PARTY POKER IN PLAYER TRAINING DEAL
2011-02-01
Earn points to access education
Party Poker and Drag The Bar marketers have come up with a synergistic promo to help players improve their skills.
The online poker training site has partnered with Party Poker to create a new program called "DTB4FREE" that allows players to get free poker training at Drag The Bar.
To participate, players opt-in at the Drag The Bar.com site once they have earned a thousand loyalty points a month playing real money Party Poker games online. The online poker provider will then foot the bill for the players' further training at DTB.
David Levy, a Party Poker marketing executive, said this week: "Drag The Bar is a cutting edge poker training site, and I know our players will benefit greatly from all its site has to offer. We want our players to not only have fun, but also perform well at our tables, so we are thrilled to make this free offer available."
"We're very excited to be working with Party, and I know this will be the start of a long-term relationship for both companies." said Drag The Bar CEO Hunter Bick. "But more importantly, this is a big win for poker players. Everyone's goal is to make more money, and high quality poker training is the best the way to fast-track your progress and start crushing the games. By providing free training, Party is investing in their players' futures and offering them a tremendous value."
Drag The Bar is currently offering an additional 3 free DTB months and 4 free poker books for anyone who signs up for a new Party Poker account, makes a deposit, and earns 200 Party points. The training company has over 25 coaches and offers strong content in limit and no-limit cash games, tournaments and sit & goes. It currently releases between 35 and 40 videos a month, so each form of poker gets its fair share of content.
Drag The Bar.com’s training videos are compatible with Apple and Android products. Alongside poker, the site also offers backgammon, coached by world champion Bill Robertie.
An ‘Out’ in poker refers to a card that could appear on the turn or river that will improve your hand, for example a card that would make you a flush or a straight. Understanding outs is a key skill in Holdem as it will allow you to make ‘good’ decisions based on your chances of improving to the best hand and the odds being offered. This article looks at how to effectively calculate outs in different situations and use this information to your advantage at the tables in online poker.
We will start by looking at how to work out the number of outs you have in some common situations, covering the importance of not double-counting certain cards. Next the chances of improving based on outs as a proportion of unseen cards will be covered. Finally, a simple rule of thumb for calculating your chances of improving with one or two cards still to come is introduced.
The most common situation in which you will need to calculate outs is when you have a flush or straight draw on the flop. For example where you hold two spades and two more appear on the flop, here any additional spade has a good probability of making you the best hand in online poker.
To work out your outs you need to know how many of the unseen cards left in the deck will help your hand. In the flush example there were 13 spades to begin with and you have seen 4 of these (2 in your hand and 2 on the board), leaving 9 spades in the deck. With an open ended straight draw, for example you hold J-10 on a board of 2-K-Q then any 9 or Ace is considered to be an out – in this case there are 4 of each among the unseen cards, giving you a total of 8 outs.
Beginning players often make the mistake of double counting outs when holding a combination of draws on the flop. Take the example where you hold J-10 of diamonds on a flop of 2 (diamonds)-Q (diamonds) – K (spades). This is an excellent situation where you have outs to both a straight and a flush. Any of the 9 remaining diamonds are outs in this situation – along with the 9’s and aces. However, you have already counted the 9 of diamonds and ace of diamonds in your flush outs. This means there are only 3 * 9’s and 3* aces as additional outs to your straight, giving you a total of 15 outs.
Calculating whether to call a bet based on your outs involves knowing how many cards improve your hand as a proportion of the unseen cards in the deck. After the flop in Holdem you will have seen a total of 5 cards of the initial 52, the 2 in your hand plus the 3 on the board. This leaves a total of 47 unseen cards after the flop and 46 after the turn. Working out your chances of improving involves dividing the number out outs by the total of unseen cards. In the straight + flush draw example you have 15 outs. 15/47 means you will improve almost one time in three.
There is a simple rule that experienced players use to calculate the number of outs with one and two cards to come. This is called the ‘rule of 4’ and simply multiplies the number of outs by 4 for two remaining cards. For example if you have 10 outs with 2 cards to come then your chance of improving is approximately 40%, with just one card to come you can halve this to 20%.
To summarize, an ‘out’ in Holdem a card in the as yet unseen deck that will improve your hand. The most common examples are cards that will make you a straight or a flush on the turn or river. Calculating your chances of actually improving involve dividing your total outs (being careful not to double count) by the total of unseen cards. The ‘rule of 4’ will give you an approximation of this chance which is good for most Holdem situations in online poker.
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Owner Gaming Media Group has appointed advisers on the future
The Poker Heaven and Poker Channel interests of UK online gambling company Gaming Media Group could be up for sale, opines the Telegraph newspaper, noting that Management has hired Cavendish Corporate Finance to advise on options for the future.
The move to explore a sale comes after the company received several unsolicited approaches from trade buyers, the newspaper reveals.
Founded by entrepreneurs Crispin Nieboer – a former NM Rothschild banker and BSkyB executive and Shaun Barron in 2005 with the backing of private venture capitalists, the Poker Channel should generate earnings of GBP 349 000 on revenues of GBP 1.5 million this year.
The television based channel provides specialist poker programming that includes branded tutorial shows, player interviews, cash games, online event coverage, daily news updates and live coverage of international events.
Meanwhile sister company Poker Heaven has developed into a successful Europe-facing online poker operation that predicts revenues of GBP 11.3 million and earnings of GBP 1.5 million this financial year.
The Telegraph speculates that there could be plenty of interested buyers, including major operators known to be interesting in acquisitions such as Party Gaming and 888, along with gambling groups like Ladbrokes, Paddy Power and Full Tilt Poker.
Paul Herman, the partner at Cavendish managing the sale, refused to be drawn on the identity of the bidders, but did confirm that considerable interest has been seen from Asia and overseas.