Plan for Progress  

While many people have started to make a decent living playing Internet Poker, there are still plenty who throw their cash away so fast you’d think they hated the dead Presidents. Online casinos and poker rooms will line up to take any money you don’t have a use for, so if you’re looking to consistently lose while playing poker, you’ll always have a home. If you aren’t willing to work on your poker skills and prefer to think of yourself as some kind of idiot savant, be my guest and follow these three tips to help you lose more often when playing poker.

1. Who Needs Practice?

Winning poker players spend hours and hours in front of their laptops, reading poker news, practicing at their favorite Merge Poker online casinos, and developing a real poker vocabulary. Who needs a free money account to practice with when the goal is to burn as much cash as possible? You don’t need to practice if your goal is to waste cash–so spend zero time preparing and practicing your poker skills.

2. Forget About Your Bankroll

There’s so much good free advice online about bankroll strategy–it must be nonsense, right? If you want to lose again and again playing poker, don’t ever think about your bankroll, how much money you can afford to lose, or what constitutes a smart bet. Ignore all the advice you read about keeping a “poker diary”. Who has time for that? Poker diaries are for winners, and your goal is to go broke as fast as possible.

3. Ignore Pot Odds

Yes, you’ve heard it before–”Every flop in poker has three possibilities–a terrible hand, a strong hand, or a hand that can draw to improve.” That’s poker-winner talk, and you’re a poker loser. Never read up on pot odds, and forget about bailing on a bad hand. I say play any hand you’re dealt. After all, you’re the poker genius, right?

There’s lots of good advice on how to win at poker online, but for those who want to lose as often as possible, they need only do the above three things, and do them often.

Poker is unlike most other gambling games, because your decisions have a mathematical effect on your chances of winning or losing. When you spin a roulette wheel, for example, the odds are fixed. Your chances of landing on black are a little less than half, so an even money bet provides the house with an advantage, and that’s how the casinos make their money. But in poker, you can decide whether or not to put more money in the pot based on what cards are in your hand and what cards you think are in your opponent’s hand. And if you’re better at making these kinds of judgment calls, then you can put more money in the pot when the odds favor you, and get away from pots where the cards don’t offer you an advantage.

So to learn how to play poker well, you need to learn an approach to the game–the poker strategy basics. The approach I recommend is a tight aggressive approach. This means that you fold often, only playing and only putting money into the pot when you have good quality cards in your hand. This way you’ve got a good chance of winning a showdown with an opponent. The other aspect of that approach is aggression. When you DO play a hand, you should bet and raise with it, rather than just checking or calling. You want to increase the chances of your opponents folding, so that you can win pots without having to go to a showdown. And when you have good hands and they do call you down, you want to win a lot of money from the pot. The way to get that money into the pot is to bet into it.

Those are the basics of poker strategy. But what are good cards and bad cards? I’ll use Texas holdem as an example, but it varies depending on what kind of poker game you’re playing. In Texas holdem, any pair is a potentially good starting hand. The higher the rank of the pair, the stronger it is. A pair of aces or a pair of kings is as good a starting hand as you could hope for. A pair of queen, jacks, or tens is pretty good. Pairs of nines or lower are often playable, but you need a favorable flop later to make them worth it to continue playing.

Other playable starting hands in Texas holdem include suited connectors. These are two cards which are consecutive in rank, like the nine and the ten, and that are also suited. These are speculative, because in order to win a showdown, you’re probably going to need to hit a flush or straight.

The best way to learn poker strategy is by playing, thinking about what happened, and reading. Start by playing micro stakes poker, if it’s legal to play Internet poker where you live. At a micro stakes poker table, you get a real poker experience. Even with only a penny or two per bet on the line, people behave differently than they do when they’re just playing for play money poker chips. When you get more confident in your abilities, you can move up to low stakes and mid stakes and beyond.

How to Win at Blackjack

Online blackjack is big business, with names like Vegas Technology Blackjack offering all kinds of online blackjack games at hundreds of Internet-based casinos. More people are playing blackjack now than ever before. If you want to get in on the blackjack action at your favorite online casino or in Vegas, there are only three things you need to do to increase your chances of winning.

1. Understand Casino Math

The reason casinos make money is simple–they have math on their side. Some casino games offer better odds than others, with random number games like Bingo or Keno offering the worst odds and games like video poker and blackjack offering the best. If you understand basic casino math, you’re more likely to win. You’ll play casino games that are more likely to put money in your pocket, and you’ll avoid high-risk bets that are akin to flushing your chips down the toilet.

2. Learn to Count Cards

But simply understanding the math isn’t all you need. Having even an amateur’s understanding of basic card counting will turn the odds in your favor. You can learn to keep a simple blackjack card count in just a few hours of studying. You can even practice your newfound skill for free at one of dozens of free online blackjack trainers. If you can keep a basic card count and understand casino math, you’re on your way to beating the house.

3. Know When to Quit

Still, even the best card counters can have bad days at the casino. If you’re new to the game and just trying out blackjack strategy for the first time, chances are you’re going to have some downer sessions. If you set your bankroll limits ahead of time and quit when you’ve hit your loss limit, or if you know how to walk away after a few big wins, you’ll be much more likely to have fun playing blackjack and to avoid money problems.

There are thousands of ways to play blackjack, through online casinos offering Vegas Technology blackjack and on your local casino floor. if you do just a little bit of prep work, you can make yourself more likely to win at the game of blackjack.

