The competition was held on January 31st of this year and a total of over 100 local beer enthusiasts, experts, media personalities, and celebrities turned out to try out beers from 10 local breweries.  Among those in the competition were Diamond Knot, Anacortes, Scuttlebutt, Elysian, Fish, and Hales.

Each brewery submitted a special brew to be called the “Official Space Needle 50th Anniversary beer” and those beers were judged based on overall impression, appearance, aroma, innovation, and unexpected flavors.

Over a period of two hours, judges sampled brews from each competitor with several dishes from Sky City Restaurant and then counted the judge’s ballots.  When a winner was selected, Pike Brewing Company was selected for Pike’s Space Needle Golden Anniversary IPA.

Charles Finkel, President of Pike, stated that, “Like the Space Needle, we are an iconic family-owned local company. We brewed this ale to feature local ingredients including 5 different varieties of Washington State Yakima Valley Hops for a unique golden India Pale Ale that goes well with Sky Cities’ local, sustainable menu. It is a beautiful GOLDEN color with an assertive hop character, and floral notes.”

Pike brewery is headquartered in Seattle, WA and has had a long history of successful brews.  Pike has the honor of being the first American craft breweries to offer customers an IPA.  The company was founded in 1989 by Charles and Rose Ann Finkel and since then various beers have won awards throughout the United States and around the world.  Their Pike IPA has been featured in the British book “300 Beers to Try Before You Die” and is a favorite of beer lovers worldwide.

First, mixed games are a great way to gain a huge advantage over other players.  Starting in 2003, most players turned their attention almost exclusively to Texas Hold’em and practically abandoned other forms of poker with maybe the exception of Omaha.  Games like Stud, Razz, Triple Draw, and others dwindled until about 2006.  Now that players are beginning to come back, they do not have the experience to flourish right away.  Also, the training materials are not out there for mixed games like they are for Hold’em players.  As a result, players will not be improving nearly as fast as Hold’em players.  If you become proficient in these games, you will have a huge advantage over other players.

This advantage also lends itself to tournament play.  It is no secret that mixed games and non-Hold’em games are the primary reason that pros have reasserted their dominance on the poker world.  They either already knew the games or turned their focus on them due to the smaller field.  A seven card stud event has a much smaller field than any random Texas Hold’em event, especially at the World Series of Poker.

Next, mixed games usually give math wizards and tighter players an advantage more than Texas Hold’em does.  Since the games are mostly limit poker, players that rely on stats and a solid game plan to succeed usually do much better in mixed games than in Hold’em.  They can manipulate the math in their favor and play a much more generic straight forward form of poker that is steadily profitable and not nearly as swingy as NL or PL poker can be.

Lastly, mixed game poker is a welcome change of pace of Texas Hold’em.  As many Hold’em players will tell you, the game can get somewhat boring and monotonous after a while.  That is one reason that when pros have cash games, they usually play something other than NL Hold’em.

Real money online poker mixed games have gathered a large following and much of that has spilled over into the live arena.  As players continue to learn the value of these games, more will flock to them in order to gain an advantage over other players and grow their bankrolls.  If you have never taken up mixed games, now is a great time to start.  Poker is always evolving and soon mixed games may be the true bread and butter for many professional poker players.

Poker Zion

Poker Zion has one benefit over other online poker coaching programs.  It offers you a structured approach to becoming a better poker players.  Whether you’re a rank beginner or have some experience, this site will improve your game.

Training programs are split up by micro-stakes and small to mid-stake.  Players received emails each week in their inbox with that week’s material which is essentially a set of videos.  Videos cover a variety of topics ranging from the basics, to advanced gameplay, and even how health and nutrition help you become a better player.

Poker Leak Buster

Poker Leak Buster is more of a specialized training program that analyzes and fixes poker leaks.  How it works is that the program analyzes your Hold’em Manager or Poker Tracker 3 database and looks for leaks and potential leaks.  Once leaks are found, you are given videos to watch that will help you identify and correct the leak in your game.

This software is a great value for those that have a relatively solid game but want to find ways to either increase their profits, take their game to the next level, or determine whether their downswing is variance or a fixable issue.

Ace Poker Drills

Ace Poker Drills is a three component program that is great for learning the concepts of odds and outs, pre-flop play, and hand equity.  The odds and outs drill will train you how to quickly spot and count your outs and figure out odds.  The pre-flop trainer works similar, but actually gives you actual game play situations where you must choose whether or not to play the hand.  The last section, the equity trainer, will teach you how to figure out your equity in hands based on various situations.

