Freeroll tournaments are very popular in many online poker sites and they allow new poker players who don’t have their own bankroll yet the chance to play poker for real money. The amount of money that you will win from placing in a freeroll tournament isn’t going to change your life, but it will give you a small starting bankroll which you can use to play real money games.
Generally you will need to have a full day in order to play in a freeroll tournament because they take anywhere from 2-10+ hours to complete. With anywhere from hundreds to thousands of poker players signing up for every freeroll tournament you will need to beat a lot of players and outlast a lot of all-in bets in order to make money. Often only the top few positions will be paid money in these types of tournaments so you will need to have one very good run in the tournament too place.
During the early rounds in a rakeback freeroll tournament you need to be prepared to see a lot of big betting which means you need to play selectively. I would suggest that you try and only play your strong starting hands and when you do play them, make sure you play them strongly. Players in freeroll tournaments often don’t even consider using any strategy and they only push their chips all-in in hopes of doubling up. You will be able to take advantage of this weakness that most players have in these tournaments throughout the early rounds and you should be able to build up your chip stack.
After most of the fish are knocked out of the tournament and you’re down to the final 200 odd players in the event you will notice that the game changes. Players will start to play like they are playing for real money and not for free and you will need to start playing tighter. You won’t see players going all-in preflop anymore with nothing and you will need to start reading your opponents and picking your spots.
You will need to remain aggressive throughout the entire tournament when you are playing hands and you can’t allow PokerStars players to steal them off of you. The big stacks often bully the other players near the end of freeroll tournaments so make sure when you’re playing a big stack that you’re willing to go all-in if you have too. If you aren’t willing to go all-in then you shouldn’t bother playing the hand in the first place. The reason you need to always remain aggressive is because you can’t stop building your chip stack up. Since only the top few players will be paid you need to make sure that you always build your stack so that you’re in contentions for the money. If you sit back and relax when you’re in the final 50 players you will find that your stack is eaten up by the massive blinds and antes.
Freeroll tournaments are ideal for those poker players who are unable to fund a bankroll, or buy their way into the World Series of Poker but I wouldn’t suggest playing them if you have money too play with. They take a long time and you could potentially play for hours and win nothing which isn’t making good use of your time.
Whether you’re playing a heads up poker game or you’ve made the final two in a tournament on PokerStars.com you’ll need to know how to play heads up poker effectively. I’ve had many poker players ask me in the past for some simple heads up poker tips that they could implement into there poker game. I sent them over some tips that I used when playing heads up poker and now I want to share those tips with you in this article. Continue reading through this strategy guide for heads up poker and I guarantee when you’re done reading you’ll have some new tips to use when playing your next heads up match.
You need to become an aggressive poker star player when you’re playing heads up because if not your opponent will walk all over you. Heads up matches are usually fairly quick matches to play and you’re not always going to get a monster hand. You need to be willing to push your chips into the pot with marginal hands. Your opponent is going to bluff at pots and you just need to be able to tell when your opponent is bluffing and when they aren’t.
Acting last in a heads up match at FullTilt is a great advantage since you get to see what your opponent does before it’s your turn. If they act weak you can try making a stab at the pot, and if they come out betting you’ll need to determine whether they’re bluffing or have a real hand.
Don’t get out of control in a heads up match after losing a couple pots because you’ll only start losing more chips. You need to control every pot whether you win the pot or lose the pot you need to be in control. You want to make the pots big when you have a hand and when you don’t have a hand you want to keep pots minimal.
When you think you’re beat you need to just fold your cards and not payoff your opponent every time they make a bet. You also need to be careful how often you chase flushes and straights on carbon poker because after chasing a couple hands and not hitting your chip stack is going to be crippled.
If you can’t make a bluff on your opponent then don’t even bother playing heads up poker games because you won’t stand a chance. You need to be willing to bluff at some PokerStar.it pots, half the time you bluff you probably have the best hand anyways. In heads up poker it’s often for both players to get nothing and usually the first player to bet in those hands will win. You need to make sure you’re the one winning these pots.
The size of your poker bankroll is going to directly reflect how much you stake in each heads up poker match. Don’t play poker over your limits because you need to leave plenty of room for winning and losing matches. I usually recommend playing for about 5% of your bankroll which means if you have a bankroll of $200 you should play $5 matches until you make some money.
Allen Cunningham was born in 1977 and has emerged as one of the world’s most elite poker players. Before playing poker Cunningham spent some time studying at UCLA under a Civil Engineering major, but he never ended up finishing his degree. Allen made the move to play poker professionally before he was able to complete his schooling, but I’m sure it isn’t something that Allen has any regrets about. Allen started playing poker for money initially when he was just eighteen in Indian Casinos.
Allen has an impressive poker resume thus far in his career and he still plays a ton of poker to this day which can only mean more good things are coming for Cunningham. He is a regular online poker player and is a member of the FullTilt Poker.net team which is full of impressive poker pros. Throughout the past few years Allen has seen himself appear on a lot of television shows including multiple appearances on Poker After Dark.
Cunningham has seen great success while playing on TV Poker shows, but I’m sure he could care less about those events and a lot more about his five UB Poker bracelets. Not to many other poker players have won five WSOP bracelets like Allen has and I can see some more in the near future. Allen has also played well on the World Poker Tour, but he has yet to win his first title. Cunningham has made appearances twice on final tables on the WPT circuit though so he has been coming close.
