Posts Tagged ‘cashgames’
Popular Formats Of Cash Games At Titan
Main Game Selections At Titan Poker
Do you prefer fixed limit, pot limit, or no limit? Do you like to play Hold’em, Omaha, or Omaha Hi-Lo? Would you rather play full ring, 6 max, or heads up? What sort of stakes do you like to play for? These are all things you will need to decide as you look to experience everything Titan Poker has to offer with its cash games.
It’s important to make sure that you are playing the right game to suit your preferences, abilities, and experiences, as doing so properly will best ensure that you get the maximum amount of enjoyment and satisfaction out of your time playing at Titan.
So I’ve put together this article for you in order to provide to you some of the considerations involved in making these choices effectively. In the end though you will be the one that needs to decide, and most of this will be based simply on what you like to play the most.
To do this right, this will involve trying out the various forms of cash game poker that Titan offers, which is a complete selection by the way, so there’s a few things to try that’s for sure. Sometimes just a brief trial isn’t enough, especially if the form of poker is new to you, and therefore may require some real time to get acclimated to the game and also develop enough of an understanding of it to be able to do well playing it.
You may not want to do this all at once though, and may want to try something for a time and then move on to something else, with the intention of revisiting it later. That’s fine, as these decisions are all perfectly up to you and you don’t want to stick with something when there is something else you’d rather be playing instead.
So let’s move on to the major formats of cash poker at Titan Poker:
Hold’em Versus Omaha
Hold’em is still the most popular online poker game out there and is the one most people know how to play. The popularity of Hold’em is what actually drove the poker frenzy of the last 15 years or so, and it is indeed an exciting game and one that is fairly easy to learn.
One of the biggest considerations in choosing a game type is how popular it is, as the more popular it is, the more people will be playing it, and therefore the more selection you will have as far as choosing different formats and stakes from among what is available at any given time of day.
Titan Poker, with its world class traffic levels, already provides you with an abundant selection overall, but depending on your preferences, this will vary. If you like to play higher stakes for instance, then you will find that there’s more selection with Hold’em, once again because people like to play it more.
On the other hand, the selection with the Omaha games, Omaha and Omaha Hi-Lo, is also excellent at Titan Poker.
While Omaha is a pretty easy game to learn as well, the level of expertise out there playing it is significantly less with this game. Most of the instructional materials out there are on Hold’em, and it’s a game that even the fish are pretty decent at these days, and the games are a lot tighter than they used to be.
Those who long for the loose action that Hold’em used to provide will still find it playing Omaha, especially with Omaha Hi-Lo, with its split pots, and both still see players chasing all sorts of hands and playing them too far. So if you’re willing to develop your Omaha skills this may provide you with even greater opportunity to do well then with Hold’em.
Fixed Versus Pot and No Limit
It used to be that new players would very often start out with fixed limit, which limits how much you can lose in a hand to the fixed bets that the game prescribes. Pot and no limit poker, on the other hand, has no such limits, and you can lose your whole stack playing either on a single hand,
There are some real benefits to playing fixed limit though if you are struggling, even though the popularity of the game has really declined and you hardly see it at other poker sites anymore. Titan Poker still offers a good amount of fixed limit games though, so if you are new or struggling you may want to give this a try if you haven’t already.
Pot Limit and No Limit are more fun to play though generally, as you decide how much to bet and the opportunity to win more money is considerably greater with these non fixed bet formats, however keep in mind that the opportunity to lose money is greater, and the normal swings or variance is greater as well.
However, as you get better at playing poker, you will find that you will prefer these non fixed variations, as they allow your skills to be best leveraged to extract the greatest amount of money from your opponents.
Hold’em is generally offered as a no limit game, and Omaha is usually pot limit, and there’s not a lot of difference between the two betting formats, although with pot limit you will see less shoving of entire stacks early in the hand, as the current pot size places restrictions on the size of bets. Both forms though do allow for big bets though.
You will find fixed limits offered with either game type, especially with Hold’em, but they are generally limited to being offered with the smaller stakes, although that’s perfectly fine as this is for the most part suited to less experienced players. You do see some mid stakes and higher fixed games at Titan though but less so than the smaller stakes.
