Plus... canny table selection and how to play short stacks
MAC USERS 'FISH' WITH CHIPS Poker-starved Macintosh computer users are finally gobbling up the chips at online poker rooms. At last they’re getting the red carpet treatment as the big sites roll out their Mac compatible poker room software. They may have missed out on the early online poker phenomenon, but Mac users have well and truly got the poker bug now creating a Mac-focused poker boom. For the big poker rooms to survive in this competitive market they need to continually offer new and innovative software so they’ve had Macs in their sights for quite a while. An interesting side issue arises as Mac users tend to hold the out-dated view that their computers aren’t as vulnerable to viruses and worms as PC’s. This, they say, makes Macs far safer for playing real money online poker games. Not true anymore of course, but cue the PC versus Macs poker tournaments? You read it here first and you can bet on it.
POKER TIP OF THE DAY If you’ve decide to snatch an hour of online Texas Hold’em during your lunch break and you want to make it pay, table selection will be the key. Take a swift look around the lobby area and check out at least three or four of the available tables. You can quickly work out which is the tightest of the tables by looking at the number of players per table, the average pot size, the number of hands being played per hour at any given table and the percentage of players from each group seeing the flop. You’re looking for the most passive table so you can attack with aggressive play. If it happens to have the most hands played per hour as well you’ll have more than the average number of pots to attack in the time you have available. Make it pay while the boss is out to lunch.
SHORT STACKING All poker players find themselves short stacked at one time or another but it doesn’t mean you have to be intimidated by better financed poker players. Patience is the key to short stack play. Wait. Pick your time and your target. Don’t be in a hurry to commit your money early. Figure out how many times you can post the big blind before busting. If you don’t have four times the big blind you need to consider getting your money down the next time the big blind falls to you. Select a well calculated spot and gamble as there’s nothing worse than blinding yourself broke. Aggression tends to pay off in poker, even if you’re short stacked, and a gamble beats a slow dwindle any day of the week.
