Everyone has seen her, and most of us, at one time or another, have been lured to her by her bright colors and flashing images. The flash of neon and the alluringly undulating Win! Win! Win! which pulses across her screen. Its the video game which gives the player just a hint of the chance of winning cash instead of points. Of course this little tease is known as the video poker machine.

Of course if you have fallen for the tease of the video poker machine, youll know that she doesnt give up the cash as easily as she portends she will. Thats part of her appeal to the player, to get her to finally give in to them and pay off. She is a paradox of beauty and frustration.

Just once wouldnt you like to beat her at her own game? Do you yearn to make her finally pay off to you? Then read on friend, for I have some tips which will maximize your chances to make the little beauty keep her promises of a win.

As with any game of chance where money is involved, the first rule to live by is to limit how much youre willing to lose. Make a promise to yourself that youll quit before you lose your shirt. Know before you begin where to draw the line if you start to suffer huge losses, and make certain you stick to your pledge to walk away.

As you would in regular poker, take your time and look over your cards each hand. You should take an ample amount of time to consider what strategy you wish to pursue with each new hand. Since there are no other people involved, your mechanized opponent will be patient with you. I have yet to see a video poker machine with a time limit, so dont feel pressured into hasty decisions.

Always play maximum coins, for the payout will be based on amount of coins played. Playing fewer coins doesnt guarantee playing longer. Always pick a machine which gives the best payout to coin ratio. If you want to play longer with less coin, then seek out a lower coin machine.

Practice at the many free video poker machines available to you at online casinos. Most online casinos offer free to play video poker machines. Use these to both hone your skills and build your confidence in playing video poker.

Playing video poker can be as much fun as playing regular poker. It presents you with unique opportunities and allows you to play at your own pace. If you follow the above tips, youll also increase your chances of walking away a winner.

Poker is becoming increasingly popular with more and more people not only playing the game but also watching television programs like the world series of poker. In this article, I describe the order in which poker hands are ranked, starting with the highest and also the probability that players have of being dealt that particular hand.

A straight flush

This is the best hand you can obtain and is the dream cards for any poker player. That is not to say that you always win a lot of chips with this hand and most players will tend to slow play this type of hand in an attempt to trap their opponent.

A straight flush is five cards of the same suit in a sequence. The higher the top card, the higher the ranking of that hand. Therefore ten, jack, queen, king, ace, which is often known as a royal flush is the best hand in poker.

The probability of this hand is around one in sixty five thousand.

Four of a kind

This is where you have four cards of the same rank or number which are the same. As with the above the higher the rank of the four cards, the higher the value. Therefore four aces are the highest rank of all of the possible four of a kinds.

The probability of this hand is around one in four thousand, one hundred and sixty five.

Full house

A full house is where you have three cards of one rank or number and two cards of another rank. As with the above, the higher the rank of these two sets, the higher the value. Therefore if you have three aces and two kings you will have the highest rank of flush. To explain it in even more simpler terms, the one with the highest ranking set of three cards, wins.

The probability of this hand is around one in six hundred and ninety four.

Flush

This is where you have five cards of the same suit but not in a sequence. A flush which includes an ace has the highest value. If there are two hands on the table which both have a flush with an ace, it then goes to the second highest card to see who wins etc.

The probability of this hand is around one in five hundred and nine.

Straight

This is where you have five cards in sequence which are in different suites. The highest straight is again the one which has the highest card at the top.

The probability of this hand is around one in two hundred and fifty five.

Three of a kind

This is the same as the four of the kind explanation apart from the fact that this is where you have three cards of the same rank or number.

The probability of this hand is around one in forty seven.

Two pairs

This is where you have two cards of one rank and two cards of another. There is also an odd card which can sometimes come into play.

If there are two players on the table with two pairs the highest ranking pair wins. If both players have the same highest ranking pair, the highest second ranking pair wins. If both players have the same set of two pairs, it is the one with the highest odd card that wins.

The probability of this hand is around one in 21.

