Poker?
 

So, at risk of being somewhat more faddish than I usually am, I've gotten interested in poker due to some of the various TV shows knocking aronud and an interview I heard on the radio... so of course, I started reading up, and I've been playing Texas Hold'em online for dummy chips. (I can't bear to use real money yet--and possibly ever--although that does affect the strategy... people "bet" differently when they're not using real money.) I'm finding the statistics and strategy very interesting. Anybody else play, RL or online?

Uh oh..I'm now hooked! Been watching coverage of the World Series of Poker on ESPN, and then also watching some poker on local cable channel 9, and THEN, watching Celebrity Poker on Bravo! :D In fact, I'm about to bring up my poker game now...I've just started playing on this site:

Popular Poker:
http://www.popularpoker.com/

Fun stuff really. I don't have any particular strategy since I'm just starting. Plus, there is a lot of stuff to learn if you want to get serious about it. I'm just in it for fun. I'd be too chicken to try to play in RL or online for big money (although it's verrrry tempting!). :biggrin:

I used to gamble online quite a bit a few years ago ... online casinos needed incentives to get people to actually deposit their money there, so they offered things like 50% match bonuses or $100 free, etc. At the time, minimum wage requirements were obscenely low - you'd maybe have to wager 5 or 7 times your deposit before you could withdraw your account, with or without profit. Ppl figured out pretty damn quickly that the odds, with these additional bonuses and such low wagering requirements, were in the player's favor ... my roommate and some of our friends were making a ton of profit off blackjack, video poker and the like, until casinos started losing too much and either lowered their bonuses, and/or increased minimum waging to 10, 20 and sometimes 50 times the deposit amount. I don't know how, but a friend of mine who was more heavily "invested" in the scheme somehow bought a BMW with his winnings (his roommates in Charleston all had similar fortunes). I was all set to do interviews for a proposed magazine story on these guys, but they declined after one kid backed out.

Kind of irrelevant, but I will say that after having gambled with real money, I can hardly fire up a casino application without a biting urge to deposit some $$ and see what happens. Some call that a disease, an addiction - I think it's just optimism after seeing a few hundred dollars turn into several thousand. Otherwise, real money won't change much other than teaching you to fold when you're supposed to, when you've got real $$ on the line. With dummy chips, there's absolutely no reason not to stay in a game, just like playing low stakes poker at a real casino (you'll notice on TV that only 2 ppl end up playing a hand because they're betting like $1000+ at a time; sit at a $2/$4 or even a $10/$20 table in Atlantic City and nearly all players will play until the river's dealt, making it very hard to bluff or out-bet an opponent).

Sitting at a RL table for the first time is extremely nerve-wracking as well - go early or really really late at night (2 or 3 am) and find a table with a) a few beginners, and b) a dealer who's willing to kind of help you guys as you go along.

I dunno. Gambling is fun until you lose all your money.

I played several games online with playmoney. Its very easy not to take it seriously, in which case you are making bets you never would with real money. I did find that if I joined a playmoney tournament I took it more seriously and had more fun.

But playing online makes you lose a lot visual queues that a real game has. I would say online poker is almost a different game than one in person. I'll stick to real life poker -for nickle ante.

I've been in a monthly game of nickel-dime-quarter for 3 months. First, I lost $4, then $8. I was wondering whether I'd lose $12 or $16 the third time, so I was pretty happy I actually ended up $1 richer.

I may try playing for real $$$.. very small stakes. There's a single-table tournament format with 10 players. Each player kicks in $x, and gets a certain number of dummy tournament chips (say 1000 or 2000). Play continues until one player has all the chips. That player receives a payoff of $5x, the next to last standing gets $3x, and the third place gets $2x. UltimateBet has some tables on the bottom end that require only a $1.00 or $5.00 buyin--I'm to the point where I can usually place with play money, so I may give the $5.00 version a try. The good bit is no matter how sucky you play you can't get cleaned out; you only lose your buyin.

Well hell, I say go for it. Sounds easy enough.

LOL I'm playing now as I type this. :D

I took the leap and started playing for cash... so far I'm ahead by $2.50 in less than a week. Which doesn't sound like bunch, but it's a $.01/$.02 limit game, so it's actually a decent start measured vs. the size of the bet. It's been fun so far, though I haven't played a statisitically significant number of hands, and I haven't had a downswing yet, which is inevitable.

I've played online at pokerstars for awhile.

I've looked into it, and I feel like it is a pretty credible site. Also, the competition there is quite good because a lot of pros play pokerstars.

They just had their World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) in which the winner of the main event won over $400,000. Not bad for a days work.

Yeah, that's one of the big ones. So what limits are you playing at?

I am a big fan of all these because before it was on TV I would have trouble finding games around town without suspect players. Now I can find a game with people I know about any day of the week. Big fan of Hold'em

I love playing poker. Even if I lose, it's fun to hang out with your friends and play. I play on www.empirepoker.com and www.pokerstars.com for play money. Maybe when I get a credit card I'll start playing real money online.

I like Empire Poker. It has the same setup as Party Poker.net (http://www.partypoker.net/index.html). Just signed up...oh lord I'm hooked now LOL. :D

Hey we should get a cellar game together sometime ;) (I'm not sure if you can designate private tables or not at any of the sites.)

Oh had a fun one last night... I won a hand with 3 queens against another guy with 3 queens... he had an 8 kicker and I had a jack... he just went off and started swearing & got very hostile. Apparently it never occured to him that the 3 of a kind wasn't an automatic win. It was quite amusing.

I had something like that - I stayed in on a Hold 'Em game with a pair of kings, no help on the flop or the turn, when this other guy had something strong. I want to say it was a two pair, faces and tens, or something similar. Then I picked up a third king on the friggin' river, and he didn't stop swearing for two minutes when he found out.