Full Ring Versus 6 Max and Heads Up
It used to be that all poker games were either full ring or heads up. Full ring means a full table of players, and heads up of course means just two, where you compete with an opponent directly, one on one.
The less the amount of players there are at the table, the more involved you need to be in the game. Playing full ring, you can sit back a lot more and wait for good hands, and there is usually more players involved in hands as well, but not always.
With 6 max there are less players at the table so it takes less of a hand to win pots at showdown, so if you just sit back and wait for premium cards you won’t do that well, as the price of the blinds per 100 hands goes up. You see a lot more of players taking down blinds in this format, especially if the game is more aggressive or played by more experienced players.
So the need to bluff is higher at 6 max than at full ring, and often you will find yourself needing to take down pots merely because you have position on the other players. There’s also more potential to punish opponents for getting too far out of line as well. If you like this style of poker then you’re going to love 6 max.
6 max also involves playing more hands per hour, which does make things more interesting. If you’re really looking for the most hands per hour to play though as well as the maximum amount of action then you’ll want to play heads up.
In heads up, you won’t be playing every hand, but you’ll be playing most of them, or you at least should be. If you don’t, then your opponent will simply run over you by your giving up most of the pots to them without a fight.
So if you like to fold and like to sit back and wait for a good hand, this game format isn’t for you. If you like to be involved in a constant fight for the other players’ money, with no down time or waiting time at all in between the action, then heads up is perfect for you.
Heads up is also the perfect way to improve your poker skills, as all that non stop action provides an excellent training ground for learning how to play against a single opponent in a pot, something you see most of the time in 6 max and even in full ring these days. If the pot is down to 2 players and you’re better playing one on one like this, then you will do very well.
Heads up poker also forces you to think about the game more, as the thinking process is a constant one here, so it can really improve your thought processes as well. Heads up is a lot like lifting heavy weights and when you are able to do that then you’ll be a lot stronger playing other games against more opponents.
So if you haven’t already checked this all out, it’s high time you did. Click on our link to Titan Poker to start enjoying the best the internet has to offer in cash poker, and don’t forget to enter in our special bonus code of PBC2000 to get the best bonus they have for you while you’re doing it.
Tags: cashgames
Choosing Stakes With Cash Poker At Titan
The Thrill Of Cash Game Poker
Cash game players tend to love the added thrills of playing with real chips and real money instead of just playing with tournament chips. It’s a whole different experience when the chips you rake in every time you win a pot consists of real dough. You don’t have to see how you do later, the rewards when playing cash poker are immediate.
So are the losses though, so you do need to exercise some care here, especially if you have limited funds. This is where choosing the right site really matters, a great deal in fact. Since the players at Titan tend to be weaker than at other sites, this will contribute significantly to your results regardless.
If I told you that you’d be guaranteed to do better over time at a certain site no matter what kind of player you are, you’d be interested, wouldn’t you? Well this is exactly what happens when you play cash games at Titan. This is true of the tournament play there too but given the nature of cash games, with real cash, this becomes all the more important to pay attention to when playing there.
There’s also the nice bonus they pay you for trying them out which is exactly that, an added bonus. By using our Titan Poker bonus code PBC2000 you’ll earn some nice extra cash right in your poker account just for giving them a try. The real benefit though is just the fact that you’re playing there versus at one of the other poker sites.
If you’re playing elsewhere right now and are struggling more than you want to, or you are new and want to simply play at the best site overall, then it behooves you to take this advice to heart and open an account at Titan right away.
So cash games can be very exciting but it’s certainly a lot more fun if you’re doing well at it. So this is the spot to do that at, folks. What stakes should you be playing though? This matters a great deal as well to your results, so let’s move on to talk about that a bit.
The Higher The Stakes, The Tougher The Competition
As a general rule, the more money you play for, the tougher that stake will be to beat. The easiest stakes to beat are always the lower ones, since this is where most new players start, and these stakes tend to be populated with more soft players than any other.
In spite of Titan Poker being populated with soft players generally, and in spite of their stakes being softer comparatively speaking with other sites, this is true for the most part at Titan Poker as well. So it’s something we really do need to pay attention to regardless of where we choose to play, Titan Poker included.
