It’s only fitting that we talk about tournament strategy as the month winds down and the biggest prize tournament on Triplejack rolls around once again.

With poker being as mentally intensive of a game as it is, there are all sorts of factors that run through the minds of poker players during a lengthy tournament.

“What are my odds with these pocket cards?”
“What does that guy have to finally bet big like that before the flop?”
“Do I have something worth playing to the turn with?”
“Is this chair wobbly?”
“What’s the score of that baseball game?”
“He raised me how much???”
“What does he have that could beat my hand?”
“Is he chasing a flush on the river and hoping to be rid of me by then?”
“How many chips do I have?”
“Where am I going to eat today?”
“When am I going to eat today?”

And so on…

It’s not unnatural at all for the human mind to wander around a bit during things such as poker that require a long attention span. This gets especially challenging in tournament play, but can also show its effects during length cash games as well.

Our friends over at PokerListings.com have put together a list of five rules to abide by that can save your online poker bankroll. Some of them are things you might not usually think of, but valuable nonetheless.

Have a look at the list here: http://www.pokerlistings.com/strategy/five-rules-to-save-your-online-roll

When poker tournaments with big prizes at stake (like an Ipad maybe) are getting thinner in players and deeper in chip stacks, every win is a big one. Along with that though, every risk carries immense weight as well, making the timing of everything that much more important.

It’s not too uncommon to see a handful of players still playing cards late in a tournament who got there from a couple risky moves and loose plays paying off in a big way for them. They caught some cards, had luck on their side, and now chances are that they are going to stick to the style of play that got them there.

Enter the squeeze play.

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Sometimes the cards just aren’t falling your way, which can make the excitement of some royalty showing up in your pocket hand that much more exciting. You’ve been treading water and blind bets throughout a tournament as sub par cards came your way, now with an ace-king in hand, you want to make your big move, right?

But slow down there turbo. There’s other factors in play that you should take a second and consider before calling any bet thrown out there. First, you should consider whether or not your A-K is suited. If so, your risk goes down a bit, and you’ll have a much better idea of where you stand after the flop. If you’re not sporting a suited hand though, much more consideration should be taken into the other players betting at the table.

If they’ve been conservative all tournament but have finally bet big, chances are they have at least some kind of pair in their hand already, which leaves you hoping for another ace or king in the community. All the while, you’d better hope they don’t catch another card to give them three of a kind. Also don’t discount the chance that they might have their own pair of aces or kings in their hand already, which essentially erases any chance you have at beating their hand by pairing up one of your cards.

Now, this isn’t to say that paying your way to the flop with ace-king is a bad move, because it’s not. With cards that high, you’re looking at a pretty good opportunity to put together a very good hand. It can be misleading at times though, and it’s not always as glamorous as it might seem. Take a close look at the rest of the table to see what kind of business the other players are up to before letting the excitement trump a level-headed poker play.

To read a bit more on how to handle ace-king, check out this bit from AintLuck.com: http://www.aintluck.com/playing-ak-poker-tournaments/

If you’re been coming around to Triplejack for a while now, you’ve probably noticed how we’re always updating things and adding new features to make Triplejack’s online poker experience the best on the web.

One of the newest features we’ve recently added is the ability to add pictures into chat. Whether it’s one of the preloaded options we have available, or a photo you would like to upload and share with friends, now you can add some visual flare to the chats on Triplejack. To do so, open the “Community” tab at the top of the page and select the “Insert picture into chat” option from the drop-down menu.

From there, just keep on having fun, keep on playing poker, and keep on having some good times with good friends!

This year’s World Series of Poker will be adding another event to its festivities, this time with more money at stake than any other Main Event tournament has ever offered. The new event is being called the “Big One for One Drop,” with proceeds from every entry going to benefit the One Drop charity that aims at providing safe and clean water throughout the world.

While it might not seem like too many people will be banging down the door to enter a tournament with buy-in that is 100 times the amount as the Main Event, so far there are already 30 confirmed entries to the Big One for One Drop. As it stands, the winning prize would be more than $12 million, which really might not be a huge get for anybody who can fork over a cool million to play poker, but it’s the charitable work that really counts.

Then entrants are currently a decent mix of businessmen, high-ranking CEO types and poker professionals such as Gus Hansen, Johnny Chan and Daniel Negreanu. And the list looks like it will continue to grow, and in turn grows the final prize, which looks to surely beat the $12 million prize that 2006 Main Event champion Jamie Gold took home.

To read more on this tournament for a cause, check out this article for more details: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/story/2012-04-12/WSOP-Record-Pot-Million-Dollar-Buy-in/54206940/1

For those who have read through Zenblender’s poker tips on the “Help” section of Triplejack, you’ve probably seen one tip that was a bit of a call to action to educate yourself a little more on.

“Most poker players play “hands”.  Learn what the “meta-game” is.”

So what is this “meta-game” that is so important to playing a well-rounded poker game? In short, it is the game within the game. Intricacies such as table positioning, knowing the tendencies of your opponents and selling certain actions of your own in hopes that they are interpreted differently by your opponents.

In the bigger picture, it’s viewing the poker game in a bigger light than just the current hand being dealt. Some hands might not result in more chips added to your stack, but through playing that hand, you can gain a read on how your opponents play certain situations. Say your opponent has a strong pocket pair and plays noticably more agressive in that hand, you can get a read on him and how he reacts when he knows the odds are in his favor. But you also might not know whether or not he has that winning hand unless you take him the distance to see his cards. Sometimes it’s worth a small dent in the chip stack in order to gain that information to use to your advantage later in the game.

