In the game of online poker, it is the common practice among players to over value their cards. Since there are no live players in front of them, making the call and re-raising the bet seems a viable strategy. While this may be a common strategy in online poker games, it is rarely seen in poker games played at land-based casinos. There, such strategies are not considered good and therefore, not followed by players.

The use of aces holds importance in the game of poker and therefore, here are some rules or strategies, which one should follow while playing online poker:

• A player holding aces becomes aggressive in an online game of poker. This may be because of the lack of physically present opponents, to read their mind. However, playing with the ace jack or ace rag hand is common in online poker but this is a risky and dangerous strategy and one should use it only if he is fully aware of what he is doing and the likely effect that it might have on the game and his chips.
• Pairing the ace can be troublesome if any of the opponents has a better ace. Therefore, this should be done only if you feel that there are no other options and this could be the winning hand.
• If the pairing of the aces might bring trouble it is better to show the flop even though for cheap because if the flop is not improving, you may be able to release the hand fast.
• A better way to deal with such conditions is to save the aces and your chips for a better hand some time later.

While the online format of the game of poker might be slightly different from that of live or offline poker, the basic rules of the game remain the same. Therefore, a player must use his discretion and judgment in an online game just as in an offline game. The main aim of the game is similar in both the cases; therefore, there is no need to veer from the basic rules of the game. To win an online game, a player needs to optimally judge each hand and try to win it each time. Knowing the odds and the pitfalls and being able to manage them efficiently is the key to winning poker, whether offline or online. One should remember these strategies to always be in the game and win lots of money each time.

Nevertheless, the free online poker tournaments have provided the women with an opportunity to practise without gamble and them being the sensible sex, they have taken this opportunity to practise without taking any risk. Some of the top female poker players are:

Jennifer Harman
While she is a great beauty to reckon with, she is as fierce as a tigress at the poker table. With 2 World Series Poker bracelets and over one million dollars in poker tournament earnings, she is considered one of the best poker players in the world, gender notwithstanding.

Jennifer Tilly
She is born to a Chinese father and an Irish- Canadian mother. Jennifer is an actress who has been blessed with both exotic beauty and the ability to play top notch poker. She became the first non-poker celebrity to win a World Series of Poker bracelet.

Jennifer Leigh
Nicknamed, “Jennicide”, she is a computer geek, all-rounder, and a top poker player. She finished 5th in the Poker Royale: Battle of Ages series and finished in the money in the Caribbean Poker Adventure in the 2006 World Poker Tour.

Cyndy Violette
As talented as she is beautiful, this poker enigma has a World Series of Poker bracelet in the 7 card Stud High-Low Split Event. Furthermore, she has amassed a career earnings of over $650,000 and has an impressive twenty one money finishes.

Erin Ness
She works as a photo assistant for Maxim Magazine when she is not playing poker. She graduated from Georgetown University and she is the 3rd highest placed women in the 2004 World Series of Poker event.

Clonie Gowen
She won the title Miss Teen Oklahoma at the age of fifteen and now, she is a savvy poker veteran mother of two kids who has a career earning of over $300,000.

Kristy Gazes
She has a talent for all types of card games and was formerly married to a professional poker player Bill Gazes. She has been a poker player since 1986 and her biggest payout in a single play is $250,000.

Evelyn Ng
She is Canadian and has a career earning exceeding $375,000. If you watch Criss Angel’s Mindfreak, you would have spotted her in one of the episodes as a professional poker player.

Isabelle Mercier
Nicknamed “No Mercy”, she is well known for her model-like beauty and hard-nosed poker playing style. Her career earning amounts to more than $500,000 and she is a Team PokerStars member.

Vanessa Rousso
Up to date, her career earnings exceed $360,000 and she is a member of Team PokerStars.

Online, the women have made a real impact while playing poker by winning big time as can be witnessed above. Meanwhile, they need to pull up their socks when it comes to live tournaments as these tournaments are still relatively churning out a majority of male winners.

