There have been some discussions about whether gambling is hazardous for kids, but I think that it is easy to forget that even though it is of course not good for kids to be to competitive, it is still a great way to spend quality time together with your family. I and my husband and our kids play at least once a week. It is a great tradition which everyone looks forward to during the day, and in the evening we all sit down at the kitchen table and start playing. We have two sons and a daughter, and all three of them are really talented. Texas Hold’em is the game we play the most, which is good since that is the game that is showing most on TV as well. I love seeing my kids develop in their game, and I get especially proud when I see that they are rather good losers. There is no real hostile atmosphere ever, and we can all congratulate the winner when the game is over. Also, this is a good time for discussions about other things than poker. If you just see each other at dinner time, if that, then it is important to take every chance you get to actually spend time with your kids.
Even though we are playing poker, we can still chat about how school was today, what is happening the next week and how everybody is feeling. It leaves room for a lot of laughter and joking, and discussing strategies and game plans is good for the development of the kids. Of course I understand that there are dangerous elements in the gambling culture, and I wouldn’t let my children take any part of that. For example, there is no way that I would allow them to go to Las Vegas! But that is more because of the whole world in general there. Hopefully my kids wouldn’t be very interested in that kind of lifestyle, and we try to keep it that way... I also think that it is hazardous to bring too much stress and competition into a child’s life – as long as he or she is having fun then it is fine, but it is best to keep one eye out for signs that they are feeling pressured. But at the end of the day I am very happy for our little family gatherings around the poker table. Without them I don’t know how much I would see of my kids, and I know that my husband appreciate the card playing a lot as well.

Last evening I and my boyfriend played a round of Chicago. He has had a great amount of luck – in my opinion, that is – in our previous games, but this time it was finally my turn to win. We got our five cards and I got a pair of Kings immediately, together with a ten, a queen and a two. I decided to go for the straight so I dropped one of the Kings and the two. Soon I had collected a Jack and another King which I was able to switch for a nine. I also won the play afterwards, to my boyfriend’s dismay. However, he won the next round with a full house and the play that followed. It is definitely more fun to play when the score is even, but since we are both competitive we were on the edge of our chairs.

Usually I like poker more, both in real life and poker online. But since I have some experience from that, I perform a bit better in Chicago then I think I would have done otherwise.

The third time I got three fours, which I managed to turn into four fours. At this point I realized I wasn’t winning so much on skill as on luck, but it was still very satisfying to see my scores compared to his. He won the play and I knew that I had to play really wisely now to beat him. I didn’t get anything in the first two gives in the following round, but when I threw all my cards I was happy to see that I had gotten three Jacks in one hand the third time. I also had a King of hearts and a lousy two of cloves. However, I could see on my boyfriend’s poor poker face that he was holding something as well, so I hoped that I would win the coming play. Since he thought I had nothing he was playing a bit cocky, which made me bolder as well. When it became obvious that he had a flush I knew I had a small chance of taking the game home. When I played my Jack of hearts I won and took over so that I could beat him with my King of hearts. His flush of hearts had been a low one and I was very happy to be able to declare myself as the winner!

The fact that it was the first, and quite possibly only, time that I beat him was nothing I pretended to know…

The next time we’ll play poker instead!

I always play rather loose with my pocket pairs. You know, it’s the usual strategy of limping in and hoping for a set on the flop. It’s a bit expensive of course but it’s almost always good anyway because when you get that third card in the flop you know you have him beat and he’ll never expect it.

The best moments are when you have a confident opponent with an overpair. You just limped in and the flop is low so he is certain he has you beat, the only thing he need to do is milking as much money from you as possible. This is almost the only way I win big pots, I hardly ever go for draws for straights or flushes so there is no big profit there for me.

The problem is that now and then they have a bigger pocket pair. Usually people bet a little harder preflop if they have fishhooks or better but sometimes some nasty Swede or Danish guy will limp in with those pocket jacks and this is what happened to me yesterday.

I was playing $50-$100 blinds short handed cash game all night and I was doing pretty well. After an hour or so I got myself a pair of eights in the pocket and did as I always do, I limped in. The guy on big blind checked, and the flop showed Jack, Three and an Eight. He made a big bet and I knew I had him, he either had an overpair and was to eager or he was trying to bluff me. I called slowly to see if I could milk some more out of him on the turn and river. Of course he had pocket Jacks.

I have no good way to finding these things out. The only thing I can do is start crying and keep playing poker. I don’t usually get this upset by getting beat but it always hurts much when I try to be smart and someone does the same thing back. Feels like I’m the stupid one in the crowd.

I have no idea what the poker statistics is for this strategy but I have a general feeling it’s a really good strategy. The best advice I can give you if you try playing this way is to keep an eye open because sometimes the get a bigger pair. Sometimes they do the same and limp in with it. If you don’t want the same situation of crying and playing you’d better not overplay that set. Poker is a dangerous game because there might always be a guy with fishhooks lurking in the darkness.