This software is one that is best geared towards beginning and inexperienced players.  With constant drilling, figuring out odds and equity can become second nature.  However, one must work in order to master these concepts.  This is one of the better poker training software tools to help you improve your skills in these areas.

Being able to see your opponents should create a more organic experience that could potentially let you tell if their tired, overly confident, or buffing. However, some might not like this and prefer the colder traditional online poker systems, where you focus more on yourself and the cards on the table, and less on your opponents projected emotional state.

Aces Hangout is still in beta testing and will likely remain that way until Google completes the ‘Hangout’ feature of the Google+ social network. However, for those of you that can not wait you can request to try Aces Hangout here, but you should keep in mind that at this point Hettema & Bergsten are having to add users manually, so it might be some time before you are able to play.

Aces Hangout is just one example of what is called ‘social gaming’. The most popular product in this relatively new category is Zynga Poker, which is available through facebook. With the clarification of ‘wire act’ by the U.S. Department of Justice back in December social gaming companies will be able to monetise their products, and if the expansion of social networks is a useful indicator real money social gaming could be the next huge thing in online poker. However, this is still some way off as individual states will first have to pass laws and put regulations in place to allow for any kind of online gambling.

For more information about social gaming try chips88.com

CamSpace takes a fresh approach to redefine technology and Web cams, with games and other applications designed to interact with everyday objects such as soda cans, boxes, or any other item that you can hold in your hand. Users just need an Internet connection and a Web cam to play CamSpace games, holding up the object they want to use for a few seconds until it is recognized by the technology then using it as a controller to dictate all the action on their computer screen. It basically functions like a Nintendo Wii controller but with no console or controllers necessary; just any object and a Web cam is all that is necessary

As far as potential applications for playing at online casinos and poker rooms, the CamSpace technology could easily be incorporated into a wide range of games such as roulette, blackjack, or poker. Blackjack would be an obvious fit, as players could use hand signals just like at the casino to take a hit or stand; other games could easily be modified to accent hand signals and motions of objects as well, triggering actions like pushing all your chips in at poker, rolling the dice at the craps tables, or spinning the roulette wheel to see whether or not Lady Luck is smiling on you.

Camspace, unlike the Kinect and other motion sensing devices is highly adjustable to almost any game. The company is constantly looking for partnerships with suitable games. Current examples are educational games and third-party applications that partners and advertisers have created and can be seen at their website. Amazingly, if you’re a bit more technical than the average Joe, you can easily design a motion controller for yourself and use it for your casino or needs to fling virtual chips or cards around.

A complete tutorial is beyond this scope of this but that’s what sites like allinpokerodds are for, where you’ll find poker odds calculators, strategy guides, and reviews of the best online poker sites to play at. Allinpokerodds is not just any old odds calculator. The hand history import feature really sets the site apart from other wannabes, giving you instant odds at all stages of the hand you just played online.

Getting started may seem intimidating but calculating odds and playing winning poker is very similar to statistics and solving math problems; once you learn some basic formulas and principles you can apply them to a wide variety of common situations that occur over and over.

This has to do with the very nature of increasing blind structures.  If the blinds never increased the games could theoretically last forever.  But with increases in the blinds, players have to continually try to accumulate chips, otherwise the increasing blinds will eventually whittle away their stacks.  The faster the blinds increase, the fewer hands a player has to accumulate the chips necessary to stay ahead of the blinds.  So the amount of time spent at each blind level is only relevant because time has a direct impact on the number of hands that get dealt.

To illustrate this, let’s look at two rather extreme tournaments.  In both tournaments there are nine players, the starting stacks are 200 chips, the starting blind level is 2/4 and the blinds double at each new level.  In the first tournament, the blind timer is set to increase the blinds every 30 minutes, while in the second the blinds raise every 10 minutes.  However, for some reason, it takes the players at the first table 30 minutes to play a single hand of poker.  At the other table, it takes only one minute.

At the first table, the blinds are putting an inordinate amount of pressure on the players.  Sure, they only go up every thirty minutes, but by the time a player has seen his or her 5^th hand the blinds will have reached 30/60.  At that point the player can’t make any moves, all he or she can do is push all-in.  Needless to say, this tournament won’t involve a whole lot of skill – whoever gets lucky and gets a big hand in the first few hands is going to win.

At the other table, though, despite the short amount of time at each blind level, the players will each get to see 10 hands before the blinds increase.  This is still probably less than average, but it’s much more reasonable than the first game.  Rather than having to push all-in within the first five hands, a player will usually get one top 10% hand at each blind level, and so can afford to be a little patient.  By the time the blinds reach 32/64 a player will have seen forty hands, which will afford him or her a reasonable amount of time to pick the right spots to play and make moves.

