Author: horse-racing-free-tips

Poker is considered to be born in the USA in the second half of the 20th century. For a long time poker has been only one of existing gambles but everything changed in 1970. The owner of a legendary casino “Binion’s Horseshoe” in Las Vegas, a great fun of poker and an eminent player Benni Binion and his son Jack Binion organized in their casino a tournament between the most known US players. In the tournament took part six players who have been competing during seven days in gambling of different kinds of poker. A champion was determined by voting and that was Johnny Moss. This tournament provoked a poker boom among people and attracted more audience. Many people expressed their will to take part in the next similar tournament. Binion took decision to continue organizing such tournaments and united them under the name World Series of Poker (WSOP). Every year the number of WSOP participants grew in geometric progression. If in 1971 the number of participants made 14 persons, in 2004 it made 1700, in 2005 – 5800, in 2006 – 8900 and in 2007 – over 6 300.

WSOP is the greatest tournament but besides that a great number of the other attractive and popular tournaments took place in Paris, London, Vienna, Amsterdam, Helsinki, Moscow etc.

Poker was given a powerful incentive in development and popularization in the 90s of the past century with development of the internet network and appearance of on-line poker rooms. Poker turned to be the most pertinent and the most interesting gamble for millions of users all over the world. Poker fever in Internet is still going on. Mostly thanks to internet a number of people willing to compete in “live” tournaments, clubs is growing by leaps and bounds. And now nobody is surprised by the fact that the winners of prestigious poker competitions are skillful casino players experienced in online poker room games.

Today poker is no more a gambling, it turned into a popular socially important phenomenon. Thus, according to the data of the American Gambling Association in 2005 the number of people willing to play poker made 35% of the US population aging from 21 to 39, 18% of the US population aging from 40 to 49, 15% of the US population aging from 50 to 64, 11% of the US population aging over 65. In conformity with the results of the polls by the Association for most of this people poker is more than a gamble, it turned into a way of communication, a nice leisure.

Poker became largely covered by many medias. Popularity of the gamble in the modern world lets co-exist a dozen specialized magazines dedicated exclusively to poker , online poker rooms, poker players, poker strategies. The most popular of them are the magazines “Poker Europa”, “Card Player”, “Poker Magazine”, “Bluff”, “Woman Poker Player” etc. The last few years were marked by a burst of poker. Poker turned to be extremely entertaining sport gamble. Many sport channels pay considerable part of time and give prime-time to great poker tournaments.

This brings up a question: why poker and not any other gamble, for instance roulette? The answer is evident. Correct poker playing is based not on a blind success, poker is a competition of intellectuals, competition of logics, psychology, ability to sort possible actions, to count consequences, a particular zest is considered to be some psychological methods (semi-bluff, bluff etc.).

The first type of an intellectual effort let us call it a logical one. The idea is that by assumption of all possible actions of the opponent and by the estimation of all positions the player chooses the way to continue the game which can lead him to victory.

Chess players have a “tree” choice of options to choose from. The player considers all possible variants in turns and all possible answers as well. Then all hisher answers and so on. While analysing the game this way, ideally the player chooses the variant which could lead him to victory faster (the mate to the adversary king or to the damping material advantage).

The similar “tree” of choices we can also find in poker. But here the poker player analyses possible moves of the opponent, the game reaction to any action of the player and all these actions are done with a glance of possible changes of game situation as a result of emergence of next cards.

The “tree” of choices in chess is incomparably stronger and consists of far more branches than in poker. Our conclusion is that a logical intellectual effort is present in both, chess and poker, however, the role and sense of it in chess are more important.

The above-mentioned type of an intellectual effort is rarely used in practice. The majority of game situations are uncertain and we can seldom find a chance to find the updated version which can lead us straight to victory. And of course, this type of search for decision is more peculiar to machines not for a human being. Thereafter we proceed to description of the second type of an intellectual effort. Let’s call it analytic. The main sense of it is that the player considers those variants that can lead him to one or another position. The position which the player wants to achieve so badly doesn’t guarantee him victory. But the player believes if the desirable position is achieved he has the evident position advantage. This means that the player estimates his total position benefit status rather highly and expects to find moves to continue the game in such a way that is more likely to lead him to victory. The desirable position will be very comfortable for a further game of the player or very uncomfortable for a further game of his opponent. Thus, by having achieved the objectively equal position, only because of its unique features the player expects his chances to be higher than those of his opponent.

In chess in the majority of cases you don’t have a possibility to spend some time counting an updated version that can lead to victory, the player tries to get a position that can help him to hold a position advantage or a position that can help him to get better oriented. The factors of open lines, active disposition of figures, territorial advantage and so on refer to the position advantage in chess. In addition every player has hisher preferable structure, the ways of attack continuation or arrangement of defense and so on. Thus, under the other equal conditions he will seek a chance to achieve only these kinds of positions.