Before any kind of poker could take place, the cards had to be invented. This happened in China in the 10^th century, but it is possible that similar game tools existed prior to that. The cards were made out of thin paper at that time. It is said that Emperor Mutsung played cards with his wives on New Years Eve the year 969. Around 1370 the card playing reached Europe, but it took until the 18^th century until card playing became common in Europe. The name comes from the latin word charta that means “piece of paper”. Previously it was very important that the card that had the highest value was the King. But since the One, also called the Ace, in many games could be both the highest and the lowest card it was eventually the Ace that became the card with the highest value, depending how it was played of course.

This was co-related to the French Revolution that took place in the 18^th century, when people wanted to make a point out of the fact that someone that appeared to be at the bottom of the hierarchy climbed to reach a place above the monarchy. For an amount of time, the Jack, Queen and King was portrayed as symbols in the fight for freedom. (Like Equality, Freedom, etc.) The Joker is an American addition, and is only used in a few card games. Even if the face of the Joker looks a bit dodgy, it has no connection to the meaning of the card. The joker isn’t included in the 52 cards.

The kind of deck that is used the most today is the French-English one, with 52 cards made out of plastic. These are divided into equal amounts of cloves, hearts, clubs and diamonds and comes descending from 1 (Ace) to 10, followed by Jack, Queen and King. How the cards are coloured and portrayed varies a lot. It is possible to find everything from strict black and white to pornographic. The most common deck of cards is coloured in black and red. Companies often put their logo on the back of the cards, otherwise the brand of the card company can be placed there, if there isn’t a pattern. What is important is that the cards look identical on that side.

There are also Spanish decks of cards, Italian decks of cards and so on. In game such as Falling a particular kind of cards are being used. But cards are almost always made to fit a grown persons hands.

Cards are of course not only used when one wants to play poker and different kind of games, but also when you do tarot, for example. Magicians uses cards in their repertoires and finally cards can come in handy if you get the urge to do a patience or build a card house.

Everyone else does it and I'm not one to go against the flow, here is my top five poker site list:


Chili poker
Chilipoker is a poker rook in the iPoker network. Really good support (and I play there btw)

Pokeriot
Poker news and interview site with a cowboy hillbilly theme. Fun to read and a lot of good stuff there.

Poker loco
Pokerroom in the Ongame network, huge bonuses and really bad players.

Poker Office
Poker software that tracks your statistics and your opponents as well.

Poker Chick
This chick is out of control.

If we are going to be a bit more serious, I've been doing pretty bad this week. Came down with the flu on Monday so until now I've been lying in bed with the laptop fooling around. Not much stamina to do anything serious.

The last ten years I have gained about 10 kg, and I think that this has a lot to do with my poker playing. Before I got in to the gambling business (and the slacker lifestyle that came with) I always spent about three hours a week at the gym. I also had a more active social life with clubbing and tennis playing. But now I am spending so much time playing with friends or even at online casinos so that I get pretty much no exercise what-so-ever. The worst part of it is that I love to eat while I play, so what begun with a bowl of peanuts on the side is now chicken dinner in front of the computer...
Better pick up that tennis racket I guess.

When I play poker I always seem to collect the diamonds. I don't know why it is - maybe I have happened to get more of the diamonds then other cards, but I seem to favour them unconsciously. And all of my large wins have consisted of diamonds, even diamond straights. If I don't play diamonds then it is still the red cards that I tend to keep, and I have had a few flushes with hearts as well. No black card for me, thank-you-very-much! I am not gonna' take my chances...

For some reason I am a huge supporter of outside card playing. Poker, in particular. I just love sitting their in the warm summer breeze, lazily playing with no real concern whether I win or lose. The only problem, of course, is the weather. The second it gets remotely windy then the game is pretty much over, since the card are flashed when hitting the ground, if they blow of the table. I wish that I had like a tent or a garden where it was completely still, and warm and nice. Until then, I guess I'll just pretend that their are birds singing and that the light bulbs are the sun... :(

I have heard some killer stories about women competing in large poker tours while being in their eight month and stuff. But come to think of it, maybe it is a good way to get rid of stress and anxiety. I think in general that people fuzz too much over pregnant women. Don't they know very well themselves what suits them and what doesn't?
I think that it is really cool when pregnant women keep living their ordinary life, as long as it doesn't affect the baby of course! And who knows - maybe the baby will have great odds to come out as a great poker player?

Once upon a time there was no other game for me than Blackjack. My head was blocked with the nummer 21, and I had no interest whatsoever in any other games.
That was until my good friend made me interested in poker. Texas Hold'em to be exact. I love that game, I can't say anything else. Now that I have played it for a couple of years I take so much more pleasure in it then I used to do in Blackjack. There is so much mentally to the game, as well as strategically and socially. In Blackjack it was basically only math that made a difference.
So from now on I only play poker and I wouldn't want to have it any other way.