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Even though you are not able to see the players you are up against in real live when playing online there are still a couple of tells that you will be able to use to your advantage when you play online poker.

1. Fast Bet
2. Fast Check
3. Betting Patterns
4. Wait and Bet
5. Telling Their Hand

Fast Bet
You can almost always be certain that when someone is betting fast they are trying to scare you away from the pot. When you want someone to fold you should bet fast since it looks scary to your opponents as it makes you look strong.

Fast Check
This is a really good tell in online poker. When a player has a weak hand he will sometimes click the check/fold button which means that he will instantly check if it is checked to him. When you see a player instantly checking like this you can be fairly sure that he is not sitting on a huge hand. If you bet here you will be able to take down the pot 9 times out of 10. But be aware that some players use this tactic to fool you and make them look weak when in fact they are holding the nuts. So you need to get the feel for the player before you try to make a move against him.

Betting Patterns
It is very important to pay attention to the betting patterns of your opponents at the table as this will give you a good idea of what kind of hand they have. Some players are raising their aces a lot harder pre flop than is they would be holding a hand like AK as they don’t want too many callers. It is always a good idea to notice these betting patterns and to take notes of how the different players are betting with different hands.

Wait and Bet
When you see a player at the table who is waiting longer than normal to make his bet is safe to make the assumption that he is holding a decent hand and trying to decide how much to bet into the pot. If you pay attention to the time each of the players at the table take to bet in their hands you will get a good idea of when they are holding a good hand and when they are not. If the player takes a lot of time to think and then just checks then he is most likely just out to scary you and make you think that he holds a big hand.

Telling Their Hand
A lot of players will tell you their hand in the chat after the hand is over and they have mucked a winning or losing hand. When they do this they are lying 99% of the time. Just think about it, why would they first muck their hand and then 5 seconds later tell you their hand. The only reason they are doing this is to play with your head and make you think that you made the wrong decision, don’t let them get to you and don’t fall for this trick.

Adjusting to a loose game is a whole lot easier than adjusting to a tight game. Since most of the loose players at the table are poor and losing players all you need to do when finding yourself at a really loose table is to sit and wait for premium hands and try to trap your aggressive opponent.

Another good thing to keep in mind is to only play when you are in position against the aggressive players to make your edge even bigger since you don’t have to worry about him three betting you.

When playing against a loose and aggressive player you can afford to be the passive player and just wait for the big hands to bring down some big pots, it is important that you narrow down the hand selection a lot when you are up against this type of players.

The best way to try this strategy out is to get a no deposit poker bonus at Full Tilt Poker and try it out for free without risking any of your own money.

In order to become a successful poker player you need to be a master of the ability to change gears. In this article we will go over some of the strategies that can be applied to a tight game.

Many poker players make the assumption that they will not be able to make any money playing at tight tables, they are wrong. A good poker player will be able to adjust his game to make him a winning player even at tight tables.

A tight player will always be making the mistake of folding way to many hands, this is something that you can take advantage of and take down a lot of small pots. As they will be folding a lot more than a loose player you can raise with a wider range of hands then normal and in this way you will be taking down a lot of small pots. Eventually the tight player will pick up a good hand and call your bets but by then you will be playing with the money that you have been winning in all the small pots and not having to risk the money you initially brought to the table.

Try out this strategy without risking any of your own money by getting a no deposit poker bonus to your favourite online poker room.

Right now you have the chance to win big at Sun Poker with their special Sun Poker coupon code that was just released to the public. When entering the coupon code  PBSBONUS during the signup process you will get a free $500 bonus that is instantly credited to your pending bonus account. On top of this bonus you will also get access to all of the cool freerolls that are offered to new players at Sun Poker.

You will also be able to play a lot of qualifiers for this years World Series of Poker at Sun Poker. These tournaments are starting at as little as $1 so if you are really good you might be able to pull a Chris Moneymaker and win the WSOP Main event after winning your spot in a satellite. You never know until you try!

“theASHMAN103” is the winner of the $25K Heads Up Championship that is held once a year at Full Tilt Poker. In the final he managed the beat David Benefield and cashed in the first prize of $551.250. There were a total of 63 players participating in this tournament from the start and a lot of these were really big names in the poker world.

The results of the 2009 $25K Heads-up Championship at Full Tilt Poker

1. theASHMAN103 $551.250
2. David Benefield $315.000
3. WinnerFish $165.375
4. Yogiblair $165.375
5. Past $94.500
6. Kadabra $94.500
7. IvanLendL $94.500
8. Vaga_Lion $94.500

The 3D online poker room PKR.com have just announced in a press release that they have made a deal with Bluff Media which entitles them to broadcast a live stream of the 2009 WSOP on their website. This deal was made with Bluff Media who has an exclusive deal with Harrah’s Entertainment.

At the same time a new 3D online casino has opened up their doors to the public after getting through their beta testing stage. At the Buzzluck Casino it is not only about gambling, it is also about entertaining the players.

Phil Hellmuth’s own book company are now releasing a book called “Deal Me In” which tells the story about 20 poker stars and their road to sucess. Amongst the people participating by telling their life story we find players like; Daniel Negreanu, Phil Ivey and Howard Lederer.

This book tells the story of how Phil Ivey went from a telphone marketer to becoming one of the best poker players in the world. Today he has generated over $10 Million in profit from poker tournaments alone, which means that you can surely add a couple of Millions to that figure if you include cash game winnings.

