THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO START WITH POKER!

Tuck-fheman's poker series is getting closer and closer. Even if you have never played poker, this is probably the best time to start as you will not be playing for real money, but you can win real money. How awesome is that?

The first tourney had prizepool of 100SBD as guarantee, but it is now increased to 200SBD!

To join to the tournament, you have to register on bluffave and join this group.
http://www.bluffave.com/steemit

Then you have to click the "tournament tab" and sign-up to the tournament. Every day there are some other freerolls to play so there are still chances for you to learn little bit about poker before the main series starts!

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You would probably learn it the most if you would play it by yourself, but I will give you a quick beginner recap. In the steemit poker league I am still first in the leaderboards as I have won almost all of the tournaments that were there. I am not a professional by any means, but I have played a lot of poker.

I wrote this myself so maybe I forgot something not that useful for beginners to know. If you will like this, I can give you some better ideas how to play properly. We would talk about 3-bet and what are a good cards to play out of position and things like that. But about that later!

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Poker is a card game of skill, little bit of luck and big amount of deception.

The biggest problem with online poker is that you can't see the faces of players thus giving you less knowledge of their playstyle. Also it is harder to know if someone is bluffing. However online poker is faster and more popular nowadays.

There are lot of variations of poker, but in the steemit poker league we will play Texas hold 'em. It means we will play with 52-card deck with four suits - diamonds, clubs. spades, hearts. You will start in this tournament with 3000 chips. You can say those chips are you money in the game.

You get 2 cards in your hand and nothing more at the start of every game that have a few rounds. What you want is to make strongest 5-card combination from your cards in your hand or you can also use the cards on the table.

Those are the combinations from the least strong to the strongest one. If you have weaker combination than your opponent, you lose.

High Card
One pair - 2 same cards. A-A-8-9-J
Two pair - 2 same cards and 2 different same cards. A-A-K-K-2
Three of a kind - 3 same cards. A-A-A-5-7
Straight - a combination of cards in order. 2-3-4-5-6
Flush - 5 cards with the same suit (spades in my example). 2S-3S-4S-5S-6S
Full House - a combination of 3 same cards and 2 different same cards. A-A-A-K-K
Four of a kind - exactly what it said. A-A-A-A-9
Straight flush- cards in order and with the same suit (clubs in my example). 2C-3C-4C-5C-6C
The Royal Flush - a combination of 5 highest card in the same suit (spades in my example). 10S-JS-QS-KS-AS

As I said, every game consists of few rounds. There is a flop, that is 3 cards that are showed on the table. Then the next round is called a turn that is 1 card showed and the last one is river. That is also one card showed.

Your main mission is to beat your opponent in any way you can. You can play till the end of all the rounds where there will be showdown of player's cards and the strongest combination will win. Or you can also bluff and make your opponents fold (discard their card) even before the last round. When all of the players fold their cards, you win.

And with that in mind, there comes your chips (stack) to the play.

For you to see a flop you have to call. Call means you put your money on the table and you want to see the next card. How much you have to call depends on the blinds or your opponents that can raise. Blinds starts low and gets bigger as game progress. One player on the table will always pay small blind and player next to him big blind and blinds go to every player clockwise. If it said that blind are 10/20, it means small blind is 10 and big blind is 20.

You can also raise. That means you put more money on the table and if nobody call your raise, the only thing your opponents can do is to fold and you will win the pot.

You can also fold, that means you don't want to play with your current cards and you want to wait for next game. You will do this often, as you should not play with cards like 7-2 or 3-9 offsuit. They are just not good enough. You are looking for cards like A-10, A-K, K-K and better.

Trying to teach poker by text is hard. As I said on the start, it would be amazing if you would try it by yourself. Give it a try, maybe you will like it! :)

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If you want to join @tuck-fheman's big series of poker you should also check his posts here and follow him for more information:

https://steemit.com/poker/@tuck-fheman/steemit-poker-league-update-june-18th
https://steemit.com/poker/@tuck-fheman/steemit-poker-league-only-5-spots-left-100-sbd-freeroll-on-6-21-sign-up-now
https://steemit.com/poker/@tuck-fheman/100-sbd-freeroll-steemit-poker-league-tournament-june-21st-8pm-cst-1am-utc-6-22

I am also giving out some WhaleShares as added prizes to the tournament and to the WhaleShares community. Probably Walrus will add some too! This is the best time to learn poker and get some tokens at the same time!

What are the prizes are being said in my previous poker post: https://steemit.com/poker/@eirik/poker-with-steemians

So come and join us!
https://discord.gg/zsdWYQX

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If you would like to have more details about poker, combinations, playstyles or the tournament itself, you can join a newly made steemit.chat just for this occasion made by Tuck-fheman himself!

https://steemit.chat/channel/poker-league

The first @tuck-fheman's poker series tournament starts June 21st @ 8PM CST (1AM UTC 6/22).
Don't forget to join! http://www.bluffave.com/steemit

I will see you on the table!
Thank you!