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.”

If you’re interested in becoming a poker pro, you’re not alone. While there was a time where poker was looked down upon as a profession, in the 21st century, poker has become associated with a glamorous lifestyle, with players jet-setting from country to country and being treated like rock stars everywhere they go. Since clearly playing cards all day is a lot better than working at a nine-to-five desk job, many players are wondering how they too can join the ranks of poker professionals.

The Poker Pro Grind

Your first tip is to get that rock star lifestyle idea out of your head. While a handful of poker players can obtain fame and fortune, the large majority are grinders, toiling away at their laptops in relative obscurity, pushing small edges hour after hour, day after day, to make their nut. Sound dull? That’s because when you are a poker pro, poker is your job. It can be a good job and a lucrative one, to be sure, but to be successful, you’re going to have to work. If it doesn’t feel like work, it’s going to be tough for you to last.

The Poker Pro Honesty

Once you’ve come to grips with the reality of what being a poker pro is like, you have to find out if you have the right stuff. This means record keeping. It’s not good enough to think you’re a consistently winning player. We tend to remember our wins and forget our excuse our losses. If you’re going to play poker for a living, you need to know you’re a long-term winner. That means recording every session, the time, duration and how much you won or lost. You’ll need to do this for months and show a consistent profit before you should consider dumping your day job.

The Poker Pro Bankroll

Once you’re sure you’ve got what it takes, you need a bankroll. This bankroll should be separate from your household expenses. However, since you’re going to be a pro, you’re going to have to pay your expenses out of that roll, so you need to calculate exactly how much you will need to beat the variance of the game and pay all your bills. Your current bankroll should enable you to do this for three months even if you break dead even at the tables. If it doesn’t, you’re not ready yet, or you need to find lower stakes games.

Once you’ve got your skills and your bankroll, you can go to work. Good luck! Remember there is no shame in going down in stakes and no shame in keeping poker as a profitable hobby if you don’t have quite what you need to make it a full time occupation.

If you’re wandering into a live poker game for the first time, there’s no need to worry. You’re playing the same game you’ve always played, just in a slightly different venue. Still, it’s good to know some of the understood etiquette of the game.

Private Vs. Public Games

If you are invited to a home game, it’s a very different situation than if you are playing in a public card room. In a home game, you should be on your best behavior to be sure you will be invited back, especially if you are a winning player. In a public room you should still behave yourself, but you may get a little more latitude.

In a public game, you are free to leave the table whenever you want, although if you pick up your chips, your seat will go to another player. In a private game, you should make it a point to stay a while, especially if you are integral to keeping the game going. If you have a big win, it is customary to give the opponents some chance to recoup their losses, rather than leave right away.

Chopping

In a public card room Texas hold’em game, if it is folded around to the small blind, he and the big blind may decide to “chop,” taking back their bets and starting a new hand. This is done to save time and so that the House does not benefit by taking a big percentage of a small pot.

The small blind may have to give up one chip in a chop. If you chop once, common etiquette demands you chop throughout the entire session, not only when it’s convenient for you.

Checking It Down

In some blind vs. blind situations, a player may want to “check it down” rather than chop. This happens in bad beat jackpot games when both players have a hand that may result in a bad beat jackpot.

Usually this means one player holds a pair and the other a big ace. Players simply check to the river and show down their hands.

Five Card Stud

In order to overcome this problem, players developed a variation called Soko, also known as Canadian stud. For the most part, the rules are the same as in five card stud: Players put up an ante and get one card down and one card up. The lowest card showing is forced to make a small bet called a bring-in, subsequent players going clockwise may fold, complete the bring in to a full bet (or raise if it has already been completed), or call. Three more cards are dealt out face up, with a betting round in between each. After each player has been dealt five cards and made final bets, there is a showdown and the best hand wins the pot.

Five Card Stud Variant – Soko

The distinction that makes Soko interesting is in the rank of hands. In Soko, there are two additional hands. The four card straight (or Canadian straight) and the four card flush (Canadian flush). These hands fit in between one pair and two pair. This makes determining what an opponent has a little more challenging.

How Soko Makes Five Card Stud Better

In normal five card stud, if you hold (As) Ac 4d 6s and your opponent holds (X) 3h 5h Jh, you know that if your opponent doesn’t catch an ace, pair one of his up cards, or catch a heart on the fifth card, you are a lock to win. However, in Soko, your opponent may already have a four flush, meaning if you don’t pair one of your upcards on the final card, you may lose. Since a pair is commonly sufficient to win in regular five card stud, the additional Soko hands increase the complexity of the game significantly.

These three books became must reading for any no limit tournament poker player. The ideas that Harrington crystallized in the volumes are ideas that nearly every poker player can now recite by heart.

“Harrington on Cash Games”

For his next work, Harrington brought his expertise to the world of cash games. “Harrington on Cash Games,” a two volume set, was written to help players apply the same analytical approach that Harrington advocates for tournaments. Following this approach, anyone should be able to become a strong player.

“Harrington on Cash Games” Volume One

In volume one of Harrington on Cash Games” he discusses the basic ideas and elements that you need to know to be successful at poker. Ideas such as the basic principles of poker, why to bet, how to determine how much to bet and what it means when others bet. He then moves on to discussing the finer points of aggressive pre-flop and flop play.

“Harrington on Cash Games” Volume Two

In volume two, tight-aggressive turn and river play are analyzed. Harrington then goes on to explore the different kind of game situations that a player might face, such as whether or not to play a loose aggressive style, how to beat weak games and what to do about physical tells.

Using These Books

What’s nice about Harrington’s work is that the books are peppered with problems taken from real life examples of cash game play. Readers can play along with great (and not so great) players, trying to figure out what they would do in a given situation and then seeing the results. This can be of great benefit to the reader.

The books do not contain the kind of game-changing concepts that “Harrington on Hold’em” offered. However, they do provide a rich source of poker information for any reader that cares to give them a shot.