Online Bingo

Though bingo is a game of luck, you can take some measures to increase your chances of winning. Besides those mentioned in my previous articles, here are some other guidelines worth taking into consideration:

1. Establish a bingo budget: Bingo players have a tendency to over-spend hoping to get that last win but this leads to even more trouble. It’s better to set your budget beforehand and stick to it.
2. Try playing at different times. If you change your usual bingo times you can see which sessions have better payouts or fewer players. There are sites who offer bonus points or bingo jackpots at the end of each session.
3. Be on the lookout for bonuses. This way you can benefit from deposit bonuses or signup bonuses that many sites offer. Another solution to earn more points is to play chat games.
4. Pay attention to the game schedule. This keeps you focused on the games throughout the day and the specials such as ‘two for one card buy’. There are games that offer bigger prizes or lower card prices, so stay alert.
5. Buy cards wisely. While some players buy maximum online bingo cards for every game, others like mixing and matching. If you know how to use advanced buy features such as schedule buy you will be in advantage because this feature allows you to be in the game even if you are not at your computer. As a result, better chances of winning the jackpot!

There is no recipe for winning at bingo as you are always at the mercy of hasard, but at least you can diminish your losses and improve your chances if you follow the basic bingo strategy described above!

At first sight bingo seems a game based only on luck but the truth is there are many tactics that can help you win more often. One factor that you should keep in mind when playing bingo is probability and below you can find out more about how it works.

First, when you play bingo, pay attention to the first ten numbers showed on the master board. In most cases, you’ll see that the numbers called tend to differ in their digit endings! The average bingo player focuses all his attention on the cards, forgetting about the master board, and so they overlook this detail. If you bear in mind this detail of numbers having different digit endings you will greatly improve your chances of selecting a winning card.

Why is this factor important? Because it relates to the mathematical principle of drawing numbers at random from a uniform distribution. Statistically there should be an equal quantity of numbers ending in 1′s, 2′s, 3′s, etc., and these statistics also govern the sample of drawing ten balls out of seventy five which means that there is a tendency for each digit to be represented.

This is basic probability and statistics show that approximately 60% of the first ten numbers called in bingo games have different digit endings.

Everyone who has played against smart aggressive players knows that it is not an easy thing to do without the proper tactics in place. Before delving more into this topic it might be helpful to emphasize some of the features of this type of player.
The smart aggressive player raises from last positions (cut off, button) having in mind to steal the blinds if everyone before him has folded or if a tight player has called. He is very active so you should sit at his left at the poker table. This position gives you an advantage over him by receiving valuable information provided by his actions. If you are poorly positioned you should try not getting involved in many pots with him.

Nevertheless, if you happen to sit in one of the first two places at his left, you will have some problems when you are small blind or big blind. As you know, he will raise a lot from button and cut off positions in order to steal the blinds and you have to put a fight now and then to keep him honest. You have to be careful not to let him bluff you every time and steal the blinds. When the smart aggressive player makes a raise from the button position and there are one or more players already involved in the hand you’d better fold because you will be out of position. If no one enters the hand and he makes a raise you have to analyze whether he has a real hand or he just bluffs in order to steal the blinds, basing your reasoning on the frequency of his raises from last position. If they happen often, you have to protect your blind with hands that beat his range.

The Euro Finals of Poker are approaching and will last between 1 and 16 February followed by the 2010 European Poker Awards. During the latter, the best European poker players of the year 2010 will be rewarded for their outstanding performances.

The commission that decides the winners is comprised of 8 European celebrities some of whom are : Fabrice Soulier, Bruno Benveniste and Lucille Denos. On 13 February they will take the final decision.

The nominees were not selected solely on their performances but also on their popularity with the online communities of players. As you can see in the list below, a category is especially dedicated to online players.
UK nominees are prominent on the list, followed by Denmark. An interesting aspect is the inclusion of Isildur1 on the list of “The best online player of the year”.

The list below offers you details about all the nominees:

Player of the year (current title owner: Vitaly Lunkin)
Theo Jorgensen (Denmark)
Jake Cody (UK)
Sam Trickett (UK)
Vladimir Schemelev (Russia)

Female player of the year (current title owner : Sandra Naujoks)
Liv Boeree (UK)
Annette Obrestad (Norway)

Online player of the year (current title owner: Patrick Antonius)
Chris “moorman1″ Moorman (UK)
Patrik Antonius (Finland)
Mickey “mement_mori” Petersen (Denmark)
Isildur1 (Sweden)
Andreas “skjervoy” Torbergsen (Norway)

Revelation of the year (current title owner: Antoine Saout)
Jake Cody (UK)
David Vamplew (UK)
Toby Lewis (UK)
Julian Herold (Germany)
Fernando Brito (Portugal)

Best performance of the year (current title owner: Jeff Lisandro)
James Bord (UK)
Jake Cody (UK)
Fillipo Candio (Italy)
Liv Boeree (UK)
Tobias Reinkemeier (Germany)
David Vamplew (UK)

Rob Gardner award for the personality of the year:
Jesse May (Denmark)
Tony G (Lithuania)
Anthony Holden (UK)

Besides the awards mentioned above, two others will be offered. One will be given to the best employee of the poker circuit while the other, the Lifetime Achievement Award, will be offered to a poker celebrity for the whole of his/her career and the added value they brought to the poker circuit.

