So youve heard of FullTiltPoker dot com, perhaps youve even sat for a hand or two at one of Full Tilt Pokers many tables. But have you heard of FullTiltPoker dot net? Thats right “.net”, not “.com”, and its amazing what a difference 3 letters can make.

Full Tilt Poker Dot Net is not a place to win other peoples money and (yipes!) maybe also lose a little of your own. FullTiltPoker (dot net) is an educational site, affiliated with Full Tilt Pokers gambling site, full of no cost ways improve your poker game. Whether youre a fish out of water when it comes to playing poker or consider yourself an online poker shark, this is the school for you.

Full Tilt Poker (dot net) was put together by some of the biggest names in poker Howard Lederer, Chris Ferguson, Jennifer Harman, Erick Lindgren, Clonie Gowen, Mike Matusow, Phil Ivey, John Juanda, Phil Gordon, Erik Seidel, and Andy Bloch, so folks like you and us could have access to their cumulative wealth of expertise in the game. At Full Tilt Poker (dot com) you can learn from these pros by playing directly against them in real-money games. At Full Tilt Poker (dot net) learning from them wont be as costly.

Full Tilt Poker (dot net) is rife with tutorials (illustrated where appropriate) on everything poker, from using the Full Tilt Poker software to the rules of play for each individual game. It includes a detailed Hand Rankings chart and a full poker Glossary. But so do many online poker sites.

What makes Full Tilt Pokers school so fantastic are the lessons (numbering 49 at last count) by the aforementioned poker stars. Lessons like:

Book Smarts vs. Table Smarts by Erik Seidel

Small-Pot Poker by Gavin Smith

Playing A Big Draw in Limit Holdem by Chris Jesus Ferguson

Know Your (Table) Limits by Paul Wolfe

Getting Started in Stud-8 by Jennifer Harman

Whats Your Starting Hand Really Worth by Steve Brecher

Big Slick: A Slippery Hand by Rafe Furst

Strategies for Short-Handed No Limit by John DAgostino

Third Street in 7-Stud by Perry Friedman

Flopping A Monster by Richard Brodle

Holding On To Your Winnings by Aaron GambleAB Bartley

No Limit By The Numbers by Andy Bloch

Playing Two Or More Tables At Once by Erick Lingren

These are the things that life-savings are banked on. And theyre yours (and ours) for no cost at all from the kind folks who ultimately want to win your money fair and square at Full Tilt Poker dot com.

As a noteworthy bonus, theres also a section on starting your own successful poker home game.

In a particularly noble, non-OS-partisan move, Full Tilt Poker makes it so you can download and install their software whether youre on a PC or a Mac. Then you can play in fake money games against other amateurs (budding pros call it what you will) regardless of operating system. (It almost brings a tear to our eye.)

And that brings us to the meat of the Full Tilt Poker experience whether dot net or dot com and that is: playing poker. Once youve taken in the tools this gaggle of experts has heaped upon you, all thats left is to practice (and, dare we say practice, practice).

To this end, Full Tilt Poker (dot net) has set up a fully functional online poker, just like its real money equivalent, except that all wagers are made with fake money. You get the same lobby stats, the same variety of stakes and types of action (limit, no limit, pot limit).

And just like at its real-money equivalent, at this Full Tilt Poker its not all Texas Holdem either. You can learn and play Omaha & Omaha HiLo, 7-Card Stud & 7-Card Stud HiLo, and Razz. And just like at Full Tilt Poker (dot com) you can play in scheduled tournaments and on the spot Sit & Go freezeouts.

The game of poker is arguably the most popular aspect of modern gambling. The intricate skill level and variety of hands and strategies entice even the most seasoned players to get involved in the game of poker.

There are many considerations as to what makes a good poker player, but the core concepts in the gambling realm are similar. The things that make a good poker player are usually the things that will assist you in the world of gambling as a whole.

The first thing that makes a poker player good is probably the most agreed upon consensus with those involved in gambling worldwide: quick and accurate decision making skills. A good poker player will be able to think quickly and apply the decisions they make at the proper time to succeed in the game of poker. Almost comparable to a quarterback on a football team who must possess good decision making skills, a good poker player is put in a similar situation when gambling. They have to think on their feet and quickly. This is the single more important aspect of succeeding at gambling and becoming a good poker players.

Another aspect of a good poker player is the ability to change gears at a moments notice. Poker, like gambling as a whole, is always changing and when playing a poker game, things can change quickly and the ability to adapt with those changes is what makes a poker player good.

