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We can all learn lessons from other sports and games to use in the current sport or game that we are playing. A thorough study of game theory will reveal this to be the case. In trading for example (I am referring to financial trading here) then the objective of all traders is to buy at a price that is lower than what they sell and vice versa. This is not always achievable but it is the goal of every trader.

However another clear goal is to also ride your profits as far as you possibly can and to cut your losses short. This principle is seen in some roulette systems where you start off making an initial bet and the use a percentage of that bet to carry on towards the next bet in the hope that the run will continue. There is logic behind this because of the fact that numbers in games like roulette are not evenly distributed in the short term.

For example in 37 spins then it is extremely unlikely that all 37 numbers would appear in those 37 spins and so this means that some numbers would appear more than once. So if you can look to possibly identify which number is about to go into a sequence of arriving more than it should based on short term variance then you have a chance of coming out ahead for the session. Clearly this method of betting will not make you +EV but it can be fun to use for single sessions of play.

I am often asked how much profit potential there really is in online poker. The key word in all of this isn’t the word profit but the word “potential”. There are many factors at work as to why different people can make different amounts of money. Better players simply do more things to be better players and this means taking the time to get the best rake deals, play more tables and select their games better. They also watch their opponents more closely as well and all of these things add to your bottom line.

So when you ask the question of how much profit potential there is in online poker then you could say “how long is a piece of string”? Although there is clearly a limited upside and the players that you will have to play against will be far more sophisticated these days. This clearly impacts on how much money you can make. So you have to be careful quoting figures here because that can easily mislead people into thinking incorrectly. I do not believe that $50/hr is achievable unless you are prepared to do more than just sit down in any old game and play poker. In fact even that may be stretching it somewhat.

But there are profits there for dedicated people and one needs to remember that the poker sites spend serious sums of money attracting new blood to their sites and if you can become a solid technical player then you can get your hands on some of that money while these novices still have it.

It is common knowledge amongst cheats that CCTV cameras do not protect them from all possible cheating moves. This is because a camera is only recording an event two dimensionally when in actual fact what is recording is three dimensional. Like for instance with overhead cameras on blackjack. I have heard of cases where some dealers were colluding with a certain player and one such example goes like this.

Imagine if a dealer could slightly expose the next card out of the shoe to the player at first base. Trust me when I say that this is easier than what it sounds. When the dealer is actually pulling cards to their own total then all it takes is slight pressure on the back of the card at the centre of that card to reveal the value of the card to the player at first base. Simply knowing that the next card out of the shoe is a ten value card affords the player a huge edge in the region of around 13%.

So not only can the player get a huge edge in this situation but they would appear less like a card counter by betting big off the top of the shoe. There are many cheating techniques that open themselves up when a dealer colludes with a player. The casinos know this and is why security and procedures are adhered to wherever possible.

A soon to be opened casino in Cleveland USA received no fewer than 16,000 job applicants for just 750 positions. The Horseshoe casino had to take down many of the job descriptions as they were only prepared to offer the positions to residents of the Cleveland area.
Having worked inside numerous casinos personally then I can see the attraction of why this type of job would appeal to many people. However there are downsides to working inside casinos as well and the unsocial hours can be very awkward for many people. There has just been a new casino given the green light in my old home town of Sheffield. This just highlights how big gaming and gambling has become over the past few years.

The topic of problem gambling is going to rear its head again whenever news like this hits the general public. However in my experience then the percentage of people who have a problem with gambling is on a par with the percentage of people who have a problem with drink, food and smoking and any other potentially destructive personal activity.

At the end of the day, people become addicted to something because they have enjoyed the process of actually doing it. So why should vast numbers of people be denied that avenue of entertainment simply because a very tiny percentage of people have a problem controlling the betting aspect of going inside a casino?

Before I go any further then I need to say that I have derived most of my education from poker books and so I cannot really fault them. However there is one overriding problem with poker books and this is that they do leave an awful lot open to interpretation. In fact it is very difficult not to interpret something in your own words when you read a book. This often leads to people having a very warped and misguided view of what the author is actually trying to say. I believe that poker books hinder as many people as they help.

The process is a twofold one, firstly the player looks to educate themselves and there is fundamentally nothing wrong with this. Players rapidly move away from first base when they seek out education. However everyone else who is serious about the game also seeks out education and so what makes you think that your information is superior to someone else’s? Clearly then once you have moved beyond a certain level then your opponents are every bit as keen and dedicated as what you are.

However what you need to remember is that there is really only one measure of success and that is how much you win over what period of time. I think that you need to educate yourself in what can happen at a poker table but you also need to learn how to think as well. There is little point in allowing some book to do your thinking for you because the best that you will become is a player with more education than a beginner who then fails to make money once they move higher up.