One pair

This is where you only have two cards of the same rank. When two players on the table have the same pair, the other three cards come into play, with the highest card winning etc.

The probability of this hand is around one in 2.4.

High card

This is where you basically have nothing but a high card. When two players on the same table have just a high card, the one with the highest card wins etc.

The probability of this hand is around one in two.

I hope this has explained the rankings of the different poker hands to you and made it a bit more easier to understand.

Poker is a great game to play, be careful however only to bet what you can afford to lose.

I personally prefer to play on the internet rather than in the casino. I basically play for fun, and merely hope to make some extra money for myself.

I am quite a patient player who is willing to wait for a good hand to come. I think this is an important skill to have in poker and it has helped me to do quite well over the last twelve months.

One small tip is to avoid playing poker when you are drunk. Maybe it is just me but I always seem to play with a lot more aggression and less patience, when I am quite drunk. This may work for some people but always seems to end up with me losing quite a lot of money.

Most people misunderstand poker. To be completely frank: most people only know poker from the low-stakes games they grew up playing with their family and friends. In these low stakes, home games luck often does play a much bigger role than skill. However, this isn’t real poker.

The money to be gained or lost in a home game tends to mean next to nothing and everyone almost always plays every hand to the end. Add in to that, dealer’s choice & the ever popular “wild cards” and you have a recipe for gambling on your hand, not playing it. In these situations, it’s often the middle hand that wins by catching a lucky card on the river.

Another reason why luck has such a big role in home-style poker games is that many of the skills we use in pro-style games just don’t come into play in a home game. Skills such as patience in determining which hands to play, when to bluff, and how to read your opponent just aren’t used when playing such low-limit against your family. If you are playing too many hands in a tough poker game, you will find yourself short stacked in no time.

Patience

The plain fact is that if you play too many hands in a pro-level poker game, you won’t win. It’s mathematically impossible for you to last for any length of time. But, if you play this many hands in a home game, you may fair better because the sheer size of the pot from the hands you draw out on may offer sufficient pot-odds to draw on that inside straight or whatever the case may be. Especially, if there are “wild cards”.

Bluffing

Another big difference between home poker games and pro-style games is bluffing. Bluffing will actually succeed in a pro game, where everyone will just call you in a low-limit family-style game. It is extremely hard to pull off a bluff in the family oriented game. The main reason for this is the limits are set against you. That 25 cents you’ve raised the pot isn’t going to be enough to scare anyone away, even if it was a check-raise. Anyone would call that, even if they thought they were beaten.

In a pro game, however, bluffing is a sound strategy. If you’ve played very few hands, it’s very possible to steal a pot at the end of a hand by becoming overly agressive at the right time. Your opponents will almost certainly put you on a strong hand, if not the nuts.

Reading your opponent

Another very important element in pro games is the ability to read your opponent. Are they full of crap or are they the real thing? In most home games, there is so much money in the pot (relative to the size of the amount to call) that there is no need to even consider this factor. In pro poker, however, there is enough money involved that a good read can be very valuable.

The simple fact is, if serious poker was a mere game of chance, there would be no such thing as a professionaly poker player and the people you see on the television constantly winning tournaments (i.e. Phil Ivey, Doyle Brunson, Daniel Negraneu, etc) would just have to be the luckiest people in the world. This, obviously, is not the case and many a professional poker can have very successful careers by honing their poker skills.

Whenever players are ahead in a hand, they think that its their right to win. After a session, theyll often report their results as follows: I was down 200, but I really should be up 500 because of the bad beats I took. Unfortunately, this thinking is misleading, because it fails to take into account the very real probability of losing the hand. Remember, poker is a game of giving yourself in edges, and very rarely are those edges absolutes. (But as long as you are actually giving yourself edges, you will come out ahead in the proverbial long-run)

What is Pot Equity?

Pot equity is the percentage of the pot you expect to win in the long run. If you subtract your investment in a pot from your pot equity, then pot equity becomes just another way of expressing expected value. But having many ways of thinking about expected value is helpful both for understanding it and calculating it easily.

