CB Education Blog

The basic poker lesson is when to hold and when to fold. Knowing whether your initial deal is worth staying in the game or if you should call it a day, is one of the most important decisions to make at the beginning of the poker game. One of the most common beginner’s mistakes is holding onto the worst pair of hole cards instead of folding and protecting your money.

Therefore, if you are a novice poker player, one of the first things you should memorize is which initial hands are worth holding and which hands leaves you no choice but to fold. Since Texas Holdem is the most popular poker variation, here you can find lists of the best and the worth Holdem poker starting hands.

Best Poker Hands

If you are lucky to be dealt one of these initial hands, you are definitely having an excellent beginning:

Pair of Aces: as known as American Airlines or pocket rockets, it is the best possible Texas Holdem starting hand.

Pair of Kings: not as good as a pair of Aces but still an excellent way to open a game of Texas Holdem.

Pair of Queens: if you want to look at the bright side, you will be beaten only by Kings and Aces.

Ace and King: if they are of the same suit, your condition is even better, since you can form the nut flush at ease.

Pair of Jacks: unless the flop shows either a Queen, King or an Ace, you have decent chances of winning with this promising starting hand.

Ace and Queen: the same as Ace and King, a suited hand would increase your chances of stepping out as a winner.

King and Queen: unless the community cards contain an Ace, you are in a good shape with this starting hand and even better if it is suited

Ace and Jack: even if appears unsuited, this starting hand is still worth holding.

King and Jack: still one of the best Texas Holdem starting hands, but be careful with it, especially when unsuited.

Ace and Ten: the Ace upgrades it to a pretty good hand, although requires a cautious play since it can be beaten by any of the starting hands mentioned above.

Worst Poker Hands

These hands would suit you well if you play some of the lowball variations, but if you play traditional Texas Holdem poker, the best advice would be to fold.

2 and 7: if you are dealt this hand, especially unsuited, you cannot even make a straight. Even if suited you should be so lucky to form a low flush or the lowest pair. In one word: fold.

2 and 8: same as the previous hand; pair of 8s is still a low pair.

3 and 7: although it can beat the previous hands, it still a worthless pair of cards

3 and 8: again, hardly even a low straight.

2 and 6: only if the community cards will feature 3, 4 and 5, you will have a chance of forming a straight. However, do not count on it, especially if there are more than 3 attendances in the game.

2 and 9: thanks to the presence of the 9 you are in better shape than with the former hands, still you cannot form a straight and even a pair of 9s would be beaten by pairs of 10s, Jacks, Queens, etc.

3 and 9: the same thing: higher than 8 lower than almost any other hand.

4 and 9: as mentioned above; foldem.

2 and 10: even though Doyle Brunson had won two WSOP bracelets with this starting hand, unless you have the talent and experience of Brunson, do not hold this hand.

5 and 9: also known as Dolly Parton, this hand would get you nowhere near the final table.

While most people enjoy casino gambling, sports betting, lottery and bingo playing for the fun and excitement it provides, others may experience gambling as an addictive and distractive habit. Statistics show that while 85 percent of the adult population in the US enjoys some type of gambling every year, between 2 and 3 percent of will develop a gambling problem and 1 percent of them are diagnosed as pathological gamblers.

Where can you draw the line between harmless gambling to problem gambling? How can you tell if you or your friend are compulsive gamblers? Here you can find answers to these questions and other questions regarding problem gambling and gambling addiction.

What is the Meaning of Problem Gambling?

Problem gambling or compulsive gambling is defined as an uncontrollable urge to gamble despite the destructive effect of gambling on the gamblers life and despite feelings of guilt and remorse. Problem gambling tends to have a negative effect on the gamblers financial state, relationships and daily life. Severe cases of problem gambling can be defined as pathological gambling.

Am I a Compulsive Gambler?

1) Do you gamble until your last penny runs out?

2) Do you gamble to win back your former losses or debts?

3) Did you ever had to borrow money to continue gamble?

