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Online poker strategy is a hot topic across the Internet considering that the explosion of poker’s popularity within the past decade. Since the inception of televised poker (most notably by ESPN), online gambling web pages have invested millions of dollars’ worth of advertising on tv networks for the sole purpose of luring poker aficionados to their sites. While advertising for online gambling isn’t legal in several states, these poker web pages conveniently sidestep the legality by advertising “for fun” sites where customers can’t use their very own money, with a near-identical domain name registered for actual monetary commitment nearby. So, online poker draws countless new customers each day and fortunes are won and lost at Internet card tables.
Like any type of entertainment, online poker has experts willing to sell their secrets to the highest bidders. Professional poker players have published lots of books filled with their advice and bookstores happen to be quick to follow suit, dedicating valuable shelf space to these online guides. Online poker strategy just isn’t terribly different from that of table poker, and also a novice player will benefit from the tactics of both quality online casino and table poker books.
Much of the strategy behind winning consistently at poker is dependent upon the mathematics of the game. As a player has no real way to understand what cards his opponent is holding, there isn’t any 100% effective outcome for poker players (hence the term, gambling). On the flip side, knowing the math behind the poker shall permit the player to understand situations where calling or folding, based on nothing however the odds of the game, is in his or her best interest.
All the math behind poker relies on the simple idea that you can find 52 cards in a deck. In a game of Hold ‘Em poker, a player receives two cards, in a game of Omaha four, in a game of Stud, five. Thus, while a player does not know which cards are within the hands of the opponents, the remaining cards (a particular few of that are needed for a successful, winning hand) are within plain sight for someone to count. Using these facts, a player can determine the amount of cash in the pot to calculate what is called “pot odds”. Pot odds will either favor the player based upon the rewards weighed against the statistical chance of success, or favor folding his or her hand given the lack of a successful hand being dealt.
For instance, say a Hold ‘Em player needs just one diamond to make a flush, which would be the top hand available to any player within this scenario. While you can find 13 diamonds in the deck, the Hold ‘Em player has two of them and you will discover two on the table (as five are needed for a flush). Thus, you will discover only 9 potential diamonds within the remaining cards. If the player has two cards, his opponent has two cards, and there are four cards on the table, there are 44 cards remaining, a 9/44 chance of hitting a diamond or approximately a one in five chance.
In this scenario, the pot is $50, with a $5 call for the player with the flush draw. The potential payout is ten to one while the odds are one to five — thus, the pot odds favor calling the $5 for the payout is double the possibility of winning the hand. While this particular hand could possibly be won 20% of the time, if it would be played out 100 times, the player would statistically be likely to lose around $400 while winning around $1000.
