Category: Gambling and Casinos

The Cincinnati Reds sent the loud message to the rest of major league baseball that they are playing for keeps this season by completing an eight player deal just a week after acquiring Seattle’s ace in the bullpen, Eddie Guardado. Any time you ship out two starting position players, one who was an All-Star last year and the other who has 16 homeruns and 50 RBI’s, there must be method to your madness.

The Reds presently sit 4 games behind the high flying Cardinals, but have a good shot at snaring the wild card for finishing with the fourth best record in the NL. General Manager, Wayne Krivsky, realized that his inept bullpen needed an overhaul and he has addressed that need.

Cincinnati gets Washington’s Gary Majewski, who has already logged 55 innings in the first half, and Bill Bray, a former first round draft pick of the Montreal Expos. Besides the right-handed Majewski and lefty Bray, the Reds acquired shortstop Royce Clayton, infielder Brendan Harris and pitching prospect Daryl Thompson. The 36-year-old Clayton, who will take over as shortstop for Felipe Lopez, made his first All-Star team last year.

Headed to Washington is the aforementioned Lopez and slugger Austin Kearns. The Reds also gave up reliever Ryan Wagner a first-round draft pick in 2003. National’s general manager Jim Bowden acquired all three players when he ran the Reds. Kearns, one of the team’s building blocks during Bowden’s 11-year run in Cincinnati, was soaking in a whirlpool Thursday when he got called into the manager’s office for a private meeting.

The 26-year-old Majewski was 3-2 with a 3.58 ERA in 46 games. He led the Nationals with 79 appearances last season and had a 2.93 ERA. The 23-year-old Bray was the 13th overall pick in the June 2004 draft and was considered one of the Nationals’ top pitching prospects. He was 1-1 with a 3.91 ERA in 19 relief appearances this season, his first in the majors.

Kearns was hitting .274 with 16 homers and 50 RBIs. He became a fixture in right field after Krivsky traded outfielder Wily Mo Pena to Boston in March for starter Bronson Arroyo who represented the Reds in the All-Star game.

Lopez is hitting .268 with nine homers and 30 RBIs, but has occasionally failed to make the routine play. The Reds are second-to-last in the NL in-fielding.

Making the routine plays all the time and getting quality middle relief should put the Reds in position to challenge the Cards who have struggled all year with injuries.

Bob Acton

Online Sports Betting

Choosing an online poker room now a days is a much more difficult task then it was a just a few years ago. Online poker has grown by leaps and bounds just in the past few years and the number of rooms has grown and is growing at a rapid pace. When choosing an online poker room you should take into account at the very minimum the following: safety, quality and comfort. These are the 3 things that Gambling Guru, http://www.gambling-guru.com, takes into account before beginning any of our online poker leagues.

Safety

By safety it is meant as to how safe is it to move money in and out of the poker room. Take this into account first and foremost whenever trying out an online poker room. Since the industry is not heavily regulated by governing bodies and is mostly self-regulated you need to know you can trust the poker room you choose to handle your money.

For this reason it is best to stick with poker rooms that have established themselves in the industry and have built a solid player base. Poker rooms such as Paradise Poker, Absolute Poker, PokerRoom.com and Party Poker have proven to be stable online poker rooms that are going to be around for the long haul. All of these poker rooms not only have proven to be reliable, but have also not rested on their past accomplishments. Each of these poker rooms also has a 3rd party check their poker algorithm to make sure it is working properly and deals fair hands time and time again. This quality check makes sure these poker rooms remain at the industry forefront.

Quality

Quality can mean different things to different people when discussing online poker rooms. In this case it refers to a couple different things. Here it is referring to software quality. Choosing an online poker room which is satisfying visually, in game play, and in reliability is important. Most online poker rooms now offer versions of their software to download and try out playing with play money before commiting to playing for real money.

Gambling Guru recommends choosing a room which is satisfying visually in order to maximize the online poker playing experience. Some rooms take extra steps to make the table seem more life like. For example poker rooms such as Pokerroom.com have added people as avatars to their tables. Other rooms such as Paradise Poker do not have people at their tables, but have added options where a player can order a drink or snack from a menu. This is something that personally keeps players entertained, however so slightly, while waiting in between hands.

Another option to balance into the equation is the quality of the game play. Make sure that the room choosen offers all of the features you need to make game play fun and easy. Decide if it is easy to follow the action going on at the table. Some rooms such as Pokerroom.com highlight the player whose turn it is to act. This seems obvious, but some rooms don’t offer this option. The player must keep track of the action in the chat dialogue box. If however, you are playing multiple tables, then you may want to be able to quickly click back and forth between tables and find out where the action is visually without having to scroll through a chat box to find out.