4) Did your gambling habit ever made you lie to your friends or family?

5) Did you ever skip work or other obligation to gamble?

6) Do you tend to gamble to forget about your personal problems or to celebrate happy occasions?

7) Does gambling have a negative affect on your daily life or relationships?

If you have answered yes on at least one of the questions listed above, then you have a problem.

Can Anyone Become a Compulsive Gambler?

Theoretically, yes. Any gambler can develop gambling problem regardless to the type of gambling he is occupied with, the amount of money and time he is spending on gambling. Researches show that slot machines that can be found in bars and convenient stores are the most addictive type of gambling activity, while lottery draws and bingo games are located on the other end of the scale. Gambling addiction is an emotional problem; its symptoms, causes and treatments are similar to any other form of addiction.

How Can I treat Gambling Addiction?

1) Group Therapy:

Gamblers Anonymous offers a 12 step self help program similar to the one offered to alcohol addicts in Alcoholics Anonymous. Group therapy also offers gambling addicts advice and support from professional counselors and other gambling addicts in different phases of their recovery process. Gambler Anonymous centers are available in more than 1,200 locations statewide.

2) Individual Therapy:

Cognitive or behavior therapy can help gambling addicts to identify their unaware thinking and acting patterns, which led them to gamble compulsively, and to replace them with controllable and healthier ways of thinking.

3) Psychiatric Medication:

It has recently been proven that antidepressant medications from the family of SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors can be affective in treatment of gambling addicts.

For the last several years one Saturday of each month some friends and I would get in the car and drive to Atlantic City for a night of gambling, and it has always been one of the best days of the month.

We have never really been big gamblers we usually just stayed with the slots or the roulette table, until six months ago when someone decided we should learn to play poker because that’s where you can win lots of money fast.

So we all started playing poker in a weekly Friday night game together till we were good enough to play in the casinos. For practice I would play Online Poker in some free multiplayer poker rooms and eventually I felt confident enough to join an online casino poker room for real money.

At first I was losing hand after hand but the more hands I played the better of an understanding I was getting for the game, and every night I started making less and less mistakes and I actually started to win a few hands.

After about 2 or 3 months of this we decided it was time and we all drove to the casino to play some Poker.

We did ok for first timers, no one got rich but no one came home broke either. We decided that instead of our monthly trips we should start going every Saturday, and soon we would be leaving every Friday after work and coming back late Sunday night

Last month we decided to join this small tournament, the buy inn was only a few hundred each and the prize was 10,000 dollars, so we all decided to go for it and to try to start making real money playing poker, and in the end it paid off, I am still not sure how but I won the poker tournament and the 10,000 dollars grand prize.

Before the tournament we had all agreed that if one of us won it we would go out and have a big party with the money, but I had a much better idea

I decided that I could turn this money into a much larger amount and since it was easy to win the first time it should be easy to do it again.

Now from my personal experience I know that the Roulette table is a great way to double your money fast, there were many nights id have 20 dollars in my poker before leaving the casino and I would manage to double it on one spin of the roulette wheel, and now I had ten thousand dollars and could walk away with twenty thousand in just minutes.

So against the advice of all my friends I looked for a roulette table where the same color had won three times in a row. Once I finally found a roulette table that had come up red 3 times in a row it I place all my winnings on black and what luck it came out red again and I nearly passed out on the casino floor.

Ever since that night I have not won anything I have played. The best piece of advice I can give anyone out there is to not let winning go to your head. If you are up in the casino, go home and enjoy the money. It is important to remember that gambling in a casino or an online casino is supposed to be fun and relaxing and if it is not go read a book or something.

Texas Holdem is by far the most common for of poker played today due to is popularity there are even several TV shows of the game. Besides being popular texas Holdem is also the best game for a beginner to learn, the game can be learned after a few minutes and afte just a few hours of practice you can be playing fairly well against other beginners, but to really get good you must play often.

