When you think of tells in a game of online poker you probably don’t think of online poker tells. Actually, online poker tells are just as obvious as live poker tells. There is a great article about online poker tells here.
Poker Stars has this to say about sitting out during a tournament…
A player in a “ring” game (a non-tournament game) can click “leave table”, and take his chips out of the game at any time. They can do this because each hand is its own separate event. If a player sits out too long in a ring game, we do remove them in order to free up the seat for another player.
Visit Poker Stars - accepting US poker players.
A tournament is not like a ring game, however. For their “buy-in”, they receive their starting stack of chips, which are not from their chip totals but are instead just scorekeepers for the tournament. Once the event begins, it must proceed until one person has won all the chips.
For the same reason that players cannot just choose to pick up their own chips and leave, we cannot arbitrarily remove the player and their chips from the event once it has begun. Every chip in a starting stack of a tournament must be at the final table in order for a game to be fair to every player.
It’s best to think of a player who is sitting out as simply folding every hand. This is a completely legal tactic, as it is up to any individual player to decide his own best strategy. There is no rule, for obvious reasons, against folding every hand. Therefore, what these players are doing is not against any rule, and no action will be taken against them.
For the same reasons, we cannot make changes to the system to discourage this activity. Once a player has paid their entry, they are entitled to play (or not play) every hand that their chips will buy them.
A player who is sitting out actually puts his opponents at a significant advantage. The player who is sitting out is still forced to pay his blinds and antes, and is never able to build his stack. On occasion, a player might blind off into 3rd place, or maybe even 2nd, but players who employ this strategy are usually far worse off than those who play their best game.
If players are actually winning chips by sitting out the entire time, this is a sign that the play in these events is far too loose and you should adjust your play accordingly. You will find that this is often the case with all play money chip games. I’m sure you’ve noticed, for example, that players will go all-in holding virtually nothing when it is play money.
We hope this clearly explains why this is neither against the rules nor something we can possibly police. If you were to play in our $5.50 cash sit and go events (available only on PokerStars.com, not on Pokerstars.net), we believe you would find that very few players are sitting out, and that the play is much more realistic with real cash on the line.
In addition, we have implemented a limit of 2 concurrent play money sit and go events per player. Players can no longer sign up for an unlimited number of events in an effort to accumulate chips without playing.
You have to keep this one under your hat. Not too many players are aware of what I am about to tell you.
What would you say if I told you that you could see a players mucked cards? You would probably want that info in your next online game of poker. In a live game if a player mucks their cards…thats it…you never get to see what they played. The dealer pushes the muck together and starts shuffling the cards for the next hand.
In online poker there is a way to see what your opponents mucked. I haven’t come across a site that doesn’t have this feature.
Check out the Online Poker Secret to get an edge on the game the next time you play.
The number one tip for every poker player who joins a poker room online is…
…use a bonus code! You wouldn’t believe how many players sign up without a bonus code. Without taking advantage of the bonuses that the poker sites offer you are missing out on a huge amount of free money.
The poker room’s want you to play at their site as opposed to their competitors. So they give out cash when you make your initial deposit. They offer a bonus code to be used when you first sign up. So even if you are only going to check out a site’s play money tables I would advise you to enter a bonus code. You may win some money in a freeroll tournament or later you may decide to make a real money deposit. Either way you are ahead by using a bonus code.
I have searched for the most popular bonus codes online and believe this poker site has the best bonus offers.
Remember, always use a bonus code. Even if you are just going on the play money tables. Playing the freerolls alone is one reason to always use a bonus code.
When playing poker, you are often faced with the decision whether to call or fold to a bet. One way to determine whether to call is to see if the odds of winning the money in the pot (”pot odds”) equal or exceed the odds of you getting the cards you need for a winning hand (also called your ‘outs’). Quickly calculating whether the pot odds you face are favorable is essential to a long term winning strategy. In other words, only make a bet if it will pay off in the long run. Here’s how:
You must know how much money is in the pot in order to calculate pot odds. In a limit game, you can easily calculate this by counting the number of bets that are in the pot. For example, if there is $100 in the pot at a 10/20 game on the flop, then there are 10 bets in there. If you must call a single bet to remain in the hand, then the pot odds are 10:1. Online poker rooms have the amount of the pot displayed, so it is easier to just divide the amount you must bet into the pot size.
Steps
Divide the number of cards unseen by the number of “outs” that you have. “Outs” are the cards remaining in the deck that will allow you to make a winning hand.
Subtract 1.
There must be at least that many bets in the pot (i.e., multiples of your bet) for a call.
Example: Say you have 2 hearts. Two more hearts fall on the flop. There are now 47 unseen cards. You have 9 outs (9 out of 13 unseen hearts remaining in the deck) to make your flush on the next card.
Divide 47 by 9 = 5.2
Subtract 1 = 4.2
There must be at least 4.2 bets in the pot for you to call a single bet.
If you don’t get your card on the turn, you may be faced with repeating the process in the next round of betting. Remember that post-turn bets are usually larger than pre-turn bets.
Tips
The preceding steps are a quick method for determining outs on the next card. Other methods exist.
Some people advocate determining the number of outs required to make your hand using all future cards. For example, if you need one card for a flush, you actually have two draws to that card, not just one. Doing the math, you get 1.5:1 odds, so 1.5 bets would be your break even. Since you can be can be forced out on the next round, this is only true if there is no more betting. However, you need to estimate all future bets to get to that last card (yours and theirs), and that ratio needs to be 1.5 or more. It’s much harder to do this math on the fly, however, and usually requires you to memorize an ‘out’ list for different card combinations.
Outs:-1—2—3—4–5-6-7-8-9-12-15 Need
Odds:45-22-14-10-8-7-6-5-4-3–2
Note that it mentions outs to a “winning hand”. There is no automatic system to determine what a “winning hand” is. Maybe that 3-of-a-kind could win. But maybe there’s 3 cards to a flush on the table. Experience will dictate what you consider a minimum strength hand to win.
The actual formula for calculating hand-odds is:(cards_left - outs)/outs (which is the same as cards_left/outs - 1)
e.g.: (47-9)/9 = 47/9-1 = 38/9 = 4.22/1
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