ARTICLES
The Rise of Poker: Railbirds and Raisers
If you are not playing poker, you may soon be in the minority. The game has come a long way from the dangerous days of the road gamblers and prohibited backroom games. It is true that those two things still exist in some places, but the game itself has been propelled into limelight and into legitimate status, due in large part to shows such as the World Poker Tour (Travel Channel) and the World Series of Poker (ESPN).
According to America's Poker Face, an article by Betsy Streisand (USNews.com, 2004), the number of poker players in America has increased to about 80 million, a 30 million increase over the estimated 50 million players just a few years ago. Most of these players still play brick-and-mortar poker (in home games and casinos), but the number of players now taking advantage of the convenience of online poker games is rapidly growing. It is estimated that there are over one million players playing online at well over 1,500 sites. The lobby area of two major sites, PartyPoker.com and PokerStars.com, regularly show over 60,000 and 40,000 players online, respectively. These types of numbers are only expected to explode over the next...
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Think big and give your poker profits a boost
Is your lack of confidence hurting your poker profits in your online poker play?
In the good Texas Holdem poker rooms on the internet there are various levels of buy-ins for tournament play, generally starting from around $5 (plus site fee) per player. This is the level that most new players play at but has your game moved on while you've stood still? What I mean by that is - have you gained enough poker experience to leave the "newbies" behind and move up a couple of levels? If you have then I would seriously suggest that you start playing for higher stakes, you could be losing out on a lot of online poker profits if you don’t.
The thing about playing at the bottom rung is that inexperienced players make unpredictable moves a lot more of the time than experienced poker players, so the very fact that you don't know what to expect from them often means that they're harder to beat than better players. Take Phil Hellmuth for example. Phil is probably just about the best player in the world but he's famous for ranting and raving whenever somebody makes an unexpected move against him. He would find it...
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