I see players all the time who for whatever reason choose to play over their heads. I don’t care how much money you have to lose, when you end up choosing to lose it on purpose that doesn’t make that much sense to me.
Sure, I can understand the fact that playing for higher stakes is more exciting, and if you really are cool with playing over your head and doing this, if this is really worth it to you, then by all means continue.
I find that almost all players in this boat don’t really want to experience the pain of playing over their heads but they just don’t understand that they are essentially doing it to themselves.
Get Yourself Into The Winning Crowd
Due to the nature of poker, most players will lose money overall at a given stake, and the site doesn’t matter here at all. This is true at Titan Poker as well, it’s just part of the math of the deal. If there were no rake, then half the players will be up long term and half will be down. However there is rake and every poker site rakes pots, that’s how they make their money. If not for this then no one would offer poker, online or offline.
Now playing online allows sites to offer games with a smaller rake since their expenses are so much lower than a brick and mortar operation. Still though this has the effect of making most players losers. There still are a lot of winners though.
Only the best 20% or so of the player pool playing a given stake will be winners. How poker sites differ here is with the skill level that it takes to join the winning crowd. Tough poker sites have very good players in the losing category and to make it to the winning group you have to be very good indeed, better than 4 out of 5 of the players there essentially.
So at Titan Poker the big difference is the skill level that it takes to be a long term winner. Having said that though, the requirements do differ by stake, with the higher stakes requiring more skill to beat than the lower ones, of course.
So you could be plenty good enough to be a winner at a certain stake but be playing too high for your present skill level and be putting yourself in the losing category by virtue of making a poor choice as far as the stakes you like to play. I hate to see this happen but it happens all the time.
I knew a player who would save his money and get enough together for a deposit, just to see himself fritter it away in no time. He would tell me that poker sucks. It wasn’t the poker that sucked, it wasn’t even he that sucked, as he was a pretty decent player who probably could have creamed the smaller stakes. He liked going big though and too big in fact and kept paying the price.
Bankroll Sizes Matter As Well
Almost all the focus on stake selection happens to be on bankroll size. Skill level is even more important though which is why I spoke about it first. Still though, bankroll size is very important as well and something we need to talk about.
The first thing that you need to realize though is while you hear how many big blinds you need to play a certain stake, if you aren’t a winning player overall at that stake or at least have the potential to become one before your bankroll is exhausted, then this doesn’t really matter. Any amount of big bets will get depleted if you aren’t a winning player.
Bankroll size is meant to protect against variations in luck, not deficits of skill. So if you are an overall winner, you will see various runs of luck happen, and the idea here is to have enough money to cover the poor luck streaks that always come.
However if you are seeing your bankroll dwindle because you simply aren’t good enough, then it’s just a matter of time before you go broke. You might be OK with that if you can just deposit again but even better is to perhaps choose a stake you will do better at.
A given amount of money has more power at lower stakes as well, because it will buy you more big blinds. So in other words it will last longer and it also makes it easier to handle the variances of luck since you’ve got more big blinds that you can afford to lose before you start getting too short.
So worry about beating a stake first and then once you have then you can look at what you will need to fend off the expected variance. This is step 2 of the process though, and step 1, being good enough in the first place, is the first thing you need to manage.
So if you’re ready to give this all a try and haven’t done so before at Titan, feel free to click on our link to them and don’t forget to enter our bonus code PBC2000 when you get there to assure yourself of the best bonus in online poker.
Tags: cashgames
Choosing Game Types With Cash Poker At Titan
What Do You Like To Play?
The first thing that comes to mind whenever people ask me about which game types would suit them the best is to ask them which types they enjoy playing the most. There probably isn’t anything as important as making sure that you enjoy playing whatever game type you choose.
This isn’t the only consideration, but it’s certainly a big one. First of all, part of the appeal of online poker is the amount of fun you can have playing it. There are countless players who do poorly at online poker, yet they just keep playing. The reason why they just keep playing is simply because it is so enjoyable. The money they lose is secondary.
Of course we want the best of both worlds, to have fun and to also do well, but the two are pretty interconnected. If you turn out to be a good heads up player, better than you are we’ll say than with playing other formats, but you hate heads up and it just causes you to stress too much all of the time, this disenchantment won’t just make you unhappy, it will affect your results as well.
