Why You Need To Take Notes At PokerStars
This tip is for those of you who have been playing cash games over at PokerStars.com. If you’re only playing in the play money rooms, you won’t get much value from it. Even so, keep reading. When you eventually get into the real money rooms, this will come in extremely handy.
PokerStars lets you take notes on other players in the poker rooms. This feature isn’t getting the circulation or exposure it deserves. But, that actually works in your favor. When you start playing in the tourneys, you’ll have a unique advantage over your opponents.
Here’s why…
Visit PokerStars to get started.
Taking The Advantage
Some of you tournament veterans know that you need to spend a few chips in order to read your opponents. You want to identify the tight aggressives, who’s loose, and who always pushes weak hands (don’t they learn?).
Now, imagine if you could open a small window while you’re in the poker room and refer to past notes that you’ve taken on your opponents. You’d have an instant advantage.
Here’s a little secret that a lot of online poker players don’t realize: the tournament players at PokerStars turn up over and over in the rooms. Chances are, you’ll be playing against them in future tourneys. If you’re already armed with great notes about their playing style, you’ll know how far you can push your hands.
For example, if you’re up against a tight player (and you know this because you have your notes in front of you), you can get out of hands early when that player stays in. On the other hand (no pun intended), there are plenty of fish that play at Poker Stars.com. If your notes identify them as fish, you can easily draw them into the flop.
Enjoying An Early Read On Your Opponents
Poker Stars.com has made it drop-dead simple to take notes on your opponents. When you’re in the room, you’ll see a chat box in the bottom left of your screen.
Just click the tab that says “Notes.” Then, double-click on any of the players that you want to take notes on and start typing. The next time you and that player are in the same room, hit the “Notes” tab, double-click that player, and you’ll see your notes.
Visit Poker Stars.com and use bonus code “stars50“. Or, read our PokerStars review.
The bottom line is that you need to start taking notes in the tournaments. A lot of your opponents will never know what hit them.
How To Stop Leaking Your Poker Chips
You win some, you lose some. That’s the nature of poker, of course. But hopefully, you’re minimizing your losses along the way so that your bankroll keeps building. The problem is that a lot of new poker players (and experienced players do this, too) develop poker chip leaks. They let their chips slip right through their fingers.
It only happens a few at a time, so it’s barely noticeable. That is, until you look at your bankroll and wonder where all your chips have gone.
Today, we’re going to give you a quick list of 3 common poker chip leaks. If you can plug these holes, you’ll build a bankroll that lets you weather the rough hands and bad beats.
Let’s jump in.
Chasing
A lot of players are optimistic. They’ll stay in even if their cards are weak, hoping the flop or river gives them what they need to make their hand. That’s called chasing. If another player has a high pair going into the flop and you can’t beat it, think about folding.
There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic. But, it can get expensive.
Seeing Too Many Flops
Nobody likes to fold. But, when your cards stink, it’s the only move that makes sense. The key is to get out early before the flop. Otherwise, you’re just leaking poker chips.
You should be keeping track of the number of flops you’re seeing over a certain number of hands. If your flop percentage is above 40%, you’re seeing way too many. Keep it under 30%.
Remember, sharks know that poker rooms which have a high flop percentage are easy prey. When they go in for the kill, it can get ugly.
This happens a lot at PokerStars.com. That’s a hint for you if you’re a good player. Visit Poker Stars to take advantage of other players’ high flop %.
Getting Distracted
As chip leaks go, this one can get really expensive. The irony is that it happens a lot to winning players. When you’ve been playing for awhile, you start getting comfortable. You might begin multi-tabling while answering your emails and watching the latest episode of The Wire.
Then, before you know it, the timer runs out on you.
This has happened to us. Trust us, we know how boring it can be waiting for your turn. But, we also know the frustration of forfeiting our chips because we weren’t paying attention.
So, keep your eyes on the table.
Obviously, there are a ton of potential poker chip leaks. We’re just scraping the surface here. Plug those holes, watch your game, and start building your bankroll.
If you want to pick up the chips that others are leaking, visit Poker Stars. There are a ton of fish over there. There are some sharks, too. So, be careful.
The Basics Of Online Poker Bonus Whoring
For those of you who have been slugging it out in the trenches trying to make money at 1 or 2 poker rooms, it can seem like a grind. And if you’re just breaking even, your bankroll may be constantly flirting on “Empty.” A lot of you know about the bonuses offered by our top-rated poker rooms, but haven’t developed a system for using them to your advantage. Today, we’re going to change that.
Here’s your 3-minute guide to online poker bonus whoring.
Starting Small
First, we’re going to assume that your stock portfolio has taken a beating lately and as a result, you’re on a limited poker budget. Let’s start with $50. Visit PokerStars.com and use bonus code “stars50” to get your 100% match.
Once you’ve played enough raked hands to clear your bonus, withdraw your bankroll. Assuming that you’ve broken even, you should now have $100 (your original $50 plus the $50 bonus).
Now, visit FullTiltPoker.com and use bonus code “kickasspoker” to get another 100% match. After you’ve cleared it, you should have $200. Again, we’re assuming you’re breaking even on the tables.