The book doesnt really follow any storyline and is just bringing up stories about 20 poker professionals and their road to fame and fortune.

The players participating in this book are; Peter Estgate, Allen Cunningham, Phil Ivey, Phil Hellmuth, Scotty Nguyen, Doyle Brunson, Johnny Chan, Carlos Mortensen, Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, Tom Dwan, Howard Lederer, Daniel Negreanu, Annie Duke, Dave “Devilfish” Ulliot, Chad Brown, Annette Obrestad, Erik Seidel, Layne Flack, Jennifer Harman and Chau Giang.

After a really long heads-up marathon match Vanessa Rousso managed to win over the second place finisher Randy Dorfman in the EPT High Roller Championship. Vanessa, who is a Team PokerStars member and a GoDaddy Girl is sure take down some nice tournaments this year.

In the final hand Vanessa made a straight on the turn holding 67 and when the river gave Dorfan two pair the all-in situation was hard to avoid and Vanessa Rousso took down the tournament and the €570 000 first price.

When the tournament was down to three players there was a deal made on the final table which left the second and third place finisher with €420 000 and the winner would get an additional €150K.

Here are the final results from the 2009 EPT High Roller Championship:

1. Vanessa Rousso - €570.000
2. Randy Dorfman - €420.000
3. Tony G - €420.000
4. Florian Langmann - €188.000
5. David Eldar – 138.000
6. William Thorson - €99.000
7. Andrew Feldman - €79.000
8. David Steicke - €60.000

Once banned from PokerStars, Justin “ZeeJustin” Bonomo, is apparently back at the popular online poker room. A few years back, Bonomo was first exposed at PartyPoker for registering as many as six online poker accounts and registering all six names in the same tournament. Shortly after, PokerStars revealed that he had done the same on their site. Consequently, both big-name online poker sites restricted him from playing at their online poker rooms.

But Bonomo’s dishonesty was not all that it was cracked up to be. He’s actually a great poker player, both online and off, and has since worked hard to smooth over his bad reputation and show the poker community that he’s not such a bad guy. In the past three years, Bonomo has steered clear of any misconduct and focused on overcoming the stigma that was attached to his name and re-establishing his career in professional poker.

After his exclusion at PartyPoker and PokerStars, Bonomo turned his attention to live tournaments, many of which he has gone on to win or cash big. In 2007 he placed 4th at the WSOP $2,000 No-Limit event and 2nd in the $3,000 HORSE WSOP Circuit. He went on to place 2nd in the 2008 WSOP $5,000 Mixed Hold ‘em event and has been around the block, placing at other big events such as the WPT Doyle Brunson North American Poker Classic in 2007. Bodog Poker saw the potential in Bonomo as a poker player and eventually signed him as a Team Bodog Pro.

What makes it clear that Bonomo is that he started his poker career at the mere age of 16 after emerging from the strategy game, “Magic: The Gathering,” like many other professional poker players (e.g. David Williams). He placed 4th in the 2005 French Open at only 19 years of age and had made hundreds of thousands of dollars by the time he reached 21. By 23, he was poker millionaire. The irresponsible kid that once tried to cheat the online poker system has grown into a diligent and respectable professional, so much so that PokerStars saw fit to lift the ban on his online poker presence.

Even though the current recession is affecting the land based casinos it seems that the online poker rooms are not being affected, at least not in a negative way. According to the numbers at PokerScout.com online poker is continuing to grow by about 30% per year. Not all of the poker rooms on the internet are doing great though, there are a couple of big rooms that are starting to see their numbers drop but this is most probably not due to the recession.

The biggest poker room is still PokerStars who recently celebrated getting their 20th Millionth customer and they are growing more and more for each day. They are now also allowed to accept players coming from Italy on their Italian site PokerStars.it.

FullTilt Poker is the second largest poker room and they are also growing on a daily basis just like the Cake Poker Network and the Entraction Network. Entraction has grown a lot lately and this is mainly due to the fact that the poker rooms that were banned from the iPoker Network, NoIQPoker.com and CarlosPoker.com moved over to Entraction. Cake Poker is growing a lot since they have taken over all the poker rooms from the old Gold Chip Network that is no longer around. But it has to be said that Cake Poker are probably also growing due to the fact that they are offering some really innovative promotions with their Gold Card system at Cake Poker and Gold Chip Rewards.

On the losing side of things we find poker rooms like Bodog Poker, Everest Poker and Betfair Poker. Bodog Poker is the biggest loser on the list and this is probably due to the fact that they have been having a lot of problems paying their US customers as they have had their bank accounts in the US confiscated several times. It also didn’t help that they lost a law suit involving their domain name and had to change it from Bodog.com to NewBodog.com and finally to BodogLife.com which is their current name.

If you take a look at the list of winners from the last week FullTilt Poker is the biggest winner when it comes to player traffic. Last Sunday they broke their own record when they hit 18.565 players sitting at the cash game tables at the same time. Even the IPN Network (Boss Media) had a good week and managed to break their old record when they had 4509 players playing at the same time at the cash game tables.

It will be interesting to see if the recession will ever get to online poker or if it will keep on going strong. It has been a couple of years now that people have been saying that the interest for online poker will die out but it has yet to happen.