Squiddies Poker Awards

As the NBA stands right now, there are as everyone knows, a few elite teams that likely will, in some combination, make it to the NBA finals to battle it out for the title. We’ll take a look at some odds in a second, but a general rule of advice for the NBA.

Believe those odds.

This isn’t college basketball betting, where it’s one and done, there’s tons of young, raw emotion fueling underdog Cinderella teams into the Sweet 16.

This isn’t the NFL, where talent is spread more evenly, there’s more parity and…you guessed it…on any given Sunday….

And this sure as hell isn’t nascar betting. It’s just not.

My point is, there’s less drama than you’d think in the NBA, and with every series being a seven-game series, there are fewer surprises and upsets than in every other major sport. There’s a reason why only the Knicks and Nuggets have, once each, emerged from the eighth seed to see the second round. There’s a reason less than 10 teams have every come back from an 0-2 deficit in a seven-game series to win it (hello Chicago Bulls). It’s because the great teams have more than enough window of error to squeeze through any round, and because home court advantage has its biggest influence in basketball.

So, when you see the Celtics at 5/2 and Lakers at 7/4 to win the title, they’re the teams you probably want to gamble online on. When it comes to sports betting, I’m an advocate for safer bets that’ll yield less money. Just like in the casino, the odds are against you no matter what, but how you reduce those odds to work as much in your favor as possible is what’ll separate you from the losers. You can keep your parlays, you can keep your Superbowl squares and you can keep your long shot, hail Mary bets (say, for instance, the Toronto Raptors at a cool 2,000 to 1).

Remember, the NBA odds makers know more than you do. If you know that, you’ve already got a leg up on the competition. Never gamble with your heart or your gut, always gamble with your brain. You might not win that once-in-a-lifetime big-money score, but you also probably won’t lose EVERY other time you throw down a wager.

For this year’s teams, especially where we stand now, I’d give consideration to the Spurs at 8/1 and the Cavs at 11/4. Everything else is a sucker’s bet, especially with so many strong teams this year. There’s no way an underdog is cutting through all of them to take the ring.

I’m excited to talk about the ins-and-outs of Elimination Black Jack. I’ll keep it to the straight rules, however, and leave the strategy for another session. What the game does, however, is wonderfully combine well-known aspects of blackjack with the feel, the sensation and mindset of poker.

Starting with the basics, every Black Jack Online Tournament starts with 30 hands. This is elimination gaming, so at certain points throughout the 30 hands, the player with the least amount of money is shown the door. When this happens might depend on where you’re playing, but the traditionally accepted points are after the eight, sixteenth and twenty-fifth hands.

As you might guess, keeping the highest chip stack among all the players is critical, and thus adds the interesting element not usually considered in a blackjack game…competing against your fellow players, not the dealer. Thus, getting inside their heads, and your own personal strategy, is crucial to staying in the game. And as you’ll see soon, a few other poker tricks push their way into the fold throughout the tournament structure.

In the early stages of the blackjack com tournament, each person starts with a certain amount in chips. You can set it to be however much you want, of course. In the Ultimate Blackjack Tournament show on TV, they began with $25K. Whatever this amount is, by the way, will also serve as the maximum bet. A minimum bet also is set.

As the game begins, each player has only a short amount of time to make a decision on his or her hand. Less than half a minute, usually. You’ll get a little more time to decide (usually 20-25 seconds more) on one of the three elimination hands.

Now, here’s a twist, and here’s where online gambling pushes its way through. Each player has the ability to make a “secret bet.” It can be used whenever you want during the round. If you decide to place this bet, you also can hide your decision made for the remainder of that hand, with the exception of splits and hits.

One big note that’s different from traditional blackjack: You can split same-value cards regardless of whether they’re actually the same card (queen and a ten, king and a jack, for example). Aces can only be split once, while all other combos can be split up to three times.

Those are the tournament black jack rules, pretty simple. The winner is determined by whoever has the most chips at the end of the 30 hands. If you watch the tournaments, or if you venture a chance to play in one of your own, you see a significant shift in demeanor from the usual talkative, friendly blackjack game among players to a more reserved (at times) affair of studying your competition and laying down bluffs to throw them off their betting game.

Satellite poker tournaments are very popular in poker and you can find hundreds of satellite tournaments through the many different online poker rooms out there. A satellite tournament is a tournament where the players pay a small amount of money or sometimes even points earned from the poker room in order to try and win a seat into a bigger poker tournament. Some satellite tournaments have different stages so you’d need to beat each stage in order to win the big prize which is usually a seat into one of the big live poker events throughout the year.

Most internet poker rooms have satellite events and they allow the regular poker player the chance to try and earn a seat into events like the $10K WSOP Main Event and many other huge buy-in live poker events. If you remember Chris Moneymaker was able to win the 2003 WSOP Main Event through a small satellite tournament that he had entered on Poker Stars. It changed his life forever and now he is able to play poker professionally and live a very comfortable lifestyle.

Anyone out there can become the next Moneymaker all you need to do is have some poker skills which you can use to earn yourself a ticket to the expensive events. Most of us can’t afford 10K for a poker tournament, but if you can get into the 10K tournament by playing in a series of small tournaments for $50 then most people can afford this.

Satellite events actually cost the poker room money because they need to buy the seat and most poker rooms will also pay for your hotel plus give you some cash for when you’re traveling to the event. Most poker rooms like Full Tilt Poker will also send you some branded clothing so that you can support the poker room that sent you to the event. If you win the tournament or place high you also have the chance of being sponsored by one of the poker rooms which could earn you a nice little side income.

I wouldn’t make satellite events your bread and butter when playing online poker because you don’t really have the chance to win much cash in them. You should still focus on cash games and cash tournaments and then use your profits to enter the satellite events. That way you aren’t using your own money for the satellite tournament and if you don’t happen to get lucky and win a seat into the poker event you’re trying to enter then at least you haven’t lost any of your own money.

You should make sure before joining the satellite event on a site like PokerStars.com that the event you’re winning a seat to is an event that you can play in. Some people can’t leave there countries due to many reasons such as work and other things so you don’t want to win a seat to an event on the European Poker Tour if you’re in Canada and can’t travel. You could sell your seat potentially, but you don’t want to risk much of your money winning seats to resell because you might not make your money back all of the time.