But there’s more because the Aussie Millions 2011 is fast approaching. This is arguably the Southern Hemisphere’s most anticipated live poker event. Aussie poker celebrities will converge on the upcoming event with gusto. The 2010 Aussie Millions champ was none other than Sydney’s own Tyron Krost creaming the spoils of a hard-fought contest. In the 2010 event, the prize pool skyrocketed to a whopping AU$7 million overall and the winner walked away with AU$2 million. The setting for this glamorous affair is the prestigious Crown Plaza of Melbourne. If you’re looking for exhilarating Aussie freeroll poker tournaments then there are myriad options available at Ozpoker.net.au where you can find any number of options through Australia’s top-rated poker sites. These include Pacific Poker, Bwin, PartyPoker and 888Poker among others.

Australian poker heroes enjoy playing Texas Hold’em Poker replete with all the exciting gaming action and thrills that accompany these action-packed betting rounds. Australian poker tournaments for money are bountiful and poker stars will be privy to guaranteed overlay tournaments, poker news cup freerolls, the PokerStars Sunday Million, Private Tournaments on a regular basis as well as all the big time World Series of Poker (WSOP) gaming action. Adding flavour to the mix are cash freerolls that poker pundits can partake in. The Australian Poker League ranks as the largest online poker league featuring the greatest number of competitors from around Oz in an entertaining star-studded poker gathering.

Since the pot odds are expressed as proportion, you should express these percentages as a ratio in order to be able to make a comparison. Since the maximum percentage is 100, your equity, expressed as a proportion, is equal to 64 – 36 (i. e. 64 times you are not going to get a better hand, and 36 times you are going yo get it).

If you make the right part of the proportion to be equal to 1, your equity will be 1,7 – 1. In other words, for each case you manage to complete your flush draw, there are 1,7 cases when you won’t complete them. In case you don’t want to be so precise when you calculate the pot odds (the maths at the table should not necessarily be very precise), you can just notice that 64 is greater than 36 a little less that twice. As a matter of fact, it does not much difference whether the proportion is 1,6; 1,7; 1,9 to 1 – you can even say it 2 to 1 and that will be enough to decide to call or not to call.

Two end straight draw – 8 outs; one end straight draw – 4 outs; a flush draw – 9 outs; two end straight draw and flush draw – 15 outs; two cards to full house – 6 outs on the flop, 9 on the turn (add one more out which will help you form a four of a kind); one card to a set on the flop – 2 outs.

Two end straight draw – you have 4 cards in sequence. For example: your pocket cards are 8 of spades and 9 of hearts; the flop is 6 of hearts, 7 of clubs and 2 of spades.

One end straight draw – you need only one card to form a straight. It may be an inside straight draw (when you miss a card in the middle). For example: your pocket cards are 8 of spades and 9 of hearts; the flop is 6 of hearts, 10 of clubs and 2 of spades.

Flush draw – you have 4 cards of one suit. For example: your hand is 8 of spades and 9 of spades; the flop is 6 of spades, king of clubs and 2 of spades.

Two end straight draw and flush draw – you have two ended straight draw as well as flush draw. For example: your pocket cards are 8 of spades and 9 of spades; the flop is 6 of spades, 7 of spades and 2 of hearts.

Two cards to a full house – you have a three of a kind i.e. 3 cards of the same rank. For example: your pocket cards are 8 of spades and 8 of hearts; the flop is 8 of diamonds, 7 of spades and 2 of hearts.
One card to a set – you have a pocket pair. For example, your pocket cards are 8 of spades and 8 of hearts; the flop is 6 of spades, 7 of spades and 2 of hearts.

The more time you spend exercising how to calculate the outs, the easier this procedure will become. Any card that will help you to form a high combination is considered an out. But be careful and do not count those outs which may help your opponent to form a better combination. For example, if you have a two ended straight draw and the flop revealed two cards of one suit, you have only 6 outs since the two cards that will complete your straight will complete the flush of your opponent with a flush draw. Once calculating the outs is not a problem for you any more, you are ready to move to the next stage.

This is an exceptional accuracy with regard to decisions taken at the end of each hand. These professional skills include the probabilities and pot odds, the order of betting, bluffing, and using the advantages of the position. The years of practice necessary to improve your play in the middle and the end, fully justify the results, because even small improvement of skills of a player can have a tremendous effect on player’s winnings.

