The popular Shaq Vs TV show is where the big scary guy, Shaq, challenges other famous sports stars at their own sports.  Hence the name Shaq versus… In the first series he played football, volleyball, baseball, wrestled, boxed with the best whatever…you name it, he add audiences glued to their screens.

The Shaq Vs Show

Although poker is a sport, this is going to be a bit different for Shaq, he is going to have use all his tactics and guile to take on the best at poker.  I hope he is reading some books to learn poker strategy, because this aint going to be any usual ball game!  Will Shaq go for the all out aggressive play and be the attacking player we know he can be?  Or will he be a bit more circumspect, and tighten up to be defensive player – It will be interesting to see him battle his natural instincts.

Keep a look out for the start of Shaq Vs, its going to be good entertainment, whatever happens.

Poker is just the same… you get fish and you get sharks…

A smooth call helps to get the fish biting.  You don’t always have to use a continuation bet.  Sometimes a flat call gets opponents thinking they are stronger than what they really are.

Then all you have to do is play them on the river and reel them in when they are tired…

Easy!

But what I actually meant, is to talk about how hard it is to sustain performance and keep winning.  There is nothing like sport to bring you down to size, after victory.  It is the teams or individuals that manage to win consistently that are truly great.

If you have ever played in a league, then you will know what I mean.  One or two brilliant games, some mediocre games and then some that you would wish to forget – make up a usual season.  The anguish of trying to stay on top of the leader board and fight off the opposition.  It is a lot harder than what it seems, to stay at the top and play consistently well.

Planning, preparation and determination were always requirements of our good games.  These lessons from my sporting life I carry through to the poker room.

Even if you have a relatively weak starting hand, yet a hand that could get some help from the table… and thats important!!   Always think about the possible combinations that the shared cards on the table and an imaginery hand could have.  Then think about how many chips you could commit, obviously if you are deep stacked then you can afford a high raise.  The payback for taking this chance is always worth it in my opinion.

Try mix in some aggressive play, like pre-flop raising and re-raising, it will get your opponents to think twice about challenging you and committing chips.  Its really difficult to stand up to a player that is coming at you aggressively and you are either, not in a position to counter them or you do not have the cards, to take them on.  The correct use of pre-flop betting will increase your returns in the poker room.

Over use of the pre-flop bet will start to raise suspicions so use it with care, otherwise players will get suspicious and start calling you.

So far at the WSOP Vitaly Lunkin and his compatriots have done pretty well for themselves.  Lunkin, the winner of this year’s Russian Poker Tour, won $1.9 million at the inaugural no-limit holdem event at WSOP.  Not bad earnings, especially when you convert them back to rubles…

So is Russia the new poker frontier?  I don’t know but I bet there are going to be lots of great players from there.  After all there were many great chess players, so why not poker players?

Keep a look out for Kravchenko, Evdakov, Alekhin & Demidiv.

Online cash games is where Dwan has managed to earn some of his poker losses back, in the past few weeks.  It seems that the high stakes online cash games is where the players like the thrill and like to try and win the big money.

How do they live with the stress of these sorts of swings in fortunes… fortunes in deed!!  And I think my swings are big…

Learning how to win at poker, and also how to lose is very important poker etiquette!  It also helps to learn these tips if you want to be invited back to play poker again.  I was fortunate that I have played a lot of sport and had to learn the hard way at school.

I used to play a lot of tennis and was a brash youngster that hated losing… I have done some things on the court that I would never do now!  Only because one day I realized, whoa hold on buddy you can’t really do that.  So when it came to poker I applied some of what I have learnt from playing tennis.

Everyone wants to win, and just because you win graciously doesn’t mean that you are soft and you are not trying to go all out to win.  Lets face it in poker sometimes you can play your best game, to the best of your ability and still get beaten by a complete novice.  It happens in poker, so learn to deal with it and learn to lose.  Also when you take a huge pot, don’t rub it in and gloat at your opponent’s loss.

Just make sure you win more often or that you win the bigger pots!

Then once in a while you find a nice clean poker site, that simply tells you everything that you want to know about poker.  Pokerearner.com displays online poker room reviews with their poker bonus offers.  So all you have to do is read, choose and try.

Some would say stick around and take money off them, but I couldn’t be bothered playing with four maniacs at one table!  The thing is they were all over the place, having fun and you just couldn’t predict what they would do next.  Funny how the tempo and mood can change around a poker table depending on the characters that are playing.

One good thing that I did discover yesterday was a very informative gambling news portal.  Once in a while you stumble upon something really good that makes you sit up and say, “Now thats good!!”.  They’ve got everything there and its worth checking out.