Finally, take into account software and server reliability. This is listed third here, but may be the most important factor in choosing an online poker room. It is definitely no fun to have to be constantly disconnected from the room during play, especially when a crucial decision must be made. If you find you must battle this problem often with your online poker room it will add additional stress to the online poker experience.

Comfort

Most importantly you need to feel comfortable with the poker room you have chosen. This means you must take every element from above into consideration and decide if the online poker room you have chosen is right for you. If you don’t feel comfortable with the poker room in any of the above categories then I would suggest finding a new place to play online poker. Whether you are logging on to play for poker for fun or to try to make a career out of playing online poker, you need to have confidence in the poker room to deliver your money, deliver answers to your questions quickly and accurately, and deliver an enjoyable playing experience.

If you would like more information regarding online poker rooms that Gambling Guru supports, you can read our Poker Reviews at http://www.gambling-guru.com/poker_reviews.php.

Choosing the best sports gambling sites to place a sports bet with can take a lot of research All of these sports gambling sites offer some sort of bonus for you to do your betting online with them. They are not the outrageous bonuses that you may hear about, but are adequate to start you out. You have to be careful about sportsbooks that offer the unbelievable bonus deals because they may not be able to stay around for the long haul.

These recommended sports gambling sites have available management. The general manager or other management people are available for you to talk to. They have enough clerks and supervisors working during the busy periods and the sportsbook online betting capability doesn’t bog down close to game time. The hours of operation are flexible. They are open seven days a week, 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

Sports gambling is a game of skill. The challenge is to gather and analyze as much information as you can about a game, weigh the probabilities of each team winning, and subsequently compare your opinion to the odds makers. Make the right judgment and you win.

Take advantage of early season point spread and money line value before the odds makers have had a chance to catch up with which teams are hot and which teams are not. During the early part of a season, look for teams that are playing much better or worse than expected to get your best value. Many novice handicappers concentrate on how a team performed the previous year, but in this era of salary cap constraints and constant roster turnover, teams never perform at the same level in two consecutive years. In addition, teams that performed well the previous year are no longer a good value because you are laying a much higher price with them, especially at the beginning of the next season. Start your handicapping analysis before the season starts so you’ll be ready to take full advantage of the first few weeks of the season.

In sports gambling, you have the advantage of streamlining your research, which is something the sportsbooks are not at liberty to do. They must keep on top of every sport and every game. The best way to win money at sports gambling is to develop a niche and follow it closely. If you become an expert on a smaller conference you have a good chance to beat the house because the sportsbook operators do not have the time or resources to follow this conference the way you can. There is a wealth of information on the Internet; it is just up to you to find it and research it daily.

In conclusion, while luck may be a deciding factor in the outcome of any single game, and will inevitably go against you on occasion, it will balance out in the long run. Being a consistent winner in sports gambling is not about luck but whether you are prepared to invest the time and effort to become knowledgeable about the sports games you bet on, whether you can weigh all the factors in a cool, objective fashion, and whether you adopt a consistent, disciplined, long-term approach to your sports gambling. Do all these and you will come out a winner. Remember, it’s you against the odds maker, not the bookmaker.

The online poker industry became a huge hit in the recent years. Many people discovered that they prefer to play virtual poker against other players instead of playing the game in real land-based casinos.

But since there are so many poker rooms available in the cyberspace, one might find himself a bit confused when he has to choose on which poker room he’ll spend his precious pastime. This is why I wrote this article- to help you to organize your thoughts, needs and preferences and to help you with choosing the best poker room for you.

Before you open an account in one of the poker rooms that you can find on the net, you should ask yourself few questions. Some of those questions should deal with your money limits and the types of poker that you’re interested in, your budget, your gaming quality and who are your preferred opponents (amateur or experienced players) and of course the reliability and integrity of the poker room.

After you established a list of guidelines and things that are important to you, you should start looking for good poker rooms. First, ask for recommendations from friends or colleagues who have experience with online casinos and poker rooms. Ask them about their favorite websites, about their experience and if they can advise you on which poker rooms you should avoid and which rooms you should check out.

Another important place that you should investigate in is the Internet search engines. Try to run a search on several keywords like poker online or poker rooms and then take some time to read reviews about specific rooms that you found in your search. Most of the reviews websites provide detailed information about the major poker rooms. Take some time to browse through those sites and read about the rooms that you found interesting. Pay attention to what other players wrote about the chosen websites.

After you minimized your list and kept only those poker rooms that you life, start with the final phase of the process: go to the actual websites and check them out. Browse through the sites and read what they offer to the players. Check out the games and variations that they offer, the money deposit options and their customer service. Only then try to play in the flash or java version (if there is such an option) or in the other free options, and if you are satisfied with that, open an account and start playing for real money.

Playing in online poker rooms can be an exciting experience, but in order to prevent disappointments, try to run a serious check before you start deposing money, because your time and money are precious.