freeloadpoker.com

Hottest poker avatars on PKR

You can’t deny Lara Croft and the Little Mermaid are hot.

But which is the hottest poker avatar on PKR? Here’s my top 5:

AngelKate22 – fox

Take Chip – if you like a red head. Looks dirty

Mega Vino – national treasure

Fara678 – classic blonde

Titesouris – sexy girl next door. Hot

Guy or girl, I congratulate your fine work. These are the hottest chicks on PKR unless anyone has any other recommendations – they should pay out to number one.

Ever wondered where poker card suits originated? Actually they were thought to be an early Chinese gambling invention of around the 9^th Century. What we now know as Spades, Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs started life a little differently. There were still four suits but these were depicted as coins, a string of coins, a number of strings and then loads more strings on the last suit. These were thought to be ‘money cards’ used for the earliest form of poker – the card itself became the stake.

After growth in popularity through India and Persia, the suits transformed to become a ring, cup, sword and baton – typical signs of wealth, royalty and so on. By way of Egypt they made their way to Europe in the 1300’s. Suits began to vary by country influenced by indigenous symbols. For instance, in Germany they became hearts, bells, leaves and acorns – still used in areas of Germany today.

It was the influence of French King Charles VI that produced the suits we know and use now. The spade, taken from the German leaf symbol, was designed to represent royalty. The club, taken from the German symbol of the acorn represented peasants. Hearts remained the same and stood for the church while diamonds, traditionally the ring, represented the merchants.

A real poker face

Finally, a deck of cards is said to hold religious and astronomical significance. The four suits are the four seasons, red and black are day and night, 13 cards per suit are the 13 phases of the lunar cycle, while 52 cards in the deck are the number of weeks in a year. What’s more, if the value of all cards in the deck is added, it reaches 365 (1 joker added) which represents the number of days in the year – add the other joker and you have a leap year! Of course, all of the above was said to be the excuse of a 15^th Century poker player who, when caught with a deck of cards, claimed their intended purpose was that other than gambling!

Not everyone is blessed with a photographic memory so here’s a technique, suggested by Derren Brown in his book Tricks of the Mind, that could help you remember anything from your day-to-day tasks to building up a bank of information on your opponents that you’ll be able to access anytime, anywhere.

Here’s how it goes and really try this as you’ll be surprised how well it works. I’ll use Derren’s example. Try and remember the following list of 20 words – give yourself about 30 seconds or so and then try and write them down afterwards in order.

It’s pretty difficult to remember too many more than about 9 or 10 isn’t it? The following ‘linking’ technique will leave you stuck with this list in your head for the next six months.

The key is to create highly visual links with the words. Take a word and apply a vivid picture to it – take time to ‘feel’ the picture i.e. if it is a disgusting image, feel the revulsion of it. Make sure it is an unusual picture too. Mundane images don’t work as they’re not weird enough to stop your brain in its tracks. Now link one image to another by adding some kind of interaction between the images – again, the weirder the better.

Here’s that list again with the above applied. Read it and take the time to clearly picture and ‘feel’ each image – is it gross or funny and so on. Give it a go – it’s surprising what your brain can absorb if you ask it to remember in the right way.

Telephone/Sausage: Trying to dial an old-fashioned phone with a flaccid, uncooked sausage. It feels disgusting and cold and doesn’t fit in the dial. You can only move the dial a bit before it purrs back into place.

Sausage/Monkey: You’re watching a documentary of a monkey in the jungle cooking a sausage over a barbecue. These are rare monkeys and it’s the first time they’ve been filmed. Next to him, he has a selection of dips.

Monkey/Button: You never have to do your shirt buttons up again because you have a monkey to do it for you. You can stand there in your socks while your monkey does up each button with his little monkey fingers.

Button/Book: It is a book entirely about buttons and in order to open it you have to unfasten a line of big colourful buttons down the side of it. A stupid marketing gimmick which makes opening it really irritating.