Yet, another consideration of gambling, especially in particular poker, is knowing the game really, really knowing the game. A good poker player or gambling enthusiast in general, will know all of the ins and outs of the game. They will know poker history, popular poker players, online poker rooms, different hands, strategies and more. A good poker player will study the game of poker like a craft and cultivate it accordingly. The good poker players are the people who have a genuine love of the game and have an acute desire to continue to learn developing trends in poker and in gambling as a whole.

Finally, a good poker player will posses the most amount of confidence a human being can have. Gambling requires not only brains, but confidence and poker is no exception. Some of the worlds best poker players win because they are confident in their decisions and dont second guess themselves. Confidence will make a good poker player as surely as any of the other traits mentioned above but the combination of all of the skills makes a good poker player and a great student of gambling as well.

Las Vegas casinos are full of “crazy” video poker players. These players love the game-and why wouldn’t they-but somewhere along the way they came up with some thought on how to win that’s just plain false.

Today, we’ll look at a few myths and see if there’s any truth to them. If you’re a sociologist in the making, spending hours in a Vegas casino might turn out to be an interesting study.

Myth: If I slam the buttons hard, the machine will respond.

Yes, you’ll see this often-sometimes from frustrated players. It’s just a machine and it has no sensors built in that tell it how hard something was pressed. The button was either pressed or it wasn’t-that’s it.

You might even see people who will only slam a button when they’re about to receive cards. Others slam them when holding a card. Either way, it makes no difference. Of course, if you beat up the machine too much, security might come over to talk to you.

Myth: Cold Currency Works

I don’t know where this started, but for decades many video poker players have put quarters, nickels and whatever in the freezer prior to coming to the casino-or they feel the change before accepting it from the change person.

The myth says that cold currency somehow tricks the machine into paying out. What?

This doesn’t even make sense. The machine simply counts your currency and gives you the appropriate credits. It doesn’t measure the temperature of your change. You could put hot or cold coins in the machine and your result will be the same.

Myth: Don’t play credits or currency

This myth goes hand in hand with the previous one. There’s a group of video poker players that believes you should only play credits-another group says only currency.

The thought is that the machine plays differently based on whether you’re using credits or currency. As a player, you’re always using credits. Even if you put money in, it’s transferred to credits.

The machine doesn’t care what you do and the casino has no preference. It’s all money to them. Machines aren’t set up to give “preference” to certain types of players.

In future articles, we’ll tackle more Video Poker myths. Some of these myths are fun, but others can be detrimental to your bankroll. As a Video Poker player, you’re first goal should be to have fun.

Educating yourself about how Video Poker machines work is a great first-step. Most, and I mean most, Video Poker players haven’t a clue about the how the game works internally. They simply get all of these myths in their head and assume them to be accurate.

Once you get these out of the way, you can have a blast playing Video Poker and you can attack the game and seize your winnings.

The video poker machine is one of the most popular gambling machines in existence today. Part poker, and part video game, its the perfect combination to make it a modern day gambling sensation. Although todays video poker machines are the epitome of our current high tech in gambling, they have existed in simpler form for about two hundred years.

Video poker is of course based on the card game of poker. The video poker machine of today is the result of the game of poker being manifested into different types of games at varying levels of technology through the generations. The game of poker has been played in America since the early 1880s, with the game being referred to as Poker in 1834 by a man name Jonathan Green.

The earliest recorded ancestors of the video poker machine were coin operated machines which used poker cards. These machines came into the scene in the late 1800s, and were manufactured by a company by the name of Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn. The poker card machines were placed in liquor stores and cigar shops, and shortly worked their way across the U.S.

These machines worked by the player putting a coin into the poker machine and pulling a handle, which spun five drums that held the poker cards. The player would wait for it to stop, while hoping for a winning hand. A winning hand was paid out in cigars or drinks. Sadly, and unbeknownst to the players, the Ten of Spades and the Jack of Hearts were left out of the deck to reduce the chances of winning.

In 1901, Charles Fey made the next big improvement to the poker machine by adding the first draw feature to the already wildly popular machine. Feys addition to the poker machine allowed the player to actually use their poker skills in the game, as opposed to being left to the mercy of blind luck.

Charles Feys improvement allowed the player to hold certain drums still after the first spin, while pulling the handle to spin the remaining drums. This in effect was the first hold and draw combination.

Over the following years, peoples interest in poker card machines diminished, with only an occasional hiccup of interest every now and again. It wasnt until the late 1970s that the poker machine was reborn into the video poker machine, thus rekindling the love of video poker.

The first of these machines appeared along side of the personal computer. It was this technology which made the video poker machine a reality. With its solid state circuitry, and its television like monitor, this clunky machine would give rise to the poker machines of today. These machines have made their homes in bars, casinos and even online.