Poker: A Mental Sport
By AMANDEEP REDDY
How To Play
https://www.partypoker.com/how-to-play/texas-holdem.html
Poker, in general
You could play poker, either live or online. Online poker in India is not illegal, and you can safely deposit and play on these sites which are the best ones, according to me and the online poker pros in India:
- Spartan Poker
- Adda52 Poker
- Poker Ninja
- Star Poker
- FTR Poker
I would recommend studying a bit of poker strategy and watching some training videos on YouTube and starting at lower stakes and playing low buy-in tournaments. There are huge tournaments on many of these sites. Spartan Poker has a “The Millionaire” tournament once a month which costs you 5500 rupees in buy-in which has a first place guaranteed prize amount of 20 lakhs and a second place prize guaranteed of 10 lakhs. Poker Ninja has a tournament every week called “The Dragons Den” which has a prize pool guaranteed of 5 lakhs with a buy-in of 5500 and a tournament daily called “The Vampire Slayer” with a buy-in of 1650 and a guaranteed prize pool of 1 lakh rupees.
Online poker is very exciting but one has to be very patient and pick his spots. There are many variants to Texas Hold’Em Poker, the most famous being the action-heavy Pot Limit Omaha. In Pot Limit Omaha(PLO), everyone gets dealt 4 cards and the format is same as Texas Hold’Em but at showdown, you have to use 2 of your 4 cards and 3 of the community cards.
There are many live tournaments in Goa. There is a yearly event in the Deltin casino in Goa, called the Deltin Poker Tour for the live players with buy-ins ranging from 1000 rupees to 1 lakh rupees. There are live tournaments in major cities running everyday. You can check them out on this website - http://pokershots.com/.
Poker is a mental sport which is rising slowly and would one day, hopefully and eventually become a sport played by youngsters everywhere. In India, the poker craze is catching on, of late. Playing poker helps in increasing mental strength, takes a lot of patience and effort and studying.
The best live players in the world are Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth(14 bracelets*), Antonio Esfandiari(Winner of a 1 milion dollar buy-in tournament for 18 million dollars) and many more.
The Moneymaker Effect was the poker boom in America in 2003 after the 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event. Chris Moneymaker, a 27-year old accountant had won an 86$ buy-in event online on Pokerstars which got him a ticket for the 10,000$ buy-in main event. He outlasted a field of 838 other players and won 2.5 million dollars. He made 2.5 million dollars from just 86$. This attracted a lot of players to the game and it was in its peak during that time in America.
Due to The Moneymaker Effect, there have been many stories where people have made millions of dollars from 50$ online. Viktor “Isildur1” Blom, the most famous online player ever had started playing online with 50$ and he ran it up to 2 million dollars. He had major swings everyday and he had participated in the largest pot online ever against the Finnish pro Patrik Antonius, which was a pot of 1.3 million dollars. There are many players online who have enjoyed success and had dropped out of colleges to play poker as a pro. Charlie “Epiphany77” Carrel started with 50 pounds and has made millions of dollars playing online now. Isaac “philivey2694” Haxton had dropped out of Brown University to play poker and has made millions of dollars. The greatest 6-max No Limit Hold’Em player in online poker now is Ben “Sauce123” Sulsky. The greatest all-round online poker now is Timofey “Trueteller” Kuznetsov. The best Pot Limit Omaha online player is Jens “Jeans89” Kyllonnen, who has winnings in excess of 5 million dollars. There is a player called Randy “Nananoko” Lew who can multi-table 22 tables simultaneously.
You can watch the movie “Rounders” which is based on poker starring Matt Damon. I’ve included the links for player profiles which make for good reading and some videos and documentaries of online poker players.
Isaac Haxton Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1_vyRK7woc
Randy Lew Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2QzhQIOFNhU
You can watch the Daniel “KidPoker” Negreanu documentary on Netflix. This is a link to its trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ME4cGOczR_o
This is a documentary of two high stakes players called Alexander “Alexonmoon” Luneau and Sebastian “Seb86” Sabic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju_7_595mDE
Hopefully, this article plays a role in making you guys consider poker as a mental sport of skill and not just luck and/or gambling. Play responsibly. :)
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