Next, let’s jump over to Sportsbook Poker. You can get a 100% match on your $200 bankroll by using bonus code “kickass“. Hit the tables, play enough raked hands, and withdraw your bankroll. By now, it should have grown to $400.
Think about that for a moment. You’ve gone from your original $50 bankroll to $400 by taking advantage of the sign-up bonuses at only 3 online poker rooms.
That’s how basic bonus whoring is done.
2 Quick Notes
We need to clarify a couple of points here.
First, you can really knock this strategy out of the park by keeping your eyes open for reload bonuses and other promos. If you time it right, you can do even better that what we’ve outlined above.
Second, keep in mind that bonus whoring works best with small amounts. If you’re depositing $10,000, the poker rooms aren’t going to give you a 100% match. If you find any that do, let us know!
There are several great poker rooms at which you can use this strategy. Read our online poker room reviews to plan your system. If you need to, start small and work your way up. Leave the poker rooms that offer larger bonuses at the tail end of your system.
How’s that for a little dirty fun?
The Most Important Decision in Online Poker
The Most Important Decision In Poker: Choosing Your Username.
The first time you signed up for an online Poker room account, you didn’t give much thought to what to put as your username. After all, what difference did it make? You probably ended up with “David86”, “coolsimon”, or if you were feeling particularly fruity… “AcesAlan”.
Either way, your username ended up being as imaginative as fish and chips on a Friday afternoon.
After a few weeks of play, you will have started to notice the odd witty username turning up at your table. “CheckyMcFlop” and “FloppyMcSet” to name a few. There were also the occasional offensive ones, but they aren’t exactly formed by geniuses at the end of the day.
But anyway, the moral of the story here is that you were left thinking “that’s a cool name, I wish I came up with that”. It’s also at around about this time that you started work on conjuring up your own hilariously witty username. Unfortunately, the majority of the time you ran head first into a few brick walls in the process.
So, what’s the point of this article?
This article aims to empathize with every single player that has stalled at a sign up form for a poker room for at least 15 minutes because they were unable to think up a decent username. After seeing all those great ones, how you could you go back to using something that has something basic like “Aces” or your name in it?
You’ve filled in all the rest of the details such as; your name, address, age, and you even entered that referral code for Full Tilt. However, it’s always that username part that manages to get you every time.
There is an uncontrollable need to think up the best possible username that is funny yet unique at every room you play at, and it really starts to take its toll as you continue to play at new rooms on a regular basis.
There’s not much that you can do to remedy this need. Some people get lucky and manage to think up some inspiring usernames, but for most of us it’s just another 10 or 20 fruitless minutes of our lives wasted. Just to let you know, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there. Whatever happens though, mashing the keys and hitting enter is never the answer.
After the username debacle, it is only going to get worse as well.
The next step is to find that perfect avatar that is eye-catching and amusing, whilst at the same time being related to your unique username. Unfortunately, avatar websites are not going to cut the mustard, as the last thing you want is to bump into another player with the same avatar as you. It’s the ultimate embarrassment as a poker player.
At the next sign up form, take a deep breath and relax. Allow the comical display name to come to you, and things will be a lot easier. If worst comes to worst, just submit and use your real name. I doubt many people really care, right?
How To Clear Your PlayersOnly.com Poker Bonus
There’s a lot to like about Players Only.com and we’ve covered some of the reasons we enjoy playing there before. The first time you visit PlayersOnly.com, you’ll notice that they offer a 100% First Deposit Bonus that taps out at $650. Pretty generous. But, it gets better for you and here’s why…
KickAssPoker readers get a bump in the bonus. Instead of the $650, you’ll get a 100% match up to $1,000. But, you need to use bonus code KAP1000 to get it.
When you enter the code, you’ll see your bonus appear in your pending bonus balance. Today, we’re going to tell you how to clear it.
Visit PlayersOnly.com and enter bonus code KAP1000.
Clearing Your PlayersOnly.com Bonus
Once you see your pending bonus, you can earn it back by playing ring games and tournaments. Here’s how it works:
Players Only gives you “Frequent Player Points” every time you contribute to a dropped rake or pay a fee to get into the tournaments. It’s similar to how BodogLife does it. For every $1 of the rake you generate in the ring games, you’ll receive 1 Point. For each $1 that you pay in tournament fees, you’ll receive 7 Points.
Fractions count. So, if you contribute $0.50 to a dropped rake, you’ll receive a half point. Also, you can earn up to 3 Points per hand.
Each Point is worth $.06. As soon as you have $10 worth of Points in your pending account, Players Only.com transfers it to your real money balance.
Remember, you need to enter the bonus code KAP1000 to get the full match to $1,000.
Why PlayersOnly.com Kicks Ass
There are actually quite a few reasons why we like Players Only.com. If you haven’t done so yet, read our Players Only review.
Besides giving our readers the exclusive bump in bonus on the initial deposit (using KAP1000 for the code), they also seems to draw the fish in. The last time we checked, the pre-flop percentage was close to 50%.
If you know what you’re doing, you can go on a fishing expedition. With a pre-flop % that high, there are probably schools of ‘em swimming around over there! Of course, if you don’t know what you’re doing, make sure that you read our poker strategy tips.
Go download PlayersOnly.com and use the bonus code KAP1000 to get the bump. Then, start earning Points to earn your bonus back on your fishing trip.