Before too long the frustration this is causing you will affect your results, and probably will do so more and more as you press on, and before too long this might be the worst choice instead of the best one for producing good results for you. So in an effort to help yourself you just end up hurting yourself by making what turn out in the end to be some bad choices here, not better ones.
What You Are Good At Does Matter As Well Though
Perhaps you love Omaha, but are simply terrible at it. Well you do need to realize that you may be a new player and, like every other game, you have to master if first before you can become proficient at it.
So if you really do enjoy it, then you may have more than enough interest to want to persevere and put in the time and effort that it takes to bring your results up to what is satisfactory or better for you. That takes the potential negative of your current skill level and together with the increased interest in the particular form of poker, ends up turning it into a positive.
This was the case for me with heads up, and in spite of being a very good ring game player, I found myself struggling against the really good heads up players at first. The one thing about heads up is that when an opponent is better than you, he or she can kick you like a dog, and it’s often tough on the ego.
So I didn’t take that lightly at all but I understood that I really lacked the experience at this game and just needed to figure out how to handle and beat these players. So that’s exactly what I did, and eventually I was the one kicking them around.
It also turned out that once I started to understand this form of poker properly, as a true thinking player, I turned out to be better at it than in ring games. So with all of that together this has become by far my favorite type of poker to play. I always preferred to play one table at a time and really get into the heads of the other players, and this format was perfect for that, as the level of depth that you can achieve in analyzing opponents in heads up poker is unmatched, and in fact no other format even comes close.
Playing To Your Strengths
So this was a case of my knowing my strengths and ultimately choosing the game that most closely matched these strengths. I absolutely hate dividing my attention across multiple tables and feel pretty out of touch with what is really going on when I do that, even with using tracking software and having a lot of hands on opponents.
Perhaps you are the opposite though and love the thrills of a ton of action going on at a bunch of tables at the same time. Perhaps you are also good at this, as many players are, especially the younger crowd. I started playing poker seriously in the 1970’s, and it wasn’t until 25 years later that online poker was even invented. So I’m used to one table at a time and also really suck at multi-tasking.
A lot of today’s players though can not only play several tables at once well, they can also be doing something else like chatting on the internet or their phones and such, and it doesn’t really bother them. If I could do that as easily and be even somewhat close to being as good a poker player as I am at one table, I would do this too.
If you suck at multi-tabling though, it would be foolish to try to do it just because it’s a kick, unless you are satisfied with the less than ideal results that this may bring. Keep in mind that the goal here, the only goal that makes sense actually, is to do what gives you the most pleasure overall.
Some players derive most of their pleasure playing poker based upon how much money they win, and some get most of their poker pleasure from the pure fun of gambling, and money won and lost will be a secondary consideration. So it all depends really on what your objective is, although one thing is for certain, and it’s that your results do matter at least somewhat to everyone, and better results are simply better.
So when you’re playing your cash poker games at Titan Poker, this is a great choice regardless, as it allows for these better results to happen regardless, due to the softer competition overall that you see here.
Trying Our Various Forms Of Cash Poker Is The Best Way To Learn About All This
If you haven’t tried something, then you will neither know how much you like it nor know how good you may be at it now or a little down the road when you gain more experience with it.
We all differ here significantly, and it really does come down to trial and error and learning what is right for you. I can tell you what games and formats I like to play at Titan Poker and what kinds I am best at, but this is my situation and yours will very likely be different.
So this is a mission of self discovery in a real sense, but it’s one that is thoroughly enjoyable when you take this journey at the best online poker site on the internet, Titan Poker.
They have a huge selection of different formats of poker to play and to try, and it’s just a matter of seeing which ones suit you best. Perhaps even several will become your favorites. It’s all up to you.
So whenever you’re ready and up for this journey, just click on one of our links to Titan Poker and you are on your way.
Tags: cashgames
The Importance Of Selecting The Best Cash Poker Site
It’s Very Important To Get Sound Independent Advice On Where To Play
I’ve been around the game of online poker since the early days, and in particular have had the pleasure of knowing many online poker players from my time coaching and especially from my recommending various poker sites to people.
