(Originally published June 2006 on WomenGamers.com)

Free Online Poker Lessons
Woman Poker Player Magazine with instructors from the Women’s Poker Club are offering free basic poker lessons. There is no charge and no deposit required to participate in the play chip games. All Women Gamers with less than eight months experience playing poker are welcome.

Players can enter one game or play all of them at their convenience and desire to learn. Woman Poker Player magazine will be providing prizes for each game. The winner will receive a one-year subscription to Woman Poker Player Magazine and the 2 and 3 place game winners will receive a copy of Poker Academy’s Learn to Play software.

To signup for the free lessons, please send an email to wg@womanpokerplayer.com. We will provide you with special instructions for the game in order to enable a peer learning environment. We will also send you the password. You can participate in as many games as you like - to observe, learn and most of all to have fun.

Poker Hand Rankings - ranked highest to lowest Royal Flush: Ace, king, queen, jack, ten all in the same suit. Odds are very slim that anyone can have this hand. This is the top ranking hand in poker! Straight Flush: Five cards, of any but same suit, in numerical sequence. Four of a Kind: Any four cards ranks the same. Full House: Three of the same cards along with a pair. Flush: Five cards all of the same suit. Ranking counts in highest card, so if you have a King high flush and someone else has an Ace high flush - they would win. Straight: Five cards of any suit in sequence. Three of a Kind: Three of the same ranked cards. Two Pair: Two sets of pairs of cards. Pair: Two cards of equal rank. High Card: If nobody has a decent hand then high card wins. If two players have the same high card, then the winner goes to the tie with the next highest card in their hand.

Odds of Getting any Hand in Five Cards

Royal Flush 1 in 650,000
Straight Flush 1 in 72,200
Four of a Kind 1 in 4,200
Full House 1 in 700
Flush 1 in 510
Straight 1 in 250
Three of a Kind 1 in 48
Two Pair 1 in 21
One Pair 1 in 2.4
No Pair 1 in 2

Basic Play of Texas Hold'em

The player with the best 5 cards will win the pot if going to a showdown. A showdown is when there is more than one player left at the end of the betting rounds, and the highest hand wins.
Each deal has betting rounds. First each player is dealt two cards face down (called the pocket or hole cards). On the next round three community cards (the flop), that all players can see and use, are placed to the table. On each of the following rounds a new community card is added to the table, one is called the turn (4th face up card) and the last the river (5th face up card). Each player can use her pocket cards together with the community cards to form the best possible 5 card poker hand from the ranks above.
The cards are dealt in a clockwise fashion, then players bet into the pot in the middle in the same order. At the end of the hand, the highest hand (that hasn't folded) wins the money. On a turn, you have one of three choices:

Call
When you call, you bet enough to match what has been bet since the last bet on the table.

Raise
When you raise, you first bet enough to match what has been bet (as in calling), then you 'raise' the bet a further amount.

Fold
When you fold, you drop out of the current hand and you lose your chance of winning but you don't have to put any further money into the pot. You can opt to fold at the start of the round when it comes to your turn.

Betting continues until everyone calls or folds after a raise or initial bet.
Poker Tournament Play

You can play in a poker tournament either online or in a Casino by paying the buy-in and entry fee, or by just registering for the game in the case of a freeroll. Each participant starts with an equal amount of tournament chips. Players continue to play as betting rounds increase via higher blinds until players are eliminated and a final winner is declared.
The prize pool is split between the top tournament finishers. The amount of players that share in the prizepool is dependent on the number of entries. Normally they fall in the 10 per cent range. For example if 100 players are registered than the top 10 players will share in the prize pool on an increasing percentage with the highest percentage always going to the Champion or first place winner. Whether you play online or live in a Casino, the amount of prizepool and number of winners will be posted once registration for the tournament is closed.

Starting Hands in Texas Hold’em – A Few Hints

When you are deciding which hands to play it all depends on the situation, how many people are behind you, how many bets you have to call, how many limpers there are, what your position is and more. I want to give you a few hints to get you started in understanding how to adapt to those different situations.

Early Position
When there are more than 6 people still to play after you, you should consider yourself in early position. Because so many people still have to play you don’t have any information about the other players hands or how many bets you will have to call in total to see the flop. You should be limiting yourself to high quality hands that are going to win a high percentage of the time. This includes high pocket pairs, 9 and higher, as well as AK, AQ and KQ.

Middle Position
When you are in middle position you have a lot more information and you can play more hands depending on the action when it gets to you. If it has been raised to 2 bets you can still play all the hands you would have played in early position. If it hasn’t been raised and there are limpers you can add hands such as AJ, AT, and high suited cards such as QJ, JT and KJ.

Late Position
When you are last, how you play should change drastically. With 2 or more limpers you should now be adding low pocket pairs, any suited ace, and many other suited hands such as J9 or 98. If you are the first player in you should be playing all these hands plus any 2 cards above 9 and you should be raising all of them.

One Last Hint
In limit games you want to generally play hands that will win a large amount of the time. Thus only play mediocre suited cards and small pocket pairs when you can get in cheaply with position against a lot of other players. In no limit, you should add some hands out of position if you think there’s a good chance of getting in cheaply. But don’t add many unsuited hands. Play hands you can bust another player out with if you hit. A hand like 98s for example is a hand you could play and hope to hit a huge flop with and win a big pot. Conversely a hand like KJ is a very poor hand in no limit when you are in early position even if you can get in cheaply because it will win very few big pots but lose some. The 98s will rarely lose a huge pot although it will win some.

How to Deposit Money Online

Ok, so you have played a few play chip tournaments and participated in some freerolls (many sites offer freerolls which means it cost nothing to enter but prizes are given to the winners), and you see that you can enter say a $5 buyin tournament with a guaranteed prize of $2,000, so you decide to enter. How do you make your first deposit?

1. Read the terms and conditions of banking posted on the website.

2. Double check the reputation of the poker site you wish to play on. For example, do searches on the Internet to see if there has been any complaints. What is the site’s overall reputation - How long has the site been in business? Do they have a lot of players? Those are also signs to watch. A lot of the larger poker rooms became larger because of good customer service.

3. Read the terms and conditions of the poker room’s bonuses and withdrawal policies. All poker rooms offer some sort of incentive in the form of additional money based on your deposit amount. This is referred to as a bonus. Most sites will have a minimum amount you need to play on the real money tables before you accumulate enough points to be paid out and earn the bonus dollars. Once you meet the requirements the funds will automatically be deposited into your account no matter what your balance is. Always read the terms and conditions on any site you want to play on for real money.

4. Decide which payment option will suit you best. Many credit card companies will not accept online gaming transactions and even though you have funds available on your credit card, you will not be able to deposit into the poker room. There may also be extra steps required from the poker room in order to withdrawal, such as faxing in your credit card, driver’s license and a utility bill. This is to protect the consumer, but it does delay the withdrawal process. Neteller is a viable and safe payment solution. Setting up an account is easy and it takes much less time to withdraw funds from an online gaming site. Most sites take only 2 – 24 hours to deposit your funds into Neteller and there are no additional steps required. Neteller also has a debit card available or bank transfer so getting your cash in hand is prompt.