Interested in Starting a Texas Hold’em Poker League? Here’s How!

If you're thinking of starting a Texas Hold'em poker league in your area and aren't sure what to do, then read on. This article is for YOU! You, of course, have to decide if you want your Texas Hold'em poker league to be all men, all women or a mixed poker league. Then you have to poll your friends and acquaintances to see how many would commit to a ten month poker league. You will want to start out with at least 16 – 20 people. Then you need to decidewhy you want to start your Texas Hold'em league, what would you like the group to be called, how often would you like to meet, is your poker league educational, how do you want to pay – one lump sum or for each session. And you have to set up the prize that you're playing for (usually to send the top 2 – 3 players for the season to a compete in a major tournament). You will need to establish your poker league rules. Also, you will need to find one or more of your new recruits to host the league. Preferably someone who has poker tables, poker chips, poker software or timer, and everything else you'll need to shuffle up and deal.

   

Don't forget about setting up your blind structures. And establishing points for the league players in the order that they finish. The top two or three players will be given their buy in for the major tournaments that you identify in your poker league rules. You'll also want to establish how many chips that all poker league players will start with. I belong to two poker leagues and we use the WSOP sanctioned poker rules for each league. The difference is one of the leagues meets once per month and we pay at the beginning of the league and play 12 games. The other league is set up so that we pay $20 twice per month as we play. Both have their merits. If you pay in advance, you don't have to worry about funding your prize pool if someone misses one game. The downside is that there is no prize money per game – it all goes to the final prizes. The pay as you go method offers the top three winners a small prize pool (half goes to the final prizes). Each poker league is set up to help the members to become better skilled Texas Hold'em poker players, with all aspects of the game including betting and heads up play which can be more challenging parts of the game. There's a lot of strategy involved in playing poker and this will certainly help to develop an individual's poker strategy. The prize money that is set aside is used to send at least two people to a major tournament. One league that I play in pays for the buy-in for the World Series of Poker (WSOP) Ladies Tournament which is played in June at the Rio Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. A poker league can be very effective for improving your poker play and give you more confidence when you play in major tournaments or casino or card room sponsored cash games. A Texas Hold'em league is educational, fun, and a great social outlet as well – it's enjoyable to play poker with friends and acquaintances. You can add to the social aspect by bringing food and sharing personal stories during play. And, of course, you can keep each other up on what tournaments are coming up that are close to home just in case one or more of the poker layers can participate. Starting a poker league in yourarea has many benefits and can be very educational, fun and rewarding! Submitted by,

How to Become a Professional Poker Player

According to expert poker players, you cannot take lessons to know how to become a professional poker player. The key to becoming a professional is to practice, practice, practice. In the words of Michael Graz, a professional poker player, in order to reach this stage you have to eat, drink, sleep, live and breathe poker. It will occupy every waking moment. You must have a love for the game and if you don like losing, then you will not be a successful player because even the great ones have losses.

There is a vast difference in being a good poker player against your friends and playing against those who are experts in the field. Take a vacation to Las Vegas and play against some professional players to see how well your skills and strategies stack up against theirs. The best way to get started in playing poker is to start playing online. There are many free sites where it won cost you anything to play. This way you learn the rules of the games and start to develop your own repertoire of strategies. One thing it will be difficult for you to learn online is how to read your opponents and get to recognize some of their poker tells because you won be able to see their faces. As you gain more confidence with your wins in online poker, you can graduate to playing poker for real money. This does not have to be large amounts of money because there are many one and two dollar games. You may be able to play all day for $20. Then as you start to accumulate money when you win several pots, you are getting started on your way to becoming a professional player. Many online tournaments offer you a chance to win your way into a tournament which ordinarily would cost you tens of thousands of dollars in entry fees. This is the ultimate chance to play against the big boys of poker. Visit a casino and play poker against the regulars. It does not have to be a daily event, if you don want to engage in it as deeply in the beginning. As you win more and more games, you start to develop a bankroll for yourself and gain a reputation in the poker world. You can take part in small local competitions as a way of building up your confidence and getting to play against a wide variety of opponents. Most casinos have tournaments where they invite some big names in poker to play and these games are not as expensive to get into as the world series games. The most consistent way of becoming a professional player is to play as many cash games as you can. If you are a good player, you can expect to win about 75% of the games. Do not become impatient when you do hit a losing streak because this will only take your focus off your game and cause you to make costly mistakes.