Poker rooms

There are really a lot of online poker rooms, where you can play with real players, using real money or play money (for free).
Until now I'm registered in 3 such rooms, so later I'll share my opinion with you about those rooms and I'll try to make some reviews.

But so.. let's get back to the poker rooms. How it looks, how you should orientate there and so on..
Here I'll tell you only the basic, later when I start to do the reviews, I'll put some screen shots and I'll go in detail explanation of the environment presented by each site (poker room).

Where and how?

• Web based, html, java, etc.. - usually when you play on the site (for example bwin.com) there are missing some options which can be useful for you, it's more risky your browser to get stuck and to ruine your good going game, so I certainly do not recommend you to use a web-based play.
• Download software - Totally spy, ad-ware free (when downloaded from the site of origin), low resource consumption, friendly to use. The poker rooms have their own software that you should download and install in order to play, usually the software is user-friendly easy to use and orientate, giving you more options that the web-based, until now I didn't notice any bugs in any of the softwares that I've used. I can only truly recommend this type of choice to play.
  

How it looks:
When you login to the software which you use you have following options of play which are usually on the top of the screen:

• Real money - using money credited from you bank account (using provider or directly from your credit card) to play in the different types of poker offering the current poker room
• Play money - Using options offered from the poker room, you can credit your imagery account with some chips/points/money... this is your best way to learn the basics. Usually only restrictions is that you have to wait couple of minutes before you reload your play money account, but this is not really a problem. There is even a option to win real money playing with play money !

Next possibility is to choose game type:
Here it differs from the server, usually you should find there at least three options of games:

• Texas Hold'em
• Omaha
  
• Stud

And after that you have to choose type of play Tournaments or different type of mixed games, this also differs on the poker rooms. More in the reviews.
And last thing to choose is No limit, Pot limit or Limit game

Texas Hold'em: Rules, Quick start

This is the poker variant that I'm playing at most. I'll use one of the poker sites information to introduce in the environment :)
information is took from the fulltilltpoker.com

Texas Hold 'em is probably the best known and most popular form of poker today.

Each player starts with two hole cards. There are three rounds of community cards. These are dealt face up, for every player to use, with betting after each round.

The best 5-card hand using any combination of the five community cards and two hole cards wins.

Each new hand begins with a small blind, a big blind, and a round of betting. The betting rules vary depending upon whether the game is Limit, Pot Limit or No Limit.

Once the first round of betting is complete, the dealer then puts out the first three community cards, or "the flop". There is a round of betting.
The dealer then puts out the fourth community card or "the turn". There is a round of betting



The dealer then puts out the fifth community card or "the river". There is a final round of betting.

After the last round of betting, the software will award the pot to the best hand.

All Hold 'em games include a small blind and big blind. These are forced bets, and are determined by the position of the button. These bets are considered live, and every player in the hand must either call the big blind, raise, or fold. The button moves clockwise around the table, giving each player a turn being the button, small blind, and big blind.

In Limit Hold 'em, each betting round has a fixed bet. In $5/$10, the small blind is $2.50, the big blind is $5, and the first two rounds of betting are in increments of $5. The last two rounds of betting are in increments of $10. There is a maximum of three reraises per betting round.

In Pot Limit, a player can bet any amount from the minimum bet to the size of the pot. In a $5/$10 pot-limit game, the small blind is $5 and the big blind is $10. The first player can call the big blind (in this case, $10), or raise to any amount up to the size of the pot. A raise must either equal or exceed the previous bet or raise. In this case, a pot-sized raise would be $25 ($5 small blind + $10 big blind + $10 call), meaning that, in total, player three can bet up $35. Supposing player three makes a pot-sized raise, the total pot is now $50.

If the next player wants into the hand, they must call $35, which is the size of player three's bet. If they want to raise the maximum, they would bet $120, which equals the size of the pot ($50) plus a $70 raise ($5 call + $35 raise).

In No Limit Texas Hold 'em, a player can bet any amount from the minimum bet to the maximum number of chips they have in front of them. As in pot limit, a $5/$10 No Limit game means blinds of $5 and $10.

In Tournament Hold 'em, the blinds will increase after timed intervals. And while Texas Hold 'em generally does not have antes, in tournaments, the later rounds will include antes based upon the escalating betting limits.

Poker variants

Some info about the most popular types of poker played worldwide.
Information is from the Wikipedia

• Draw poker: any poker variant in which each player is dealt a complete hand before the first betting round, and then develops the hand for later rounds by replacing, or "drawing", cards.
• Stud poker: any of a number of poker variants in which each player receives a mix of face-down and face-up cards dealt in multiple betting rounds. Stud games are also typically non-positional games, meaning that the player who bets first on each round may change from round to round (it is usually the player whose face-up cards make the best hand for the game being played). The cards dealt face down to each individual player are called hole cards (which gave rise to the common English expression ace in the hole, which suggests that one has something valuable that is hidden from view).
• Texas hold 'em (also hold'em, holdem) is the most popular poker game in the casinos and poker card rooms across North America and Europe. Hold 'em is a community card game where each player may use any combination of the five community cards and the player's own two hole cards to make a poker hand, in contrast to poker variants like stud or draw where each player holds a separate individual hand.
• Omaha hold 'em (or Omaha holdem or simply Omaha) is a community card poker game (often referred to as a "flop game") similar to Texas hold'em where each player is dealt four cards and must make his best hand using exactly two of them, plus exactly three of the five community cards.

Basic Info

Hello all poker maniacs (and future ones) out there.
This Blog will be about my experience in the cruel poker world. And just to know, I'm not a pro, I still have a lot to learn and to train myself, especially to be more patient :)
Anyway through my blog I'll try to bring you closer to this great game and this what I know.
The idea:
When I started to play, I had a lot of problems to identify the best server for me, there are so many possibilities so you can get crazy which one you should choose as a beginner. With friends of mine we've tried something like 10 different servers to play and everywhere is different, I guess that the main reason to start playing on some particular server should be the bonus amount for sign-up. This part also will be discussed later, but anyway the idea is to offer you some overview of what is the best to choose, doing some reviews on the most-known poker rooms out there.

Please feel free to post your comments.