Book/Cabbage: Opening a book to have a quiet lunchtime read only to find all the pages have rotten cabbage stuck to them. It stinks and has ruined all the pages which are soggy with putrid cabbage juice. It’s all over your hands too.

Cabbage/Glass: A beautiful but enormous cabbage, realistically created out of glass. The artist is showing it off , flicking it with his fingers and making a pinging sound. People are stood around with glasses of wine appreciating it. You actually think it looks quite ridiculous and ugly.

Glass/Mouse: You go to drink a glass of wine and find the wine has gone and there’s a little mouse in there instead. He’s clearly drunk and hiccupping bubbles of pink fizz with a limp party hat skewed in between his ears.

Mouse/Stomach: your stomach is full of squeaking mice and they start to stream out of your navel like the rats out of Hamelin.

Stomach/Cardboard: A pregnant lady covering her stomach with cardboard from old boxes. Taping it round her until she’s enormous. Now she feels protected.

Cardboard/Ferry: A massive P&O ferry is sinking in the sea because a seriously misjudged cost-cutting exercise meant the entire ferry was made out of cardboard. People are escaping on lifeboats that they haven’t realised are made of ordinary paper.

Ferry/Christmas: A little ferry sat on top of a Christmas tree, perhaps at a school for the hard of hearing. Little streamers, windows, everything. Tinsel around the hull.

Christmas/Athlete: It’s you and all your relations you normally spend Christmas with running round a race track with Christmas hats and crackers and the track is covered in snow. Your Gran is doing really well, racing ahead in her coat, hat and bag.

Athlete/Key: The winning athlete is given a four-foot long golden key on a ribbon as a prize. She tries to hold it up as the National Anthem plays but it’s too heavy and she wishes she was given a real medal.

Key/Wigwam: A key hangs unnoticed from the head gear of a Native American Indian. He really needs the loo but can’t unlock his Wigwam to get in. He searches red-faced for the key that he can’t see on his head dress.

Wigwam/Baby: Latest new-age fad, put your baby to sleep in a wigwam each night – dreamcatcher above him. Imagine a giant baby asleep inside sucking in and blowing out the sides of the wigwam as it snores.

Baby/Kiwi: A baby shoving green furry kiwi fruit into its mouth one after the other. A huge pile to be eaten and its got bright green kiwi juice all down its bib and throwing up kiwi vomit. He loves kiwis, the little tinker!

Kiwi/Bed: Tucking up a little kiwi for the night in a king-size bed. Pulling the covers almost over it, then sitting next to it to read it a story about the Little Kiwi until it falls asleep.

Bed/Paintbrush: You’ve re-decorated and your bed no longer matches so rather than buy new covers you decide to paint them the same colour as the walls. Sloshing paint all over the entire bed, watching it go hard and uncomfortable.

Paintbrush/Walnut: Not owning a nutcracker, you’re forced to try and open a walnut with the end of a paintbrush. Trouble is, you’re using the brush end which isn’t working and there’s paint sloshing everywhere. It’s a mess but you really want that walnut.

If you took the time to do it properly, you’ll be able to remember this list for ages – repeat it backwards at the drop of a hat even.

It’s a simple technique that you can apply to any aspect of life – don’t have a piece of paper and need to remember some shopping, need to remember someone’s name etc. In the poker room it is a good way to remember winning hands from players, styles of play etc as it takes no effort to actively remember it. Once the image is in your head you can simply add to it and then shut it away again until you need it next. You’ll find you’ll be able to remember the whole table’s shown hands as the game progresses and build up a valuable bank of information to improve your game going forward.

The more cunning (and probably more casual players) among you may think that getting your girlfriend into online poker is a sneaky way to spend more time enjoying your second favourite late night past time. A good strategy when executed correctly, but proceed with caution.