Allen is one of few players who have won three WSOP bracelets in three consecutive years and most of the other players who completed this accomplishment did so when the tournament fields were much smaller. This makes Allen’s three WSOP bracelets in three years a much harder feat then the other players who have done this.
Over Cunningham’s poker career he has managed to win more then $10 million in live tournaments which has put him fifth on the all-time list. Allen is no doubt one of the best tournament poker players in the world and in history and he still has a lot of years to win some more tournaments which could put him in the top ten all-time players. With a couple more WSOP bracelets and maybe a couple titles on the WPT or EPT Allen could no doubt make a list of the top ten players in poker history and especially the past decade.
Right now Allen is living in Las Vegas with his girlfriend and spends most of his time playing poker at PokerStars.de and spending time going out with his girlfriend. He is definitely living the high life in Vegas and there is no way he could have imagined this when he was attending university for engineering. Cunningham is a great example of someone who put there mind to becoming a poker professional and not stopping until he achieved exactly that. Allen is less aggressive then most poker players, but it seems to be working great for him so all the power to him.
Johnny Moss is a poker legend and was one of the first poker players who made poker popular amongst the mainstream internet poker crowd. Johnny competed in all of the early WSOP events and when he played poker this was the only circuit out there for poker. Johnny grew up in Dallas, Texas and spent most of his childhood learning how to play cards.
When Johnny Moss was just a teenager he spent time working in the saloons making sure that everyone was playing the poker games fairly without cheating. Johnny was taught at a young age all the ways to cheat in poker at that time so he was well equipped for the job at the saloon. It was a dangerous job at the time, but someone needed to do it and Johnny stepped up to the plate. He also didn’t really mind working there because he was able to watch other players and learn the strategies they used.
Johnny has won 9 WSOP bracelets and finished in the money 25 times in his career which is pretty impressive because there were hardly any events to play back when he played. He won the main event bracelet at the WSOP in years 1970, 1971 and 1974. He has also done well in other poker games on the WSOP circuit and won many bracelets in games other then Holdem.
Johnny Moss was known in his early days as a rounder, a rounder is someone who, before sites like PokerStars.com came around, travelled the country looking for any gambling action that they could find in the saloons. Moss traveled around the USA with some of his poker buddies and made a lot of money for the time. Later in his career Moss started getting called the “Grand Old Man of Poker” because he was basically there since it became regulated and played for more then most poker players do today.
Throughout Moss’s long career as a poker player he won $680,000 which you might think is pretty minuscule compared to how much the players earn today on sites like PokerStars.com, but back when he played this amount of money was a ton. Nowadays you see the winner of the main event winning nearly $10 million, but back when Moss played the tournaments were way smaller and the prize pool therefore was also a lot smaller. Although when Moss played there weren’t that many players the skill level of the players who did play was exceptional. Players like Doyle Brunson were some of Moss’s competition in the early days so it wasn’t like it was easy for Moss to win his 9 WSOP bracelets.
Johnny Moss has been inducted to the Poker of Hall of Fame decades ago and with a HOF with only a select few poker players inducted it’s quite the achievement for Johnny. He has been in the HOF since 1979 after pioneering poker and there isn’t anyone else more deserving then Moss to be in the Poker HOF. I personally haven’t seen him play at PokerStar.net or seen his style of poker play so I can’t comment on that, but judging by his poker resume he definitely was one of the greatest players of all-time.
The fact is most people around the world have a computer and internet connection and with the rise of online activity gambling was a sector that took off. Over the past decade or so roughly online poker has made its mark on the world and millions of people have played online poker at sites like www.FullTiltPoker.net. There are certain benefits of playing online poker over playing live poker in a club or casino and that’s what we’re going to spend some time looking at today.
* The best thing about online poker which has drawn in many players is the convenience of playing poker on the internet. You can have your account set-up and ready with money within minutes and with such ease of access a lot of people tend to just play at home rather then traveling to a casino to play. One thing that could backfire about the ease of depositing money into your poker account is that some players don’t know when to stop if they’re losing. Make sure you always can afford the money you’re using for poker and never dig into debt to play.
* FullTiltPoker.net is a much faster game then live poker and you’ll be able to play a lot more hands online then you can at a live poker game. The reason is really simple and it’s that chips are automatically counted and distributed plus cards are automatically dealt and shuffled. This means you can play more hands per hour online then at a casino so if you like playing and not waiting around then online is the way to go.
* If you’re a new player to Full Tilt you don’t need to worry about giving away any tells by your posture or speech online. The same goes for players who always shake when they have a hand. All of these tells used on a live poker table can’t be used online due to the simple fact that nobody can see or what you’re doing.
* You can stop playing whenever you want and you also have a better selection of tables to choose from. This helps you out if you’re losing on a certain FullTiltPoker.com table because you’ll be able to change tables easily and try your luck there. At most casinos there are only a couple tables usually open per stake level so you don’t have many options of moving tables.
* Most live poker games have regulars who play everyday and thus start to learn how certain players play poker. Online you don’t need to worry about playing the same person over and over again and therefore you don’t need to worry about any of your opponents learning your playing style over time.
* Action is generally much looser at FullTiltPoker then live poker and players aren’t scared to push around and make large pots. I would recommend online poker offering the bigger potential of winning big money then any casino can due to the betting patterns I’ve seen over the years in online poker rooms and live casinos.