Ever wonder what the most popular card games and most popular board games are? I don’t have any scientific insights to share about which card games and board games are most popular, or even about which games appeal to which demographics. But I have looked at a few card game and board game names in Google, and I’ve seen how many results are returned for each of them. My hallucination is that if a lot of people have published pages on a subject, then it’s popular. So here’s a list of the most popular card games according to that criteria:

1. Bridge – 285,000,000 results
2. Poker – 218,000,000 results
3. Hearts – 193,000,000 results
4. Blackjack – 56,800,000 results
5. Solitaire – 32,000,000 results
6. Go Fish – 25,800,000 results
7. Spades – 9,830,000 results
8. Canasta – 7,200,000 results
9. Old Maid – 4,550,000 results
10. Crazy Eights – 3,600,000 results
11. Chinese poker – 2,400,000 results
12. Cribbage – 1,570,000 results
13. Whist – 1,560,000 results
14. Euchre – 1,160,000 results
15. Gin rummy – 559,000 results
16. Pinochle – 558,000
17. Badugi – 166,000 results

There are a lot of problems with my methodology. For example, blackjack has an inflated number of results because there are pages on the Internet about Blackjack Pizza and Blackjack brand cell phones. Hearts is also inflated, because it’s such a common words. My guess is that if you ever did a professional survey, poker would win out amongst all of them. Also, there are a lot more than 17 different card games in the world. And I didn’t even try to rate the popularity of games like Magic: The Gathering or other proprietary card games.

Here’s another totally unscientific list of popular board games:

1. Chess – 58,400,000 results
2. Scrabble – 12,300,000 results
3. Checkers – 10,800,000 results
4. Backgammon – 8,300,000 results
5. Candy Land – 4,120,000 results
6. Trivial Pursuit – 2,120,000 results
7. Stratego – 1,800,000 results
8. Chinese Checkers – 1,050,000 results
9. Settlers of Catan – 712,000 results
10. Parcheesi – 257,000 results

Of course, I didn’t list every board game ever made, or even search for every board game ever made. For one thing, that would take an enormous amount of time. And since Monopoly is such a common word, it wouldn’t even make sense to include it here.

You can also find lists of popular board games and popular card games.

Before constructing your halfpipe you should figure out the complete dimensions ahead of time, that is, the length and width of the construction. A larger ramp would be best for skaters who would like a bit of challenge and/or who are more experienced. Building a halfpipe is not excruciatingly difficult, but will require a bit of carpentry skill.

How To Build A Halfpipe

Required Materials

¼ Plywood

¾ Plywood

Required Tools

Jigsaw

Nail

Wood Glue

Wood Screws

Roller

Paint Tray

Carriage Bolts

Instructions

1.Begin by constructing a life-sized template of the quarterpipe. You will have to use this as a guide while constructing your halfpipe. Essentially you will be using this to make sure that all your end supports are identical in size. You may use ¼ plywood to make your template.

2.Join the pieces that you have formed using duct tape or if you want to be a little bit more exact, use a bit of ¾ ply to make scab plates that you then may join together with regular wood screws.

3.Cut your ply in half along the length, you will be getting more out of the wood by doing this.

4.Cut off a portion of about 2 feet from one of your pieces of ply and join/scab it to the full length piece that has been left uncut. By doing this you should now have created a 2ft by 10ft rectangular base.

5.Then you will need to build a 5 foot square that you will then jin to your rectangular structure, it will look like a very large boot when you are done.

6.Mark out your radius using your nail as a pivot. The radius should extend from the top corner to the lower corner that falls just benaeth the nail.

7.Utilizing a jigsaw cut out the radius for your template.

8.Now you can utilize your quarterpipe to make your end panels. Building your end panels by using two layers of ¾ inch plywood. You will need to laminate the two together to ensure that it remains stable while being use. This can easily be achieved by using wood glue to attach them together. Put some wood glue within a paint tray and get a roller and place a thin layer of one glue on the area to be laminated. Place the top layer over this layer and make sure that the edges are even. Let this set for 24 hours. Once it has set you may use your template to build the end panels. Cut these out using a jigsaw.

9.Once more you will utilize your template, this time to create intermediate supports. Make scab plates from ¾ ply joined together, make sure that the scab plates are at least two inches away from the edges.

10.Cut a few 2 by 4s into approximately 3feet by 9 inches in length. Ensure they are cut symmetrically.

11.These 2 by 4s can then be laid on your structure to make the flooring. Nail these in adequately with a hammer and a couple wood nails.

12.The most important part of the process is creating your support frame. This will allow the halfpipe to support your weight. You may choose to create additional support by anchoring your structure to a building. When you have chosen the type of framing you will utilize, anchor this to the almost finished structure using carriage bolts.

13.Then create your riding surface using 3/8 inch cdx ply for greater flexibility. Run the layers in the same direction making sure that the end joints are set up unevenly for extra strength. Screw these layers unto your flooring when you have laid them out properly.

Tips and Warnings

You can actually get your ground more level by shimming beneath the framing. However, if you are doing this make certain it is executed properly as this can result in a unstable overall structure.

Your halfpipe should not wobble, if this happens you may need to anchor it with a bit of concrete. You may do this by putting your quarter pipes into the ground for extra stability.