The initial seduction works well. Login to your PKR account ‘just to show her how cool the graphics are these days’, then let her change your avatar a bit – the more she changes it, the more connected she’ll become to her new creation and more committed she’ll be to seeing it in action. Hit the tables; a low-risk $5 sit-N- go game of Texas Hold’em should do it – though go for a 6 player table rather than a 10 as she’ll be surprised at how long it takes, plus, some of the sneakier better players eat up the novices on the 10 player tables for a bit of sport.

Once you get going, there are a couple of things you should be wary of: 

1:  The chat function and flirt emoticons

She may be initially surprised that you can chat, and more specifically ‘flirt’, with your fellow competitors. Be prepared for questioning on this – your late night antics suddenly became a bit more threatening. Ensure that when the girl in the cowboy boots with the low cut top says ‘hi’ and sends you a message to ask how you’re doing, you respond with absolute certainty that it is most definitely a bloke. She’ll then enjoy taunting her/him relentlessly.

2: ‘Having a look’

You may have rubbish cards but it’s usually worth a look or the game gets pretty boring. Your girlfriend may be more inclined to fold preferring to save the $40 a look would be worth for later. When nothing comes up and you ultimately fold anyway, be prepared for your first ‘I told you so’. However, this works both ways and she’ll soon come round to your way of thinking. Play a few hands her way and when she folds and her pair of 3’s gained on the river could have won the hand, afford yourself a satisfactory smirk.

 3: Going all in

This is the biggest source of ‘I told you so’. You’re down to the last two and in an attempt to scare off your opponent, you go all in saying ‘trust me’. But they call and you lose. She was right, you were wrong. Ride this one out – this is the turning point…

Basically, while you may be questioning yourself for introducing your partner to poker, actually the more ‘I told you’s’ you get, the better: ‘I told you that one only bets hard pre-flop when he has something’; ‘I told you he was taking too long to decide to bet’; ‘I told you he looked at his cards way too many times to have something decent’ etc.

Mission complete. Sit back and check out your new poker buddy! You’ll be hearing the seductive tones of PKR drifting through from the living room before you know it. Grab a bottle, you’re in for a late night!

Probably the most active player in the professional poker world, Thuan “Scotty” Nguyen ranks among the highest earners among tournament players. He is known in the poker circuit as The Prince. It took quite some time for this Vietnamese refugee to attain his success in the professional poker world. To date, he is the only person to win both a World Series of Poker Main Event and an H.O.R.S.E. World Championship.

He escaped from Vietnam in a small boat and because of his refugee status was given safe passage to the United States. When he arrived in the US with his family, they had a very small amount of money and material possessions with them. He was just 14 years old then. After a year in Chicago, his family then moved to California where he learned how to play the game of poker.

Nguyen began his poker career by first becoming a card dealer to support his family. This served as his training ground. While a dealer, he observed the winners and losers. With this knowledge in hand, he switched sides and in 1988 Nguyen started playing professional poker in Las Vegas to make his family more financially secured. Well, now we know that his gamble paid off.

His other poker nickname is The Train because he projects a fearless aggressive persona while on the poker table yet he is relaxed and easy going. He is also talkative and usually does a running commentary while a match is in session that often distracts his opponents. His 80% win rate at final tables is impressive as well. He says that this might be because of his familiarity of the situation because his been there a lot of times before. He also has this all or nothing attitude and he does take it one hand at a time because winning is everything for him. Plus he has a lot of confidence to boot.

He is also probably one of the best loved poker players by fans because of his charming personality. One of the best all around players around, there’s never a dull moment with him around. He is also famous for saying yeah baby often during competitions and he plays with lots of emotions. He was the one who made up the phrase “that’s poker baby” to refer to a bad beat. One memorable Scotty Nguyen moment happened during the 1998 World Series of Poker Main Event where a full house (8-8-8-9-9) was dealt on the table. Nguyen said to his opponent Kevin McBride, “You call, gonna be all over baby!” McBride called. Nguyen won with a full of 9s.

