 days
1. I have 15 days from starting point meaning 360 hour. Starting point will be 3rd March 1:00 p.m. Central european time. So it will end 18th March 12:59 p.m.
2. I can only play Sngs with a maximum buy in of 16$
3. 180man or 90man do not count
4. If I go broke at any point I lost the bet
5. Profit only, Rakeback and Bonus, player transfers or BoP cashes do not count

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6. I will have to run a webcam when I play. You can see it at www.justin.tv/Boku87
7. I won the bet as soon as I reached a 10000$ bankroll meaning I made 9900$ in Profit. Progress can be tracked with sharkscope
8. Money must be sent before the bet starts to the Pokerstars escrow account P5contest (Isle of men)
9. I get 3-1 odds so for every 100$ from me I will get 300$ from you.
10. I will bet up to 30K to your 90K
11. People who bet against me are not allowed to play at my tables unless it is their regular limits to create a realistic atmosphere for micro stakes playing.(12)  There is one thing left . Though it did not happen i
n 15 month I once disconnected completly for an hour or so and blinded of at every single Sng I played which cost me about 2200$. So I want an extra rule for this bet ONLY for the first 2 days that if I disconnect for longer than 20 minutes for reasons that are not my fault I will get a refund of all tournaments that I blinded off where I had > 1200 chips . I won’t make any profit of this, its just to make sure that I don’t start my first session and disconnect and lose 70% of my roll the first day.

13. If I do not get enough action on this ( minimum 30K$) I will postpone the start till I have enough action.
I will post daily updates in this blog

On the first day alone, Boku had played over 500 sng’s and had made over $300 in profit. Boku eventually went on to accomplish this amazing feat, in just 14 days. You can click here to visit his blog which covered the entire event. Or, if you wish to try your luck at PokerStars Sit and Goes, click HERE!

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Texas Hold’em Poker: Skill or Luck?

March 29, 2009 By: tuckonline Category: Poker News

Cigital, Inc. conducted a recent study which analyzed over 100 million poker hands which were played out on PokerStars.com. The study showed that about 75% of hands which were played never made it to showdown, which is the completion of the last round of betting. The study also showed that 50% of the hands that won at showdown, were not the best hands on the table. In order for them to have won with a worse,  someone had to have folded the better hand. This is what many are claiming to be as proof that poker is a game of skill. The best hand only won 12% of the time, therefore, players more skilled must have won the other 88%  of pots using skills such as betting techniques. Well, this all makes sense to me!

Former three-term Senator from New York and current Poker Players Alliance (PPA) Chairman Alfonse D’Amato commented, “As a poker player, I can tell you that knowing when to hold or fold is not based solely on the cards that are dealt, but a series of decisions based on skill and the actions taken by other players. This study provides the raw data to back up the compelling arguments made by poker players around the world that it’s skill, not pure luck, that determines the outcome of this game.”

Once again, we as poker players know this to be true. As Phil Hellmuth might say, we got our Jackals, Mice, Elephants, and Lions. Once you get to a certain level of thnking and playing, you begin to play your opponents, and your cards begin to have less and less of a impact on your decision making.

The data this study has accumulated has been used in many poker legal battles, and will continue to be used in many more in the future.

Wall Street Journal writer Carl Bialik authored a blog on the study, outlining many of the doubts its opponents had. Among them were “players’ decisions are determined by the cards they draw, which is entirely a matter of luck.” In addition, the relationship between Cigital and PokerStars was questioned and individual players were not tracked to see if they experienced success over time. Finally, “the study doesn’t answer the question of how showdowns and best-hand wins would look in a game of pure skill, or of pure chance.”

I guess the world of poker, especially online poker, is always going to have its critics and skeptics. Maybe one day they will pull their head out of their a$$ and actually try to experience the game for themselves. Maybe they just dont have the mental capacity to think on such a dynamic level, or maybe they lost their luch money in a game of poker to their cousin Rooney when they were 9 years old, and still havnt recovered. Who knows what dark secrets are keeping them from allowing this beautiful game to flourish, as it should be. All we can do is continue to conduct studies such as this, and continue learning as much as we can about this wonderful game. The skeptics will fall, its a matter of time. The skeptics will fall…

Play at PokerStars.com right now! or try Full Tilt Poker!