I am often asked about the relative merits of playing poker for a living. I must say that it does require a lot of hard work and commitment and is one that I am not overly happy to continue doing. Although this comes down to my internal lack of motivation than anything else. However to play poker for at least 40 hours a week requires dedication and especially when you are playing online where there is no interaction with anyone other than your computer screen.

This for me is the hardest part of playing online poker for a living because losing money in isolation is difficult. So in 2012 then I will be planning more recreational poker and not playing poker full time although it hasn’t been that way for a while now. In fact my last full time year as I recall was back in 2006. Next year I want to spend more time trading on the betting exchanges and then playing some poker around that.

This allows me to play how I really want to play and that is single tabling higher levels of play. I can handle the variance when I am only losing one buy in as a maximum in any one given day. I normally play between NL400 and NL1000 when I single table although I don’t buy in for the maximum at NL1000 and usually buy in for $500 to feel the game out. I think buying in for less is a more viable way to play until you are really sure of what you are getting into.

I often hear the discussion that tracking software is both fair and unfair and usually these arguments stem from the people who either use or don’t use the software. Firstly as an online player then the question is not easy to answer because you do not automatically need tracking software but it all depends on how you play. For example if you only want to play one table then the information that you can derive from hand histories and carefully watching the table would be superior to what you could get from using a HUD (heads up display).

However there is no doubt that if you want to multi-table then you need the extra information that tracking software gives to you. But even then if you play too many tables then there will be too much lag for many people. I know personally that I am not a great player when it comes to being technical. My best game is single tabling and this is where I think I can get an edge against other players who are using HUD’s.

So the bottom line is that it all depends on what you are trying to do and how you want to play poker. For example if you are minimum stacking and jumping from game to game then a HUD isn’t required or essential to your success. But it also depends on how you plan to play as already mentioned. I have gone through stages where I have used them and not used them with equal success and failure.

I once had a discussion with someone on how even a mediocre poker player could make a million dollars from playing poker. The process doesn’t involve anything remotely complicated but is simply making sure that you can beat the game at a relatively low level and then putting in enough hours at that level. If you can earn say $20/hour then you are well on your way. For example then anyone who can make that kind of money could make $400/week and $20k/year playing 20 hours per week.

Clearly this would mean that it would take you 50 years to make a million dollars at that rate. However this is assuming that you do not save your winnings and place them into things like bonds and other types of investments where your previous poker winnings are still making you money and continue to do so. This snowball effect is something that can only be observed if enough time has elapsed.

However it is easy to see how making a million dollars could be achieved sooner if you played more hours and made more money either by playing more tables or higher levels. Actually playing more tables is an easier way to make money than moving up because many of the low-stakes players will be recreational players or novices. So if you could increase your earnings to say $35/hr and play say 30 hours a week then you are making around $50k/year and suddenly a million dollars can be achieved in less than twenty years if you are prepared to invest your winnings and keep re-investing.

What is the best way to play STT tournaments or SNG’s as they are also known? Well without going into ICM theory or anything like that which is more complex than what I have time to write about here then a good default strategy in this form of poker is to play tight to start during the early to middle stages. If you play very low stakes then this can make you a small profit because there will be many players who are simply throwing their chips away. However this type of strategy is simply not strong enough because too many other players will be playing a proper strategy. So it then becomes very difficult to not only beat them but to only beat the rake as well.

This is the problem that you face when you play against opponents who are at least as skilled as you if not more so. If you play at say then $20 level then there are many pro’s and semi pros who multi-table these levels. They watch their opponents very closely and use opponent tracking software to find beatable games. They are adept at using ICM and so they become very tough opponents to beat on a regular basis. So you have two clear goals here and the first is to educate yourself in STT strategy. The second is to avail yourself of a very good ICM calculator because your shoving and calling a shove frequencies will have to be nailed on in order to even break even at relatively low levels these days.

The largest casino in Britain opened this week at the Westfield Shopping Mall in Stratford in London. It literally swamps most of the smaller sized casinos in the UK and boasts a huge number of gaming tables by comparison and has 40 roulette and blackjack tables. The largest casino that I have ever worked in personally had 8 roulette tables and 3 blackjack tables for a total of 11.

The casino is indeed open for business 24 hours a day and has on top of the 40 gaming tables, 150 slot machines, a huge 150 seater poker room and 92 gaming terminals. On top of all of this is a lavish restaurant and two up market bars. The casino is called “Aspers” after the Aspinall family and employs a massive 440 people and has provided numerous jobs. Although there are always going to be people who oppose places like this but there are two sides to every argument.

I would not go as far as to say that I am in the pro casino corner simply because I have worked in them and my living is derived from them in one way or another. I am open minded enough to see both sides of the argument but I honestly feel that the “anti-casino” lobby misrepresent their argument. We live in a world that has evolved very rapidly and in that world are vast number of people and companies who are looking to make money. We simply live in an environment where people from all walks of life want to do different things and if those activities are things that we enjoy then so much the better.