Posts Tagged ‘facebook texas holdem’

PostHeaderIcon Dont you just love Pocket Aces ?

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Pocket Aces, aka as Snake Eyes, American Airlines, Rockets, or silver bullets, is the strongest starting a player can get in texas holdem poker. Against any single opponent, your chances of taking the pot are around 85% if you go all in before the flop. So why then do so many people complain about how they’ve lost huge pots with Aces all the time?

Well one of the main reasons is just luck of the draw, even with an 85% chance of winning, that means that 15% of people will still lose all the facebook poker chips by going all in. Spread that percentage over a few million players and you’re left with quite a few people who have a bone to pick with the “bullets”.

But the main reason most people lose with Aces is much simpler than odds, its just poor play. Aces can turn the best of players into complete amateurs because people tend to fall in love with this hand. The chance of getting Aces in facebook poker are about 1 in 220, so when it does finally hit, its incredibly hard to lay it down. Even after players realize an opponent might have a better hand after the flop, they just can’t help but throw more and more facebook chips at the problem, hoping that it will somehow turn around for them.

Players generally misplay Aces in 2 ways:

Slow play: There’s a big element of excitement when a player gets Aces. Your first instinct is to go all in and see how many players you can get to call, but then another side of you thinks that might scare everyone out and announce that you have the bullets. So you try to drag other players into the game with less than spectacular raises of facebook poker chips. Maybe you don’t even raise, you just call another players raise or check it. Knowing the odds a little better might explain why these undersized raises usually end in tears. While Aces may take the pot 85% of the time against one opponent, that number drops down to 73% when there are 2 other players and 64% when there are 3 others. And if 5 other people are in the pot, the odds fall even further down below 50%.

Being starstruck: This is a common mistake among intermediate and beginner players whose skills at reading their opponents hands are not yet refined. While preflop your Aces are usually solid, a flop of 7h 8h Jh opens up the table to all kinds of flushes and straights and your hand strength plummets. But players are often so thrilled to get pocket aces and so convinced that it’s finally their shot and winning a huge pot of facebook poker chips that they turn a blind eye to any possibility that their hand might have already been bested by an opponent’s. They continue to ram more and more poker chips into the pot in the hope that either everyone else will fold, or they’ll land another ace and get trips. This situation rarely ends well.

There is no shame in winning a medium sized pot when your opponents fold to your big pre-flop raise. It’s just part of the game, and it will keep you from being outdrawn and overplaying. There is a lesson to be learned here. Don’t fall in love with Aces. Just like a woman, if you hang on to them longer than you should – they’ll take all your money and leave you broke.

PostHeaderIcon Playfish “Poker Rivals” – An suitable Poker alternative?

Playfish is a company that was recently bought out by the giant game company Electronic Arts. They are getting ready to roll out a completely brand new Texas Holdem Poker Game for Facebook which is fitting called “Poker Rivals”. Playfish looks to challenge the long time established texas holdem games zynga’s texas holdem application. With a fresh unique spin with a flashy interface and virtual aspect to the game, where the players can virtualized items such as buildings homes and buying yaughts and vary characters with physical avatars.
The huge popularity of zyngas texas holdem game has meant that it has managed to hld the number 7 spot on Facebooks’s premiere top 25 applications list. Whilst at the time of writing, a impressive 19 million users which goes to show there is no shortage of poker players in online social networking sites. Playfish’s new poker rivals application seems to be aimed at this demographic.
Whilst the game is still in beat, initial feedback is that it looks great and has a smooth play to it. Using their facebook poker chips from the game, players can buy clothes and jewelry to customize their looks and avatars. Also poker rivals allow you to tag players according to their lpay style, a unique feature that lets you keep track of their playing styles. Poker Rivals by far the most detailed and customizable of the selection of texas holdem games currently available on facebook. Play Fish announced that more features are being added and tweaked but the official finalized released. Why not check out the working beta version for yourself and leave feedback. You may play the game here Poker Rivals.