Rakeback offers provide online poker players the opportunity to receive a percentage of the rake they contribute to each pot back at the end of every month. These rakeback offers vary by online poker room, but they all have one thing in common. You don’t have win in order to make money while playing your online poker rake back account.

Yes, this is the truth. Online poker players are playing every day with the objective of winning money at online poker tournaments and ring games without understanding the fact that by just playing you are generating money for yourself via the rakeback offer you have signed up for.

Rakeback is as simple as this: Your Rake Back = Monthly Gross Revenue X Rakeback %

Now we need a couple definitions.

1. What is rake and how is rake calculated:

The rake is the fee that every online poker player pays to the “house” or in this case the online poker room for playing in a hand at their online poker room. This fee is different from poker room to poker room. The rake is calculated in one of two ways, the dealt method and the contributed method. The dealt method is calculated by totaling up all of the rake in a hand and then dividing that amount between all players who were dealt cards in the hand. The contributed method is calculated based on the total amount each player pays into the pot. The dealt method gives an edge to those players who play fixed limit games. While the contributed method can add up to greater rake for No Limit poker players and thus earning greater rakeback.

2. What is Monthly Gross Revenue (MGR)

Monthly Gross Revenue is the total amount of rake you generate while playing at the online poker room. This amount includes all rake contributed while playing ring games as well as tournament entry fees. Some online poker rooms do not pay rakeback on tournament entry fees so you should check with the poker room before signing up. So now that we have these rakeback definitions down, we can calculate how much theoretical rakeback you can earn in a month. A player who generates $1000 in MGR over the month and is signed up to a 40% rakeback deal now will receive $400 in rakeback at the end of the month.

$1000 X 40% = $400 to your pocket.

Now this $400 is going to be paid to you wether or not you win $5,000 or lose $100 playing online poker. The rakeback is always going to be there and is only dependant upon how much you play, not how much you win. Now let’s take a look at yet an other example of how rakeback can make you a profitable online poker player.

Like all poker players you are going to go through hard times and find it difficult to even just break even. In our above example, you don’t even have to break even at the table in order to still earn a profit. As long as you generate the $1,000 in monthly gross revenue, you now have a $400 cushion to work with. So even if you happen to end the month down $200, you are still going to end the month up $200 after you receive your rakeback payment.

As you can now see, if you didn’t before, the importance of playing online poker with a rakeback deal in place for yourself. You can find many rakeback offers at Treasure Hunter Poker by visiting any of our rakeback pages.

Don’t throw your money into the muck with your cards any more. Start making money while your are making money at the online poker table today.

Jan Sorensen Wins Grand Final at Master Classics of Poker

Jan Sorensen won the grand final of the main event at the Master Classics of Poker in Holland Casino Amsterdam. He won 623.000 euro. In the exciting final Gustav Ekerot came in second. The Master Classics of Poker is one of the biggest and best-known international poker tournaments in Europe.
Link NewsCom Photo:
This year poker players from a.o. America, Canada, Russia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Slovakia, England, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, etc. attended the Master Classics of Poker.
About Master Classics of Poker
The main tournament in the Holland Casino Master Classics of Poker is the Lido Poker Tournament. This tournament takes place from Tuesday 11th to Friday 14th November inclusive and has a buy-in of 6,000 Euros plus 200 Euros entry fee. The Master Classics of Poker comprises seven different tournaments where the types of poker played are Texas Hold’em and Omaha. The buy-in plus entry fee for each tournament varies between 330 and 6,200 Euros. The level of the prize pot for these tournaments is, of course, dependent on the number of participants. Each day the tournaments start at 2 pm except for the Lido Tournament that starts at 3 pm. More information on the MCOP and the full tournament schedule is available at http://www.masterclassicsofpoker.com.

‘Poker Wizards’ Reap More than $4,000,000 in Tournament Earnings in 08

‘Poker Wizards’ book contributors: Chris Ferguson, Daniel Negreanu, T.J. Cloutier, Kathy Liebert, Marcel Luske, Dan Harrington and Mike Sexton unable able to defeat the overwhelming odds in 2008 to make the recently televised WSOP final table, but as a group, they have been paid in excess of $4,000,000 for tournament winnings in 2008 even without cracking the Main Event.

In one of the years best new books, ‘Poker Wizards’, the best known names in poker explain how they make large sums of money year after year. An exclusive compilation of strategies, insights and winning tactics from some of the worlds best poker players combined in one book. Well known No-limit Hold’em champions Daniel Negreanu, Chris Ferguson, Dan Harrington, T.J Cloutier, Marcel Luske, Mel Judah, Mike Sexton and Kathy Liebert, reveal the tactics and attitudes that have enabled them to make millions of dollars playing poker. The book also contains a bonus chapter on body language by world renowned body language expert Marc Salem.