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Which Site is Better: Full Tilt Poker or PokerStars?

March 29, 2009 By: tuckonline Category: Poker Room Reviews

Poker Stars and Full Tilt Poker are definitely the top Poker Sites for U.S. Players. I have had many people ask me which of these two sites I prefer, and which I would recommend for them. Well, this post will go over each of these two poker sites and the positives and negatives behind each of them. First we will start with Poker Stars.

Poker Stars

Positives:

  • More Traffic – Which means faster filling sit and goes and more cash game selections.
  • User Friendly Software – Poker Stars’ software is more user-friendly and is more aesthetically pleasing.
  • Poker Tournaments – Poker Stars hosts the largest online tournaments in the world, like the Sunday Million. Poker Stars also a vast selection of tournaments from the $3 rebuy with $40k Guaranteed to the$109 rebuy which usually has a hefty prize of $60,000 for first place.
  • $10 Minimun Deposit – You can start with a $10 deposit with a bank card (if it works), which is really great if you are short on cash.
  • Cashout is quick! – Poker Stars’ cashout options are awesome. If you request check, you will usually get it within 3-7 days
  • Customer Service – Poker Stars’ Customer Service is awesome! Enough said.

Negatives:

  • Laggy Servers – Because of all the traffic, the servers sometimes get a little bogged down, especially during special events and Sundays.
  • No Rakeback – Poker Stars does not offer rakeback, but instead it has a VIP Program which is only good if you reach the peak.
  • Lots of Regulars – If you are playing low stakes cash games, you will come across a lot of regualrs. This isn’t always a negative though, especially if you can spot the regualrs and play accordingly.

Full Tilt Poker

Positives:

  • Rakeback Program – Full Tilt offers rakeback which is great, especially when putting in lots of volume. I believe they offer 27% rakeback, which can add hundreds to thousands of dollars to your bankroll every month.
  • Full Tilt Pros – Full Tilt Poker has some great sponsorships through the top pros in poker. This gives you many opportunities to chat with pros and to play with them.
  • Tournament Schedule – Full Tilt schedules their tournaments like every 10 minutes (or something crazy like that) which is nice if you like playing smaller fields.
  • Tournaments – Full Tilt’s tournaments are very soft, which means easy money. These tournaments are much easier than Poker Stars’ tournaments.

Negatives:

  • Minimum Deposit is $50 – This is sometimes a problem for the micro and low stakes players, as $50 may be a lot to risk.
  • Cashing Out – You have to send in ID and also a utility bill or similar by fax or email before you can cashout. Not the worst thing in the world but it is a nuisance.
  • Customer Support – Full Tilt’s Custom Support usually is very slow. Just visit any poker forum and you will hear them constantly complaining about it.

Overall

Poker Stars has better software and larger tournaments and more players, but, the games are typically harder and are filled with more regulars.

Full Tilt has small tournaments going all the time, and they are very easy to cash in. The players on Full Tilt for the most part are worse than on Poker Stars.

Full Tilt also has rakeback which is much better than Poker Stars’ VIP Program.
So here are the facts, now I will leave it up to you to decide which is better!

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Professional Poker Blog: Get Paid To Write!

March 28, 2009 By: tuckonline Category: Announcements

If you are a successful brick and mortar or online poker player, please click on the “Get Paid To Write” box above and send us some of your finest works! Whether it is a strategy guide, simple tips, theories you’ve developed, book reviews, or just about anything that is poker related, we will take it and publish it! You as the author will be given all credit to the writing, and if you own a website, you can place up to two links in the article that refer to your website!

Beginner poker players are also more than welcome to submit any poker related writing and have the chance to get it published.

All published writers will be entered into a freeroll tournament which will be announced every month on the homepage.
Thanks for all your help! Good luck at the tables!


Aaron Tucker

JackTenOffsuit.com

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