Poker Promo Blog

When playing tournaments, you can’t rely on waiting for the best hands and doubling up. You can pick up uncontested pots through a series of small bets. In this week’s video tip, Team Full Tilt’s Erick Lindgren explains how to win uncontested pots to build up your chip stack.

Erick Lindgren plays online exclusively at Full Tilt Poker. Erick Lindgren holds a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet and two World Poker Tour (WPT) Championships. Awarded WPT Player of the Year 2004, Erick has banked over $7.3 million in career tournament earnings.

Ernest Wiggins is from Washington DC, and is appearing on The Big Game as one of the Loose Cannon online qualifiers. He became interested in poker after dating a player, and now competes on a regular basis. So far his experience of live poker has been confined to local cash sessions at home games with friends, where he usually turns a nice profit. He’s serious about making money on the show, and is looking at his time in the spotlight as a chance to prove himself as a true contender and one of the best upcoming cash and tournament players on the scene.

Full Tilt Poker’s Big Little Tournament series returns this July, with eight $100,000 guaranteed tournaments featuring buy-ins of $2 + $0.20.

With a guaranteed first-place prize of $9,000, the Big Little Tournament is the best chance for players to turn a small buy-in into a huge score.

Play for a piece of $100K for just $2 + $0.20 every other Sunday beginning this July and win your share of $800,000 in total guaranteed prize money. Each of these Turbo No-Limit Hold ‘em tournaments will be held on the following Sundays:

• July 18th
• August 1st
• August 15th
• August 29th
• September 12th
• September 26th
• October 10th
• October 24th

Register Now to play for your share of $100,000 in each Big Little Tournament.

How to Register

If you don’t have a Full Tilt Poker account, download the free game software and set up an account. Once you’ve done so, log in to Full Tilt Poker and follow these steps to register for The Big Little Tournament of your choice:

1. In the game lobby, click on the Lobby menu, select Choose Lobby View and then click Standard View.
2. In the Browse area, click on Tournament, then select Guarantee, Hold ‘em, No Limit and Micro.
3. Scroll down the game list to find the Big Little Tournament of your choice by time and buy-in.
4. Select that tournament and click Register Now.

Author: Roy ‘the Oracle’ Winston

Unless you have a monster draw or are slow playing a big hand, calling is often the wrong play at the table. In fact, it often times takes a stronger hand to make a call than it does to make a raise.

“You raised with that?” is a question I hear a lot after showing down a hand. You can make a raise with any two cards (sometimes less than that), but it takes a real hand to make a call.

When I’m in late position in an unopened pot and someone in front of me puts in a raise, I’ll always say to myself, “Hey, I was going to do that!” The fact is opening a pot with a raise is a good idea because it puts you in control, while cold-calling a raise is not a great option for a variety of reasons.

read full tip >>

Author: Howard Lederer

Full Tilt Poker recently released a revolutionary new form of online poker: Rush Poker. If you’re not familiar with the game, I encourage you to give it a try. Instead of the players sitting in a 6 or 9-handed game, they are seated in a game that has up to 2,000 players in it. All players are seated at a normal table, but as soon as you decide to fold, instead of waiting for the hand to finish and playing the next hand against the same players, you are immediately seated with a different group of players and play your next hand. This allows players to play around 300 hands per hour instead of the usual 80.

The excitement level isn’t the only thing that makes this game different than normal online poker. Playing against a different group of players each hand means you will need to make a few other adjustments to your normal ring-game strategy to succeed at Rush Poker.

One big mistake that is tempting to make is to play too tight, waiting for only premium hands. It’s easy to find yourself folding any marginal hand, as you will have a chance to get a monster the next hand with no waiting. But, you must not forget that you’re still paying blinds.

read full tip >>

All Poker Stars players in the USA and Canada can play in the free-to-enter Big Game qualifiers running 4 times a day, from March 26-June 25. The top 300 players from each will go through to Round 2. Finish in the top 1,000 there and next stop will be the finals.

If you then finish in the top 200 in a Big Game Final Round qualifier, you’ll be invited to send in a casting video, explaining why you think you should be on The Big Game as a Loose Cannon. Impress them and you’ll be going to Las Vegas.

PokerStars is putting up $100k of their money to buy you into this game.  You will be playing a session of $200/$400 NL Hold’em with some of the biggest names in poker - like Daniel Negreanu, Vanessa Rousso and more. I really like the idea of having someone sit with 100K and be able to keep potential profit, and be able to come back for another go-round if they want to. Sounds like fun.

Freeroll Tournaments cost zero to play but offer a chance to win real money while gaining some real tournament experience. You can discover what it’s like to play when there’s real money at stake, without the danger of losing any of your hard earned money. If you win, you can use that money to build a bankroll and play in higher stakes games, just as Chris Ferguson did when he overturned $0 into a $10,000 bankroll. There are daily freeroll tournaments open for players across the different online poker rooms, which mean that you can truly make some money from playing in them everyday.

Full Tilt poker Freerolls are your chance to compete for big money. Each offers 250 places in their weekly $1k Freeroll tournament. If you finish in the top 250, you will be automatically qualified in the $1k Freeroll, taking place every Sunday at 14:20 ET and paying 90 places.

Generally you’ll notice more bad beats in freeroll tournaments then real money tournaments, but that’s because the players in freeroll tournaments didn’t put up their own money to play.

If you haven’t done so already, download Full Tilt Poker (in my opinion the best poker site for freerolls) and install the software on your computer.

When you get down to the tournament bubble, it’s often going to change your play. Perhaps you’ll play more aggressively to try and take advantage of some of the tighter players aiming to sneak into the money, or perhaps even play tighter yourself to make the money. Watch the above video to get Allen Cunningham’s advice on how the tournament payout structure can help inform your game when you reach the bubble with a medium-sized stack.