Poke Wizards author available for media interviews.

Author Warwick Dunnett
Cardoza Publishing
Distributed by Simon & Schuster and available at:
www.pokerwizards.net

Century Casinos Announces Polish Open 2008 Poker Tournament

Century Casinos, Inc. announced today that its subsidiary Casinos Poland Ltd. will present the grand Polish Open 2008, a four-day Texas Hold’em No Limit tournament, hosted as part of the fifth EPT European Poker Tour Season at its casino in the Hyatt Hotel in Warsaw from November 15 to November 19, 2008.

The tournament will be capped at 400 players who will play for a total prize pool of up to PLN 8,000,000 or approx. $2,700,000. The buy-in for the tournament amounts to PLN 21,000 or approx. $7,000. According to the official website of the EPT a lot of stars are heading to Warsaw for the next stop on the Pokerstars.com European Poker Tour. Among the top players set to compete at the four-day event are Team PokerStars Pros Gavin Griffin, the EPT Grand Final winner in Season 4, EPT Player of the Year Luca Pagano, PCA Champion Bertrand “ElkY” Grospellier, William Thorson, Season 3 Warsaw finalist Katja Thater, EPT London finalist Marcin Horecki, Dario Minieri, Alex Kravchenko and Isabelle Mercier.

Read More?

Online poker rooms Poker Host and Eurolinx had already established that residents of certain states from the USA would not be allowed to play on their sites in keeping with local laws on poker’s legality, and now have made the announcement that all of the US is banned from play on their sites. It is believed that this action as taken in response to the actions of the Governor of one of those states, Kentucky, who sought to gain ownership of poker room domain names in an effort to shut them down.

Overlay Poker Tournaments: Gaining buy-in Advantage in a Guaranteed Tournament - CelebPoker.com

Poker players don’t get this opportunity often, but sometimes a poker player can make a financial advantage just by registrating for a Multi Table Poker Tournament

How is this possible? The answer is within the overlays given by guaranteed prizepools offered for some guaranteed poker tournaments

An example: On Sunday the 02/11/2008 the 250.000 Guaranteed Tournament at CelebPoker had a 320 Buy-In. 613 players registered for this tournament. Now the calculation fun begins!

First a player has to divide the offered Prizemoney with the number of players who registered. In this example: 250,000 / 613 players = 407.

This means that a players ticket is worth than 407. As your ticket costs 320, you are automatically gaining the equivilent of an extra 87 to pay for your entry (407-320 = 87). Ok, players don’t get the cash in the bank, but poker players do get it as an advantage for the buy-in as a player have less players to compete for the prizepool with.

Read More?

More students betting future at online casinos

Addiction comes in many forms, and while alcohol and drugs get most of the attention, university and college students are not immune to one of the fastest growing and expensive vices– gambling.

According to the Responsible Gambling Council’s Poker Poll and 2005 Prevalence Study, 6.9 per cent of young adults in Ontario have a moderate to severe gambling problem.

Online poker playing by young adults has grown by nearly 300 per cent, and 16 per cent of Ontarians between the ages of 18 and 34 believe that online poker is a good way to earn extra money.

Amanda Stokes, project co-ordinator for Know the Score, the Responsible Gambling Council’s travelling gambling awareness exhibit, said her organization’s goal is to educate students about the risks of gambling.

Read More?

A 22-year-old Danish poker professional won the World Series of Poker early Tuesday, turning a wheel straight on the last hand to become the youngest champion in the history of the no-limit Texas Hold ‘em main event.

Peter Eastgate hit an ace-to-five straight on the turn and instantly called an all-in bet from Ivan Demidov on the river to win the title and $9,152,416. Demidov held two pair, twos and fours.

The previous youngest champion was 11-time gold bracelet winner Phil Hellmuth, who was 24 when he won the tournament in 1989.

“It feels good to beat Phil’s record,” Eastgate said after taking pictures with stacks of $100 bills and his new gold bracelet. “I was not focused on the record that I could break, I was just focused on the game.”

Eastgate said he got a call from Hellmuth wishing him luck before the more than three-hour session.

Read More?

Perth player misses making poker final

The final of the World Series of Poker, with its $9.15-million U.S. first prize, will be televised tonight with Scott Montgomery no more than a spectator.

The 27-year-old professional player from Perth reached what organizers labeled the “November Nine” in Las Vegas, but he bowed out Sunday night and missed last night’s final, which was taped for broadcast tonight (TSN, 10 p.m.).