Texas Holdem is played the same way in the casino, online casinos and in your home with your pals.

Texas Holdem is played in the following manner:

1. Betting structures can vary. In Texas Holdem rarely are antes used. Most Texas Holdem games start with first two players on the dealers left placing predetermined bets. These players are called the small and large blind, and their bets are called posting the blinds.

2. Each player receives 2 cards face down. These cards are called you pocket cards and they are the only cards that are unique to you.

3. After each player is dealt their hole cards a round of betting takes place starting with the player to the left of the 2 blinds this round of betting is called the pre-flop. Just like in any other poker game a player can call raise of fold during their turn.

4. After the Pre-Flop round is over the dealer will remove the top card from the deck and discard it, this is called the Burn Card. This is done to make sure that no cheating is done. The dealer will then turn over 3 cards in the center of the table. This round is called the Flop. Any player may use any of these cards to make the best 5 card hand possible, but you are not allowed to actually touch the cards, each player can use the same cards if it help them, this is why your hole cards are so important.

5. As with the pre-flop there is now another round of betting, it is at this point you will start to see players folding.

6. After the betting is over, the dealer will burn another card, then deal the fourth of the communal cards. This card is called the Turn card

7. Again another round of betting begins and now is when you will start to see the size of the pot really grow.

8. One last time the dealer burns the top card before turning over the last card of the game, called the River card. Players now have all 5 of the communal cards and their own hole card to make the best 5 card hand.

9. One last chance is given to raise the bets or get out of the game. After this each player still in the game will show their cards. This is called the Showdown. The player with the best hand is declared the winner and wins the pot.

Now that you know the basic order of the game you are ready to start playing Texas Holdem. Holdem is a simple game to learn but if hard to master. This is the part that will take you many hand and many dollars, but if you put in the time you will be rewarded for it.

Blackjack is one of the few casino games that are beatable in the long run. It means that by using a basic blackjack strategy you can have an advantage over the casino and eventually step away from the blackjack table as a winner. Here you can find the basic blackjack strategy explained in a simplified manner.

The blackjack strategy is based on the mathematical probabilities of the game and it provides you guidance on the best decisions to make at every possible situation during the game. It takes about an hour to memorize this strategy but it is worth every minute. This does not man you will win every single blackjack game from now on, but with the help of the blackjack strategy, patience and persistence, you can significantly improve your chances of beating the casino in the long run.

Note that some blackjack rules vary from one casino to another. In some casinos, both brick and mortar and internet casinos, blackjack is played with one card deck while in others the blackjack game occupies four decks or more. In addition, in some of the casinos the dealer hits on a soft 17 while in others he is required to stand and doubling after splitting is allowed only in some of the casinos.

Here you can find a basic strategy to a single deck blackjack game where the dealer hits on soft 17. Playing other blackjack variants would require you to make some adjustments for a few borderline occurrences.

First, here is a short introduction to the terms mentioned here:

Hard Hand: two initial cards that do not include an Ace.

Soft Hand: two initial cards that one of them is an Ace

Stand: when a player is not asking to be dealt more cards after the two initial cards.

Hit: when a player calls for an additional card to be dealt

Double: when a player doubles his initial bet after the initial deal, but it requires him to hit only one card.

Split: when a player separates the initial two cards into two individual hands and plays them as 2 hands.

Finally, here is a basic blackjack strategy:

When your initial two card hand sums up to 8 or less: hit

When your hand sums up to 9 and the dealer hand value is between 3 and 6: double if else: hit when your hand sums up to 10 and the dealer hand value is between 2 and 9: double; if else:

When your hand sums up to 11 and the dealer hand value is between 2 and 10: double; if else hit.

When your hand sums up to 13, 14, 15, or 16 and the dealer hand value is between 2 and 6: stand; if else hit.

When your hand sums up to 17: stand.

when your initial two card hand contains Ace 2 or Ace 3 and the dealer has either 5 or 6: double; if else: hit.