Of course, both of these examples are somewhat extreme (if nothing else, blind levels rarely double with each increase).  Nevertheless, they do illustrate that before deciding on a blind structure for a home game it is important to factor in how long each hand takes since it is the number of hands dealt at each blind that really determines the impact of the blind increases.

So, when determining the blind structure for a home game, remember to always consider the speed of play among the players.  If you have an inexperienced group then it might be beneficial to have longer blind levels since new players tend to take longer to count chips, make decisions, etc.  However, if you have an experienced group and an efficient dealer then you can shorten the blind levels and still get a good amount of play since each hand will take less time.

For a number of years the game of online bingo has been known by many as a popular pastime for both men and women all around the world. As opposed to standard casino games however, online bingo is considered a form of entertainment more than a form of gambling. It’s considered to be one of the most social online games that you can play, as chatting and conversing is actively encouraged at online bingo halls. These sites provide a popular meeting place for friends and family, as well as a way of meeting new people in a fun and inviting environment. Gone are the days of having to drive across town to play a few rounds of bingo and catch up with your fellow players. Do you prefer to play bingo early in the morning or even late at night? You can do this with no problem at all right from the comfort of your own home.

Different than the traditional version of the game, online bingo offers an almost unlimited number of versions of the game all with special bonuses, promotions and jackpots. Play as many cards as you want at a time and let the site’s software keep track of all of your numbers for you. In addition to bingo, most sites also offer players a number of casino and table games to keep things interesting. You simply won’t find the same level of convenience along with the variety of choices at your local bingo hall.

Nearly as popular as online bingo halls are sites that offer online scratch games. No matter whether you refer to them as scratch cards, scratch offs or pull tabs the object of the games is essentially the same – reveal the symbols hidden in the play area and win a prize! Just as with online bingo, the biggest benefit to playing scratch games is the convenience and ease of play along with an unparalleled number of scratch games and themes to choose from.

You’ll find scratch games based on all sorts of popular subjects including fantasy, sports and casino games. Besides convenience, you’ll also find a few other benefits to playing online. At many of the top sites, you can win jackpot prizes from $200,000 up to $1 million in an instant! Even better, most online scratch card sites guarantee that one out of every three cards is a winner. You simply won’t find those same odds buying scratch off tickets from your local corner store or by playing the lottery.

Why are poker players using an odds calculator? The poker tool gives you the information you need to avoid common mistakes. You will start to understand how the knowledge of poker odds can influence your play dramatically and you will become a better player faster. Some odds calculators work for both absolute beginners and experienced poker players.

The majority of available odds calculators are designed specifically for Texas Hold ‘Em.  This is the most popular form of poker played in poker rooms today. Players receive two hole cards and then choose three from five community cards.  The suspense builds as everybody watches the community cards.  Between rounds of betting, the dealer passes out the flop (three cards), the turn (one card) and the final card, called the river.

The calculator grabs the values of the cards dealt and automatically updates the current odds. If you had to calculate the odds manually, you could easily make a mistake. The poker tool uses complex algorithms to calculate your current hand odds, giving you a recommendation of what you should do in real time based on your cards, position, fold depth and playing style. All the relevant information is displayed clearly in a small window that stacks up next to the poker browser window without distracting you from the game play. Players do not have to flip back and forth between screens to see what’s going on.

Any odds calculator is a great improvement tool for any Texas Hold’em poker player as it will assist you, but the final call is always yours to make.

Using Psychology to Your Advantage

In five distinct sections, Schoonmaker shows how many players rely excessively on intuition, even when they know they should be applying logic. He shows players how to do a cold, hard assessment of their own play and the psychological errors that they make. He shows how players can identify these psychological errors in others to use to their advantage.

Psychology and the Evolution of Poker

Schoonmaker understands that in the 21st Century, poker is constantly evolving, as more and more people take up the game, as technological advances like hole card cameras and Internet play predominate. He talks about how players can analyze and adjust to these changes to stay ahead of the curve.

Understanding Your Own Psychology

Schoonmaker also offers techniques for understanding and combating the effects of tilt, an emotional overload that can occur from a series of bad beats or one terrible one, or from a run of bad luck. If a player lets it, tilt can destroy them, and Schoonmaker’s techniques and observations can help prevent this from happening.

Any poker library that includes a section on psychology would be incomplete without this volume. Those who benefit from it may also consider taking a look at Schoonmaker’s follow up work, “Your Best Poker Friend,” or the book’s predecessor, “The Psychology of Poker.”