I don’t have any association with Titan Poker by the way, if you go to their site then sure they are going to tell you that you should play there. Why wouldn’t they, it is their business to try their best to get you to play at their poker site. On the other hand, I can recommend whatever poker site I want to, freely and without prejudice, unless you count being prejudiced toward the welfare of my readers, which is certainly the case.
Over the years I’ve recommended a few different poker sites and with me it’s always been about what is best for you based upon my experience. This experience is gained not just from playing at Titan Poker since it first opened, a well as pretty much every other poker site out there past and present, it’s mostly from talking to players just like you and seeing how they do here compared to other places.
I have chosen to recommend Titan Poker for quite a while simply because it is that good of an online poker site. There’s a lot of people who will just throw a bunch of facts at you and talk about a bunch of poker sites and you’re pretty much left up to your own to decide these things. This isn’t why people have come to me over the years though, just to become as lost and often even more lost then they were before they came to my site.
So people ask me sometimes why I just talk about Titan Poker on my site, and the answer is that while there are several other good poker sites out there, I came to decide that I just want to point my readers toward the best one there is, and this is the one.
I Know You Care About Your Poker Results
I know that there are a lot of online players who simply don’t take the game of poker seriously at all. They are playing purely for entertainment it seems, although these players tend to do pretty poorly and I seriously wonder what is so entertaining about losing money over and over again at poker.
It’s not my place to speculate too much on that, but what I do know is that you are not one of these players. You are here because you care about your poker results enough to come here and do some research.
I will tell you that there’s no question whatsoever that choosing the right online poker room is the most important thing you’ll do as a poker player. Most online poker players in fact do not take this seriously enough, and even the ones that do tend to underestimate the importance of all of this. I’ve been preaching this for well over 10 years, it was true back then, and it’s even more true today.
This is especially important when playing cash online poker, as your bankroll can dissipate rather quickly if you’re in the wrong kind of situation, which includes playing the wrong game, playing the wrong stakes, and of course playing at the wrong online poker site.
So I want to talk about all of these things in this series, but for now realize that it is critical that you get the last one right, which is playing at the right poker site, because contrary to what a lot of people think, this matters a great deal.
The answer to this question is pretty simple, play at the best poker site you can. I firmly believe that Titan Poker is that site, and I am not exaggerating when I tell you that deciding to play there will be the most important decision you will ever make in your online poker life.
It’s All Really About The Competition
Regardless of what games we choose to play at a poker site, whether it’s cash games, tournaments, or sit and go’s, whether it’s Hold’em, Omaha, or Omaha Hi/Lo, whether we play the smallest stakes or go bigger, whether we play full ring, 6 handed, or heads up, how we do, the success we have in other words or the success we fail to achieve, always comes down to the strength of the competition.
This is the case whether you are a total newbie playing the first poker hands of your life, whether you are a world class top pro, and everything in between. Whatever your skill level, it is a given, and while it is important to look to improve your game as you go along and get better at this, it is even more important to seek out the weakest competition you can, so you can leverage whatever skill you now have into better results.
When playing cash poker, this is even more important, as once again the differences in skill level between what you have and what the average level of skill at a given site is will be more magnified at cash poker. So in other words if they are better than you are, you will lose more money, and if you are better than they, to the extent that you are better, you will make more money.
So when I speak to my cash players I want to make sure that this is very well understood, and I can’t tell you how many players I’ve spoken to have struggled mightily at cash poker at other online poker sites when this didn’t have to happen. Often just directing them to a better site will turn them from losers to winners right there, without even changing anything else, it’s that important.
I am absolutely certain that your poker results matter to you, or you wouldn’t even be reading this. If you want to do well at poker and at cash poker in particular, the best piece of advice I could possibly give you is to play at the best site for poker and cash poker out there, which is indeed Titan Poker.
So feel free to check out the rest of this series and this site, and whenever you’re ready, perhaps even right now, I encourage you to give Titan Poker a try. You can always return to my site later, and after you’ve gotten a chance to try out their poker site a bit, this experience will even help you better absorb the information that I have put together for you here.
Tags: cashgames