Real clubs and casinos have much bigger numbers of those. Those guys and dudes who open raise 10x and bet on every flop and turn. They are considered as bad players and awaited as warm spring day in the cold mornings of January. However, there is not much of players who know how to play against them.

“This man opens too wide and his raises are wild, he is fish anyways, so let’s have a party,” – this is pretty much all thoughts of players at the tables when they see another maniac. That is basically definition of what is a fish in poker.

The only problem is that they have no idea how to crush this poor fellow fish. Many make same mistakes and become another victim of this poker maniac.

The acknowledged best high roller from the season 9 of the EPT Russian poker pro Vladimir «vovtroy» Troyanovskiy is considered to be the strongest player of his country. A family man, a businessman, a gambler – he picks up all kinds of games in a jiffy and prefers playing without using the bankroll.

Meet Vladimir. Opposed to our previous protagonists under the heading “Heart-to-heart” he is over forty, has a family (a wife, a daughter). Despite that Troyanovskiy is an active online player named vovtroy. According to Official Poker Rankings data Russian’s earnings are over $1.2 million.

Live game has its own rules. Playing online you can earn decent money using “standard lines” with the help of intense multitabling, but in offline poker you’ve got to invent 5-wheel bicycle (in a good way) every freaking time.

The main problem with live poker in that it is slow. You can’t have good win rate playing similar all the time (well, you can, if opponents are the same and in general this is only partly true). Live player must maximize his value in any favorable situation and his online vis-à-vis can score the same result with playing bigger amount of hands. Here are few tips on poker strategy.

When Daniel Negreanu claimed that it’s easy as pie for him to beat NL5000 ($25/$50), he received lots of crack jokes from the most persistent trolls of the poker world. One of the best tournament players was just a scapegoat in cash regs’ eyes.

One of the users of 2+2 forum asked a pretty logical, but a stupid in many ways question: why live tournaments winners are more respected than cash players?

The author of the question also made a suggestion to change World Series of Poker or to add a cash game championship there. Numerous tables, a few days, even a week maybe, a constant rolling. A player, earning more money than others as a result of the championship, becomes a winner.

18 days, 70 tournaments and a bunch of new records – Prague Poker Festival again brings calm streets of Czech’s capital to live. Despite there is a huge number of interesting events, central place of the festival is most definitely taken by EPT.

As Russian proverb says, “We’ve all been there and drank honey and beer” – and it is true in the case. At least partly, because we surely have drunk beer – as it’s good and chip in Czech Republic. Even the creator of PokerDiscover, who have been into Top-10 of OFC World Championship Main Event, visited Prague. But we’ll talk about this sometimes later…

In this first part of series of theoretical articles “Poker Notepad” we are going to talk on one very significant topic for those who play live: being pot-committed. This is especially important for those playing cash games as they have absolutely no clue about it.

Let’s get through the “terms used” as all the nerdy articles seem to start like this, aren’t they?

It is very common to hear or see the following logic in cash game: the player invest more than a half of his stack into the pot and calls on the turn and river just because he is “pot committed”, or “too much involved”. And the main focus is the invested money, not pot odds.

Weird.

The English like nothing better than betting. Great Britain, and England in particular, is the kingdom of scratch cards and lottery tickets, the poker empire and the homeland for the most powerful bookmakers in the world.

About 150 casinos are scattered across the United Kingdom. A significant number of gambling venues are situated in London. Generally speaking, most people do not consider Britain as a single state, as well as the United States or India. That’s why we won’t cover the situation in the whole country; we would rather focus on the most developed and densely populated part of the UK – England.

It all started during World War II. The soldiers became addicted to the game that was similar to the modern bingo. The first casinos were opened in the 1960s, and the very first casino was situated in Wales.

In poker, like in the film industry, only stars enjoy all the attention. And what about the medium and low stakes first-class players? Kind of supporting actors. They are, perhaps, no worse, but their names are only mentioned in the credits.

Some users of the TwoPlusTwo forum became interested in this problem and paid attention to the stunning results of the American Joe McKeehan.

With Belarus Sports Poker Championship started actually the whole Belarusian poker. During this time, a whole generation of professional players was born, and nowadays they are playing for their country in the international arena.

In mid-April of 2009 the Belarusian Federation of Sports Poker was created, and just in five days, the 1st Belarus Sports Poker Championship was announced.

It is with this massive tournament, which is still called a national one, that started "live" poker in Belarus.