Author: horse-racing-free-tips

Online gaming sites are always changing — upgrading software, improving features and functionality, getting rid of bugs and bad ideas, inventing new offerings, etc. — all in a furious effort to remain competitive. A consistent leader of the online gambling pack, Party Poker, is often at the cutting edge of these new and improved releases. Not only has Party Poker done it again with their latest upgrade, but with the elimination of one of their programs (skins), and brand new partnerships with other leading edge online casinos and online poker rooms.

The first thing to be aware of with Party Poker’s new upgrade is that all the bugs may not yet have been completely ironed out (which simply means updates to the upgrades will be forthcoming). There have been some reports that uninstalling earlier versions of the Party Poker software after installing the new upgrade could lead to problems, so we would hold off on that uninstall if we were you. Of course, now that we said that, some of you may be wondering why you would even bother downloading the upgrade. Here’s why:

re: Lobby
– Games are listed by blinds rather than maximum buy-in
– Hands per Hour are included amongst the lobby stats
– Cash games are divided into Limit, No Limit, and Pot Limit
– More limits added to Cash Games
– Player’s available cash and Party Points are prominently displayed
– Filters are given to help narrow down your selection of tables/games
– Tables are given names rather than numbers
– The news ticker has been made more prominent
– Tournaments are divided into groups for easier searching

re: Tournaments
– Tournament buy-ins now include entry fees
– Tournament players start with more chips (Sit-and-Go’s: 2,000, Multi-Table: 3,000, “Events”: 5,000)
– There’s a new tournament blind structure
– More buy-ins available for Sit-and-Go’s
– Sit-and-Go levels have changed so that now they are based on time rather than hands played
– The payout structure is flatter

re: Party Poker Accounts
– Players can easily switch between Party Poker and Party Casino all from one place
– The Account Page has been streamlined for greater efficiency and ease of use

re: Miscellaneous features
– Players can shrink windows for multi-tabling
– Optional automatic window tiling and cascading

As you may know, a skin is an independent site that uses another site’s software (in this case Party Poker’s) in exchange for a percentage of revenues. PartyGaming, parent company of Party Poker as well as host of Party Casino and Party Bingo has decided to terminate its skins, instead purchasing those sites as secondary PartyGaming sites (and presumably raking in 100% of the revenues).

In place of their newly defunct skins, Party Poker is now joined by the following new members of the PartyGaming family: IntertopsPoker, MultiPoker, PlanetLuck Casino, PokerNow, and Starluck Casino Online. Party Poker’s most recent acquisition, as of February 2006, was former Party Poker skin Empire Poker, which they purchased for $250 million. Those Party Poker folks are building quite the Empire (some bad puns just beg to be voiced).

Party Poker, who according to Reuters signed up a record number of new players last year, is a publicly traded company on the London Stock Exchange.

Badugi is a poker variant that has grown increasingly popular during the last few years. It originates from Asia, but has not spread to the rest of the world until recently. It is today played online as well as offline by poker enthusiasts all over the world. Learning Badugi is very easy if you already master other poker games, such as Hold’em Poker.

Badugi is a four card game with three draws. The players with the lowest hand will win the pot. Unlike other poke variants, getting one pair, two pairs, three of a kind or four of a kind is undesirable in Badugi. Getting two or more cards from the same suit is also bad. The best hand is therefore containing cards from four different suits, and no cards should have the same rank. Such a hand where all the cards are of different suit and rank is called a Badugi!

When playing Badugi, you will be dealt four cards. The first card will be dealt to the player on the small blind, and the dealing will then proceed clockwise. Only one card is dealt to each player at a time. The betting will depend on which type of Badugi you are playing. There exist three different variants: Limit Badugi, Pot Limit Badugi and Half Pot Limit Badugi.

In Limit Badugi, all the bets are made in incremental units. During the first and second round, each player is allowed to bet the lower level bet. If you for instance play $4 / $8 Badugi, you will be allowed to bet $4 during the first and second round. During the third and fourth round, you can be the higher level, i.e. $8. Just as in the other Limit Poker variants, betting will be capped at four bets per round in Limit Badugi.

In Pot Limit Badugi, bets are not made in incremental units. You can instead raise your bet any amount as long as you bet no lower than the minimum bet and no higher than the amount of money currently found in the pot. The minimum bet is determined by the big blind. Let’s say that the small blind is $4 and the big blind $8. One caller has already bet $8. The next player can then choose to bet as low as $8. The total value of the current pot is $4 +$8 + $8. The player can therefore also choose to bet $4 +$8 + $8 + $8, since the maximum bet is based on the current pot on top of the initial call. The maximum bet in this situation is therefore $28.

Half Pot Limit Badugi is very similar to Pot Limit Badugi, but a player is only allowed to raise the value of half the current pot. Let’s say the pot contains $2 + $4 + $4. Half of $2 + $4 + $4+ $4 is $7. The next player can therefore raise $7+ $4 = $11. The lowest allowed bet is determined by the big blind, just as in Pot Limit Badugi.