Though after that momentous win, tragedy struck the Nguyen household. The day after the win, his brother was hit by a car in Vietnam and died. This is the reason why you won’t see Nguyen wear his 1998 WSOP bracelet anymore.

To date, he holds five WSOP bracelets. Aside from the 1998 WSOP bracelet from the $10,000 No Limit Hold’em World Championship, he has also won at the 1997 $2,000 Omaha 8 or Better, 2001 $2,500 Pot Limit Omaha, 2001 $5,000 Omaha Hi-Lo Split Eight or Better and at the 2008 $50,000 H.O.R.S.E. World Championship.

Nguyen’s first World Poker Tour event title came in 2006 by defeating Michael Mizrachi in a heads up match during the fourth season of the Gold Strike World Poker Open. His A-Q of spades for a flush won over Mizrachi’s A-J off suit on the first hand of the heads up match. With this win, he is only one of five people who have won at both the main event of World Poker Tour and World Series of Poker titles.

During the 2007 World Series of Poker’s Seven Card Stud High Low Split Event, he placed second to Eli Elezra. After the said event, Nguyen stated that he didn’t played cash games during the last two years because he wants to play in a friendly environment which he can’t find in a serious cash game.

He just missed getting into the final table of the 2007 World Series of Poker main event where he finished in 11^th place in a field of 6,000 plus competitors. That stint earned him prize money worth $476,926. As of 2008, his total earnings have been estimated to reach at least $9,700,000. Aside from the WSOP and WPT events, he has also appeared on the Ultimate Blackjack Tour playing Elimination Blackjack.

In 2003, he co-starred in the poker movie, The Big Blind. He has been a guest of the show Late Night with Conan O’Brien in April of 2004. Other than that, he also appeared on the television via appearances in Poker Superstars International, NBC’s National Heads up Poker Championship, and Poker After Dark.

Although he has achieved worldwide fame, he still goes back to his native country. He spends some of his poker earnings on his family that still lives in Vietnam. One thing he would like to improve on is his money management skills. He spends most of his earnings to have a good time.

Beth is on a winning streak is head to head with the chip leader. She was dealt pocket jacks. She placed a minimum bet and got called. Luck seems to be on her side when the flop was J-8-K. She then bet $300 and the chip leader called. Turn was 8. Full house! She bet $500 and the leader called again. The river is a 3. Beth then went all in. The chip leader called. Leader had K-K. Beth’s lucky streak has ended.

It’s the first time Marie played in Las Vegas. She folded her first hand which is 3-7 off suit. Then on her second hand she was dealt pocket aces. She raised the pot four times the big blind. One player called and the rest folded. Marie then went all in and the player called, flipping 4-5 diamonds. The flop is ace of spades, ace of diamonds and three of diamonds. Marie though that nothing can beat her four aces. Well she thought wrong. Turn was rag but the river was 2 of diamonds giving her opponent a straight flush.

Alice picked pocket aces, both black so she bet $200 on it. Her opponent raised it. Alice then went all in thinking this might make the other player fold but instead the player called and showed his 6-3 diamonds. The flop is A-10-J with one diamond. Alice thought she has this match. The turn is 7 of diamonds. Now Alice became uneasy. One more diamond and she’s going home empty-handed. Finally, the river was revealed. It was 5 of diamonds.

If you played a tight table image all throughout the sit-n-go, then you can make a profitable all in play. An example of this is when you’ve only played 4 hands the whole sit-n-go. You’ll be able to get a few loose raises later in the match. This is true if you’re on or near the bottom. With your tight image, you can go all in and the other players might think that you have a premium hand.

Ben doesn’t like full houses and this is one reason why. He has pocket aces when the flop came with A-K-K. His opponent went all in. Thinking he had the game, he called. To cut the story short, the opponent had pocket Kings. The turn and river didn’t help Ben’s cause with 2 and a 9.