2BlogPoker.com

Online heads up poker is a very hard field to get into, although I do know several players who play the $50-100 stakes and win a good percentage of the time. They are not your average gamblers though; they have strict routines and probably tilt 1/100 games if they are having an incredibly bad streak!

That is the key anyway, take it match by match, but overall you need to be hitting somewhere between a 58-60% win rate to be profitable overall, and have the bankroll to take your downswings in online heads up poker. Do not think that 100 games is a good enough sample either, I’d be looking at around 500-1000 games before you will see a clear indication of where your game is with online heads up poker, mainly due to the variation of results.

Playing online heads up poker is slightly different to offline, mainly due to the fact that you can’t see the opponents face. If you give off your emotions fairly easily, then this is definitely a good thing, as they can’t see your face either.

The only way you can portray or perceive an emotion in online heads up poker is by giving off vibes from bets, folds or by showing opponents your cards. Give off as little information as possible, mix up your play and keep your opponent guessing and you will begin to see them making huge amounts of mistakes.

Using your position, raising a mix of hands, showing a few bluffs, even calling and loosing chips just to see their hand is always a good way to work out your opponents play in online heads up poker.

I’ve been using Sharkscope over the last few weeks to monitor my progress over at pokerstars, but it has come to my attention that Pokerstars are not happy with members using the service.

I’m not sure whether this is for the subscription, free service or both, but I’d just thought I’d let fellow poker players know incase they get their Pokerstars account revoked.

The link to the story on the ban by Pokerstars regarding Sharkscope can be found here: Sharkscope

Poker Stars definitely has the popularity factor, which speaks for itself seems as though it’s the second largest online poker room in the world.

This is mostly due to the diversity of the site, offering multi-table tournaments as well as Texas Hold’em, Omaha, Omaha Hi-Lo, 7 Card Stud, 7 Card Stud Hi-Lo, meaning there is pretty much something for everyone!

The lower limit games are quite easy to beat on the whole, although that is an generalization. This tends to be the place for beginners to try there luck and start to learn factors such as emotion and money management.

The minimum deposit is $25, and with the wealth of promotions going around, you can probably get your first deposit matched if you scour the web, or their promotions section. Buy Ins can range from $1-$1,000 depending what your playing, and stakes can range from $0.02-$0.04 to $100-200.

On the subject of cash, if any thing, a really good feature at Poker Stars is the actual speed of the cash backs.

With such a large and reputable site, with such good customer service, even if you have a problem, it’s dealt with pretty quickly.

A common phrase used is ‘Rake’, relating to poker. But what exactly is rake?

Well, player’s sign up to a poker room, pay there deposits, and play, according to table rules. If a player signs up and deposits $500, and has a starting balance of $500, how does the poker room make any money? This is where rake comes in.

Rake is a percentage commission that the poker room will take for ‘hosting the game’ as such, which could be any percentage, but generally around 5%, and never usually more than 10%. Of course, some rooms don’t charge the rake straight away, they only charge a rake if there’s a flop, limiting the players risk of loosing money constantly if they feel they need to fold before they have seen the flop.

Of course in the long run, the whole point of a rake is for the casino to cover all their costs assosicated with the game, and then make a profit. Of course, this isn’t the case for all casinos, as some will run poker tournements as a loss leader, to tempt players to visit, in the hope they will spend money on the likes of blackjack, or even roulette.

A leader in online poker rooms, PKR.com, has hit a major long term goal, by hitting the 2,000,000 user sign up milestone. Not only is this a massive achievement for PKR, but it comes just one year after hitting their one millionth user sign up milestone, which shows how rapidly they are growing.

According to online statistics, it’s the fastest growing poker room, that doesn’t accept US players, and the second fastest growing, worldwide.Thanks to their strong marketing force, PKR were recently able to air PKR TV, which is an hour long TV show, which reaches a potential audience in excess of 15,000,000, which runs alongside other marketing ploys such as the PKR loyalty program, and Stacked, their promotional magazine.