“I certainly wanted to finish better than fifth,” Montgomery told reporters later.

This year has been referred to as his “breakout year” as a poker player, with more than $1.3 million in tournament earnings heading into the World Series, and he more than doubled that with his $3.1-million prize for placing fifth.

Montgomery started playing poker about four years ago, while teaching English in Japan, using his down time to play and study the game.

His great 2008 run began in February at the World Poker Tour’s Los Angeles Poker Classic $990,000 No-Limit Hold ‘em championship. He made it to the final table, which included eventual winner Phil Ivey, and won $296,000 for finishing fifth.

You gotta know when to Texas hold’em at UMSL

Are you good at card games?

If you are (or even if you are not), the University of Missouri-St. Louis holds annual poker games and this year was the “Texas Hold ‘em Tournament!”

The tournament is usually played with a 52-card deck, and needs at least two players with no more than 11 players.

The Texas Hold ‘em Tournament was held on South Campus in the Provincial Hall from 7 -11 p.m. on Thursday night and officially started at 7:15 p.m.

The event drew in 46 players.

Charlotte Caeys, graduate student, business administration, came here from France and said she learned to play poker here, and has loved it from the first time she played. “I found out [how to play poker] on the Internet,” Caeys said.

Read More?

Rakeback is a term that refers to a refund on the rake that you pay when you are playing at a poker table. For any online poker site that you visit, the house takes a portion of every pot that you play. This portion is referred to as a rake and it is what the house does in lieu of actually being involved in the game the way they would be in casino poker. The rake is something you can not get away from as it basically represents the fee taken from the players by the house because the house puts on the game, hosts the accounts and invests their money into the creation of a poker website.

The rakeback is not always going to be equivalent to the rake that you give to the house and in fact in most cases will be quite a bit less than the rake that you give to the house. A typical rakeback would be in the 15% to 20% range, while a really good rakeback would be in the 35% range. However, if you become a prop player for a website that needs to have players in seats to get games going, you will find that the rakeback you receive is quite a bit higher and in fact can go to levels of 120% from websites that are grateful for your presence and your help. However, all of the larger and more established websites do not need prop players and that is why the typical rake back range mentioned above exists.

The rakeback is important to poker players for a very obvious reason. That reason, simply put, is that a rakeback gives them back some of the money they contributed to the house. If you are a break-even poker player, you would be a winning poker player if you got some of your rake back. If you are a losing poker player, you might have a chance at becoming a break-even poker player if you get some of your rake back. And of course if you are a winning poker-player, having some of your rake returned to you would increase your winnings and maybe allow you to reach some personal goals in the field of poker quite a bit sooner. All three of these scenarios regularly materialize under rakeback deals and that is why those rakeback deals are as important as they currently are.

One thing that is worth mentioning about rakeback however is that it is by no means easy to get. Most of the time it is not regularly advertised on the poker site and for that reason most of the time you will be forced to go through an affiliate in order to get it. Don’t let it discourage you however, since these websites are quite helpful and the rakeback you receive at the end will be just as valid.

If you are looking for the best rakeback deals for online poker look no further, go to rakeback.poker-lessons.net for the best rakeback and bonus deals for internet poker.

Ivan Demidov and Peter Eastgate emerged from a marathon session early Monday morning at the World Series of Poker and will meet later in the night to settle the $9.15 million title.

Eastgate, a 22-year-old poker professional from Odense, Denmark, eliminated the last American in the field with a set of threes. Dennis Phillips, who tried to bluff Eastgate with a 10 high, shrugged his shoulders and nodded his head when Eastgate made the call that eliminated him.

“I just want to be alive on the river,” Phillips said before an ace came on the turn, officially eliminating the 53-year-old trucking account manager who started the final table with the chip lead.

Phillips, of Cottage Hills, Ill., won $4,517,773 for third place.

Eastgate held 79.5 million chips, nearly 22 million chips more than Demidov, a 27-year-old semiprofessional poker player from Moscow.

“My hands held up all the time — that’s the key factor,” Eastgate said.

Those big hands, including two full houses and a set, helped Eastgate end the tournament for four players.

Ylon Schwartz finished fourth and won $3,774,974 after failing on a bluff, giving Eastgate a lead over Demidov. Scott Montgomery watched Eastgate hit a full house on the river, after Montgomery picked up three aces on the turn.

Read More?

One Day Fundraiser for Poker Players Alliance

Poker author Mitchell Cogert has decided to donate the proceeds from one day of sales of his poker book, “Tournament Poker: 101 Winning Moves”. The book is for sale online at Amazon.com, and everyone who buys a copy on November 11 will be sure the proceeds from the purchase will go towards the fight to keep online poker legal via support of the grassroots organization the Poker Players Alliance. The date was picked to run along side the airing of the World Series of Poker main event final table on ESPN, an event months in the making.