Some situations aren’t exactly favorable in the sense of a single hand, but if you can gain valuable information about your opponent in that process, then something good has come of that. Learning how to blend that all together is how you play the meta-game!

To read more on some of the finer points of the meta-game, check out this article from The Poker Bank: http://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/psychology/metagame/

One of the biggest complaints many people have with free online poker is that much of the game’s authenticity gets lost in a flurry of reckless all-in bets that quickly rob any online table of the usefulness of strategy. With no consequence for losing out on all those free chips, some players take advantage of that freedom to play a style of poker that can often take much of the fun out of the game for other players.

At Triplejack though, no longer! Using the new Abusive Betting Filter, repetative all-in bets, or even just a heavy quantity of over-bets will result in that player being shown the door to that particular poker room.

Now you can play the game of poker the way it was meant to be played. Of course, this does mean you might need to pay closer attention to everyone’s moves at a table in order to read their playing styles. But hey, all that’s going to do is make you a better poker player in the long run. While you’re getting used to playing some serious poker with all your Triplejack friends, you might want to take a minute to dive into our blog archives for some of that poker strategy we’ve written so much about.

Don’t forget that you could always play without the filter if you wanted, if one day you and your friends want to get together online and play the old fashioned, no holds barred kind of online poker. It’s just one click away to uncheck that box and play the game however you want it!

Have fun!

What makes the difference between semi-bluffing and reckless chasing of cards into the turn and the river? The simple answer is odds.

Different from full bluffing, semi-bluffing means you’ve at least got something good developing to make for a winning hand by the time the river card comes. The benefits of this are that there’s a chance for both a winning hand to be put together by the river, or for your opponent to buy into the bluff and fold. The challenge in this is understanding what odds you have in hitting certain cards that would complete a potential winning hand. Even still, that’s banking on the notion that nobody else at the table is sporting a hand that can beat the cards you might have caught on the turn and river.

In the free poker world, such as Triplejack, the lines between semi-bluffing and reckless card chasing get blurred a whole lot, particularly in non-tournament play. Player have little to lose in a free game, and therefore are generally much less protective of their chips. As those prize tournaments wind down to their final handful of players, knowing the proper situation to execute a semi-bluff could do wonders in working toward that big prize.

Over at CardsChat.com, they’ve put together a detailed breakdown of all the ins and outs of semi bluffing. Check it out below.
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Poker betting strategy – The semi-bluff

You will see a lot written about bluffing in poker. Super aggressive maniacs will base their betting strategy on knocking people off pots and will therefore focus a great deal on bluffing. But poker is far more complex, although the semi-bluff should still be a vital part of your poker arsenal.

The semi-bluff poker play – a definition
So what exactly is a poker semi-bluff? Well the simple definition is whenever you bet with a hand that has good potential to become the best hand by the river, you are semi-bluffing. You are bluffing because you currently have no hand when you bet. However, you have good “outs” to end up with the best hand by the time the last card is dealt.

And that’s why this tactic is called a semi-bluff, not a pure bluff. You are betting with “something”, not simply with air.

Why is a semi-bluff a good poker betting strategy?
The profit you earn from playing semi-bluffing poker comes from having two ways in which you can win the pot. If your opponent folds to your bluff bet, then your bluff will work and you get paid off. While if you actually make your draw you win by having the best hand.

This makes it hard to counter semi-bluff poker plays because it is difficult to determine when your opponent actually has a hand, when he is pure bluffing and when he is chasing a monster draw. If a player varies his play correctly, he can keep his opponents guessing.

Of all the species of poker animal out there, the tight aggressive players will find semi-bluff poker betting strategies more profitable because fewer players in general will call their bluffs. Their table image has been cultivated to show a player who aggressively plays a few good hands. Thus opponents will often fold to their semi-bluff bets.

The bad poker semi-bluff
Although many players understand what a semi-bluff is, they rarely use it correctly. Many beginners make the costly mistake of betting when they should be checking, and checking when they should be betting.

So how do you know when you should bet and when you should check? The simple formula is as follows:

Pot equity + fold equity = profitability.

The more pot equity you have, the more likely you are to win by making your draw. Fold equity refers to the chance of getting your opponent to fold. Therefore, the more pot equity you have, the less you need to worry about your opponent folding. While, the more timid and cautious your opponent is – and thus the more likely they are to fold – the less pot equity you need (and that is why pure bluffs work so well against timid players).
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To read the rest of this article, head to CardsChat, here: http://www.cardschat.com/semi-bluff.php

In-som-ni-ac       [in-som-nee-ak]
noun

1. A person who suffers from insomnia, the inability, especially when chronic, to obtain sufficient sleep through difficulty in falling or staying asleep.
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The folks at Dictionary.com might define insomniac as somebody who is unable to sleep. At Triplejack though, we’ve got a bit of a different definition of who the real insomniacs are. Not only that, but we keep track of who the biggest and most dedicated insomniacs are on the entire site.

Under the “Rankings” tab in the Triplejack lobby and by clicking “Insomniac”, you can see which Triplejack players have been the most glued to their computer screens over the past 24 hours.

With the rankings being updated every hour, reaching the top of this list really might require a solid 24-hour commitment, but hey… That’s the price you’ve got to pay to be No. 1!

Should you choose to make a run at reach the top of this list, don’t be shy about taking a screenshot to capture and commemorate the moment and sharing with us and all your friends on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or any other way you feel like.

If nothing else, playing that much poker could definitely go a long ways in developing your game over time! You could also take part in a handful of prize tournaments over the course of a 24-hour poker marathon.