After a long series of immense losses, Gus Hansen seems to end 2010 on the upbeat due to his recent victories. The WSOP Europe bracelet that he won a few months ago and the recent Poker Million IX title made up for all his 2010 losses.

The Poker Million IX was a Full Tilt event, a 48-player shoot out tournament whose big prize valued $1 million dollars.

The first 8 stages of the event resulted in a selection of 8 players to battle at the final table. These were: Gus Hansen, James Bord, Tony Bloom, Gary Peniket, Barny Boatman, Seth Webber, Howard Lederer and Patrick Antonius.

Patrick Antonius was the first to exit the final table after a confrontation with James Bord. Antonius held A-9 against James Bords’ T-8 and 9-7-6 on the flop made the difference between the winner and losers.
Howard Lederer, Seth Webber et Barny Boatman were the following victims of the final table.
James Bord was eliminated on third position by Bloom. Bord entered the hand with T-5 and was paid by Bloom who had 9-8 and who was lucky enough to make 2 pairs on the flop.

The evolution at the final table led to a heads-up between Gus Hansen and Bloom. After a few hands, Hansen revealed A-8 against Bloom’s A-6 which was not such a serious disadvantage for the latter. An 8 on the flop, however, turned Hansen into the winner of the Full Tilt Poker Million IX tournament.

Today at 8pm PT, Jonathan Duhamel (23) and John Racener (24) will battle for the WSOP 2010 title and for what is the grandest prize in the entire tournament poker history: $8.94 million.

The heads-up will start with a clear advantage for Duhamel who holds 188.95 million in chips to Racener’s 30.75 million. Additionally, with play ending on 600k/1.2m blinds and 200k ante, the situation will not be so rosy for Racener and the clash is expected to be brief yet palpitating.

Despite all this, Racener’s short stack is compensated by his experience. So far, he managed to raise $1,239,951 in live tournaments over four years while Duhamel has earned only $108,987 but, as the latter explains:

“I don’t have much tournament experience. I’m a cash game player but I’m confident in my game.”

What has led to this disproportionate heads-up is the turn of events during the three-hand table. Duhamel, the 23-year-old Canadian poker pro, entered in a monster pot with Joseph Cheong while the short-stacked Racener was quietly watching the clash between the two. More precisely, Cheong moved all-in preflop with A7, and Duhamel called immediately with QQ that helped him win the 170 million chip pot, the largest pot in WSOP history. Soon, Cheong was eliminated third for which he cashed $4,130,049, leaving lucky Racener the chance to win either $5,545,955 for second place or the WSOP title, the gold bracelet and $8.94 million for first place.

Racener declared about this twist of events:
“I was really shocked. If they were smart they would’ve waited for me to get knocked out and not risk that kind of prize money or the chance at heads up”
“I thought for sure I was going to have to double on them and my buddy said, ‘Watch, they’re going to end up tangling up,’ and that’s what happened. It worked out perfect for me.”

The game will be underway this evening at 8pm PT at the Rio in Vegas. There is a lot of tension that rises as the end of the WSOP 2010 Main Event approaches!

The world’s biggest online poker website, PokerStars, has announced the approach of the Regional Championship of Online Poker (RCOOP). This brand-new event organised by PokerStars sounds fun and challenging. Fun because you will play with people close to you geographically and therefore you might speak in your own language, and challenging because at the end, each region will crown one winner. This poker championship is not only about winning big money: it’s also about national/regional pride and being given the title of the best player in the whole region.

RCOOP is just another event of the PokerStars series of online championships: the World Championship of Online Poker (WCOOP) and the Spring Championship of Online Poker (SCOOP). Unlike the spring championship, RCOOP will cover the months of winter, this one being its first.

This totally new event organised by PokerStars will consist of a series of tournaments, each tournament taking place in a different geographical zone. More precisely, Poker Stars has split the world in 13 regions, each with its own tournament.

These 13 separate tournaments are each made up of 11 events, all with guaranteed prize pools! The buy-ins are accessible to all pockets and satellites start from just a few dollars. Aditionally, players can chat with others at the table in their own language, English is no longer the official language.

PokerStars guarantees a prize-pool of more than $7,000,000 worldwide, with almost half of it (more precisely $3,275,000) allocated to the USA Championship.