Amsterdam Poker Capital of the World

AMSTERDAM, The Netherlands, November 8 — Yesterday, November 7th, the 17th edition of the Master Classics of Poker started in Amsterdam. The Master Classics of Poker is one of the biggest and best-known international poker tournaments in Europe. Last year the total prize pot added up to more than 3.7 million Euros. This year the total prize pot will add up to almost 5 million euro. Between Friday 7th and Saturday 15th November the best poker players from all over the world will be pitted against each other. Amsterdam will be the poker capital of the world this week.

ANP news video with feeds live from Amsterdam:

http://pubstr.datiq.net/perssupport/HCPokerINT.wmv

Last year poker players from a.o. America, Canada, Russia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Slovakia, England, Ireland, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, New Zealand, Pakistan, Netherlands, Belgium, etc. attended the Master Classics of Poker.

Read More?

I like to peruse the Full Contact Poker online forums to read and comment on posts about interesting poker hands and whether they were played properly. I find that many of the contributors consistently suffer from the same problem: They are far too preoccupied with statistically insignificant aspects of a poker hand.

My point is that the minor details of many poker hands are often unimportant and simply not worthy of in-depth analysis. Worrying about these insignificant details won’t have much effect on your bankroll at the end of the year.

The best way to improve your poker game is to focus on the important aspects of the game, like eliminating big mistakes. Instead, I see too many players fretting about whether they are a 56.2 percent favorite or a 51.8 percent favorite.

Read More?

North Versailles Diner Raided For Video Poker

Video poker machines were removed from a North Versailles restaurant Thursday night.

Police officers confiscated the machines from the Great Valley diner in the Great Valley Shopping Center on Lincoln Highway.State and Allegheny County police handled the raid.No arrests were made.

Poker pros to duke it out

These are serious poker professionals duking it out at one of the biggest events of the year.

It’s going to be intense. The final nine players of the 2008 World Series of Poker Main Event Final Table will meet across the poker table Sunday at the Rio.

The nine will battle for a share of $32.6 million in prize money, bragging rights and the much coveted WSOP gold bracelet.

The event takes place at 10 a.m. inside the Penn & Teller Theater.

The final two players go head-to-head the following day.

Go to www.harrahs.com for more information.

Tao turns 3-years-old

Amy Smart bopped into Tao over at The Venetian this weekend with 10 friends. The group settled next to the restaurant’s 20-foot Buddha and dined on TAO Asian Bistro signature dishes Hong Kong XO Shrimp, Imperial Vegetable Egg Rolls and assorted sushi.

Read More?

Cake Poker is one of our most popular rakeback offers and is one of the fast growing poker rooms. They have excellent customer service and some of the weakest competition on the internet. The combination of 33% rakeback at Cake Poker and the dealt method, along with their other promotions makes Cake Poker incredibly lucrative.

Percentage of MGR Returned:

This is one of the most important variables to consider when comparing a rakeback deal. The Cake Poker 33% Rakeback Deal is one of the most generous offers in the industry. In fact, they offer the highest rakeback rate in the industry for their size room and up. This means a greater percentage of your MGR will be returned to you in the form of rakeback.

Method of MGR Calculation:

This is a very important for anyone who plays ring games, and Cake Poker has great ring games. There are three different methods. For more information on the different rakeback calculating methods, check out our rakeback strategy section. Cake Poker is one of the few poker rooms that uses the dealt method. This is the best type of rakeback for winning players who play a tight aggressive style. Tighter than average players will be credited with more MGR and earn more rakeback at a poker room that uses this method. Future articles will discuss how to estimate how much of an impact this will have on you.

Rakeback Stat Updates:

Rakeback Stats are updated daily for all Cake Poker players. This is very nice for tracking how much you are playing and if you are reaching your goals. .

Method of Deducting Bonuses from MGR

Each poker room deducts different items from MGR. At Cake Poker they deduct Bonuses from MGR. This means if you earn $500 in bonuses, your first $500 of rake contributed you get 100% of it back and after the first $500, you earn 33%. If you were at a poker room that offered 33% Rakeback and a 100% bonus with no deduction, you would earn 133% rakeback for the bonus period. However, very few poker rooms offer MGR without bonuses deducted.

Method of Calculating Bonuses Earned

Remember to consider that Cake Poker’s generous 100% first deposit bonus of up to $500, is also credited using the dealt method. Which means you will earn your bonus atCake Poker faster than other poker rooms that uses the contributed method.

