Hi guys, I just thought I would see if there were any people on LG that would be interested in forming some private, LG Poker Games, online. There are multiple platforms that we can use, that allow us to make private, real money games. The two best platforms for organizing private games, in my opinion, would be PokerStars or 888Poker. 888Poker offers video tables, which are pretty cool. It would allow for us to see and hear each other while we play, giving it a more social aspect. Although it does have about 10% of the traffic that PokerStars has, so it would make it more difficult to find games, outside of the private ones we would organize amongst ourselves. Both sites allow us to set the stakes from anywhere as low as .01/.02 ($2 Buy In) to literally as high of stakes as we can afford. This would allow for us to make games for people that want to learn, without them risking much money, while still allowing for people that want to play for higher stakes. I just thought this might be a neat idea, that would allow for any poker enthusiasts from the LG Community to both play and learn together. The easiest way to learn the game and improve is to have a network of people that you can discuss strategy with. If we can get enough people interested, we could potentially make a league out of it with cash games, tournaments, a tournament series or at least have some regular games to play with familiar people. So if anyone is interested, just post in here or message me and I will get in touch with you.
http://money.cnn.com/2012/07/31/technology/online-poker-settlement/ "The Department of Justice announced a $731 million settlement [in July or August 2012] with online poker companies PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker to resolve bank fraud and money laundering allegations." In addition: "PokerStars chairman Mark Scheinberg said in a statement that the company was "delighted we have been able to put this matter behind us," and looked forward to operating in the United States when it is legal to do so. In the meantime, PokerStars remains open to non-U.S. players." In other words, technically it is illegal, and Pokerstars is a very suspect website to play poker on anyway. It's a cool idea, Freddy, but I don't think it's going to work.
Technically, it was never against the law to play, only facilitate. It is now legal in both Nevada and New Jersey. I believe it's also legal in Delaware, but it may not be yet. For Americans, unfortunately, it would be nearly impossible to play at this point, as States can only license companies for play within their own state, however that is changing as we speak. Right now, none of the big companies have been granted licenses within any of the States yet, but I expect PokerStars to be in New Jersey in the next 12 months.
You're probably right, I won't get much response from this, but I certainly disagree with PokerStars being a questionable website. It's by far the best and safest place to play online poker, if you have access to it. The only questionable place to play online in my opinion is Lock Poker, because you can't get your bankroll off of the site, in most cases.
If we were talking about maybe a weekly fun tournament or something like that, there's the F2P WSOP on XBL right now. Other than that you probably won't have too much luck finding people.
I played on both pokerstars and fulltilt a long time ago. Online poker, in my opinion, is always questionable. The frequency of rare hands is just too high. I'll be playing for a few hours and I'll see 4 of a kind, a straight flush, and multiple full houses. All in a few hours. Plus, there are ways (so I've heard) to play in rooms with your friends (kind of like what we're trying to do) and people would often gang up on one or two freelance players (and share hand info with their friends) so it's basically 8 against 1 or 2 instead of a free for all. All online poker is questionable, imo.
Playing as a team at any stakes higher than 10NL, PokerStars will catch you within a couple of weeks. There is also not anywhere near as much advantage to colluding in that style as you would think. It certainly happens, but it is a rarity as accounts get flagged pretty quickly. As far as the frequency of big hands, I've heard that a lot. I've been playing online regularly for over 10 years and live, in casinos for 12 years. I find the main reason you get exposed to so many crazy hands, is because a) it was a fairly isolated incident and/or b) you see about 3 times the amount of hands,per table, online that you will see live, so big hands do happen pretty often and/or c) there's more bad players online, because the pool of players is much bigger, which leads to more hands being exposed (going to showdown) than you would typically see live. So there's more opportunity for people to make big hands, because you'll see a lot of full boards. I could write a laundry list of crazy shit that I've seen happen playing live that would sound as unbelievable as some of the online stories we all have. If you're not an online poker fan, I respect that, a lot of people aren't. I find that online does get a bad wrap though as a lot of the fears people have with playing online are placed as a result of bad, or lock of information, "bad" experience or they are Looney Tunes that truly believe it's "rigged" like the site is out to get you, lol. For the record, you don't sound like a Looney Tune, lol. If you play live poker at all, good luck at the tables.