When your hand contains Ace 4 or Ace 5 and the dealer has 4, 5 or 6: double; if else: hit.

When your hand contains Ace 6 and the dealer has 3, 4, 5 or 6: double; if else: hit.

When your hand contains Ace 7 and the dealer has 2, 7 or 8: stand; if he has 3, 4, 5 or 6: double; if else: hit.

When your hand contains Ace 8 or Ace 9: stand

When your hand contains a pair of 2s or 3s and the dealer hand value is between 2 and 7: split; if else: hit

When your hand contains a pair of 4s and the dealer has either 4 or 5: split; if else: hit

When your hand contains a pair of 5s and the dealer hand value is between 2 and 9: double; if else: hit

When your hand contains a pair of 6s and the dealer hand value is between 2 and 6: split; if else: hit

When your hand contains a pair of 7s and the dealer hand value is between 2 and 7: split; if else: hit

When your hand contains a pair of 8s: split

When your hand contains a pair of 9s and the dealer hand value is between 2 and 7 and either 8 or 9: split; if else: stand

When your hand contains a pair of 10s: stand

When your hand contains a pair of 8s: split

It is not uncommon for a man to want to have a night out with the boys, maybe play a little poker. It is also not uncommon to have the plans of men thwarted by their wives.

To help with this problem I am telling you the secrets about how to have some harmless fun at home without the wife catching on.

The best way to get rid of the wife so you can have a little “Man Time” is the easiest but most expensive way to do it. For her birthday you get her and one of her friends a trip to a weekend spa place.

Your wife will think you the best hubby ever and will never suspect you are going to throw a poker game in her absence, and the best part of this plan is that when it is over your wife will be so grateful for what you have done she may be more inclined to allow you to go out with the boys more often.

The next way is a little complicated and will only give you 4 or 5 hours of time at best, but it is much less expensive then a trip for 2. It may seem a little childish and yes I also have seen it on TV but a scavenger hunt scam can work.

The trick to the scavenger hunt is that each spot has to mean something. An example would be the first place you ever went on a date as one of the places she needs to go.

The end of the game is the most important make the last stop a restaurant and make sure to be there before she does. A good idea is to try to think of something meaning full in the area of where you live so you do not have far to drive, this will leave you the maximum amount of time to lay poker with your pals.

I have to admit this is not the ideal way to play poker, but getting away with even an hour of poker without her knowing is more excitement than any regular poker game could ever be.

Now that you have a plan to get her out of the house you need to be ready to go. The most important part of this is a large plastic drop cloth. This is so that if anything spills it will be simple to clean up.

Make sure you are ready to go with the table and chairs and make sure they get put back exactly the same as when you took them. You may want to use a digital camera to make sure you remember exactly how everything was before the game, because I promise you that you wife does.

If you send your wife on the trip I do not recommend using a cleaning service right before she comes back. If the house is too clean she will know something funny is going on

The last two tips I have is to make sure that you have a really nice gift around at all times just incase she finds out, and the other is that if your wife and your friends wives are friends do not invite those friends, if one guy gets caught you will all get caught.

Good Luck.

Una de las maneras m

The question we should be asking is, by banning online gambling are we going to make things better or worse?

The answer to that question is simple, banning legalized and regulated online gambling in any form, just makes another way for organized crime to get a hold of peoples money, and then no one but the criminals win.

If you want to keep a child from seeing an R rated movie you do not ban the movie from the theaters do you? No that would be silly you just make sure that people are doing there best to check and verify that no one under 18 gets into see the movie. By banning the movie chances are greater that someone will get a bootleg copy and show it to every kid in the town.

So if you want to keep a child from gambling online then all the online casinos should be regulated and monitored, not banned.

The same goes for terrorists. If you believe terrorist groups are exploiting an unregulated and unmonitored industry such as the online gambling industry, then by regulating it you can see where the money is going and make sure it is not going to fund international terrorist attacks. All that is accomplished by banning it is that the criminals get a stronger grip on the industry.