Sit-n-Gos (SNGs) and Tournament Fees Included in MGR

Some rooms don’t add SNG and tourney fees into your MGR. This can be a substantial loss for some players. Cake Poker includes these fees into MGR calculations, which is a good thing, because the majority of their SNGs and MTTs are incredibly soft. For every $1 in fees that you pay, you will be getting back $0.33, this has a great impact on your ROI.

Online poker has grown in popularity and demand in the past few years. There is no need of visiting casinos to play poker as the internet brings online casinos to your home. Poker is a game that consists of many terms and plays; and one of the more popular phrases used in poker is poker rake and rake back.

Poker rake and rake back is a phrase many serious online poker players are quite versatile with. The rake in a poker rake and rake back is basically the method of making money by online poker sites. When playing a game of poker with real money, the house generally takes a percentage of each hand for itself; this is poker rake. Different online poker sites earn different poker rakes; but it is usually 5% of the pot amount.

Now about rake backs. Poker sites generally find out how much a player spends on online poker every month. If the player had signed up to the poker site through an affiliate, then the affiliate is paid a commission for having brought the player to the site. And in a bid to gain an advantage against competitors, the affiliates offer a larger percentage of this money to players and this is called a rake back. It is usually the poker rake and rake back that interests a player to sign up to the particular site or affiliate. This is because they charge a reasonable poker rake and a considerable rake back.

When playing online poker, both the poker rake and the rake back are important points to be considered when choosing the online poker site. Usually the poker rake is charged automatically where the person is not aware that they are being charged. When playing online poker, it is important that the player not only beat other players on the table, but also beat the poker rake. This is because winning money with no rake only ends up in the player ending up a loser.

However, when the rake back comes into the picture, players who were once losers become poker players who win with a profit. So a player who is winning in the game of poker automatically ends up with a fat bonus with the rake back. So when signing up in an online poker site, it is important that you first consider the poker rake and rake back of the site.

You have to make a rough calculation of how much you stand to lose through the poker rake and the amount of money you stand to win with rake back. You are paid a percentage of the money that the house charged as a poker rake in a rake back. In addition to this, the number of hands that the player plays and the stakes that are paid also determines the size of the rake back. So considering the poker rake and rake back of an online poker site, a casual and low limit player can earn about a few hundred dollars a month while professionals can rope in about $3,000.

So it can be seen that it is of no use to sign up to a site where there is no rake back. All poker players should be sure to receive a rake back when playing online poker; otherwise tons of money will be lost on the poker table. It is only with a rake back that a poker player can optimize his or her profits.

Poker Strategy - Playing Trap Hands Like King-Queen, King-Jack, Queen-Jack, Ace-Ten & More
By Matt Canei

One of the most frustrating and subtle strategies of playing poker is through the handling and play of these range of hands that actually are badly overrated by amateurs and beginning players. They are referred to as trap hands because they appear as a premium hand but they are actually really just high suited or unsuited connectors that most players aren’t aware of.

The beginning player will be dealt King-Queen and will likely think, “Oh, sweet this is just like Big-Slick.”

They could not be more wrong. Great players that want to play tight, smart poker probably do not even have king-queen on their list of starting hand requirements and if they do it’s in very late table position. These hands need to be treated similarly to 9-8s, 10-9s and other suited connectors, the only difference is that they are high in card rank but do not make the mistake of playing them like a premium hand because they are not.

Let us look at a quick example. You are dealt K-Q suited, which by most is the highest rated “trap” hand, and call another player’s raise (this player was located under the gun, directly left of the big blind and the raise was 3x the big blind). This raise was called by you who sat in 2nd position directly left of the raiser. The first mistake was calling a raise with this hand in early position, when a player raises in early position they are indicating a tremendous amount of strength and poker theory states that to call their raise you need a hand of equal or better strength.

The rest of the players fold and the flop reveals: K-J-5. You flopped top pair with second kicker and you are most certainly ahead! You can’t be so sure just yet. So you call the original bettor down to showdown and he reveals A-K and you lose the pot.

That is the problem with entering pots with trap hands, because most beginners play them like premium hands so they enter pots against premium hands that have them hopelessly crushed.

For a more in-depth (3000 words to be exact) explanation of playing trap hands as well as over 10,000 words of other free poker strategy as well as much more please take a look at http://www.mega-poker.net

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Matt_Canei
http://EzineArticles.com/?Poker-Strategy—Playing-Trap-Hands-Like-King-Queen,-King-Jack,-Queen-Jack,-Ace-Ten-and-More&id=965359