PokerStars are not at their first regional-type of event. They have organised before regional live poker tours such as the European Poker Tour and the North American Poker Tour.

The 13 regional series will start in the last day of October 2010 and will last till February 2011.

1. Russian Open Championship (October 31-November 7)
2. Nordic Championship (November 4-14)
3. Baltics Championship (November 4-14)
4. USA Championship (November 21-28)
5. Canadian Championship (November 21-28)
6. Germanics Championship (November 21-28)
7. Asia Pacific Championship (November 21-28)
8. Mediterranean Championship (November 18-28)
9. UK & Ireland Championship (December 5-12)
10. Central and Eastern European Championship (December 6-16)
11. Latin American Championship (December 5-12)
12. Iberian Championship (February 13-20, 2011)
13. Benelux Championship (February TBD)

The winner of this year’s EPT London is David Vamplew, a Scottish player aged 23 who has just begun making a name for himself by beating one of the most experienced and well-known poker players, John Juanda. For first place, he won £900,000.

Vamplew was surely not one of the favourites but he did manage to raise a comfortable chip stack, trailing only Juanda and Kyle Bowker. After eliminating their opponents, the final table was made up of these three chip leaders with fairly close to equal chips stacks: John Juanda leading with 10,5 millions, Bowker with 8,5 millions and Vamplew 6 millions.

Bowker was the first to leave the final table after a clash with Juanda. He took home £300,000 for third place.Winning the confrontation with Bowker meant almost doubling the chip stack for Juanda.

Therefore, Vamplew entered the heads-up against an adversary who had almost 4 times more chips. The fierce battle between the two lasted almost 4 hours but it was neither animated nor funny. Juanda calculated meticulously each and every move and occasionally stretched the muscles in his neck that being his only sign of fatigue. In contrast, Vamplew looked at times physically and mentally tired and yet he managed to fight back to level the chip counts.

At some point Juanda was forced to move in for his final 3.5 million, and Vamplew called. Juanda showed K2 against Vamplew’s A3. Next, Vamplew hit two pair on the flop and in that moment he became EPT London’s 2010 Champion. Juanda won £545,000 for second place.

Juanda is one of the top pros with four bracelets and more than $10.5 million in his tournament history. On the other hand, for Vamplew, the EPT London is his first major win and it represents his second notable cash, the first coming earlier this year at the World Series of Poker.

“He got really unlucky,” commented Vamplew about Juanda’s performance. “It will be really interesting to see what he had when it was broadcast, [to see] what he had when he was getting me off some of my hands.”

The final results at EPT London Main Event are:

1. David Vamplew – £900,000
2. John Juanda – £545,000
3. Kyle Bowker – £300,000
4. Artur Wasek – £240,000
5. Kayvan Payman – £190,000
6. Fernando Bito – £145,000
7. Tom Marchese – £100,000
8. Per Ummer – £66,800)

The Swiss Federal Council has recently ruled that playing poker tournaments outside casinos is illegal. They claim that poker is a ga me of luck and as a result, poker tournaments should be confined to the casino industry.

Consequently, real money poker is legal as far as it is played in casinos or within family/friends private circles. If a poker tournament is held in clubs, bars or other businesses, then it is considered a breach of law.

Some have disagreed with this ruling. According to them, legalizing poker would bring more gambling revenue, create new jobs and prevent young people from choosing less skill-based forms of gambling.

The Swiss Federal Council is made up of 7 members who act together as a head of state. Their votes and notes from their meetings are kept secret for 50 years which makes this decision process less transparent to the public.

South Africa has recently passed a law banning online gambling. A ruling of the North Gauteng High Court forbids online poker plus all the other forms of online gambling from now on in South Africa.

The Gauteng Gambling Board (GGB) has been trying, for a long time now, to stop the activityof online casinos to protect the domestic gambling market, which generates $2,2 billion by itself. Any breach of this law will be punished with $1,36 million fine or with a 10 year sentencing.

The law applies not only to players but also to any payment establishment or Internet provider that may facilitate players’ access to online poker and gambling.

The ban targets also the publicity of online gambling.

If a gambling operator is caught to activate illegally it will not be given a license in case the government would open its market in the future.

Lucky Lukhwareni from the Gauteng Gambling Board declared:

“That’s why we approached the media to alert them of the judgement which makes online casino operations illegal, and if they continue we will have them arrested and fight for conviction.”

A representative of a profitable online casino operation based in Swaziland declared that they will not give up without a fight:

“On consultation with our Senior Legal Council they agree that we should appeal this finding which we believe is totally incorrect.”

“Until the appeal has been heard and the outcome determined, our business will continue as usual as agreed with the Gambling Boards.”

The stiking fact is that Microgaming and many other casinos have their head quarters in South Africa.