Suppose youre playing in a no-limit holdem game with blinds of 1 and 2. One opponent limps, you raise to 10 with AA, and someone behind you goes all-in to 50. The blinds fold as well as the initial preflop limper. You call, and you find that your A♥A♦ is facing K♦K♠ for a 105 pot (lets assume 2 rake, meaning that the pot is actually 103). Youll win about 81.71% of the time and tie about .46% of the time. Your equity is (.8194)(103) = 83.90. The percentage, .8194, is obtained by taking your winning percentage and adding half of your tying percentage (because when you tie, you only get half of the pot).

Short Term Variance; Long-Term Results

Your goal is poker is to make decisions yielding a positive expected value. Another way of saying this is that you need to think of the process rather than the results, and you need to think of the process in an honest light.

If you think of your results in terms of should haves, youre in the habit of overestimating your expected profit, and if you overestimate your profit, youll seldom reach your expectations every session, meaning that poker will be a very frustrating experience for youone of the worst feelings in life is repeatedly failing to match expectations. Instead of thinking in terms of should haves, begin thinking about your poker in terms of pot equity. At the end of the day, youll be a much more sane, and a much more happier player, and a much more analytic player. Poker is supposed to be fun, so respect and enjoy the process!

A Snapshot of Three Top Female Poker Players in the World

Annie Duke is hands-down the most popular female poker player in most circles. She is a young woman on a roll, learning to play poker young, from her brother (Lederer) she decided at the age of 22 to play poker full time. Although she was studying cognitive psychology at PENN at the graduate level, she left to play poker. In all fairness, she left also to spend more time with her family, but like so many professional poker players, Annie left college in order to spend less time on papers that didnt seem relevant and to spend the time on poker instead. Though modest, she says that her being female is one of the best assets that she has at the poker table. Despite her current status, she says that a lot of men still do not take her as a serious opponent simply because she is a woman. Instead of being angry, Annie simply counts it as an advantage that she takes to the table that she has nothing to do with. She does not have to work for this advantage, its simply an advantage that the men bring to the table and she reaps the benefit of it. Annies career in poker is certainly established, but shes got a lot of her career in front of her; we might not have even seen the best of her yet!

Jennifer Harman is another one of the top female players in poker. Actually, all of the women mentioned herein are not simply top female players; they are top players who happen to also be female. It is not just in a womens only world that they beat all of their opponents. Harman, like Duke, plays with men every day and Harman also states that men often take her a little bit shy of serious simply because shes a woman. Also like Duke, Harman claims to take this as her own advantage. She also is a perfectionist, which she says helps her to learn from every mistake that she makes. Like the rest of us, she makes mistakes, both at the table and off it, and she makes her goal to learn from her mistakes. Some perfectionists are just hard on themselves when they make mistakes, but Harmans philosophy makes it so that she can benefit from her mistakes just as she benefits from the negative outlook of the men who are her opponents.

Kathy Liebert was the first woman to win a poker tournament that was worth a million dollar cash prize. Of course, she has made a deal with the 2nd and 3rd place winners that they would split the winnings, but still, in the end, she was the winner of the tournament. Of course, in the end, its not about taking the money home, its about winning the tournament—the money is a great advantage, but secondary to the title of being the first woman to win a one million dollar tournament. She studied in New York, but moved out to Las Vegas to play professionally when she was young. In addition to playing so much poker, she likes to play her odds in the stock market as well. Like the other advanced women in poker, Kathy wins by taking advantage of her strengths and by not letting anyone else interfere with her game.

These three women are inspirations to women and men alike in the poker world. There are simply not that many women in professional poker, though some people are aiming to change that, the cold hard fact is that it just hasnt happened yet. Until it does, the poker community will continue to support these three with vigor, and hopefully that will be done even if the female poker contingent widens; these three deserve all the respect and support that theyre getting, and more, for their significant accomplishments.