Alpha Core

Since almost a year ago, we’ve seen an enormous increase in popularity of the game poker, the Texas hold’ em variant to be more specific. I think it was around the time that the latest Bond movie (Casino Royale) was shown in theaters that I started to take some interest in the game. Sure, in high school we played some draw poker, but no game was ever as much fun as a regular hold ‘em one, simply for the reason that there’s a lot more interaction in this variant. The main reason for this are the ‘community cards’, a set of (eventually) five cards lying in the middle of the table that are shared by all players. Just two cards, called the ‘pocket cards’, are being dealt to every player at the beginning of every hand. These two cards are the only ones that can give you an edge over your fellow player. The community cards add a lot to the game and they offer a feeling of interaction. The game isn’t just about your hand and your luck drawing some cards anymore.

Update (October, 7th): NBC airs a great daily show called Poker After Dark and puts all episodes online for free. Watching the series is a good way to learn more about poker and to get to know some of the successful players out there. It’s really exciting and fun to watch! There are also some nice shows on Joost that are highly entertaining, e.g. the WPT (World Poker Tour) finals.

There’s absolutely no substitute for getting a few friends together around the table and having a poker tournament at home, but for people who went through the rules (also check here) and want to practice a bit online, I’d like to recommend three clients: Full Tilt Poker (my personal favorite, clean & good interface), PartyPoker.net (no-fuss, clean and good overview) and PKR (fancy 3D interface, nice graphics, closer to ‘the real thing’). Naturally, you can play without the need to plunder your bank account because all three allow to play with game money and no real losses can be made. A nice feature worth mentioning PKR is that you have to press a button to take another look at your hand and that the other players then actually see you taking a second peek! My favorite is the Full Tilt Poker client for its good look and feel. It simply has the best interface I think.

If you’re getting more serious about rules and gameplay, I heartly recommend the Home Poker Tourney site, which offers tons of information about chips, rules, guidelines among other things that come to mind when wanting to host your very own poker tournament. I bought my poker chips on eBay in Germany because they’re a lot cheaper there than in Belgium. Also, every Aldi, Lidl or other supermarket in your neighborhood already offered a set of poker chips with cards included for a very cheap price lately. The disadvantage about these were often that they didn’t offer at least 500 chips (of course you could buy more sets) and that the color ratio wasn’t always that good, because you actually want a lot of low-value chips and just a few high-value chips.

Another great thing to have when hosting your own home poker tournament is a blinds clock. This clearly shows the current and next blind level along with the time remaining until the next level. The best, completely free one I’ve found is called ‘Check ‘n Raise Tournament Director’s Poker Clock’, an absolutely fabulous piece of software: simple, functional and just what you need, nothing more!

Update (December, 11th): It seems Check ‘n Raise doesn’t exist anymore and is now part of ChanPoker. The Poker Clock I mentioned before isn’t available anymore from their website. I contacted them and they might have their own version online in the future. As an alternative, I would like you to check this one out from Poker-Clock.com. It has almost the same features and even saves player names and statistics.

Update (January, 13th): It seems that exactly the same software product is also available at Europoker.com. Thanks to Mikkel for this link!

Ever since we own our own poker set with chips, cards and dealer button, we often get together with a couple of friends and have a great time bluffing and screwing each other over while trying to win the chips in the pot. Texas hold ‘em poker is all in all a highly recommendable waste of time.

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