Industry Affairs & Some Goodies
The Gambling-Gazette.com is your source for all that’s going on in on-line gaming. Independent casino reviews, weekly gaming tips, to keep you at the top of your game, whatever your game may be. Sports book, Poker Room, Casino and Horse Racing action will be discussed and analyzed in an effort to provide the type of useful information that makes the difference between winning and losing. We’ll let you know where to go on-line to find the best upcoming free rolls and tournaments. The Gambling-Gazette.com will also bring you industry news to help you keep up to date with the latest news and current events in the on-line gambling Industry.
Gaming Tip of the Week
The poker boom of the past five or six years has produced a glut of no limit Texas Hold’em players in on-line card rooms. Many begin playing after watching the World Series of Poker and seeing internet players do well. One thing a lot of internet players don’t give the attention it deserves is position. The way to win at no limit Texas Hold’em is to get other players to make bad decisions. These decisions are made based on the information you and the other players at the table provide. Use late position at the table to re-raise, check-raise, or just check an opponent into making bad decisions.
Watch the players in early position, and the types of hands they play. Players who play marginal hands in early position may not have a lot of experience. Having late position and especially the button, you can get away with playing marginal hands because you’ve seen the players in front of you act, and you have a little more information than they did when they played their hand.
Raising a pot pre-flop out of position can set you up for disaster if you are not careful. Even getting involved in pots with early position is sometimes unwise, but a good hand is a good hand no matter where and if you think you can get your money in with the best of it, that is also important poker strategy. The flip side of that coin is that when someone raises under the gun (first to act), their hand will get a little extra respect from experienced players if they don’t do it often. Using this tactic to bluff can work effectively once in a while, but I wouldn’t recommend doing it very often.
On a side note to this, beginning players should watch how the early position players bet when you go to a new site and sit down at a table. Betting patterns in early position can give you a good idea of the level of talent and experience you are competing against. This may let you know if you are the fish at the table, or if you are at a table full of fish.
Free Roll Tournaments
Poker Free Roll tournaments are just about what they sound like. Free tournaments, you qualify for by making so many bets, or depositing in a gambling account. Qualifying means you have to deposit a certain amount in an account, or play a certain number of raked hands or whatever the qualifications call for. Poker rooms use these tournaments as promotional tools, and just about every online poker room has them. Prizes may be cash or merchandise, and if you qualify you can get in for nothing. Finding these tournaments is very easy, with sites available exclusively to direct people to free roll tournaments.
The bigger the better generally in free roll tournament play. Poker giant PartyPoker.com has good free rolls starting often. Titan, Poker stars, Pacific Poker, Ultimate bet, and Paradise Poker all offer many free roll tournaments with great prizes. If the tournament is rewarding you for something you were going to do anyway, such as play so many hands, or bet on sporting events, or horses then all the better. They can be a great deal.
Paradise Poker has the richest free roll tournament with a million dollar free roll. You must have a real money account with Paradise Poker, and you get a chance to get to the final table after playing in heat events. These heats can pit you against as many as 5,000 other players, making it kind of a long shot, but a million dollars for nothing isn’t a bad deal.
The obvious thing about free roll tournaments is that everyone got in for free. This can make for a lot of fireworks early in a free roll tournament. Be careful about getting involved with the ultra aggressive players early in a free roll tournament because they just don’t care about the money. Later as players get close to cashing positions, you can play a little looser to take a shot at winning the tournament. Whatever strategy you use, enjoy your shot at the free prize money. And as you know, if you’ve had to play a lot of raked hands to get in the tournament, it isn’t totally free. Go in with the attitude that your seat cost something, even if it’s just your rewards points, and defend them to the end.
Industry News
The attention of most on-line gambling companies has been on the indictments handed down against London based BetOnSports PLC executives, and the arrest of CEO David Carruthers while changing planes at Dallas-Fort Worth airport. That arrest is part of a 22 count indictment for conspiracy fraud and racketeering against key executives at BetOnSports. Many insiders believe the arrest of Carruthers is a ploy to get him to turn on founder Gary Kaplan who is outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Justice and charged with 20 felony counts under the RICO act.
The indictments forced the BetOnSports to be removed as a publicly traded company from the London Stock Exchange. After shocks included 1,300 employees of BetOnSports losing their jobs, and plunging stock prices for investors of on-line betting operations that do business with U.S. citizens. If that didn’t affect people enough, the company shut down it’s phone lines and sites leaving gamblers uncertain about the money on deposit, and winnings payouts. BetOnSports has stated that payouts would be made within 90 days, but they have been less than forthright during this ordeal. Advertisers on the site are also affected by the indictments making innocent people suffer the brunt from this witch hunt.
David Carruthers sits in a hotel outside St. Louis Missouri wearing an electronic ankle bracelet. Freed on a million dollars bail, Carruthers was fired from his position soon after his arrest. BetOnSports had over is a multi-billion dollar company with well over 100,000 active players.
United States laws about sports betting on the internet are in a kind of grey area since the Wire Act prohibiting phone bets was enacted in 1961. At that time the internet would have been inconceivable to lawmakers. The current regime’s attempts to shut down on-line gaming to its citizens have increased as the current administration believes in needs to get this done before leaving office. So far legislation has been able to limit the ways on-line gambling accounts can be funded, just making more inconvenient and costly to fund your account and get paid off.
Proponents of a ban on internet gambling to U.S. citizens insist on saving people from themselves. Republican representative Tom Osborne from Nebraska believes this is a tremendously important piece of legislation because internet gambling is fueling illegal gambling on college campuses. Osborne is the former head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers and was known by sports talk show host Jim Rome as Brubaker, for the large number of criminals he recruited. Now Dr. Osborne is concerned about the well being of people on college campuses after filling them with criminals during his tenor as head coach. This may be more hypocritical than all of the state representatives whose state run lotteries encourage people to gamble on games they have almost no chance of winning, and that pays out only about 50% of the money they take in. Any other bet that paid 50% back wouldn’t be one people would make, but the promise of huge, life changing scores in a lottery is enough to blind most people to the odds of winning.
Are You Ready for Some Football
Aside from the bad industry news with American Lawmakers trying to reinstate prohibition, it is also football season. College and Pro football kick off this month. With the pre-season well underway, gamblers are chomping at the bit to get the regular season started. Football season is the busiest for sports betting sites, and more money is wagered on College and Pro football than any other sport. It’s time to start studying the teams if you’re going to make a profit on football this season. Some great match-ups are slated even early in the year. Quarterbacking brothers Eli and Peyton Manning go head to head in the opening NFL weekend as Eli’s New York Giants take on brother Peyton’s highly ranked Indianapolis Colts. Eli Manning has been in Peyton’s shadow for years now, and is predicted to have a breakout season. The Colts are favored by many to win the Super Bowl. The brother versus brother angle is sure to have fans around the world tuned in for the opening weekend of what promises to be another exciting football season.
xox
Diana
Diana Sterling
diana@gambling-gazette.com
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Birgit says:
Very informative, thank you! I always liked to play Texas Hold’em!
August 30th, 2006 at 11:50 am