What you're saying makes sense about how the big hands just appear to happen more often in online due to the factors you list, and you may be right. I've got nothing against people who like playing online at all, but there's always that extra level of the unknown with online since I can't actually see the cards. And I appreciate you not thinking I'm a loony toon lol. To be honest though, my worst bad beat by far was in a casino. I stopped playing poker for about two years after it. Short version was I had an absolute perfect read on one guy, and the pot was huge (it was a 2-3 NL I think, and the pot was about $800 at the end (which was big for me). I had a pair of 5s and played a guy all the way down. I got counterfeited on the river and lost to AJ, even though the guy didn't have a single pair of his own. My two pair lost to his no pair because of pure bad luck and I got wiped out. Never really went back to cash games after that lol. I stick with the tourneys where my playstyle is an advantage instead of a hindrance.
This is a story I know all too well, lol. My personal favourite is flopping the nuts and having them become essentially rags on the river. Here's a fun one to leave you with... 9 Handed, I'm on the button.... open folds to the 6 Seat, who makes it 3x. Folds to me and I call with Ad, Jd. Flop is 2d, Kd, 6d.... The raiser bets 1/2 pot, I call with the nuts. Turn is 10d.... Raiser checks, I bet 1/3 pot, he raises 4x, I go all-in, he snap calls with 3d,5d. River is the 4d and he hit his 2% outer, lol. God, I love poker.
I was in Atlantic City playing in a Casino and got knocked out in 2 tournaments my 2 pair getting beat by 4 of a kind. I was like oh well its only up from here. Than i placed 5th out 70 players and won some cash.
lol ouch. My (real) favorite hand is a pair of 2s and being able to limp in. If I hit another 2, someone's probably going to get torched. And if I don't, then it's an easy throw-away. Not like getting a pair of 10s or jacks or something.
This would be a great idea like previously stated if people from the US could play, I used to play pokerstars an fulltilt all the time before they were shut down here, playing online poker is by far more tricky than playing live because it takes one of the most important things of poker out of play (reading your opponents). However I feel that online poker gets a bad rap because of all the dumbos that play smaller money games an tend to try the dumbest things you will ever see an have it work out sometimes. To people in the US if you want to play poker on line an have a chance to win prizes an money they place I would recommend play on WPT, worldpokertour.com this is a pretty big an growing website that you see represented by many pros at big live events.
For regular online poker, no question, but for friendly private games, I think the 888 software has more to offer.
Well i live in jersey so i am def game, used to play online all the time before they shut it down. I am having issues with them verifying i actually live in jersey, something about wifi and bla bla bla. Once they figure it out i am game. Also "Get Shit On Brett"
If it was legal in US id be down. Used to love playing $12/ 360 turbos. Used to play a lot of ,private tournies with a forum back in the day, had awesome side bets and bounties. We had a buy in to our league of 100 bucks then it was weekly $5 tounies with points based on entrant numbers (ie 13 pts for a win in a 13 entrant game). Was cool be ause we would switch games up..razz always was interesting.
Didn't read some of the longer posts on here because I'm an idiot so don't know if someone brought it up but 888 is now legal in NJ as well as Ultimate Poker in Nevada. Although PStars isn't legal in NJ yet. Some good sites for US players that I play on are Carbon Poker, Bovada (formerly Bodog), and Americas CardRoom. Recently shipped an MTT on ACR for about 5k. I saw something about Lock Poker, and you're right they're awful in regards to payouts.. Carbon is pretty reliable only depo'd from there once though, the estimated delivery of my check was like 4 months and it came in 2 weeks, lol. Also, ACR was pretty quick as well when I withdrew a couple grand. From my experience Bovada has the best value for MTT's for US players, but the whole "anonymous player" thing really turns me off to the site. There's too much money to be made in this industry though, and soon more states will follow the path of New Jersey, imo.