The ban on online gambling is much like the war on drugs. If marijuana was legalized in the USA crimes related to it would almost go away completely, because it would be sold in stores and it would be controlled, another advantage would be that people would no longer be going to jail for marijuana related charges, this means thousands of less people getting arrested and going to jail every year, which would save us tax money that could be better spent.

By making online gambling in the USA a legalized form of adult entertainment it would also bring in an estimated 1.2 billion dollars in taxes to the American government. This money could be used for schools, police and universal healthcare for all Americans.

This is how you improve society, not by telling people what to do. It is human nature to want what we can not have so the more laws you put in place to stop people from doing something the better the chances are that people are going to do it.

People are just as likely to become addicted to gambling at a regulated casino as an unregulated one, but the difference is that in a regulated casino they will not extend you the amount of credit that will get you into trouble in an illegal casino.

And in a regulated casino they will have information on how to get help if you have a gambling problem. In an illegal casino they will not have this type of information, they want you to continue to gamble till you have nothing left, and then they will let you fall and find someone to take your place.

In the long run society can only prosper if we educate people on the dangers of gambling both online and in a casino, and not from banning an industry that employs thousands of people in countries all over the world. No one gains anything from just telling people they can not do something that they are going to do anyway.

It is about time the government learned this and stopped making the same mistakes year after year.

La mayor

Here is a guide to the best online games. Find yourself winning, or at least not necessary losing in the long run. The best casino games are games that have a low house edge or games where by practicing your skill you can have an advantage over the casino. Those with the lowest house edge are blackjack and video poker. By improving the skill with which you play poker and blackjack, you gain an advantage over the other player or over the casino.

House Edge:

First, here is an explanation about the term house edge. The house edge is the way the casinos create an artificial advantage over the player to ensure their profits. The advantage is created by not paying the true odds. The house edge is the gap between the true odds and the odds the casino actually pays out for a winning.

Here is an example for clarification. The true odds in an American roulette game are 37:1. However, if you place a one dollar bet, you would be paid 35 dollars instead of 37 dollars, which are the true odds. The two dollars gap between the true odds and the actual payout is the casino house edge. You can calculate American roulette house edge by dividing 2 dollars by 38. The result is 5.26 percent.

Poker:

This is an exceptional casino game. It is the only casino game where you play against the other players instead of competing against the casino. There is not a house edge in poker. Instead, most casinos ensure their profits by collecting a rake, which is a certain percentage of the pot used to cover expenses. Other casinos charge each player by the hour.

Poker is the best casino game to play if you are a skilled player. A skilled player with experience, excellent knowledge in certain game rules, smart strategy and an ability to read facial expressions would have an advantage over the less skilled poker players, especially those who rely on their good fortune.

Blackjack:

This is the only casino game where the advantage can be shifted from the player to the dealer. When you are playing blackjack and using an optimal strategy, the house edge can be lower than 0.5 percent. You can increase your odds of winning and lower the house edge by learning the strategy based on the mathematics of the game.

Another way to lower the casino advantage in blackjack is by card counting. A skilled card counter can adjust his bets and his strategy according to the proportion between high cards and low cards. Mastering card counting requires skill and practice. In addition, since casinos are not especially welcoming card counters to their blackjack tables, you should also practice your hiding skills.

Video Poker:

The resemblance between video poker and slot machine sometimes causes confusion. Nevertheless, contrasting to slot machine, video poker is a game of skill. Playing video poker using an optimal strategy can lower its house edge to less than half percent. As opposed to slot machines, in video poker machine the pay table on the front of the machine enables you to determine the expected return of the game.

For example:

1) In a 9/6 Jacks or Better video poker machine, the expected return percentage can be as high as 99.5 percent.

2) In a 8/5 Jacks or Better machine the return percentage can be 97.3 percent and 95 percent in a 6/5 Jacks or Better video poker machine.

3) In a full paying Deuces Wild machine, the expected return percentage can be 100.17 percent.