There are 169 different starting hands in Texas Hold’em (if you don’t take into account the suits). From all these possible hands only five belong to the “highest category”. They are as follows:

1. A, A
2. K, K
3. Q, Q
4. A, K (suited)
5. J, J

No matter what is your position at the table, you should always play these hands if no one made a raise before you. In case somebody did, especially if there was a call or re – raise, you should play only the aces or the kings, because to play the rest of the hands will probably be a huge mistake. When you think about the starting hands in Texas Hold’em now, you realize that you should fold about 80 % of the hands and play only about 20 % of them. The stronger your starting hands, the smaller the number of difficult decisions will be. You don’t need to make your life more complicated than it is. Naturally, the hands that you play, and the way you do it will vary depending on thousands of different circumstances.

Generally, there are very few hands, which are considered suitable to enter the game. If no player has opened the game (no one before you did not raise or limp), you can play almost any hand with some potential value. But once someone made a raise, you should narrow the range of playable hands to those that can give you some nuts and won’t get under domination.

For example, you should never play K, Q, in response to a raise since A, A; K, K; Q, Q; A, K; and A, Q will dominate your hand. If you do not have very good reason to do the opposite, as a beginner in poker, you should play only the best 10 to 15 hands. The more you play and improve your skills, the more hands you can start playing. But in the beginning, do not complicate the situation and always enter the flop with one of the best possible hands.

The top 15 starting hands in Texas Hold’em are as follows:

1. A, A;
2. K, K;
3. Q, Q;
4. A, K (suited);
5. J, J;
6. 10, 10;
7. A, Q (suited);
8. A, J (suited);
9. A, K (not suited);
10. K, Q (suited);
11. A, 10 (suited);
12. K, J (suited);
13. A, Q (not suited);
14. 9, 9;
15. J, Q (suited).

Like it or not, but Texas Hold’em is a game of chance. Each of your actions, each of the hands you play and each of the bets you are to answer are connected with the odds, probabilities and statistics.

If you are afraid of maths or you don’t like it, don’t worry. You don’t need to be an expert in maths in order to become an expert poker player, not at all. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of wonderful players who have no any idea even what a common denominator is. The strategy of Texas Hold’em is quite complex but basically the game is very simple. This simplicity is expressed in simple equations and very easy mathematical operations. Many of the things below you don’t need to understand fully, you just need to know enough to feel confident during the game.

There are different types of poker and different types of winning combinations (depending on the variant of poker). For instance, in high – low games, the highest combination wins the half of the pot and the lowest combination wins the other half i.e. the pot is split into two. Regardless of differences, all variants of poker games begin with forced bets. There are two forced bets in 7 card stud – they are called ante and bring – in. Omaha and Texas Hold’em have Small Blind and Big Blind bets. In any poker variant players place their bets using some of the allowed moves in the game. So, players are allowed to:

1. Check – if during the betting round there are no bets placed, a player can check. Then the next player to the left is to act. Check does not mean that you refuse to fight for the pot, it means only that you refuse to place a bet in this round. In case all the players at the table check, the round is considered complete.
2. Bet – if during the betting round there are no bets placed, a player can bet. If a player places a bet, the one to the left as well as the next players have the right to fold, call or raise.
3. Fold – this means that you refuse to continue fighting for the pot. A player who folds cannot and should not place bets during this game.
4. Call – if during the betting round there is a bet placed, players can accept it by call which is equal to the bet placed by the last player.
5. Raise – if during the betting round there is a bet placed, players can place bigger bets i.e. raise. In order to do that they should place bets higher than the bet of the last player. All next players have the right to call or re-raise in order to continue fighting for the pot.

Each round the betting continues until it reaches the player to the right of the last player who placed a bet or raise. When his turn comes, either the next betting round starts, or the hand is completed.
After a bet or a raise during the last round, the players are to reveal their cards. This is called a showdown and means that it is time to see who is going to win the pot. Then all players reveal their combinations card by card. There are cases when there is no showdown. It happens when a player places a bet or raise but no one of the other players plays call in order to answer the bet i.e. all other players fold. In this case the player who placed the bet or raise wins the entire pot.